Catching the disc on the leading edge.

Was at the park throwing with Nathan and Hingo today.

I noticed a lot of Hingo's catch's he was dropping were deflecting off his hand and ending up 3-4metres away.

I thought about it, and realised it was because he was catching on the trailing edge rather than the leading edge.

I tried to explain it, but it didnt make sense so I stood a few metres away from him asked him to throw the disc to me, and put out my hand to just stop the disc. Once on the trailing edge, it would spin off my hand and land a few metres away, and once on the leading edge, straight into the ground.

It made sense after that with the nice little demonstration. So then I made him swap roles he had to mac the disc to let it spin away from him and also stop it so it would fall straight down.

A good way to teach the concept of leading and trailing edge catches I thought!

VICTORY FOR SEMFEL WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

WOOOOOOOOO

Its 2:05 am, Thursday 19th of June and I'm happy.
I just played 6 hours straight of online poker.
Played over 400 hands....
Outlasted a field of 2700 players to come first.

Had an EXTREMELY lucky start - some idiots quadrupled me up in a single hand.
My lowest point was about 8 big blinds, with my top being 4 500 000 chips (from a starting stack of 1500)
Played a very good middle game, adapting to my opponents (weather they're idiots or not, tight/loose etc)
I had awesome patience. (6 hours of it)
I played sort of badly after a big hand when it got to Heads up, the last hand was probably a bit too much of a loose play, but I did go in with an advantage and won.
I never went to any show down an underdog (i was very happy with this)
And funnily my biggest pay offs weren't aces (which i got 3x over the night, but never won moer than 3bb off anyone since bb and sb folded to small raise...

I played position very well.
Played a solid tight aggressive game.

So what did i win after 6 hours of grinding?
$15!
... could have worked for an hour to get that.

Warm Fuzzy Memories - The Bum Shower at Nationals

Just remembered this nice little one...

The second day of Nationals was the really wet and really muddy one. It was raining all day, puddles were huge, mud was knee deep, layouts were awesome and everyone fell over getting stuck in the mud as they tried to turn around too quickly.

The end of the day though wasn't so fun still cold and wet, showers packed full to the brim mud dirt and grass somehow managing to get into everything...

I remember walking into one block seeing a long queue and leaving as Tiger told me enthusiastically "Hey come check out the bum shower!"

What it turned out to be was a punch of guys washing their clothes in a big puddle on some concrete behind the block from runoff from one of the rooves, as they all cramped up shivering underneath the runoff trying to get a good shower as everyone undressed and got closer together...

Pretty gay.

Focus, Now

A problem I have not just in spades but in buckets and other, more ergonomic and practical containers, is losing focus, and disengaging from games I am playing. This is a problem- often it will not be the more athletic or the more skilled team who prevails, but simply the team who wants it more. Being engaged - being focused - is a large part of this.

Unfortunately, there isn't much of an on/off switch to competitiveness in the human psyche, so I thought I'd share a sort of drill that helps me out when I am trying to switch on.

Get two discs between two people, one person each with one disc. Stand a short distance apart, and throw the discs between one another. Aim chiefly not to drop any discs, and to keep your throws on target. Done properly, at no time should any one player have both discs.

I find that this exercise demands nearly complete concentration. Which is good, if focus is what you are lacking. The best part is, it can be done quickly on the sideline for a few minutes until you feel in the zone.

Okay, Now You're Just Being Selfish

Back in my first job at Pizza Hut, folding up the pizza boxes was an art form. In total, there were eleven individual folds to make for the flat piece of perforated cardboard to become a rigid box, and one of my managers was amazingly skilled at folding. In the time it took me (and I was in no way slower than the average- if anything I was slightly above it) to do one stack of boxes, he could have filled the entire store. Watching him fold boxes was almost magical - he was so good at it, yet at the same time I questioned the ultimate purpose of being so very, very good at something so very, very trivial.

There is a special facial expression that accompanies this mixed emotion of awe/pity, and it's the same expression I see on people's faces when I tell them that I am going to represent Australia in frisbee.

So, where we are at the moment, in Oz: ultimate is a competitive amateur sport. I'm a paragon of unathleticism, and yet I manage to make it to events like Nationals to play alongside or against people are truly world-standard.

