Trying To Find Players

It is getting really hard to schedule matches. Playing the matches is not much of a problem. But getting them scheduled seems to be most of the work. The other day I emailed about twenty people and only three of them responded, and I only set stuff up with one of them for sure. I threw some times out to the others and haven't heard anything back, so I have to hold those times open and can't really schedule other matches then. That seems to be the pattern. So it's hard to get stuff happening every night, but then at times, when it rains it pours. I'll get a bunch of people respond to play on a weekend. For instance, a couple of weekends ago, I managed to get in eleven sets. That was about a week and a half's worth of sets in two days! So days like that do me good, and when I can't set anything up for several days in a row, it makes up for it. But it seems like it is getting harder and harder.

I am running up against a finite number of players on the ladder, and some of them may be getting sick of hearing from me. Plus, some of them I would beat really easily, and some of them would beat me really easily. Ideally, I'd like to play mostly competitive matches, with some above my skill level and some below. I'm trying to reach more players that I think would be competitive in matches, but I've been having to adjust where that is upward a couple of times, so I'm still not quite sure where the ideal is. That's the downside of not having a lot of match experience.

When I try to get players off of the CATA player finder, hardly anyone ever responds, though I have found a few people there. I just don't know where else to go other than CATA and the ladder. I'll have to get creative. Also, I bet that I'll find some regulars who will play me once every couple of weeks or so. It's only been a couple of months, and really, that's all the match experience I have; there's really no history before that, unless I go back to high school. And I'm pretty sure I'm a much better player now than I was in high school.

So if any of you out there in Internetland (in and around Austin!) are reading this and want to play, get in touch! At this point, it's almost guaranteed that I'll be able to make time for you within at least the next week or two. And it makes my job of trying to hustle up lots of matches easier. Or send people my way to play. I think my goal for the end of February will be to get to at least 100 matches, maybe as many as 110. I'll be really happy if I get to 110. But I haven't played any matches since Sunday.