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The X factor
Sc2, like any competition, has a winner and a loser. At the end of any tournament, match, or series, one player must win and the other must lose. Most games are decided by A: One player, whether mechanically or mentally, out classing his opponent with raw skill or B: a build order cross aka a lucky break. While straight skill is important, it marginally diminishes as you look at higher level players because every player has the mechanics and knows what they are doing. So then people could say "Star craft 2 is a game largely of build orders and luck or the faster player always win". However, this fails to explain how players like Taeja or MVP, at some point in their career, simply dominated tournaments. It is not that these players are doing radically different things than everyone else. True MVP's mech play was innovative, but he is still more successful than those who copied it. Taeja does not play very different than most players, but he still managed to have much better results. For months all MC did was two-base all in but he still was coined the "Boss Toss" and hailed the best protoss in the world for over a year. Stephano is a phenomenal player who revolutionized the ZVP matchup. Even after his style has been "figured out" he is still known as a top Zerg versus Protoss player in the world. So what sets these players apart from masses of mechanically sound players who can perform the same strategies? I believe that the mindsets of these players define their success just as much as their mechanics or their innovative strategies.
Firstly, let us look at Liquid Taeja. Why Taeja? He isn’t a player to be known for his crazy mind set or personality! However, Taeja has a very unique view on games that is clearly visible in his play. Simply put, Taeja views every game as a test of skill vs. skill. At the same time, he has A TON of skill. Now this mind set might seem simple and obvious, but it is clearly effective! Look at his IPTL performance; he stated that he takes every game as an individual test of skill! Therefore if he has confidence in his skill, he shouldn’t and doesn’t generally get nervous in matches. He can tell himself, I believe that in THIS match on THIS map, I have more skill than my opponent! Therefore all he has to do is execute what he knows. This is what makes Taeja great.
Another perfect example of mindset showing in a player is everyone’s favorite Frenchman, EG Stephano (RC). If you are at all involved in the sc2 community, you know Stephano. If you know Stephano, then you are definitely familiar with his overwhelmingly confident attitude. He is known to in game chat his opponents (LOL Proleague), be a little goofy, and look very bored and uninterested while slaying top Koreans. Stephano IS a player of exceptional skill, however, other zergs have his macro. Other zergs have his multitasking. Other zergs can do the exact same style as he does. Why does he have such success? He goes into every game telling himself he can and will beat his opponent. Imagine for a minute you are Stephano at WCS Europe. You could tell yourself “This is a zerg heavy tournament, and my worst matchup is ZvZ! Plus everyone expects me to win! What if I fail?” Do you think Stephano would play half as well with that mindset? Of course not, but if what he shows us is right, I would assume his mindset to be more like: “I am the best damn foreigner in the world! I bet my opponent is shaking in his booth!” With the kind of confidence that Stephano exhibits, it is no wonder that he is so dominant.
If you have read so far, you can probably see that the common factor here is confidence. Need more examples of successful players that seem to bleed confidence? Life, Parting, MC, Seed, DRG, and many others share a ton of mindset commonalities. So I guess the whole point of this is that if you are, or hope to be competitive in sc2, practice your ass off and remember….You CAN do it.
Love you guys <3,
xO Caboose
 
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So how long did you live with the players before you were able to pinpoint what aspect of their mindeset sets them apart from all the other pros?
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I based my hypothesis off observation and interviews! Also, take stephano for example, he makes his confidence quite obvious. I am just making an observation about mindsets i have noticed and their correlation to success? If you disagree about their mindset feel free to make a counter argument!
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On February 16 2013 04:20 tjtombo wrote:
I based my hypothesis off observation and interviews! Also, take stephano for example, he makes his confidence quite obvious. I am just making an observation about mindsets i have noticed and their correlation to success? If you disagree about their mindset feel free to make a counter argument!
well the part about taeja is pure speculation and pretty much reads like a bball interview with key words like play hard,confidence and execute the plays,which in the end takes 5 lines to say nothing;)
the stephano part is alright and actually based on what the player said.
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I think it makes more sense to say confidence comes as a result of being really good at the game, not the other way around. MC was pretty confident too, but then he got knocked out of code S and then code A, and only recently started making a comeback. In fact in an interview he stated (maybe jokingly) that is weakness was "overconfidence".
But the fundamental thing is that people don't have confidence for no reason - they only develop it in themselves when they prove to themselves that they can win against the very best. If Stephano continuously lost against Koreans like everyone else he probably wouldn't be very confident. He is only confident because he has shown that he can win. So it proves that the basis for all the confidence is skill, and that confidence is really just something incidental that happens to come along with being really skilled, just like how geniuses are typically arrogant and dismissive of other people with "lesser" minds. They are arrogant and confident because they see how good they are every day compared to everyone else.
To sum up confidence is just a consequence of being good at the game, and having a certainty that your understanding of the game is correct. Its just an indicator of how comfortable you are playing in various situations, and knowing how to respond to various things. But its not a magical force that will make everything work out better. True it may reduce your stress, but ultimately what matters is your decisions.
Confidence is useless if your attack is ill-suited against what your opponent is doing, confidence in your micro is useless if you clump everything up or attack through a choke point. The only reason you think confidence is the X factor is because its intimately tied to *competence*. So no surprise...the real X factor is how hard you practise, and understand the game.
Edit: Also I'm not sure you can say you know enough about how MVP plays vs. how other terrans play to say that it all comes down to some intangible quality like a feeling. There has to be some decision MVP is making in the game that affects how the game plays out. It may not be obvious, but it literally has to be there because otherwise its just silly to think confidence magically makes the game work out in MVP's favor  . Its his decision making, and you can bet he doesn't base his decisions on unfounded confidence, but a rational approach to understanding the game
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The basic problem with this is that you are only observing the people who won. They all have a confident mindset. Great. This does not make confidence "the X Factor"
Unfortunately, most of the people who lost were also confident. Professionals don't play all day long because they think they are trash players but they can sneak a trophy while nobody is looking. Interviewing champions after they become champions also completely confounds everything because people have a powerful tendancy to revise their emotional states based on results. In other words, a player who was really thinking "fuck, this guy is really good, I think I've got a chance but I hope he doesn't shit on me", will tell you that they never REALLY doubted themselves after they win.
Its like sending 1000 men over Niagra Falls and then looking at the 5 who survived and saying: "Ha, all these men can swim! I've found the X factor that will make you survive 200ft drops over a waterfall!". Well no shit, if you can't swim you're definitely gonna drown, but of the other 995 dead fuckers, most of them could probably swim too.
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EPT
