In Between - from Katniss

Find your WHY.....and you will find your WAY.

Somewhere in between when you leave your comfort zone, to enter a more challenging zone.

com·fort zone

/ˈkəmfərt zōn/

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noun

a place or situation where one feels safe or at ease and without stress.

My comfort zone: Known ability to play in a higher caliber event/league. Having the stats and skills to back it up. Competition is “fun and care free.” 

Players looking up to you. You're the top of the food chain.

chal·leng·ing

/ˈCHalənˌjiNG/

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noun

testing one's abilities; demanding

Players are of bigger and stronger playing abilities. Your mental and thinking process will be tested constantly. You are no longer on the top of the food chain, you are now at the bottom trying to make your way up. It may even feel like players are looking down at you instead of them looking up at you like in the comfort zone.

It’s basically the same concept for both zone's, tho:

• Pre-shot routine
• Pattern play
• Stay down on your shot

Start with a small goal and once that is achieved, set another a goal. DO NOT GIVE UP!!

Once the challenging zone toughens you up, and makes you a confident and stronger player, going back to what was your comfort zone will actually make you feel like you no longer belong. It will make you feel out of place. 

I do feel that you adapt to your surroundings. So if you stay there too long, you have to keep moving in order to excel or you will stay playing at that same level.  

Change is hard....it is tough when you are IN BETWEEN leaving the old and making your way in to the new. 

I am determined and I will NOT give up! 

Playing Even in a Tourney - Thanks to FargoRate

Catching up a bit from my trip to OKC for that tournament I played in January...

When we play in tournaments (whether open or handicapped) it's very natural to "judge" ourselves and our opponents ahead of every match.  We wonder things like:  who is the better player, will I have a chance, I should win, this will be tough, or this will be easy.

To be frank, it's is best if we DON'T ever think any of these thoughts and just focus on the game in front of us - that gives us the best chance to win!  But it is kinda normal to compare our skills to others.

The tournament in OKC was different than any other I had ever played in.  Basically, the race of every single match was not standard and instead depended on who you played.  And the race was established using an option on FargoRate.com.

It was a "575 and under tournament," which meant any player with a Fargo Rating of 575 and under could play.  And depending on who you played, your race was determined for you.

This is going to be tough to explain, so bear with me.

There is an option on Fargorate.com entitled "Find a Fair Match."  See top right choice below:

From there, there are 3 categories: Hot, Medium and Mild. The Hot column is the race that should benefit the lower ranked player and the Mild column would benefit the higher ranked player, if two players would try and match up evenly:

In the OKC tournament, the race was to 7 on the winners side and 5 on the one-loss side. And we were to use the "hot" column to determine our races.

So, if I (524) was to play a player ranked 460, I would race to 7 and they would race to 5. (See below far left column and find the match up that begins with 7, since this tournament was a race to 7 on the winners side and I was Player One). If it was a one-loss side match, I would race to 5 and my opponent would race to 4 (again, below far left "hot" column and find the match up that begins with 5, since this tournament was a race to 5 on the one-loss side).

So, what was SUPER cool about this tournament was each player was essentially playing about even, no matter who you played because the race was stat-dependent.

So, let's set me up to play a higher-ranked player. If I was playing a player rated 570 and we were on the winner's side, I would race to 6 and they would race to 7. See hot column on the left and notice my opponent is Player Two, so we look for the "7" in the hot column for the second player, which would be 6-7 in this case:

It was actually a lot of fun and really cool to realize we were all playing about even in every single match. I don't mean we all played the same, I mean each race was established under the "Fair Match" option and that allowed for every person we played to be matched up pretty evenly in our matches.  I admit it was a different type of pressure - not one where one or the other is suppose to win, but who will win?

There was no guessing who played better and there was no pressure like there normally is when we all race to the same number. It was cool that each player raced to their own proper race against whoever it was we ran across based on our skill.

I liked it!

Different Thoughts of Playing Better Players

I think it's very interesting what goes through people's minds when they see someone with high talent walk into the pool room during a weekly tournament.

What are YOU thinking?

A girlfriend of mine and I were talking last weekend about this very topic.

She said it must be tough for local Pros to walk in to play in local tournaments because they have a target on their head.

I looked at her very curious because that's not the way I look at them.  My thinking is completely opposite.

My thinking is more like, "shit, I hope I don't have to play them tonight."  lol.  I get nervous I might have to play them.  Instead, she is of the mind set that she HOPES to play them so she can try to beat "de-throne" them. 

I wonder why people have such different reactions and thinking when it comes to wanting to play better players? 

Confidence?  Mental toughness?  Killer Instinct?  Hmmm....