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I am ShoCk, I am one of these guys that started out in Bronze league, I have never played an RTS game before, so Starcraft 2 WoL was my first catch. Even though SC was my first RTS, I have always been a very competitive player, I have always been ambitious about gaming. The mindset I have carried on for years was that losing isn't fun, and I would get really angry about losing in several games (Counterstrike,Cod,....) , so that I just tried harder. I could never accept being worse of a player than my opponent. I know this may sound a little cocky but thats not what I try to emphasize here, an example would be, that if I play against my friends, where it should be about only having fun (f.e. when we LAN-party), I had to be the best to have fun myself, I was getting angry as long as I was not the best, but this eventually pushed me to be the best at every game - every single time.
We had tons and tons of LAN-parties and online-meetups and every single time, I would be the one grumbling about everything if not everything was perfect for me. I just have to be the top1, every single time, and If i lose to a player that I knew is not on my skillset, I completely lost my mind. This feeling really heavily expressed when I was around friends, online was obviously the same, but I could just barely go on with it and keep me "about calm" :D but when it was about friends and people that I love being better at something I love to do, I could never accept to not be the best or to be beaten.
This is of course is one of the worst things if u are so competitive, u will start to become really, i'd say "BM", even though u don't want it. I did never want to insult a friend over beating me or anything, but from time to time it just happened that i shouted at them that "how could a f*ing noob like u even beat me" or something, because I was so incredibly into being the number one, that I could never ever accept anything else. I hate this attitude and I personally apologize every time after that stuff happened that I "didn't mean it like that" and so on, It's just that I'm so competitive that I completely freak out not being the best, especially within my social environment.
Well anyways, all that has two sides, one would be the one where u are an asshole to your friends (because u have your "5 minutes of anger" after each game), even though u don't want to be an asshole, and the other is, you become really, really really good at something. I love and hate my ambitious attitude, I hate the part where it gets insulting, where I lose my mind over something, but I love the part where I am constantly improving, where I am exploding because I can't accept to be losing and thus I improve rapidly.
A few years back for example, I was playing CS 1.6 with a friend who I played soccer with, he just invited me into the session every evening where he was playing with some of his friends who i didnt know. Well anyhow, I have not played 1.6, only source and thus I have just been raped over and over again, fortunately for me, I wasnt on a headset with them, so I could flame lonely in my room (:D) about being beaten. But seriously, they raped me. Anyhow, I trained, I seriously started to train because of a "fun-session" we did every evening, I started to play on ranked servers and stuff just to improve, and suddenly, a week ago I crushed everybody in the "evening sessions", and I started to have a lot of fun. Anyways, what would happen is, they suddenly said I was a cheater, they couldn't believe I went from "nothing" to "beating the best" and they wouldn't let me play with them again.
The worst thing about this was, (this story is a 100% legit) I wasn't cheating, I was just so ambitious and so angry about being beaten, that I got my stuff together and wanted to be the best. This especially developed as I got to know the guys more, and like I said, I never want to be worse than somebody I know and like. Well, anyways, the friend of mine that invited me into the round looked like an idiot that invites cheater-friends into the game, and I felt like I betrayed him even though I didn't. It was just such a stupid moment, I did never ever cheat, I was just so rapidly improving because of my anger and self-pressure, that it made me look a cheater.
This is just a story I wanted to tell u, so u can imagine on how I can explode due to this pressure I constantly put on myself to improve. Well and now, lets get back to Starcraft: Starcraft is a game that just catched me right away, as I bought it, I was amazed. I started to watch some of the progamers play, and I was just so excited about it, that I wanted to become really good. I would again play with my best friends, and I would try the hardest, I would play the most, read the most and know the most stuff, and yet, on ladder I failed. I had huge ladder-anxiety and I just couldn't properly focus. I always felt my race was the weakest, because, there has to be a reason I am the one that trains/knows the most, and yet loses the most , right? (:D) Of course that's not true, but like I said, I just cant accept to not be the best, and even though I actually knew the most, had the highest APM and best mechanics (words of my friends, not mine), I would be the lowest on ladder.
I mean, can u imagine how bad I feel, as competitive as I am / was, this is something I have the hardest time with, being the hardest-working, and yet the less-rewarded person of all of us. I had some serious mental breakdowns because I always felt i underachieved myself, but the next day i just tried harder. Anyhow, in Bronze/Silver I had huge ladder-anxiety so I didn't play all that much, but in Gold-league I finally started playing a bit more. I think that my social environment, that developed with me, that I always beat in 1v1s but yet has always grown faster on the ladder, has helped me to really improve, because again, I set myself under such immense pressure to be better. So, as soon as I started playing more and more, I improved a lot and got from Gold to Masters in roughly 5-6 months at my first ever RTS. I was very proud about this because I have had this goal from the beginning, when I started to play in Bronze-league, I tried so hard, and eventually I would reach the Masters-League.
