Poker Good; Pop a Shot? Not So Much

So last night marked the second time I've gathered up a group of poker players to go bowling. Obviously we bet on the games to make it interesting, but I'm fighting an uphill battle. I was at one point in my life a decent bowler, and glimmers of that "OK-ness" showed through in my first two games two weeks ago, where despite starting off zero for nine on ONE PIN spare pickups I rolled a 160 and a 139 to start off the evening. My final score for the night was a 120, and I had to take some pretty terrible lines in games 2 and 3, and ended up down on the night in prop betting, albeit it only $20 to the big potato (who generally cleaned up). Fast forward to last night and we're about to get started, but our lane is messed up and then messed up again and we have to restart after 5 frames and Hyperprrank is late and well anyway I told myself I was going to offer 15 pins for the first game to everyone, started my offer at 10 and was soundly mocked and ended up giving 20, and promptly came in last place, straight up. I just fell apart, and everyone else bowled numbers in like the 130s and 140s, and it was just awful. OK fine, that was on me, you can't expect to bowl like I did and win, but now I have a problem. Jailyard and Kangster just beat me by like 30 and 40 pins respectively and STILL WANT PINS in the next game. I'm not even kidding; we're not raising the stakes, we are still just betting $20, and they want to be spotted pins against a guy who just rolled like a 97. I refuse to give action and promptly roll a 77 in the next game, the wheels completely falling off, with me deciding to start throwing a hook in about frame 4 just to see how it works out (this once my no spread bet with Hyper was basically already decided, as he posted 80 pins through 5 frames). As I was finishing out the string I commented that my horsing around will probably give them a reason to still request pins next week, claiming I wasn't trying. In the 14 frames before I started horsing around I made one mark. And they're going to want pins next time.

So since our lane was messed up and we started late we only got in 2 games, and on the way out decided to play some air hockey and pop a shot. We paired off in 2s, and I clearly chose...poorly. Jailyard and Hyper played pop a shot, with the final score being something like 65 to 55. Meanwhile Kangster beat me 7-5 in air hockey, which was honestly probably about the fairest bet I made on the evening. So now he and I walk over to pop a shot and decide to bet one last time and he offers to go first and just...starts...killin' it. He does so well they give him a bonus round. Then another. Then another. The man scores 355 points. To restate, the score of the previous match was 65 to 55. He graciously lets me buy out for half and I post a 95, which honestly felt pretty respectable.

So my lesson learned is that I'm not giving these nits action next week :)