[Duke]

OOH. Just remembered a story from my youth that is loosely related to poker.

So I had finished my part of a tournament, I was maybe 8, and had gotten second place in fighting and a first in forms. I was watching my dad in the adult division fighting. He had to win 2 more matches to win the tournament.

Anyhow, the guy he was fighting first was, in poker terms, a donk. He didn't really rely on strategies or techniques at all, unless you called rushing the opponent and flailing as if he were auditioning for a new Exorcist movie a strategy. It was point fighting so any contact that he'd get would be a point, so against a bad opponent he'd probably do alright. Kinda how a maniac donk at a poker table can make inexperienced guys fold too much and take down a lot of pots.

So it starts, and the guy rushes to get a point. My dad is like... what the hell? This guy's just rushing me like an idiot and that's not what this is supposed to be about. They explain that the guy scored a legit point. 5 points and he'll win. The guy scores another point quickly when they resume. They stop after each point and have the guys restart.

So down 2-0 my dad is kinda pissed, since he doesn't understand how anyone can be that dumb. So on the restart he takes half a step back, and punches the guy one time in the chest. The guy runs right into it since that's his whole strategy. As you can imagine, there was severe contact since there was a lot of motion between the 2 colliding bodies, some of it coming from the victim's idiotic lunge.

After they carried the guy out on a stretcher (he just had a couple broken ribs and had the wind knocked completely out of him) my dad had to fight one more guy. It was obvious to all the judges that the contact was self-inflicted and my dad wasn't really to blame for what happened, so he won that one kinda by default. He lost the next one because he felt like an [censored] for damn near killing the other guy and really let up in every way.

The best part was when our instructor came over (it was a biggish open tournament) and loudly told my dad that he needed to exercise more control, and as soon as they were relatively alone he says: "Nice."

~D