I'm writing this because tomorrow is bowling day and because of that it is the day of the week that I look forward to the most out of any other. We do it every week and even though the amount of foreigners in this town and Vietnam as a whole seems to drop by the week, we still have a really good turnout at our weekly events.
One thing you can count on happening every week is a lot of very difficult if not impossible to pick up splits to occur in our games and one of the worst is the dreaded 7/10 split.
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Normally, when you have a split the idea is to hit whatever pin is closest to you at an angle so that it can bounce towards the other pin that is far away from it and knock it down. This does not apply to the 7/10 though because there is virtually no space next to it and the gutter so it simply isn't possible to hit the pin on the side and make it travel across the lane and hit the other one. It can't be done this way even by the world's greatest bowling computer / machine that can roll a ball exactly where you want it to go at exactly a certain speed and rotation. The computer doesn't know how to be wrong and definitely will roll it precisely where you tell it to go.
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The machine is called EARL and there are several of them around the world. The machine is used to test bowling balls and new technology that is being introduced to the sport. It is accurate within 1mm on its rolls and this is true up to 25 miles per hour - which is a lot faster than you are likely to be bowling and also a lot more accurate.
With all this technology that doesn't know how to make a mistake, EARL still misses more than 70% of all attempts at 7/10 splits. There isn't any real strategy for getting a 7/10 split pickup and from what I have seen the pros say to just try to hit the hell out of one of the pins on the inside of it (not the gutter side) and hope that the pin bounces around to the other side. You have to get VERY lucky in order for this to happen. There have been a lot of televised PBA (Pro Bowling Association) events over the years and there have only been a grand total of 4 times that someone has actually succeeded in picking up this dreaded shot.
The most recent time this was done on TV was in April of last year by pro bowler Anthony Neuer who is known in the circuit as "The Ginger Assassin."
Maybe it seems nerdy to get so excited about someone making one of these shots but if you bowl like I bowl, you can understand why it is such a big deal.
In our league, which we call DUMBO, we have a long-running bet that if anyone can pick up a 7/10 split that they will receive a US $100 bill. We have been bowling scores of times and have seen many 7/10's in that time. Nobody has even come close. If the pros can't do it, what chance do we have?