Tao of Pokerati - Bowling for Dollars

By Pauly
Hollyweird, CA

Last Sunday night was my last night in Vegas. I was stunned at my miraculous run at the sports book. Wasting my night away on MPGT (mega-Pai Gow tilt) was a desperate situation that I wanted to avoid.

I decided to hustle Michalski at the lanes. I offered to bowl a three game series against Michalski for $100. We settled on a $50 wager for best series and we also wagered $50 on a 'best-of-three' including bonuses for whoever had the most strikes each game.

Michalski drove us to South Point in the middle of a sandstorm. Swirling. Winds. Sand. Ominous signs of the continuing winter of discontent. I visited South Point once before, with Grubby on a buffet sojourn.

Wandering through the floor of the unusually brightly lit casino was sort of like being inside a classier version of the Gold Coast inhabited with people that had actually bathed that day. A dozen Japanese hippies stumbled out of a small van and dragged their luggage through the casino as I followed Michalski up the escalator to the bowling alley.

A busty blonde in a pink juicy sweatsuit stood in line in front of us. She paid for an extra game for two of her friends. She unfurled a $100 bill and the guy from behind the counter leered at her fabricated rack for a couple of seconds longer that someone in a service situation should have been allowed to do so. I looked over to at the lanes and spotted two other exotic dancer types. What do Las Vegas strippers do on Sunday nights? Bowling, of course.

The guy behind the counter was all business. He spoke with a slight Eastern-European accent and didn't respond when I asked him how his night as going. Unfortunately, the miserly Michalski failed to bribe the guy behind the counter. If Michalski had slid the hourly-wage slave a $20 bill, heck even $5, then he would have hooked us up with the lane next to the strippers. Instead, the bitter malcontent plopped down two pairs of recently disinfected size 10 bowling shoes and shipped us to the far end of the bowling alley.... next to two lanes of kids. Some sort of Mexican birthday party with 20 kids running around and playing bowling with bumpers. At 11pm on a Sunday night. Las Vegas.

Despite the little ones and the obvious sexual angst brewing for not being near the dancers, we kicked off the challenged in a highly contest first game. It came down to the last frames. I held a slight lead and won by a few pins. I smoked Michalski in the second game. He later revealed that the guy in the lane next to us was using his ball and got too much lane grease on finger holes. It was a legit excuse, but Michalski was too much of a pussy to tell the guy to stop using his ball. Why? The guy was at least 6'6" and 250 lbs. He would have kicked both of our asses, so I'm kinda glad that Michalski sort of shined it on like a nice Christian soldier. The meek shall inherit the Earth.

We recorded a podcast that night regarding our hijinks at the bowling alley. Here's the latest episode...

Episode 10.7: Bowling for Dollars... According to Michalski, "I blame it all on a text that put me on tilt for about four critical frames... regardless, to close out his most recent visit to Vegas, Pauly and I went bowling at the South Point casino for an intense heads-up match and some prop-betting education... and because he's not on Facebook and we couldn’t wager status-update control, we had to play for cash."

Thanks for listening to the shortest and laziest poker podcast on the intertubes. For first time listeners, head over to the Tao of Pokerati Archives.


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