Last weekend, a couple of my students made big mistakes at the Newgy Cincinnati Open.  I asked Hesam about his strategy against Tapabrata Dey in the open quarterfinals.  He responded with, "Oh, I think that it will be easy.  I won easily last time and even Ali has beaten him twice."  Without thinking strategy, he went out and lost 3-0.  Tapabrata had been thinking strategy and played excellent the entire match.  Hesam was shocked and couldn't perform at his best.
 

This year, I had one of my most devastating losses…
 
     I was playing at the 2013 US National Team Trials against 2x Olympian Khoa Nguyen.  I won the first 11-6.  I won the second 11-5.  I was winning 10-4 in the third game (best 4 out of 7 match) and lost that game and the match.  What went wrong…