Accuracy, Not Obliteration

Lately I've been finding that wristband nights at one of my favorite arenas have been...well, quiet.  Call it a mid-winter lull (or maybe a lack-of-winter lull). I don't know why, but the last few times I've shown up I've been crossing my fingers just simply for someone to play against. So, when a couple of players did show up tonight I genuinely didn't want to scare them away, so I tried to go solely for accuracy. The goal tonight needs to be accuracy, not obliteration. At this I both succeeded and failed. Even though at 50 percent my hit ratio for a normal situation wasn't bad...but I clearly didn't reign it in enough. The gap between my score and theirs was about 7000 points (which I really wasn't trying to do) and I thought at that point I might have lost them. The players I was up against were green and if they went in for a second game I could tell I was going to have to severely pull back or else there wouldn't be anyone to play against at all at this rate. So I sat there thinking of how NOT to play it full out...and that's harder than you might think. Next game I vowed to myself to fight every impulse to play hard and only shoot when it's unmissable. I will give up some hits against myself to tighten the gap between scores. The goal will be 100 percent accuracy and scores will not be a consideration for me this time. 

Here's how that game plan went...

88.9 percent. But a closer margin for scores with the guy feeling better than I left him the last game. Playing for accuracy makes me wonder about something though. By my count there were eight shots in that game that I took and legitimately just missed on the first trigger pull. All the rest were either spot on hits or I pulled the trigger at the same time as being deactivated. Do those trigger pulls impact my accuracy if they happened once I was down? Or do only the shots missed while I'm up make a difference? I'm not sure. I suspect the former, but I rarely think about it if I'm not striving for a perfect game. If there was a shot count on the screen it would be self-evident, but unfortunately not.

Once the place had cleared one of the employees, Adam, indulged me a one on one. Best game of the night! Although he tried to play it off like he thought he wasn't very good, he honestly gave me a really solid run. I started out just playing for accuracy again in hopes of not turning this guy off from playing me again (and pulled 59 percent, which at FJ would at least be worth a mention), but by midway through there was no question it was a legit game so I shifted my focus to just playing for real as he gave me a good challenge. I like when that happens. And I'm glad I got some quality game time in this arena. I wish I had more opportunities to play here because it's always a blast!

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