Bowling and more

Last week I was back in Chicago and had my fair share of adventures. Oh, where to begin? Well, first things first: I got to bowl with Bill. Yes, Bill. That Bill. Gates. Yes, I think we understand each other. You know, I was expecting that Bill would be quite a good player, but he's... well, he sort of sucks. Which is weird, especially for a guy who has two bowling alleys in his home. I kid you not, he has two: one upstairs, one downstairs. Freaking hell! And he still sucks. What does that tell you? It tells me that this man should spend more time bowling than helping out the poor. But that's neither here nor there.

So, there we are, 7th frame, so far we are neck and neck, all strikes. Just then Bill makes his biggest mistake and gets 9 pins on his first throw. I thought he was going to pop. I haven't seen him this angry since that Blue Screen of Death he got during the live demo of Windows 98. On the next throw Bill must have remembered that Blue Screen of Death: he rolled a gutter ball. You have not known fear until you came that close to beating a billionaire nerd at bowling, I had to consider my next move very carefully. I hit 9 pins. Bill leveled those Wal-Mart frames on me and my life flashed before my eyes. Wow, how boring. Before I knew what had happened, I found myself standing in front of the lane, watching a ball recede into the distance. I closed my eyes and concentrated on what I hoped was a latent telekinetic ability. With all my might, I willed that damn ball to- I heard a hit. That's it, my life is forfeit. Would I be offered my favorite meal and a knife? Bill probably watched his fair share of samurai movies, seppuku is quite likely. After what seemed like eternity, I opened my eyes. Bill was beaming. He was quite happy for my success, to have continued where he himself has fallen. Long story short, I got 279, he got 267. I was never happier to get such a low score.

If this was all that happened to me that night, I think we would both agree that it was indeed a waste of energy to have woken up that day. But no, there was more.

Combined with the fact that this particular Chicago bowling alley hosted a game with Bill Gates, they were at the time also playing host to one of the biggest ping-pong tournaments in the world. Literally. The bowling alley was hosting the National Fat Guy Table Tennis Tournament.

You've probably got a fair idea of what a table tennis tournament is. In one word, it can be described as 'boring'. In two words it can be described as 'meh, OK'. But the Fat Guy Tournament is a sight to behold!

The rules of the Fat Guy Tourney are similar to those of regular table tennis, but due to the fact that the players are rather large, new rules are added to take advantage of the fat guys' natural gravitational field. See, fat guys are so massive that they posses a quite powerful gravitational field which, while mostly insignificant in everyday life, does quite a number on such a small object as a ping-pong ball. These gravitational fields can be utilized to produce never-before-seen maneuvers that, frankly, lesser players are simply incapable of replicating. Even if a player misses the ball, he can attempt to catch it in his gravity well and continue playing. While the rules do state that ball-body contact is equivalent to ball-table contact, in reference to the number of contacts allowed, and the ball may not come to rest on the body of the player, there is no rule against using the body's gravity to move the ball in complex orbits. In fact, body orbits are a basic necessity in the higher rungs of the tournament between strong players: it is nearly impossible to win a game if the player is not capable of performing at least a 1080 (3 complete orbits of the ball around the player).

At the tournament I observed games in three categories: Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3. Tier 3 held the lower-ranked players, while Tier 1 held the higher-ranked players. But player skill is not the only difference between the tiers. Tier 3 games were very similar in style to regular table tennis matches, with the obvious addition of the basic gravitational rules, but Tier 2 games added atmospheric effects to the mix: players are allowed to establish an atmosphere around themselves to help them. Fat guys are so massive that, in addition to affecting a ping-pong ball's motion, they are capable of having a thin atmosphere around them. At Tier 2 this atmosphere may consist of several heavy (non-toxic) gases as well as a slew of particles. The most widely used one was chalk dust. I was told that this is due to some inherent property of chalk, but I don't remember the details. During the game, this thin layer of atmosphere can act as a brake for the ball. Chalk dust increases the effect, while at the same time adding a spin to the ball. In addition to allowing various combinations of small particles in the atmosphere, the rules state that the player may establish a medium-scale weather system. I did observe slight winds around Tier 2 players, but the rules also put a limit on the speed of wind, which must be kept under a specific threshold. The rule about the weather system really only shines when applied to Tier 1 players, so I suspect that the reason the rule is in effect for Tier 2 players is that, given an atmosphere, weather around fat guys is all but unavoidable.

