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I'm hoping this thread isn't perma-dead because I'm taking the steps to ramp this up from a pastime to an all-out hobby. I'm near the end of my second league season with three buddies, we finished sixth last time and are on pace to finish fourth this time. But I feel like I've kinda maxed out the potential with a straight-thrown house ball (Avg 160, high game 255, high set 564) so I went to the local pro shop and got a ball. I don't know a whole lot about balls, but the store owner came highly-recommended and sold me a ball that would be good for transitioning from a straight ball to a hook (Grease Monkey Pow). We're pretty much set on fourth place right now and this league does playoffs oddly, so we're probably not going to move from there. I went ahead and bowled with the new bowl yesterday and was treated to my first sub-100 game in at least 10 years. But I got the feel for it and was hooking into the pocket fairly well and finished the series with a 163 and 159. It felt great the whole time but I think I need to have him drill the ring finger just a tiny bit wider as it was getting tight. It's weird having to relearn a bowling technique but hopefully this'll let me push through that ceiling. First goal is to throw over 200 with the new ball, and then hopefully I can get my first 600 series after that.
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Mar 31, 2015 20:25
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 14:00 |
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Thanks! I figured maybe it was just a dead time for some leagues or something. The new ball is a 15 lber as recommended by the pro shop dude. I threw a 13 lb house ball before that, and I didn't really even notice the weight difference. The weirder part was getting used to the fingertip grip. I had three strikes in four frames at one point and it kinda felt like I was cheating since my strike game was always weak. The bigger fixes now are consistency with the pocket and aim adjustment for spares. This thread has been a nice read, especially seeing Baldrash go from a 145 average to a 693 series. Hoping to have a similar success story myself.
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Mar 31, 2015 21:32
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An alley nearby is $2 a game from 9am to noon on Sundays. I found my new church.
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Apr 5, 2015 16:50
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Last night was the playoffs, and we had unfortunately been running under the wrong assumption when it came to playoff format. Last season it was set up oddly where only the top two teams would compete for first place, then 3 & 4 competed for third place, etc etc. This season it was a single-elimination bracket, and unfortunately two of us had basically conceded the season (we were solidly set in fourth place coming in) by switching to new balls/deliveries. We put up a fight but lost in the second round when our leadoff man fell off a cliff. Another team tried to poach me for a fall league, so if it turns out that they'll be playing on a different day than my current team, I'll probably end up in two leagues.  What sort of stats do you all keep for yourselves? Since increasing my bowling output I've been capturing score, strike%, single-pin-spare-pickup%, and spare%. Anything else worth adding in?
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Apr 14, 2015 19:48
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What's Fill%? And do you do your averages for an entire season or is it something like the average for your last ten games?
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Apr 14, 2015 20:27
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Thom P. Tiers posted:I keep a running average, so it includes the entire year. But with the information I have, I could very easily just highlight cells and see what I have been averaging in any league for the past month, or month by month specifically. Fill % is a pretty big stat for competitive college bowling (something I used to do). Basically, how many frames did you "fill." Fill meaning spare or strike. So it would be strikes and spares divided by total number of frames. For the sake of fill percentage, only count your attempt in the 10th frame. You wouldn't count all three strikes in your fill if you struck out. Oh duh, that makes sense. Thom P. Tiers posted:On a different note, I finally shot my first 800. 300-247-253. And it happened to be in the league finals, so I helped our team takes first! Congrats! That's freaking awesome to get a 300 and 800 in the same series.
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Apr 15, 2015 15:46
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I'm wondering if there's any disadvantage to one of these shots over the other. I'm still in the process of converting from a straight ball to a hook and the biggest hurdle right now is just straight-up muscle memory when it comes to my aim. Bowling for so many years has made it incredibly unnatural to start my throw directionally to the right like in image A so I've had more luck with B. My hook also doesn't seem strong enough when I work with shot A, either. It doesn't seem to make a difference in the outcome when I DO hit the pocket, it's just that I hit the pocket much more often with shot B. I never see anybody start from over to the right like that, though, so I'm wondering if there's just something I'm missing and I should practice more to throw a shot like A.
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Apr 24, 2015 17:15
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New league started yesterday and we're on a new day. Oddly enough my hook was stronger than expected so I ended up having to move back to a center-originated throw and it worked really well. We swept our opponent 7-0 and I ended up going 143-169-181. I'm hoping to maintain a 160+ average for this season and that's a good start. My spare game is back! I've really improved with the new ball and new throw and that's great. I'm waiting for the first game where my strike and spare game are both on to reap the benefits. I've noticed already that my lows are much higher, which is a nice change - I typically threw a game in the 120s-130s twice in every three-game series or so, and I've only thrown one in my last five series. Goals for the season:
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May 1, 2015 04:40
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Augh we lost by one pin overall last night - 2432 to 2431! We won the first game by 43, the second game by 11, and lost the third game by 55. Their anchor finished with 6 straight strikes and he needed every one of them. It was disappointing but they were a really fun team to bowl against so we had a lot of fun. I couldn't get any sort of consistency between our two lanes though - one was grabbing incredibly early and the other had very little movement at all. I did alright, I wasn't striking very well but I was picking up spares. 181-131-178 for a ~163 average, bringing my season average up to 161 for the season. I'm shooting for 160 on the season so at least I'm on pace there for now. My spare game has improved a lot in a short period of time though! In April I spared at a 43.3% rate (5.3% splits, 48.0% non-splits, 62.7% 9P) and in May I'm rolling at 53.4% so far (11.1%, 59.4%, 69.2%). Strikes are a bit down but that seems to come and go with me.
