Sunday, August 8

Luck is when preparation meets opportunity

Dear all,

It has been a strange season. Strange, meaning pretty fruitless. I’m not sure exactly why but there could be a few reasons.

I guess for one, I took a conscious break from practicing. I was playing so many tournaments and winning so many last year that I almost got immune to it. I guess as crazy as it sounds, I might have taken winning for granted as it was happening. It’s almost as if I needed to loose a few times again to be able to appreciate the winning ways. Awful, isn’t it? Hell yeah it is because I took quite a few beatings. I’m tired of it.
Secondly, I was a bit discouraged to play because I didn’t even get paid yet from my World 10-ball Championships in Manila last December. Can you imagine all the hardship you have to go through to win? Just to have them play strange delay-tactics on me?
It kind of took the wind out of my sails. I am still wondering where the money is. 9 months and counting.

I have a plan. As I would like to see myself as a honorable man, I hereby promise to do the following things to improve my chances to win tournaments in general:

1. Practice (a lot)
2. No partying, if any, before the tournament is over. (why would I? LOL)
3. Make favorable travel plans. For example, don’t show up one day before the tourney specially if it’s on the other side of the world.
4. Stop giving myself excuses why and if I would be playing bad.
5. Exercise moderately on the day of tournament, hard on the day off. (or “hard” after the match that day)
6. blog more
7. Suggestions?

I did already do some of these things here and ended up victorious in Louisiana! Me and Rodney “The Rocket” Morris won the doubles event and I ended winning the singles as well by beating none other than Shane Van Boening 10-3 in the finals! Pretty sweet…

Ok, its time for me to go to work.


-ICEMAN-

4 comments:

Unknown said...

7- try to see the kinds of satisfaction other than money, when you win a tournament.

It is really sad that you couldn't get your prize money for 9 months, that's a huge disappointment. I am sure that this is a very hard situation to deal with. I hope you get your good news soon and share with us.

In Turkey, we don't have big prizes in pool tournaments, so we don't have disappointments about money :)

Sometimes, winning the respect of spectators is better than everything, and you already know that...

Murat from Istanbul

rohan said...

Rohan Ambi August 14 at 11:25pm
hello sir ,
hiii i m a co-ordinator for the cultural fest of IIT BOMBAY.its ASIAS BIGGEST COLLEGE FEST.we want to invite you to our fest.its really weird to inform like this but i couldnt find out any other way.my email id is ambi.rohan@gmail.com.if you do have any query please ask
this is a link which a glimpse of our fest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMXzbDCdtOE

孫邦柔 said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

Hey Mika it's finally happening: you will play Shane in October, 10 Ball, first to 100...This is the match everybody was looking for for quite some time. One of (if not THE) 2 players in the world right now...and both are my favourites...this will be huge!
I'm really excited and looking forward to this match!!!
Take care Mika and wish you good rolls!!!