Tier 1 games is the main reason I chose to even blog about this event. They are spectacular! The skill, the orbits, the hurricanes, everything about the sport comes to a head when such powerful opponents face off. First off, yes, I said hurricanes. Tier 1 games do not have an imposed weather limitations, so a number of players develop devastating weather system around themselves to help in the game. I myself witnessed about three or four hurricanes, two small twisters and, what the announcers and fans all over the world have dubbed it, The Great Blue Spot. The Great Blue Spot is an atmospheric phenomenon that gets its name from Jupiter's Great Red Spot, a storm on that planet that is so large, it is capable of swallowing the Earth, and has lasted at least two centuries, and possibly quite longer. The Great Blue Spot is a hurricane in the atmosphere of the player known as Jove (English form of the name Jupiter), one of the best representatives of the sport. I was told that this hurricane is nearly four years old. It is blue because of the secret dyes Jove uses to intimidate his opponents. A somewhat dubious source also stated that the Blue Spot has swallowed more than 100 ping-pong balls during its lifetime, but obviously I have doubts about this figure.

Physics figures greatly into the sport: players use intuitive physics to predict orbits. I say intuitive because that is exactly what the players must do, develop intuition for the physics of the game, as using a good ol' TI-86 is a bit out of the question. After all, the player might drop it, and then what? Well, then they're pretty much shafted. Well, moving on. In Tier 2 and Tier 3 games, the better intuitive physicist has an upper hand on his opponent. In Tier 1 games, there's a bit of a twist: there are a number of fat guys moving around the players and the table. Their movements are semi-random and their weight is a closely-held secret, at least for the duration of the game. These fat guys represent an added random element, a way to throw the players off-balance and make the game even more challenging. There are usually five to seven fat guys moving around the table in different directions and at different speeds. Their motions are decided prior to the start of the tournament and they are communicated this information through radio linkups. As I said, the motions of the periphery fat guys is semi-random: the random movements are decided almost exclusive by a computer. 'Almost exclusively'. There is one event in every Tier 1 game that is decided by a person, usually one of the judges, beforehand, and that event is called the eclipse. The eclipse is an event, which happens once during a game, when the periphery fat guys are oriented into a line. This 'fat guy eclipse' has the potential for very strong forces on the ball, and on some occasions has been decided the outcome of the game. It is a random occurrence, so one cannot prepare for it, but the strongest players are able to use the eclipse to their advantage from almost any state of the game. I myself witnessed an eclipse occur while Titan (a powerful player from Oregon) was passing the ball to his opponent: the ball literally froze in the air before flying back toward Titan. All seemed lost. While a lesser player would surely have lost his cool, Titan used the sudden acceleration of the ball (due to the eclipse) combined with his own gravity to pull off the slingshot maneuver, forcing the ball to orbit his body and releasing it at the apogee (the farthest point in the orbit) where the force of the eclipse had by this time died down. As a result, the ping-pong ball slammed into Titan's opponent, a wiry New Yorker calling himself Sfinx, and broke, folding in on itself. Titan won the game!

Some would ask if random motion of fat guys is really a viable randomizer. While it is conceivable that a Rain Man-like player may be able to compute the changing conditions and take advantage of the situation, the penalty for cheating is immediate and permanent ban from all tournaments and events. So far, there have been no instances of the application of this rule.

The National Fat Guy Table Tennis Tournament is one of the wonders of the modern world and I urge everyone to try and attend a game if there is one near you. You will not be sorry!