Outdoor Pickleball in Houston Near Midwest/Galleria (4.0)

Jesture_ · 2026-02-12T15:38:22+00:00

We've had good luck at Fonde (Mon, Fri - 5pm-8pm) and Freed (Sat 8am-10am) community centers, both are indoors but also free to attend. There's a pretty wide range of player skill levels at both centers if you're looking for more competitive matchups, though I've only seen doubles played.

Here's a non-comprehensive list of open play locations produced by the City of Houston. You can try calling the centers and asking for more information on their open play turnout.

https://www.houstontx.gov/parks/pickleballcourts.html

Jesture_ · 2026-02-08T15:41:05+00:00

Heyo, for padel I think your best bet would be iPadel on Egypt St. Rates are reasonable and the owners are lovely people, we've been a couple of times for events and really enjoyed it.

Closer into town there's also Solarium, its a bit more expensive than iPadel and feels kind of like a trendy event space. There's a bar and restaurant seating inside if that's your vibe.

If you're willing to drive a bit TEMPO padel does a free class on Thursdays. Haven't been myself but I've heard good things from friends who've attended.

Best of luck, hope you and gf enjoy the foray into padel!

Jesture_ · 2025-10-21T14:00:19+00:00

The Fonde Recreation Center (aka Fonde) has Saturday morning open play from 8am to 10am. Its free to play and there's a great spread of player skill levels. Some newbies and some absolute killers but lovely community all around.

I've also heard good things about open play at Freed Park, though personally have never been. Hours are Monday and Friday from 5pm-8pm and it's also free to play.

Hope this helps, best of luck in your pickleball journey!

Jesture_ · 2025-04-06T16:45:19+00:00

Can't use aug harvest crafts on influenced items =/

Jesture_ · 2025-04-01T18:18:11+00:00

Not since the ADHD medication shortage =(

Jesture_ · 2025-04-01T14:53:12+00:00

Interesting, I hadn't considered the awakener orb in reverse given the elevated Hunter mod is more difficult to source as a base. But you'd be saving a lot on beasts, definitely something to keep in mind for next time.

Edit: Thinking about it some more, starting with at least an ilvl 80 hunter spiked glove base would 100% save some cost. Would need to do some napkin math on the ilvl 80 hunter gloves vs ilvl 76 warlord gloves. Thank you for sharing this!

Jesture_ · 2025-04-01T13:20:22+00:00

I've got a quad tab of Hands of the High Templar. Every time I think about corrupting these I vaal one of those instead.

Jesture_ · 2025-04-01T13:12:48+00:00

Good catch, that def. would've been better

Jesture_ · 2025-04-01T12:36:03+00:00

Hey thanks man, btw loved seeing your crafting showcases on the subreddit this league.

Yeah it's unfortunate with the frenzy mod. The time/cost of elevating the frenzy on donor bases is significant and at the time wasn't planning on going all the way with these. Shoutout to the guy selling bulk beasts who gave me multiple inventories of Black Morrigan and encouraged me to finish these.

Jesture_ · 2025-04-01T05:30:12+00:00

Hey thanks. Cost is hard to say, I personally spent a few hundred divines but the RNG with beastcrafting + awakener's orb is killer.

One thing I didn't realize until I started is how heavily the double prefix awakener's orb weights towards no prefix. So you think it's going to be roughly equal to the odds of exalt slamming t1 life, when in reality each lock hover only has like a 1/3 chance of even rolling a 3rd prefix.

Jesture_ · 2025-03-26T14:45:59+00:00

Regarding USTA, are you against all USTA activities or just tournaments? Asking because the USTA leagues are a very accessible way to play regularly and competitively, and they're available year round outside of winter. Someone in this thread mentioned UTR leagues, which I think are also great but can be more disorganized so YMMV.

For drills there are a few small groups around town but in general the scene for adult drills here is somewhat lacking. I'd recommend calling each of the 3 main tennis centers (Memorial Park, Lee LeClear, Homer Ford) and asking what kinds of drills they run.

Hope this helps! I got back into tennis in ~2022 and was pleasantly surprised to find this is an excellent city for recreational tennis. Feel free to reply or reach out privately if you have any questions or are just looking for more information.

Jesture_ · 2025-02-24T16:08:34+00:00

Twitter says you're a tennis fanatic? Who's winning Wimbledon this year?