And recently a sense of selfish irony has hit me: despite all the efforts I make trying to get people to get into frisbee (at uni or for league) I really don't want the overall standard of play to rise much higher. I don't want ultimate to be an Olympic sport, or be recognised as legitimate by all the normal folks out there.

It's not just a fear of how chumped I will get by actual legitimate athletes who play the game, it's more a fear of how the game itself will change to accommodate its growing professionalisation: it's so fundamentally reassuring to turn up to day one of Nationals and see hundreds of people in the carpark who are there because they want to be there, because they love the game. The moment people start playing for the paycheck, I'm going to play dischoops.

The Luckiest Unlucky Streak of My Life.

I have missed an opportunity to play NUFL 1 and 2 becuase of my ruined knee which would have been am amazing chance to improve to my game and get some awesome frisbee experience. I missed out on ECC tryouts which would have been awesome fun, and I have missed out on that team.

I have lost a lot of my fitness, I was the fittest I'd ever been coming back from Junior's training camp asnd Kai's crazy fakulti fitness and worst bit was I wanted to run more than ever on day 4 of nationals, the first time I've wanted to run on the last day of a tournament...

Im not sure I'm going to be ok to properly try out for Usyd's unigames team or train with our new youth nat's team.

On the other hand, I have played a bit less poker recently but have had the luckiest stream of cards over my past 100 hands that I cannot believe (100 hands is very very short term and is no where near enough to let your variance even out in terms of having shitty hands and getting your share of good hands.

In the past 100 hands, I have flopped quads two times, along with several flushes, full houses (with junky hands) and a happy variety of top two pairs and triples. The quads though is unbelievable.

In the past night, which would have only have been about 45 hands over 3 hours I was dealt pocket queens, pocket 10's pocket 2's (flopped quads - unfortunately had folded preflop becuase of too much action in front) and pocket aces, as well as flopping a full house off big blind and a flush.

Really its the quads that blew my mind, the rest can happen often enough but the quads is crazy.

So I guess despite the bad luck of getting ripped up in frisbee losing all my fitness and missing out on some awesome games... other things get lucky.

Marking Time

So it has been brought to my attention that most of the Sydney juniors suffer from a mystical disease known as 'weak mark-itis' whereby we hold extremely weak marks.

Hah. I scoffed as I was informed of this. My marks are fantastic. I have never been broken in my entire ultimate career!

But it's true. I did always hold a weak mark. Or, perhaps 'soft' is a better term for it - weak kind of implies that I get broken a lot, and while it certainly happens, it is not like I am failing at my basic imperative of holding the force. By a soft mark, I mean:

• I will giving disc space, possibly a little bit more.
• Not biting overly on fakes.
• Keeping my hands low, and relatively static.

I believe this is serviceable, and in my experience of being marked it seems this is how most people do hold a force. However as a thrower it really does not put very much pressure on, if at all. Depending on the size of the person marking this way, a throw will not have to be released with much pivot, or very low, effectively ensuring that all the throws made from this sort of mark are at a high percentage.

There's a lot more that you can do as a marker to pressure the thrower into resorting to lower percentage throws without compromising some basic tenets:

• Never intentionally foul the thrower.
• Never lose balance (sprinting too hard to the mark, layout bids or committing to fakes).

Get a lot closer. Really bump and grind. See if you can't make babies with their team strip. In Australian ultimate (perhaps because by and large aggressive forces are not held) 'disc space' and 'straddle' are not calls one often hears. If they are not going to call it, exploit. Essential etiquette: tell them after the point to call it. Same goes for double team. That's really the only 'revolutionary' adjustment I have had made to my personal marking technique, the rest is stock standard. Hop around on your toes, flash your arms across to stop throws. You know. The usual. Without a doubt, a mark of this kind makes it a lot harder for the offense to play inside their comfort zone.

But there are also some things to watch for. That extra 10-30cm of distance you are closer makes you a lot easier to break. The thrower can step forward (even only slightly, without fouling you!) to deliver a punishing I/O throw. The O/I flick blade (if the thrower is competent enough) is extra punishing because, at such a proximity, all the thrower needs to do is extend his or her arm slightly behind and around the mark. With this in mind, my tendency would be to shade slightly more to the break side than I would with my standard mark, while really watching to discourage that I/O flick break with your pointblock hand.