So here I was, finally in masters, but no, I'm noone to give up on this, my next aim was Top25 Masters, then Highmasters (top8 ~1000) and eventually GM. Even though most of my friends except for one have stopped playing StarCraft, my ambition grew from day to day, and now I'm in the 2nd season where I'm in Masters and I'm currently ranked Top20. Even though that is not a big achievement, I am playing a very solid style, I'm never cheesing or allin'ing , I want to play a very solid style, that just purely relies on skill and not luck or gamble. Anyways, I currently do my Abitur (in roughly a week) which is my final exams for school, so I'm doing kind of a break in SC (just playing at night atm), but as soon as school is done, I want to dedicate all my time to try to break to highmaster in one month, and I hope as many people as are out there, will tell me that it is impossible, that I can't do it, because that is eventually gonna make me to reach that goal. I want to become professional with StarCraft, no matter what it takes, no matter how much I have to train or how hard I will have to try, I think that the right mindset and huge amounts of ambition is what is really important.
I have one huge problem though, and that is my bad-side of the mindset, I think I have one of the best mindsets when it comes to ambition, when it comes to telling yourself to train harder and when it comes to huge aims that I want to reach and when it comes to self-confidence, but I definately have a huge problem dealing not with losses, but with playing bad. I sometimes am just "off my game". I have a good friend who's top50 GM, and in my good games, I beat him once or twice so far (macro), because I can be really good, in my bad games, I lose to Diamond/Platinum again, because I do stuff, I know I shouldn't do. I think too much about who I am playing against (league), and then I get very very sloppy, cocky and do stupid stuff. Afterwards I completely get insane, I hate myself for losing against somebody I should be able to beat and I go into the next game with this mindset, this broken mindset. And I lose the next one, and the next one, and on it goes, up until even people on stream realize I get a little angry.
Some of u may have checked out my stream and realized this as well, I also talked about this on stream, that I have huge problems dealing with emotions after one game where I didn't play up to my level, losing is one thing, it is something I can learn of and i grasp experience off, but not playing up to my skill makes me insane, makes me angry and makes me lose all my games afterwards. I sometimes have huge amounts of potential I feel like, If I'm in a good mood (sometimes streaming), I win like 7-8 consequent games brilliantly, and people are writing to me (in streamchat/ingame) how good I play today etc. but unfortunately, all that has an end as soon as I mess up one game horribly and start to get angry about that, because for a game like Starcraft, u need your full focus on what is happening, otherwise, u miss your upgrades, u miss parts of your multitask and lose more and more games, and If you are into dealing with the anger of a game that u played in a very bad way, u will have a hard time to win against an even opponent.
This is exactly why I made this blog, I hope that people understand in what situation I am, I can never be a good player if I don't work on this attitude, I have to just find a way to stay calm, find a way i can work on my mentality so I can only focus on improving and not dealing with such bad emotions. At least 60-70% of my games lost are mental-problems, games that I lost due to anger and emotional problems. Starcraft is just so important for me, I love the game, and I have a lot of fun with it, and I want to take away that part of the anger, that part of sometimes flaming people because I hate myself for not beating a strategy or for not doing something that I know I should have done to beat something. I want to use this blog to openly criticize my mindset, try to work on that stuff together with u guys, try to tell u if i had another mental breakdown or if i can finally get it behind me, I hope I really can, and then, I think there's nothing in the way to eventually grow a ton as a player and hopefully go professional.
Thanks for reading this huge amount of text!
Please go ahead if u have any critics/contribution,
ShoCk 
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Thanks to BisuDagger for restructuring the wall of text :O
ah and sorry for the wrong english im native german
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Losing is the only efficient way to learn the game. If you cannot do that, you might as well stop and do something else. There is no point in pursuing the Starcraft path, if you are unable to learn.
It's easy to progress into masters, because all the way from bronze to masters, you focus on yourself, your basic ability to play the game and only after that, you'll have to deal with real Starcraft and things, you cannot just wing around, by say, increasing your rate of injects by 30% or more (because your injects were so shitty before, it was easy to improve by a large margin).
Sorry brah, either you realize, that winning is not as good for getting better, than losing is, you're fucked and should stop.
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Nono, not sure if u read everything? I was writing that it isn't losing that is bad for me, it is dealing with games that I didn't play up to my own skill, there have been plenty of games that I looked at and said: "Wow, I really played this well, let's check on what went wrong and never make that mistake again", it is playing sloppy and not at my level that is hard to deal with emotionally, a loss is not the problem, the games that I get angry about can also be games that I won, it is just sloppyness and underachievement that is the emotional problem sometimes
shock
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Bisutopia19229 Posts
On March 29 2013 21:45 ShoCkSC2 wrote:Nono, not sure if u read everything? I was writing that it isn't losing that is bad for me, it is dealing with games that I didn't play up to my own skill, there have been plenty of games that I looked at and said: "Wow, I really played this well, let's check on what went wrong and never make that mistake again", it is playing sloppy and not at my level that is hard to deal with emotionally, a loss is not the problem, the games that I get angry about can also be games that I won, it is just sloppyness and underachievement that is the emotional problem sometimes shock
He probably didn't make it all the way through due to the giant wall of text. Maybe make a few more paragraphs and use the [ indent ] command. I don't have any good advice but if you make the blog easier to read maybe others will.
