Friday I went to The Bank Shot after work.

There's really not much to report except that I ended up playing a guy three games of one-pocket and won two of them.

I missed a lot of shots that I shouldn't have missed, but the guy was just trying to warm up so he didn't play much defense.

I did make one pretty fantastic shot that I need to put on the Eye-Openers page once I get it diagrammed.

All in all it was a decent outing but I'd probably have been better off going home and trying to take a nap.

Saturday I went to The Bank Shot for a while.

I've been playing very well at home and just wanted to see if I'd crumble against a real opponent.

I didn't.

I played this guy that I'd never seen before. We played 9-Ball and very early in the session I could tell two things:

1. I was nearly in dead stroke.
2. The guy was just out-matched.

I recall about three mental mistakes I made during the forty or so games we played. Those mental mistakes, along with the approximately four shots I missed, contributed to our final score being about 38-2. It really should have been 40-0.

Did I feel bad about beating the guy so badly? Not at all. Builds character.

I do wish the guy would have asked for some advice though as he had a few glaring problems.

He was relying entirely on his practice strokes to convince himself that he was aligned correctly. There was no attempt to step into the shot at all.

He was fighting the cueball on almost every shot. Using the path that the cueball wants to take may be tough to learn, but it's a vital skill to have.

After a while his attitude just disintegrated. He convinced himself that he was going to miss every halfway-tough shot and he very nearly did.

I have this really annoying habit. I think I've mentioned it here before.

I usually play my best at the very beginning of any given session, and it's all downhill - or at least steady, never better - from there.

Today I had this idea to try and capture this phenomenon.

I set up my camcorder, broke the balls, and banked eight in a row.

I then proceeded to spend the next hour before I could even bank five off the break.

This annoying habit of mine is thankfully something that is unique to Banks.

Today, that damn last ball was in my thoughts througout the entire rack. I knew it would be my last ball and I just couldn't get it or my cueball into position. I ended up missing a three-railer (not the way you want to try to finish a runout) by less than a diamond.

At least I got it captured for all to see.