My Best Tournament Performance

I'll start off by saying I know how this comes off. Obnoxious, a little arrogant. Probably unnecessary, definitely not humble. I think I would get annoyed if I saw somebody else do exactly what I'm doing. And if you feel differently about me because I'm doing a write up after one tournament, that's totally okay.

But here's the thing, I need to write this. I'm in a very unique situation after a rare alignment of the stars, and if I wait too long I won't be able to really capture how I'm feeling. I guess the best thing I can do is not post it. But I really like when people read my shit. Whatever, enough of this intro.

Last night I had the best tournament of my life, no doubt about it. I beat three players ranked top 20 in Tristate. Three amazing players with their own story to tell and great success within the community. Three players I have incredible respect for.

Here's the thing about melee that non players probably won't understand. This is a great achievement, yes, but these guys are still better than me. If you watch my matches with Kaeon and Smuckers they miss stuff that they normally don't miss. The match against 2saint was better but even he missed like every SDI on my upairs. I'm not calling these players out by any means, ask them and they would agree they played poorly, I just need to share that I had luck on my side.

I need to give myself a little credit for sure. I had some good combos and kept composed. But yesterday was the perfect storm. I won't go into specifics, but I do know that all of those players were newcomers to that venue,among other factors, while I had been there four times prior. *  That definitely plays a factor in how comfortable you are playing the game, especially when the commentators are feet away and within earshot. It takes adaptation. Yesterday wasn't a fluke, but it was definitely lucky. Very lucky.

I wanna take a step back from explaining myself and the situation. How do I feel right now? What does that change? The most obvious is a real sense of joy, I won't deny myself that. I had to eat an entire Taco Bell box at one in the morning to bring myself down a few pegs. I screamed with nonsensical bliss on the ride home and almost broke down crying. I know melee meant a lot to me, I just didn't know that results were that important. However sad it might be, it's true.

I began thinking about the possibility of achieving top 20 in Tristate and how exciting that would be. I tickled with the idea of striving for top 100 in 2018. All of these things are possible for somebody who started the same time I did (Look at Zain!) and now I actually believe that I can do it. I don't know if I really want to go for it, though.

Before yesterday I believed that I was as good at the game as I wanted to be. I told people that, perhaps as a way to protect myself from new losses or bad tournaments. I still feel the same way, but I'll edit the sentiment. I'm going to be as good as I'm going to be, working less than I did. I just can't keep up the same grind that I have for the past few years. I want to just have fun at tournaments.

But that conflicts with the ranking idea!

Ah, shit. Contradictions!

This changes way more than I thought it did coming into this post. I need to sit on it a little bit more. A big part of me wants to brag to coworkers, family, etc. to prove that I haven't been wasting my time. I'll try to refrain. After all, writing about it is way more pretentious anyway.



**Thanks for taking the time to read this. I know there are people who like my posts, but I don't know who you are! If you have any questions or just want to say hi, feel free to email me @ Jessegardner7@gmail.com**




*Maybe Smuckers has been there.