All Tied Up…Twice

Saturday night I had the guys over for cards. It was the first time we’ve played since New Year’s Day after watching Michigan get embarrassed by Texas in the Rose Bowl.
I jumped out to nice lead. In the first hour and half I forced one guy out three times (we allow players to buy back in until a set time). That was rather fun. I was clearly the chips leader, by a healthy margin. Then ‘ole mo got up and walked to the other side of the table. I didn’t win one hand from 9:30 to 11:30 when I finally went out.
With only two players left we decided to call it a night. There was fifty bucks on the table. The first guy finished counting his chips and he had just over $25, the other guy, obviously, was just under $25. A near tie in poker? That’s unusual.

My bowling team had a rough night on Sunday. Going into last night we were tied for seventh. A marked improvement from the previous night of bowling. We were facing the team that we shared that seventh place spot with. We were short a player, due to illness. Our opponents were short two players. The league as a whole had a pretty light turn out because of the snow storm that was rolling through.
We struggled through the first game. It was a competitive, albeit very low scoring, into the tenth frame. Our opponents squeaked out a 9 pin victory. The second game was more of the same. Thanks to two strikes in the tenth by their second bowler they pulled off a 19 pin victory. The third game was just as close. In the tenth, with our anchor up, we’re down by 5 pins. He’s able to get those 5 on his first throw. So we’re tied. All he needs to do is hit anything, one pin would be fine. The ball is rolling down the alley headed toward the group of pins. It looks pretty good as the ball makes its way toward winning at least two points for us. Then an amazing thing happened. The ball made a hard curve to the left coming to the full embrace of the gutter.
All the remaining pins were standing there laughing at us. We tied the third game.
‘You tied?’ asked our league president when I asked him how it gets scored. ‘How’d you tie?’ asked the alley manager when I asked her the same question. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen that.’ said several other people standing around.

Two ties in the same weekend? What are the chances?