EPTOK, let's put ourself in perspective of a player who is not good but is trying his best to become good. What is difference between him and already good player? Time spent on gaming to get good. It's just matter of time and way you practice for you to get to point of your gaming level where it's more and more necessary to be GOOD at practice and not only to practice. I say this because on higher levels there is just no time for you to waste on BAD practice.
Yeah, there is «bad» practice, practice where you waste your time by playing and not geting anything from it. Maybe you heard about it or seen it, it's those games where you just play — maybe win, maybe lose but it's just that game where you didn't do anything new, didn't experience any new strategy or didn't even try to force yourself to play faster and more precise. Someone would argue you get your mechanic more solid and that would be correct — but I'm reffering to a bit higher level where there is no time to waste (kudos to 1st Protoss Brood War Campaign mission — Zealot: "There is no time to waste, we must help our brethren in battle"
and that means that profit that you gain from making your mechanic 0.004% more stable is not enough profit for your level of play.![[image loading]](http://xs843.xs.to/xs843/09371/hard_worker830.jpg)
Problem with players is that they either don't try their best, or they do but not efficent enough and they slow their progress of improvement rapidly. Trying your best not only means you need to be a hard worker like your pal on the picture, but it means you need to do it in a way it scores you point. There is no point in forcing a game where you won't learn something (only if you are doing it for fun wich is absolutely OK) but trying to focus to maximize your practice time when you are giving your best. Sun Tzu has great point of view on this subject and I am highly recommending (as I did read his «Art of war» three times and I am still trying to get some of his ideas and toughts in practice for real life and gaming in general) to read his «Art of War» not only for cause of your gaming but for your leading guide in real life aswell.
![[image loading]](http://bloggingexperiment.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/art-of-war.jpg)
Maybe try questioning your practice time by asking yourself: «OK, I practice way too much but I'm not improveing as much, why is that so?» — answer could only be that you are not being good at doing good at it but only working hard for it. As you can see, you need both of variables to make outcome effective for you, if any of those two is missing — the results will miss out too.
Also, people need to understand that «playing hard» dosen't mean you need to play Starcraft on uncomfy Netbook to make it «hard» for you. You need to make it worth it and by «hard» good definition is just to play above your willing to do it but also that is enough efficent to make that time count in proper way. Many people try hard just to play like zombies and dosen't do anything worth a while but they live in belief: «OK I did train hard, now I can go to sleep and I did well and learn something». Maybe you did try hard but didn't get anything from it, you could aswell go sleep little earlier.
Problem is that people do understand this but avoid it sometimes because of so called «Obvious that I don't need think about it» reason. You see, we — people sometimes percept obvious reasons so obvious that we forgot about them and do mistakes that we already know about but think that they are so obvious and they don't matter because we «automaticly» take care about them — no biggy, right?.. It dosen't work that way — you need to be conscious about things that seem so obvious and taken care of to you.
![[image loading]](http://xs843.xs.to/xs843/09371/starcraft_on_netbook859.jpg)
Working hard dosen't mean you need to play Starcraft on little keyboard that most of Netbook has!
Trying to analize your mistakes, trying hard even if you are losing, trying to concentrate while playing and doing stuff that has some purpose… even watching the VOD's of same situation you experience in real game is «Trying your best and being good at it». Wasting time is not an option, maybe in lower levels where everything counts much more and it dosen't make difference too much. But when you have two top players only margins seperate them apart = those things like two minutes more of «trying best» from other guy that did it properly (and good) and other who wasted those two minutes in practice for just staring at screen and moving units around and hearing «Entaro Adun!»
One prime example is Korean proscene where many players burn out and that's direct effect from forcing games and not being good at practice but only trying hard. Don't get me wrong, I think trying your best and hard is the most of the top-notch quality that can person have but you need to consider how do you do it in these times where differences between quality in gaming is so close so you can only cut it with razor.
This subject is one of many that can be written about for a 20 pages and still not be demistifyed, but my goal here was just to make you think about how you practice and do you practice enough quality wise not only quantity wise.
Expect more in depth when I catch inspiration or time, this is very interesting field
And sorry if I didn't pin-point some of other stuff in this little blog entry, it's very wide subject as I said and it can be disscused over and over and in very wide range of perspectives.Take care,
![[image loading]](http://www.iccup.com/upload/images/flags/hr.gif)
![[image loading]](http://www.iccup.com/upload/images/race/protoss.gif)