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May 14, 2015 15:56
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Bowled much better in May than in April, though I'm dealing with some lingering wrist issues now. I refuse to stop. Average: 159.0 (+11.5) Strike%: 24.3% (+0.2%) Spare%: 55.4% (+12.1%) 9P%: 67.9% (+5.2%) Mark%: 67.4% (+10.1%) First Ball: 8.35 (+0.40) Hoping to keep it up going into June, especially since my best performances seem to come on league days rather than practice days.
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Jun 1, 2015 23:22
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Due to injury and illness I have barely bowled at all in June, but I was well enough to go last night and threw my best three-game set since switching to a fingertip grip, so I'm glad that it didn't all leave me through inactivity! 146 185 193, and the 193 was my first clean game in a long time. We ended up taking 5 of 7 points from the first-place team in the league so we're all pretty pumped, especially since we're only a week away from a vacation we're taking as a team.
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Jun 25, 2015 16:52
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We've been on a ROLL lately, taking 5 of 7 on back to back weeks from the first place teams and then sweeping whichever schmitties we played last week, giving us a three week total of 17-4. We probably had a good chance of taking all 7 from the group two weeks ago, but our team was flying out to Jamaica the following morning and we all got way too drunk to bowl properly in the third game...it was fortunate that we won the second game by nearly 300 pins (!) so our overall pin lead was never in danger. It was even better because that team is easily my least-favorite team in the league due to general attitude and lack of bowling etiquette, so it was nice to bring them down a peg. I had my most consistent three game set in ages last week with a 188-163-173. Still want to push out a 550 but in the meantime my average is back over 160 so I'm good with my current pace.
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Jul 14, 2015 20:24
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Playoff tournament is tonight, we have the two seed. If we win our first round match we'll likely play our biggest rivals. We gotta do this. Seeding is incorrect in the image but:  EDIT: Extinguished first opponents. Rivals are getting clobbered by nerds. IT'S HAPPENING EDIT2: on to the finals, first time ever, against a team we really like. This owns. Poque fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Jul 30, 2015 |
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Jul 30, 2015 01:17
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We didn't pull it off, but I'll settle for 2nd. Two of us bowled our asses off but our anchor shat the bed, we were bowling a man down, and the other team bowled awesomely. BUT! Poque posted:Goals for the season: 1. Yup, went in with a 159 today and came out with a 161 2. Close. Max 193 on the season but was much more consistent on the whole 3. Got it tonight (554), not a bad way to finish out the season 4. ALMOST Great season. Glad for a break til October.
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Jul 30, 2015 05:04
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Not sure what's going on with me this season but we're about halfway through the regular season and I'm bowling a 170 average, my best ever by about 10 pins. We took a long break going into this season and I think the rest helped me reset a bit. I went 193-171-220 tonight and I think the 584 is my best three game series of all time. Funny thing is I stupidly left the first two frames of the first two games open so it really easily could have been a 600.
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Jan 19, 2017 05:53
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I bowl in a beer league only and our opponents intentionally slowplayed us tonight to the point where we finished our series in FOUR loving HOURS, over a full hour after all 14 other teams had finished bowling. We took 5 of 7 points but it REALLY hosed with our rhythm by the third game, complete bullshit.
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Feb 9, 2017 06:18
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Thom P. Tiers posted:You don't have a pace of play rule in your league? Intentionally bowling slow sounds horrible and I probably would have confronted them about it and/or the league secretary. Like, that's not even a real strategy. That's just being a bunch of loving tools. It's a great league at a super fun old alley, but it doesn't really have rules or a secretary. It's supposed to be really chill. When we asked them if they could pick it up, they said they were already bowling faster than they usually do and made a big scene about it, so it was clear they were lying tools. You're right that it's not a strategy, but we let it get in our heads for the last game (and we were also exhausted)  Nobody in the league likes them, so maybe they'll be gone next season.
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Feb 9, 2017 16:43
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Funny that, we finished 90 minutes earlier than last week! We also set the season high for handicap series at 2552, about 60 pins higher than the previous high 
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Feb 16, 2017 06:06
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First round of the playoffs tonight and it was best two of three to advance, we were even handicap with the opposing team so it was a scratch fight. First game we ran a train and won by 117, then second game we were tied after 8. We proceeded to get beer frames in 9 and 10 (almost twice in 10) to win by an even 100.  My first open frame was after a strike ball on frame 10, game 2. Poque fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Mar 9, 2017 |
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Mar 9, 2017 04:28
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We ended up coming in third again this season (16 teams). First round was last week, and we beat our second round opponent pretty handily as their best bowler ended up throwing scratch like 60 below his average. We were in it until the end in the final four, but they simply marked more than we did to finish out the game. I think we get too fatigued in later rounds.
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Mar 17, 2017 21:09
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I CAN'T loving BOWL ANYMORE
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May 11, 2017 03:12
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that was just sheer frustration from a weeks long slump. immediately after that i got mad and mean-mugged 5 strikes in 6 frames. then i sprained my wrist so i actually am out
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May 11, 2017 16:35
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I am just horribly in my own head this season and I can't manage to pop out of it. Average is down about 25 pins and I can't clear my head when I get up to the line.
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Jan 4, 2018 04:02
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Dude in my league just picked up a Greek church 
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Mar 22, 2018 02:59
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I think 6-7 or 4-10 is the toughest I've ever converted. Someday I'll get a big one We just bombed out so hard and I'm so glad this season is over. I'm completely broken. Wondering if starting fresh with a different ball could help as a reset of sorts.
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Mar 22, 2018 04:00
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 14:00 |
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Is there a term for the pins you get when you have a strike or spare pending?
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Jun 16, 2018 06:37
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