EPTThe more talent someone have, the more right decision they will make under stress.
For the longest time I have no concept of why my hand is sweating when i play sc2 and not any other game. For the longest time i thought i understood why someone with mass experience such as Idra would make bad decisions that ruins his chances at prize money at crucial matches, but after I learn of this thing call fight or flight response, I can gasp how idra can be both brilliant and stupid in different situations during a game.
Generally, this response only full blown when an animal is reacting to threats that endanger its life. The animal would release adrenaline to prepare the body for physical action. When this happens the animal will tunnel vision fight or flight.
In sc2 this response is not full blown because it is not a life threatening situation, but because sc2 creates stress, our body reacts similarly, and depend on the person this reaction to stress could be small or big. The good news is that you can train your body to stop responding this way by not getting stress out in the first place.
I was having this discussion with my friend, who is a brilliant guy, a programmer whose work depends on logical decision he makes with math everyday. For the longest time I was in awe with his bad decision making during games. I would help him on how to make good decisions in this game by explaining the cause and effect of every action taken by both him and his opponent. Let's just say that he easily understood everything on paper and in theory, and he is able to apply it on his games, but he always tend to make bad decisions when he is under stress, which usually are game ending mistakes. Things such as get supply block when he scouts opponent is moving out, or micro badly in big fights, or stacks up over 2k/1k when he is under harass in multiple spots. When we were discussing why he was not able to make the same decision calmly as he's been doing up to that point of that game, another friend of mine bought up the fight or flight response, and i realize that he was being effected by the adrenaline and his brain is unable to function normally.
Let's take Idra for example, he can be brilliant at times, but when things go wrong for him, he will lose his mind in a snap of two fingers just like that. the infamous Idra rage quit. In almost every single case of his premature exist of an still undecided game, he was taken by surprise by something his opponent did that he thought was not possible, hence triggered his stress response, when he is in stress he became tunnel vision, and when that happens in a strategy game, he will lose his decision making ability. This results in the famous rage quits. There are only few times when this happened on live events, most of other cases where it seemed he rage quite, it was only due to him being greedy and he expected to lose when the other person catch him in the timing where he knew he can't hold it off.
How do we deal with this fight or flight response?
I think everybody has their own methods, for me when stress is unavoidable there are two different concurrent methods. first, I minimize my stress by rationalizing that it doesn't matter what I do in the game of sc2 I will forever be a trash compare to the likes of jaedong, flash and bisu. So there is no reason to get up sad when I lose. Second, I plan out and imagine myself in situations where I would be under stress, I would make a check list of things to do. So when the time comes, my concentration would not break for long because of my autopilot aka the survival mode. when i'm under stress i would to do simple things like A click army don't look at fight, spend all your money, never get supply block. Of course, my brain still get freeze up initially when stress hits, but it recovers fast as my concentration returns and goes into my survival mode. as i have experienced and imagine this kind of situation in the hundreds of games I have played. After the dust has settle, and if i'm not yet cripple in the current game, I then can again assess the situation and make better decisions.
Now knowing this is the limit of my talent, knowing the decision making part of my brain will shuts down and that i have to rely on auto polit, Therefore, I must rely on a game plan that I will try and never let myself get under stress and go into survival mode. We see example of this with Idra vs MC series where Idra went all in on MC like 4 games in a row and lost horribly because he never practiced those strategy often. But he had the right idea on how to deal with this stressful situation.
So for those of you who read the whole thing, how do you guys deal with this fight or flight response?
