Growing up, I was always told that I should not accept second best in life. We only have one shot at life, as far as we know at present, therefore you need to make the most of it. This article talks about this subject.

At the age of around twelve, I was bought a five foot snooker table for my birthday. This was something I had wanted for quite a long time and I have to say, it is probably the best present I was ever bought and I quickly became hooked on playing the game.

I would play snooker, either with friends or on my own, I did not care. My dream was to be the next Steve Davis, however I was aware that the chances of this happening were extremely slight.

Around six months later, I joined a local snooker hall with three of my friends, this is where we could play on full size tables. The sheer size of the tables came as quite a shock and at the start it was difficult to pot even what should have been the simple shots. The table was twelve foot by six foot which was more than twice the size of my table at home.

We started to play every week. We were very impressed with the club and found out that it offered free coaching for children under the age of sixteen on a Saturday morning. The coach who was called Glen and who was aged around thirty at the time asked us if we would like to attend. He was a larger than life character and a very good snooker player. We all decided to turn up on the next Saturday, it was free after all. There were snooker tournaments every month as well as coaching and they gave us free drinks and toast.

The first aim of all of the people who played on the Saturday morning was to score a twenty break as not one of us had ever had a twenty break. I was extremely determined that it would be me and listened carefully to what I was being taught and tried hard to implement it into my game.

My progress was quite rapid and to my amazement I was the first person to score that elusive twenty break. People around the snooker table I was playing on started to applaud and I was walking around with a beaming smile on my face. I felt on top of the world.

Glen who was on the other side of the room wondered over to find out what all of the noise was about. I thought he would be so proud of me and happy at my achievement, however he stated that if I could score twenty, I could score thirty. He told me to stop messing about and smiling, and to re-concentrate on the job in hand.

I had been brought straight back down to earth and was a bit gutted to say the least. This lesson was a very good one for me to learn at such an early age and I eventually went on to have breaks of over one hundred.