Good
It's been a week and a half; I suppose I ought to say something about my most recent tournament.
Snap back to reality, whoa, there goes gravity
Whoa, there goes Rabbit, he choked, he's so mad...
Yeah, I choked. There's no other way to say it.
Going into round 14, with two games to go, I was in control. All I had to do was win one game. I jumped out to an early lead on Carl (chaithedog ), playing as solidly as I had for much of the past two days. But then things fell apart.
Three separate times, I could have made a play that would have all but ended matters. I saw the right play in two of those instances, but in one case I chickened out of it, not believing it was good, and in the other I opted to score points rather than play defense. Even so, I could have salvaged the endgame...but didn't look hard enough for the winning play.
So, I lost. First time in over 24 hours. But I was still in good shape. I could still play my way into the finals with a win, and I had chances even if I lost; if Carl won his game, I'd be okay as long as he didn't overtake me on spread...and he had 235 points to make up.
You can see what happened. Yeah, you can say I was unlucky to lose by as much as I did, but it's hard to draw good tiles with your hands around your neck. I missed a bingo in that game too--it wouldn't have won the game for me, but it certainly would have kept the score close enough that Carl's heroics weren't enough.
Accepting congratulations afterward on a "good performance" and "coming so close" was awkward, to say the least. Sure, if you had offered me third place before the event started, I would have taken it. But having such a run--one in which I was both playing well and getting lucky, one that any of a number of players could have parlayed into a final-table seat--and somehow snatching defeat from the jaws of victory...that's not a feat worthy of congratulation, in my book.
You'd better lose yourself in the music, the moment, you own it
You better never let it go
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance...
Part of me knows that this isn't true. I'm going to have other chances. At the same time, the hyper-competitive part of me hates losing, especially the way I did. They say you have to learn how to lose before you can learn how to win...I think I've got the first part down now.
Success is my only m-----f---in' option, failure's not
Good isn't good enough anymore. It never has been.
I know I have it in me to be great; it's on me to make it happen.
*****
If anyone's interested, I'll be posting the games, and other assorted commentary (hopefully much less melodramatic than this) over at lechayim28_11 , the Scrabble-only version of this journal. Feel free to friend me there if you haven't already.
Mike
Snap back to reality, whoa, there goes gravity
Whoa, there goes Rabbit, he choked, he's so mad...
Yeah, I choked. There's no other way to say it.
Going into round 14, with two games to go, I was in control. All I had to do was win one game. I jumped out to an early lead on Carl (chaithedog ), playing as solidly as I had for much of the past two days. But then things fell apart.
Three separate times, I could have made a play that would have all but ended matters. I saw the right play in two of those instances, but in one case I chickened out of it, not believing it was good, and in the other I opted to score points rather than play defense. Even so, I could have salvaged the endgame...but didn't look hard enough for the winning play.
So, I lost. First time in over 24 hours. But I was still in good shape. I could still play my way into the finals with a win, and I had chances even if I lost; if Carl won his game, I'd be okay as long as he didn't overtake me on spread...and he had 235 points to make up.
You can see what happened. Yeah, you can say I was unlucky to lose by as much as I did, but it's hard to draw good tiles with your hands around your neck. I missed a bingo in that game too--it wouldn't have won the game for me, but it certainly would have kept the score close enough that Carl's heroics weren't enough.
Accepting congratulations afterward on a "good performance" and "coming so close" was awkward, to say the least. Sure, if you had offered me third place before the event started, I would have taken it. But having such a run--one in which I was both playing well and getting lucky, one that any of a number of players could have parlayed into a final-table seat--and somehow snatching defeat from the jaws of victory...that's not a feat worthy of congratulation, in my book.
You'd better lose yourself in the music, the moment, you own it
You better never let it go
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance...
Part of me knows that this isn't true. I'm going to have other chances. At the same time, the hyper-competitive part of me hates losing, especially the way I did. They say you have to learn how to lose before you can learn how to win...I think I've got the first part down now.
Success is my only m-----f---in' option, failure's not
Good isn't good enough anymore. It never has been.
I know I have it in me to be great; it's on me to make it happen.
*****
If anyone's interested, I'll be posting the games, and other assorted commentary (hopefully much less melodramatic than this) over at lechayim28_11 , the Scrabble-only version of this journal. Feel free to friend me there if you haven't already.
Mike