Does Any One Remember Pot Games

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Does anyone remember bowling in a 5 or 10 dollar pot game? Everyone for themselves against the field. If you had the money to put up, you were in, and your scores did the talking.
Enter the dark period of doubles matches. Hours to negotiate teams - what pair - no lefties - etc., a narrower possibility of who will win (team A or team B), more money being put up, most of which came from outside backing. It wasn't long before there were more fixed matches than legitimate ones, and a lot of great bowlers were involved as part of the hustle. So goodby to bowling action and let's go over to Jai Alai where the fix isn't so obvious.

Having experienced these times, I believe it a mistake to establish any strong connection between gambling and bowling.

Among those unfortunate remarks made by Jim Kelly during the U S Open telecast was one relating to "purse splitting". Yes, you can consider the source and ignore it, but if there is to be a rosy future for the Pba, integrity is always an issue. This isn't the WWF where the promotor dictates who will win the title match, and it isn't the NCAA final four either. Bowling is an exciting product that can be "very cool" without rendering physical harm to participants. I love it, and I know that you do too. Let's keep it cool.

['Guest']

Imagine Ernie Schlegel in a finals against Pete Weber. First place is $40,000 and second is $20,000. Both bowlers have friends betting $50,000 on the other bowler to win(ie. both bowlers are throwing the match to pick up the $50,000). We could see a score of 63 to 57. hehehe

[TonyTantillo]

I certainly remember pot games. In the early 70's I would go to a small 14 lane house on Webster Ave. and 200 Th street in the Bronx. There was a bunch of young bowlers and a bunch of old timers there each day. The owner was Eddie Detorres an action bowler from the fifties. He would throw a hard Manhattan rubber ball with a "chick grip". It was a tough house at the time and 190 was probaby high average in most leagues. On most afternoons there were $5 dollar pots and we would bowl across four lanes. On Satuday the pot games were $10 and you could at times get 12 to 15 bowlers bowling across six lanes. It was good action when you had limited funds putting up $5 for the chance to win $30 to $50. If there were over a 7 or 8 bowlers they would some time's pay out a second prize. The lines were paid for the top scores by the lower scores. It cost at that time $.45 on week day's and $.65 on weekends. If we only had four to six bowlers we would sometimes bowl doubles but the partners would change each game. We would pick from a plastic bottle with numbered ball's inside to determine who the parners would be for that game.

Steele Lanes was a great place to learn the game (Joey Beradi grew up in this house no matter what his PBA bio indicates) the old timers would coach us and one thing they got us to do was play low score. You had to get the least amount of pins in ten frames and had to hit a pin on every ball. If you hit nothing or went in the gutter it added ten pins to your score. This really increased our accuracy and made us good spare shooters. Almost thiry years later I am living in Virginia and their idea of pot games still is $5.00 a man but you have to pay your own game $2.50. So you invest $7.50 to win $50 however after the first game half the guy's drop out and then you invest $7.50 to win $15 to $20. The concept of action has not made it past the Mason Dixon Line.

[bobputtick]

Hi from Calgary, Alberta. In the early 1980's 7-10 guys would meet at noon at least once and week and bowl 3 game blocks. $5/game, $5/total, AND 10cents a pin UP THE LADDER. Losing could become very expensive and winning highly profitable. I missed a lot of work many afternoon, office would have no idea where I was and never asked. Made a weeks pay quite often and it died out after about 2 years. Never been anything like it since. Every spare or double was worth about $10 bucks when you think about it and every open would cost you that much. It was a great way to learn to handle pressure, or not, and to make some good dough, or not. Triples would go from 500-660 or so and the losers would be digging deep and the big winners would pay all the lineage. What a great time. Anybody else got crazy stories like that.

[Zoo Master]

Welcome bobputtick

I enjoyed your story, please leave some more...

[big Mac]

Two of the best houses for pot games was Maple lanes and Shell lanes both in Brooklyn.

Shell lanes had real good pots every Sunday morning for many many years. Maple lanes had pot games all the time for two many years to count. they also had some real good king of the hill or whatever they were called across 12 lanes.