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Why You Keep Losing

Blogs > Chef
Post a Reply
Chef
Profile Blog Joined August 2005
10810 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-11-21 01:11:32
November 21 2010 01:10 GMT
#1
Why You Keep Losing
[image loading]
Gather 'round children while uncle Chef rambles to himself


The Emotional State

My last OP on TL was about concentration and the ways we spend it. In many ways the emotional state of a player is very much connected to the amount of concentration he or she has at his or her disposal. This means that being able to control one's emotion state is an extremely valuable skill one gains from StarCraft (or doesn't, if one is bad).

Controlling one's emotional state doesn't just mean not getting angry after a loss. Shrugging one's shoulders and saying "oh well!" neither gives a player the closure he or she needs to play the next set, nor identifies what went wrong. In a way, it is like dancing around a problem in real life, letting it build up to get worse and worse.

Frustration

When one loses a game one thinks he or she should have won, a critical attack is being made on the player's emotional state. As I said before, ignoring it and trying to be calm doesn't help. That only means that one will make the same mistake next game.

Getting angry does not help either. While a completely calm player doesn't bother to think deeply enough about the game to identify the reason he or she lost, an angry player focuses too much on a minor detail. How many times has it happened that after losing a frustrating game, you've decided it was that one micro mistake that cost you everything? "Oh, if I hadn't lost 3 mutas for nothing in my first attack this game would have gone so much better!" Maybe. But why did you lose those three mutas? Was it just control?

Losing is Deceptive

Losing a frustrating game gives a lot of players tunnel vision. Half the time the immediate solution for why one lost a game is 'if I just hadn't let that scout in, he wouldn't have had such an easy time defending my attack.' That sounds like a more intelligent answer to why one lost 3 mutas for nothing later, but it's really not. It's still claiming "if I were just paying a little more attention," "if I were just a little quicker." Games in StarCraft aren't won and lost in an instant. There are huge swings of favour, but games are really won over time.

So what is the intelligent answer to the question "Why did I lose?" The answer is that your opponent caused you to make mistakes, and you didn't cause him to make more mistakes. StarCraft was never about how well you played. You only have to be faster than the slowest person in the tribe to escape the lion. You only have to beat your opponent to win.

Good players do little things that screw worse players up. They do A LOT of them. You didn't lose because you forgot to scout the opponents natural entrance. You lost because you got distracted by the woman in the red dress—I mean the scouting probe. That was where it started to go wrong, and then your opponent kept doing little things like that. You lost 2 Zerglings at his entrance because you couldn't pay attention to them while you were defending from a Zealot. You didn't set up your overlords properly because you were distracted because your build was slower than usual from a little attack in the early game. Everything adds up, and then your opponent just picks one of your many weaknesses and exploits it. You didn't lose cause you lost your 3rd to a DT that you forgot to send an overlord to... You lost because you got flustered in the beginning from not being able to put your hatch down right away.

Effective Strategies

I've identified the problem, now what's a good way to fix it? When you lose a game or two and are frustrated, just take a breather. Try to recognize when you are over-rationalizing a loss, when you are looking at one specific thing and saying it's completely to blame. Think about what really went wrong. Was it a moment of micro, or upon thinking about it does your whole base seem to not be where you know it's supposed to be (in terms of tech, military structures, etc.) Try to imagine how your base would look if the game were ideal and you hadn't gotten tripped up by one of the opponent's pokes.

That's when you'll start to think clearly and a loss will neither frighten nor anger you. You'll be able to go into the next game knowing what your game should look like, rather than worrying about not making one little micro mistake. You won't even make that little micro mistake because you'll actually feel like you know what's going on. Sometimes we get so focused on not letting a scout in, the rest of our game falls apart (not just build order, but scouting, thinking about the opponent, making our own attempts to sabotage his or her concentration). That's when we lose several games in a row, even though we've fixed the one micro mistake and can't understand why we're getting overwhelmed every time.

It's Not One Little Thing

It's not one little thing that went wrong. It's everything. If you're losing several games in a row that you don't feel you should be losing, it's probably because your whole game plan fell apart. It's good to focus on improving one aspect of your game every time you play, but do that before you've started losing, not after. That way you keep the rest of your game in perspective and do all the things you normally do while adding the one thing... Instead of only doing the one thing and wondering why games suck.

It's worth mentioning as well that if you're playing on ladder this is even more important, since you will play different players who do different things to screw you up. That means the improvement to your game has to be something you can do every game, or you will get even more pissed off.

+ Show Spoiler +
Sorry for switching pronouns randomly and general inconsistencies. I hope that this piece gives you some helpful advice anyway, especially in for people who don't ask the right questions in strategy forums.


