The USBC Open Championships 2007 – My Successful Trip to Reno

Originally Published June 19, 2007

Two Sunday’s ago I headed out on the open road to Reno, NV for the 2007 USBC Open Championships where I was to meet Lindsy, Kacy, and David Bonifacini along with John Staley for the team even at USBC Nationals.

Monday night we bowled the team event and Tuesday night we bowled Doubles and Singles. Unfortunately Flor was taking her final Tuesday morning so I was without her until Tuesday evening when she flew in to meet me for the week.

I decided before I left that I was not going to gamble in Reno but would put all of my spare cash into the brackets instead. Doing some mental calculations I figured I would probably do better than the average bowler for the tournament so if I entered a lot of brackets I’d be spreading my risk out and would not likely lose all my money.

I turned out to be right I entered 28 brackets for $180 and won $540 bowling games of 194, 230, & 217. I figure I’d have done even better had I thrown a better first game but man tripling my money was great.

Tuesday after meandering the city streets by foot all day waiting to pick Flor up from the airport I scouted for places to take the lady out for a nice dinner.

Finally after picking her up from the airport and making back to the hotel we found out that we missed the start time for The Twelve Irish Tenors show. That was a bummer we both wanted to see that show. We also decided that we didn’t feel like spending a fortune on food so we just went down to the Fitzgerald’s in-hotel restaurant and ate a basic meal of Prime Rib with Alaskan King Crab Legs.

It was a modest meal that was fit for a couple reuniting. Actually the food was delicious and was very inexpensive considering the grandeur of the meal.

After eating we headed back over to the National Bowling Stadium for the second night of bowling.

I bowled doubles with David because they told us Lindsy and I couldn’t be partners at the last minute. They said that because both of us were members of the PBA in 2006 we had to split up. Bah!

Anyway, I spent an additional $300 in brackets getting into 40 brackets for Tuesday night hoping to repeat my success from the night earlier and I won $130 back in the Doubles event bowling games of 177, 245, & 198 and then $400 back in the singles event with games of 260, 223, and 217.

I essentially made an additional 76% on my investment totaling $1,070 in winnings on $480 in investments! Awesome!

Not only that but my performance in the tournament was so good that I’ll be making some solid money in the Singles Event and the All Events category as I bowled top notch scores in both events.

My official scores and standings can be found on Bowl.com. Click here and search for my name.

A summary of my games bowled can be found below.

Anyway, after finishing up way late Tuesday night Flor and I went back to the hotel and called for a late checkout as it was around 2:30 in the morning.

Wednesday we finally got out of the city around 2:30 in the afternoon and drove to Fresno where we spent time with my parents and prepped for a day trip to Yosemite on Thursday.