Gold Crown IV

Gold Crown IV
FastMikie's Fun House, Del Mar, California

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Winning under challenging conditions

I won the Thursday afternoon 8-ball tournament (again), but it could have turned out differently...

The outside temperature shot up past 85, and I guess that kicked in the room air conditioning higher than normal, and it got pretty nippy, and that is not a good thing for me.  With a low blubber index, my bones get cold fast, and I start to shivver and shake, and then it seems I gotta pee, and I just can't shoot very well when I'm in that condition.  (Now you know my Achilles' heel.)

I guess I got lucky, and won anyway.

That helps me get over my non-win last week, about which I refrained from blogging until now.  My mom always said "If you can't say anything nice, then don't say anything at all".  Hence my quietude.   Suffice it to say that I did not win last week, and it was all because I let my head get in the way.  I was shooting very well until the end when the playoffs started.  I was undefeated with 5-0 record, and there were 4 other players with a 4-1 record, so I just naturally assumed that the 4 would play down to only one, who I would play in the finals.  But it didn't happen that way.  Instead, I had to play two of the one-loss players, and the "injustice" of it all tweaked my brain so bad that I was just not playing the shot in front of me, at all.  

Wouldn't it be great if there were a switch we could use to turn off our emotions and negative thinking, and leave only the pool-shooting brain functions?

I'm working on it.

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