Pulling the Trigger

by Crazy Ivan


In the movie The Karate Kid (the original), there's this spectacular scene where Mr. Miyogi (Pat Morita) and Daniel (Ralph Macchio) are at the bad guy's dojo.  He's got this really hard core sensei  (Martin Kove) and he's giving this hard core speech about how hard core his dojo is.  He says "We do not train to be merciful here. Mercy is for the weak. Here, in the streets, in competition: A man confronts you, he is the enemy. An enemy deserves no mercy."  Because he's so hard core.


Now, in the movie, this is meant to explain why Daniel's tormentor, Johnny (William Zabka) is so ruthless about beating him up.  It's supposed to be the worst thing that his teacher could be telling him in a karate class.  It was supposed to be the kind of heartless, merciless, emotionless thing that one bad guy in a movie would teach another bad guy in a movie.

Here you see this ruthless bad guy donning the only
facial expression he uses in the movie... or his career.

Which is why I feel kind of weird giving that exact advice on this blog.


But that's exactly what I'm going to tell you tonight... when you are playing MYACH, your enemy deserves no mercy.  You have to be ready to pull the trigger at a moment's notice.  Mercy will become losing really quick.  Now, if you're okay with giving a friend a win here or there, that's fine.  Noble even.  But if you're just trying to keep from beating somebody MYACH to M, you just need to suck it up and pull the trigger.


It's not that we want people to be ruthless in Myachi.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  We promote respect and discipline above all other things (with confidence, patience and passion rounding out the top 5).  But if you're going to enter into a competition, you're best bet is to set mercy aside for a few minutes.


I'll give you an example of how that can go wrong for you in a heartbeat.  And I'll draw from my own experiences to make it more human.


So tonight I'm on the brawl.  I'm more distracted than usual because I'm helping Myachi Man put together this big power point presentation for a meeting tomorrow so for the first hour I have to decline all the MYACH invites.  Finally, at about a quarter after seven I'm (more or less) done with all that and Gold (or Jakeums if he'd prefer) challenges me to a game of MYACH.


Now, I do have a mercy rule in MYACH.  If I'm playing against another Myachi Master (or Mantis), I just do my best tricks and hope not to lose.  But if I'm playing against a Maniac, I have a rule: I'll never use a move that I know my opponent can't do.  For example, if I know you don't have a Toe Stall, I'm not going to call a Toe 360 on you.


That's not to say I'll go easy on everyone.  I want to challenge my opponents, but I don't want to call 4 Myachi juggles on somebody who's still learning the Matrix either.


So Gold is in a pretty high echelon for a Maniac.  I know that he's got me beat in Cross-Body moves (under the legs, yogas, behind the backs, etc.) so I can pretty much count on him getting at least one letter with some yoga/crazy leg combination and he's got enough in his arsenal to threaten me with a few other moves as well.


He strikes first and gets me an M (on exactly one of those weird yoga/crazy leg combos I was expecting) and I exacerbate the problem my missing my first set.  He misses his second and I call 3 consecutive right to left Daredevils for my second set.  I get it, he gets it.  Still down a letter.

He's kind of like this, only with a Myachi.

Eventually I battle back and get my game on straight.  I knock out two letters with foot tricks and another with a juggling combo.  And don't think I was being mean here... the dude hit the first juggling combo I threw at him and then called a 3 Myachi Juggle with an Under the Leg and a Toe Stall in it on me later.  So he can juggle.  But I've got a slight edge there (5 years earning my living as a street performing juggler).


After a long battle he gives me an unintentional break.  On 3 separate occasions he calls something with 20 behind the backs (pretzel style so you're throwing and catching back and forth behind your back) and missed on the 20th catch... actually, he only did that twice.  On the other one I think he'd added a Mojo Rising at the end and then missed that after doing 20 Pretzel Behind the Backs.


This allows me to get a big lead.  I end up with a MYAC to M score.


And then I start feeling merciful.


