Bowling Post #1

I've been in a bit of a bowling slump recently. After shooting over 700 four times in the first seven weeks, I haven't done it at all in the last six. Since I've been bowling two leagues, I've been throwing more games, too. Since October 18, my last 700 series, I've been bowling nine times. I've actually managed to be above average four out of those nine times, but three of those were almost exactly my average. Four of the nine times were also particularly bad, an average of more than 10 pins-under-average per game. This was culminated last Wednesday by my shooting 159, 206, and 162, winding up 91 pins under my average series.
The problem is that my standards have been creeping up higher and higher as I go. Tuesday was rough, a 200, 215, and 193, but it was rough because I was throwing good shots that just wouldn't get the pins to fall. Wednesday was rough because I couldn't hardly get the ball to get to the pocket; it was constantly on one side and then the other, making it difficult to adjust for. I only managed 159 in the first game by throwing three strikes in a row in the tenth. I had enough of a roll going on that I pulled a 206 out in the second game, starting with four strikes, and then keeping spares going until the tenth.

There's sort of a Punnet Square of bowling in my brain; on one axis is the quality of bowling, and the other axis is the quality of carry (or you might prefer, "luck"). Good bowling and good carry is how I wind up shooting 700+. Good bowling and bad carry was my Tuesday. It was frustrating, but I knew that I was still doing well. Bad bowling and good carry can lead to average scores but be dissatisfying. Bad bowling with bad carry is how I wind up below 550. Particularly low scores tend to mean that not only am I not throwing strikes, but I'm leaving splits or missing spares.

I used a couple hundred games of bowling data a couple years back and came up with a regression equation to predict bowling scores. Basically, for me, if I have exactly the same number of strikes as opens, I expect to shoot about 164. Every strike that I have beyond that with no opens is worth approximately 9 pins. In order to shoot 200, you need 3.75 strikes and no opens.

Now this is curious, because there is a thing called a "Dutch 200," in which a bowler alternates strikes and spares throughout the game. That would be six strikes and six spares. It would, in fact, be the most unlucky distribution of strikes in a game possible. The idea that you should be able to shoot 200 with 3.75 strikes and no opens suggests that in enough distributions of strikes, they come in successive frames. A strike and a spare is only worth 20, but two strikes and a 9-spare would mean 29 to the first strike, then 20 to the second. A game that starts with three strikes and makes 9-spares the rest of the way would end in a 212.

In any event, a 550 series is a 183.3 average, or 1.97 more strikes than opens per game. Considering that I've been throwing strikes at a 52% clip (even including this down sample), that's pretty disappointing. That's 5.72 strikes in a typical game (11 chances). That makes 3.75 opens per game, if I had been throwing that many strikes. That many opens would be damn frustrating. In this case, I haven't been throwing a great deal of strikes, so the opens haven't climbed through the roof, but picking up spares is a lot of "work," in bowling speak. Spares don't give you good games at this level, but they sure keep you out of bad ones.

On a day where I don't strike, opens are really difficult to overcome because I essentially need two strikes in a row to undo the score damage. With 10 frames and a need to get at least 5 strikes to make it to 211 (my Tuesday night average), an open is difficult to overcome, especially when strikes aren't showing up freely.

I can get really frustrated while I'm throwing open frames, but interestingly, it's difficult to tap into at this point. I was remarking the other day that I think I don't tend to act out too emotionally; or at the least, I don't tend to act out with a lot of negative emotion. I still have negative emotion just like anybody else, but I manage it differently, and when bowling goes poorly is the time I typically see it come out. I think that's a post for another time, but it so happens to be the post I was trying to make before all these numbers came out of my keyboard.