****
LEGEND!! LEGEND!!
Khenra
Profile Blog Joined January 2009
Netherlands885 Posts
November 21 2010 01:21 GMT
#2
People are losing because there isn't a StarCraft2 version of The Stove yet.

User was warned for this post
This signature is ruining eSports.
SubtleArt
Profile Blog Joined January 2010
2710 Posts
November 21 2010 01:25 GMT
#3
Lol, nice writeup, I enjoyed the read.

I really wanna do something like this and title it "Bronze players - you're worse than you think".
Basically a post about how Bronze players need to realize they're terrible and just how badly their macro is lacking, and improve from there instead of trying to learn specific matchups and gimmicky strategies and analyzing too deeply into their games when their end all solution is just to have spent their resources more consistently.
Morrow on ZvP: "I'm not very confident in general vs Protoss because of the imbalance (Yes its imbalanced, get over it)."
shawty
Profile Joined June 2010
United Kingdom294 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-11-21 01:30:42
November 21 2010 01:30 GMT
#4
On November 21 2010 10:21 Khenra wrote:
People are losing because there isn't a StarCraft2 version of The Stove yet.


this makes me happy

edit: also nice read lol
blahman3344
Profile Blog Joined March 2009
United States2015 Posts
November 21 2010 01:38 GMT
#5
Thank you for the blog, Uncle Chef. =P
This really gives me a different view on how to play the game. I think that looking at my games from the perspective of what you said will probably help me improve faster. =D
I like haikus and / I can not lie. You other / brothers can't deny
cody1024d
Profile Blog Joined August 2010
107 Posts
November 21 2010 02:06 GMT
#6
Uncle Chef, that was a very informative and helpful blog. I am definitely one of those players who swings within the spectrum, from telling myself to not care about a loss, and then getting angry at one. This definitely puts things in perspective. Thank you.
No point in half-assing it.
emperorchampion
Profile Blog Joined December 2008
Canada9496 Posts
November 21 2010 02:06 GMT
#7
Good stuff
TRUEESPORTS || your days as a respected member of team liquid are over
Froadac
Profile Blog Joined July 2009
United States6733 Posts
November 21 2010 02:39 GMT
#8
Quite good. I love listening to guinea pigs "ramble"
theinvisiblePLER
Profile Blog Joined October 2010
United States110 Posts
November 21 2010 02:46 GMT
#9
Great write-up. I will be thinking about this when I'm playing Black Ops -_-
theinvisiblePLER
Profile Blog Joined October 2010
United States110 Posts
November 21 2010 02:52 GMT
#10
Oh yeah, gona be getting new laptop+sc2 soon so I <3 this article :D
invisible.terran
Profile Blog Joined September 2010
United States280 Posts
November 21 2010 02:55 GMT
#11
Nice job you 've done
"Until the very very top, in almost anything, all that matters is how much work you put in, the only problem is most people cant work hard even at things they do enjoy, much less things they dont have a real passion for." - Idra
hazelynut
Profile Blog Joined December 2008
United States2195 Posts
November 21 2010 03:15 GMT
#12
Thank you for writing this it's actually something that's so easy to overlook/sidestep/dodge.
Zerg | life of lively to live to life of full life thx to shield battery | www.cstarleague.com <3
hifriend
Profile Blog Joined June 2009
China7935 Posts
November 21 2010 03:28 GMT
#13
Read it first in rage mode after 2 very close games resulting in losses, felt even more pissed.

Read it again now and took it in. Good read.
Ares[Effort] *
Profile Blog Joined February 2009
DEMACIA6550 Posts
November 21 2010 04:45 GMT
#14
Chef you're amazing
Moderatorgold coin
goswser
Profile Blog Joined May 2009
United States3519 Posts
November 21 2010 04:49 GMT
#15
The game is perfectly balanced, 50% of the players always win.
say you were born into a jungle indian tribe where food was scarce...would you run around from teepee to teepee stealing meat scraps after a day lazying around doing nothing except warming urself by a fire that you didn't even make yourself? -rekrul
Grobyc
Profile Blog Joined June 2008
Canada18410 Posts
November 21 2010 06:05 GMT
#16
Hopefully this read will help me on my way to C+ iCCup; I've been losing a lot of games :S
If you watch Godzilla backwards it's about a benevolent lizard who helps rebuild a city and then moonwalks into the ocean.
night terrors
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
China1284 Posts
November 21 2010 18:05 GMT
#17
I got to D+ something like a week ago. Then played two koreans and went back right into the D level. What did I learn from the games I lost? Dont play koreans when you want to keep your rank.
Through high and low, bisu boy, through high and low.
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