Just one little mistake

It's not how many mistakes you make that matters, it's whether the mistakes you make matter that matters.

I was reading Danny Boy's recent blog post and came across this gem of a short paragraph.

I've had a really strange year in that regard. Moments of great play overshadowed by a sloppy play here and a bad call there. Thing is, I'm not discouraged in the least! You'd think I should be, but I'm really not. Why? Well, because I know it's a pretty easy fix. It's in my control and my skill level today is better than it's ever been. It's a simple case of poor preparation before tournaments.

Easy fix? I'm not so sure about that. The only poor prepreation he talks about in that blog post is playing with a hangover, drinking, and drinking too much, when he knows he shouldn't. If that's a problem for you then I really don't think it's a problem that's likely to be easy to fix. If it's really easy to fix then you wouldn't do it in the first place.

It's been my experience in no limit that your overall outcome often hinges on just one or two decisions or outcomes. You can't control the outcomes, sometimes you'll just get beat. But controlling those decisions is hard. It's hard enough that if you keep trying to convince yourself that it's easy then it's probably not going to happen.