See, I'm feeling 99% sure that this dude doesn't have a lefty/righty Matrix.  I've only used one multi-Myachi move so I've got one more I can pull out.  I start going a bit easier.  Not easy, mind you, but easier.  I take my foot off the gas.  I don't pull the trigger.


Now, I think I'm being nice, but in retrospect I'm actually insulting JDM's skills (that's another one of his nicknames).  And he makes me pay for it.  While I'm messing around with Daring Slingshots and 2 in one hand juggles, he starts hitting some of his sets.  He finally nails the 20 Pretzel Behind the Backs and I get about 12 of them... I think.  Maybe I'm revising history there because I only got two or three and I'm trying to block that out.  It happens.

I do the same thing with high school.

He got me with something else too.  It was a Slingshot to a Mojo to a Slingshot.  I should have hit that, but I can't honestly recall ever going straight from a Mojo to a Slingshot so it was a perfect MYACH call.  I tried it for the first time and missed it (I've hit it six out of seven tries so don't go thinking you know my MYACH weakness now).


So now all of a sudden my comfortable lead is gone.  I'm up MYAC to MYA.  I say to myself, "self, it's time to pull out that lefty/righty Matrix."


I call it and Gold sighs.  He knows he's got only a very slight chance of hitting this.  But it doesn't matter.  Because I miss it.  Badly.


And now we get to the whole point of this convoluted recollection.  I didn't pull the trigger early enough.  I've messed around too long and not taken the challenge seriously enough and now he's in a very advantageous position.  If he can get one more letter on me (and I have no doubt that he could), he puts me in redemption.


If you don't know about the redemption rule, tough.  It's too long to get into now.  Suffice to say that MYACH is kind of like tennis and you kind of have to win by two.  But not really.  But kind of.  The end result of this rule is that if he earns a letter on me now, getting one letter won't win me the game.  I'll still have to get him one more time.  Maybe.  Probably.  But not definitely.

Here, the redemption rule is portrayed graphically.

What it meant, ultimately, is that I never should have held my kill shot for so long.  This was just a friendly game so it wouldn't have mattered much if I'd lost (though it would've stung my pride since I've been playing Myachi almost as long as he's been walking).  But if this was a serious competition I'd have really jeopardized myself.  One way or the other I'd just essentially given my opponent back the ball inside the two minute warning.


Luckily for me I weathered the storm.  He called a tough one but I hit it.  I managed my lefty/righty Matrix on the next set and won the game by a hair's breadth.  But the moral of this story is that there was no guarantee.  And there's never a guarantee.


If you've got a killer trick that you hit 99% of the time and your 99% sure that you're opponent will miss it 99% of the time, there are still a lot of ways that can go wrong for you.  Sure, the odds are overwhelmingly on your side.  But I can't honestly remember the last time I missed a lefty/righty Matrix. I can normally go back and forth with that all day.


But at this moment, I didn't have it.  And there's always that slight chance that you're going to miss your favorite set.  There's always a chance that you're going to take a letter that you didn't think you'd take.  There's always a chance that your opponent has gotten better since the last time you battled them.  And there's always a chance that you could lose.

There's also a chance a meteor could fall and knock your
Myachi out of the air, but it's a really, really small one.

No lead is overwhelming in a game of MYACH.  Even if you're up MYAC to nothing (the largest lead you can have without already having won) it only takes two misses on your set and three tough ones from your opponent to put you in a position where you absolutely need to letter somebody right now.


Think about that for a second.  You're up 4/nil in a game and decide it's time for the death blow.  It's a tough move (it would kind of have to be), but it's one you're really good at it.  You almost never miss.  But you do.  Twice.


That's all it takes to be in a one point game and you always have to assume that you could miss at a moment's notice.  Never take a lead for granted in a game of MYACH because if you do, it will disappear.


Now, I know I could have said that in far fewer words, but I have a rule in life.  If you can work in a Karate Kid reference, you work in the Karate Kid reference, no matter how far you then have to go to make your point.  I apologize, but I can't honestly say that I won't do it again.