Ping Pong, Part II

On December 27, 2005, I wrote about ping pong

...I got crushed repeatedly. Normally I play these guys pretty even but on this night I had no chance.
It got me thinking. I don't really get into "the zone." I tend to play solid and feed off the mistakes of others, be it in ping pong, frisbee golf, ultimate frisbee, or poker. It's very rare for me to play "above the rim" and beat people. My victories come when people beat themselves. I don't know anyone who has had more success playing frisbee golf and poker than I have, though I know friends who are more talented at these games. I tend to surpass them because I do not make as many mistakes as they do. If they play flawlessly, they should beat me almost every time.
It's important for me to stay patient. Sometimes when I am losing I press and force things a bit. When I think about my greatest successes in poker, they came when I was patient and gave myself the chance to get lucky. I lose when I try to outplay people and I make mistakes. If an opponent plays his best against me, he will usually win. But most people don't play anywhere near their best, no matter what the game.

I'm pleased to say that I no longer feel this way about competition. Not long after I wrote that post my ping pong game started improving quickly and within a couple months I was crushing anyone who would challenge me with ease (Wolf and I have not yet had a second battle royale after his narrow victory in February but I do imagine I would beat him today). Not only do I easily destroy my friends in ping pong these days, but I do it by beating them - slamming shots past them and breaking them down with constant pressure, not just waiting for them to make mistakes.

I've also come to believe that in frisbee golf, the sport/game I am probably best at compared to the field, I do outplay people. I do make fewer mistakes than most of my opponents, but I'm also capable of consistently making shots that many cannot.

When I wrote the original ping pong post, I generally employed a "setmining" or "nutpeddling" weak-tight strategy in poker. I was easily bluffed and rarely made moves. My profits came from exploiting the mistakes of less-skilled players, not outplaying regulars.

Today that has changed as well. With a lot of help from Paul, Joel aka gamblegambel, ReMMy3, Alex aka Concatenate, PiMaster, and Mike Odeh, I've become a loose, aggressive, bludgeoning, outplaying sort of player. I don't mind playing against regulars and I like to make moves. During my last three full-table sessions my hands won percentages have been 13, 14, and 14. In the past I was usually at 10-11%.

Last night at a party in Saint Paul I got crushed by the two best ping pong players I have ever played. While these two guys were nowhere near world-class, they made me look foolish with spin shots I have seen only on television. I came in expecting to dominate and walked out mindblown, stunned but excited to know that the game could be played at such a high level. As good as I've gotten at ping pong, there are players, even at an amateur level, that are light years ahead of me, playing a game that hardly resembles the tap-tap back and forth I am used to.

And the same is true of poker, of course. The luck factor is so huge that it's not always obvious, but there are players who are incredibly good at poker. As good as I've gotten, I'm still a slow learner, and it will be a very long time (if ever) before I'm truly elite.

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Thursday Afternoon: +17,150
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Monday Afternoon: +3914

Year to Date: +101,362