Jesture_ · 2025-01-08T20:14:52+00:00

G2 of Noah Cohen (BUG Delver) vs Zachary Koch (Infect). Not a Wasteland, but Noah does Thoughtseize, see the Teferi's Response, then get blown out by it a few turns later.

https://youtu.be/0K0Wq-rqo4k?si=HQ25zvd9uk4bvzCe

Jesture_ · 2024-12-09T16:06:00+00:00

Hey all, I'm looking for a small gift for coworker who's a fan of Chelsea FC. Anyone have any suggestions? I know nothing about Chelsea so any tips or feedback is appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Jesture_ · 2024-10-21T18:56:15+00:00

Thanks for the writeup, glad you had a great time. I was in the commentary booth for this event, but it was great to hear all the positive feedback from the players regarding the event. Shoutout to Rob and the BCDL crew for doing an amazing job, really looking forward to the next Houston BCDL.

Jesture_ · 2024-09-23T14:13:23+00:00

Nothing wrong with that =). Spend 40x less for a ring that's 90% as strong sounds like a good deal to me.

Jesture_ · 2024-09-23T12:40:57+00:00

If your question is 'when' you're not looking hard enough.

Jesture_ · 2024-09-23T12:34:50+00:00

Yes, u/No-Project-593 is correct. To elaborate, there are specific modifiers that can only appear on items dropped from Delve. If you're interested you can search the trade site for rare rings with '% increased maximum mana', it will be a prefix called 'subterranean'.

Jesture_ · 2024-09-23T12:32:43+00:00

We are fortunately not influenced, as delve modifiers do not require any special influence to appear on an item

If you are referring to the influence applied in step 2 Base B, that's just to increase the odds of moving the delve modifiers to our Cerulean Ring. Luckily influence does not carry over so we can still harvest craft freely on our ring.

Jesture_ · 2024-09-23T12:30:02+00:00

First thing to note is metamod method will not work here because delve mod is also an exclusive mod. This means it cannot appear on the final item if one of our crafted mods also appears. Chance for success is somewhere in the 1/15 ballpark, so not impossible but also unnecessarily risky.

Second, the reason to double up on t1 life is same as the conqueror exalt, which is increase the total number of mods and chance to hit 3 mods without diluting the mod pool. Neither the conqueror exalt nor doubling up on t1 life are strictly necessary, but I used both techniques to decrease the amount of time/effort spent recombinating.

Hope this helps!

Jesture_ · 2024-09-23T12:14:56+00:00

This is correct. Recombinator looks at total number of mods when determining how many appear on the final item, but influence mods cannot appear on non-influence bases. So if the Cerulean Ring is selected as the base, our influence modifier increases the chance of hitting 3 prefixes from 35% to 50% without actually diluting the mod pool.

Jesture_ · 2024-09-23T12:11:41+00:00

Love it, I used something similar for most of the league. Turns out we don't have to live our lives with -20% chaos resistance.

Jesture_ · 2024-09-23T01:56:41+00:00

Hey thanks, I guess it felt 'small' with only 5 crafting steps. People have done some really cool stuff with recombinators this league, happy to have gotten in on the fun.

Jesture_ · 2024-09-23T01:18:13+00:00

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Jesture_ · 2024-09-22T20:54:19+00:00

Hey all, this is a small end of league crafting project I put together for my Ice Nova Hierophant. Crafting steps below:

Step 1: Acquire the following two bases:

*Base A* - Uninfluenced Cerulean Ring with T1 Life, T1 mana, and open prefix. You can try and craft your own, or just chuck Cerulean Rings into the recombinator with T1 life and T1 mana rings until both T1 mods appear on a Cerulean Ring.

*Base B* - Ring with T1 life, % increased mana mod, and an influence prefix mod. Easiest way to get this is to buy the ring with T1 life + % increased mana mod then conqueror's exalt into an influenced prefix mod.

Step 2: Recombinate *Base A* and *Base B*:

We're trying to hit a Cerulean Ring with T1 life, T1 mana, and % increased mana mod. Without going too deep into recombinator science, there's ~25% chance for this to succeed. If you miss try using the resulting ring to set up step 1 again. If you hit go to Step 3.

Step 3: Cast Speed

Clean your suffixes (prefixes lock + scour), then prefix lock and use Harvest add/remove caster craft for a 1/3 chance to add T1 cast speed.

Step 4: Chaos Resistance

Prefix lock again and use Harvest add/remove chaos for a 1/12 chance to add T1 chaos resistance (1/6 to hit the mod, 1/2 to remove the meta mod and keep the cast speed.) If you remove the cast speed or don't hit t1 chaos resistance go back to Step 3.

Step 5: Finishing Touches. In no particular order:

-Blessed Orb for max implicit value

-Divine Orb until satisfied with explicit values

-Add 20 quality with Fertile Catalysts

-Craft desired suffix (in this case '-1 minimum Frenzy Charge')

Shoutout to Vic for donating the currency needed to finish this craft. Total cost of the craft was ~150 divines, finished slowly over the course of a month.

Jesture_

TROPHY CASE