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I read it all, but I don't think there is that much of a difference here. You should stop thinking and definint how good you are supposed to play, what opponents you should or should not lose to etc. You can lose to anyone and against everything, if you're not good enough. You having the feeling, that you didn't play your best isn't worth anything. If you have this feeling all the time, then you should rethink what "your best" play means and maybe think of your "best play" as the exceptions, rather than the norm.
Sorry if I made the impression, that I haven't read all of your text 
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I have the same problem, the difference in my performance when I'm at my best compared to when I'm at my worst is quite large.
I think the solution is to try to only play ranked ladder/tournament games when you are feeling good, i.e. when you are performing at or near your best performance. If you are not playing at or near your best, then just don't play 1v1s.
There are ways you can improve when you are playing bad such as studying replays/build orders or watching a stream and learning from that. But I think taking a break from SC2 and doing something else is a better solution.
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Thanks for the replies!
@Bisu: Sorry for the unstructured text, if i find some time later on i will restructure
@Kuni: Maybe you are right with the fact that losing / performing bad is kind of similar, but for me losing is the concept of something lacking in your play that can be filled up, if u just perform bad this means i know exactly how to fill that gap but I just don't. U see my point? Anyhow, u said that i should stop thinking about who I play and how I am supposed to perform, this is what I'm working on right now, with this blog, I want to be more open to say: "Wow! That was a shitty game, nevermind, next one will be good again!"
@Mongoose: Good to hear im not the only one! Yes, you are right, I guess somehow a solution is turn your back on starcraft for a little while, then go back as focused again, the problem is, I always think of it as :"If i don't train enough i'll not prosper" so I keep playing into this vicious cicle :'( I think it is a solution, but I think the way better one would be to have a change of mindset about underperforming
shock
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Bisutopia19229 Posts
It's okay I edit for you if you like this format better feel free to use.
+ Show Spoiler + I am ShoCk, I am one of these guys that started out in Bronze league, I have never played an RTS game before, so Starcraft 2 WoL was my first catch. Even though SC was my first RTS, I have always been a very competitive player, I have always been ambitious about gaming. The mindset I have carried on for years was that losing isn't fun, and I would get really angry about losing in several games (Counterstrike,Cod,....) , so that I just tried harder. I could never accept being worse of a player than my opponent. I know this may sound a little cocky but thats not what I try to emphasize here, an example would be, that if I play against my friends, where it should be about only having fun (f.e. when we LAN-party), I had to be the best to have fun myself, I was getting angry as long as I was not the best, but this eventually pushed me to be the best at every game - every single time.
We had tons and tons of LAN-parties and online-meetups and every single time, I would be the one grumbling about everything if not everything was perfect for me. I just have to be the top1, every single time, and If i lose to a player that I knew is not on my skillset, I completely lost my mind. This feeling really heavily expressed when I was around friends, online was obviously the same, but I could just barely go on with it and keep me "about calm" :D but when it was about firends and people that I love being better at something I love to do, I could never accept to not be the best or to be beaten.
This is of course one of the worst things if u are so competitive, u will start to become really, i'd say "BM", even though u don't want it. I did never want to insult a friend over beating me or anything, but from time to time it just happened that i shouted at them that "how could a f*ing noob like u even beat me" or something, because I was so incredibly into being the number one, that I could never ever accept anything else. I hate this attitude and I personally apologize every time after that stuff happened that I "didn't mean it like that" and so on, It's just that I'm so competitive that I completely freak out not being the best, especially within my social environment.
Well anyways, all that has two sides, one would be the one where u are an asshole to your friends (because u have your "5 minutes of anger" after each game), even though u don't wan to be an asshole, and the other is, you become really, really really good at something. I love and hate my ambitious attitude, I hate the part where it gets insulting, where I lose my mind over something, but I love the part where I am constantly improving, where I am exploding because I can't accept to be losing and thus I improve rapidly.
A few years back for example, I was playing CS 1.6 with a friend who I played soccer with, he just invited me into the session every evening where he was playing with some of his friends who i didnt know. Well anyhow, I have not played 1.6, only source and thus I have just been raped over and over again, fortunately for me, I wasnt on a headset with them, so I could flame lonely in my room (:D) about being beaten. But seriously, they raped me. Anyhow, I trained, I seriously started to train because of a "fun-session" we did every evening, I started to play on ranked servers and stuff just to improve, and suddenly, a week ago I crushed everybody in the "evening sessions", and I started to have a lot of fun. Anyways, what would happen is, they suddenly said I was a cheater, they couldn't believe I went from "nothing" to "beating the best" and they wouldn't let me play with them again.
The worst thing about this was, (this story is a 100% legit) I wasn't cheating, I was just so ambitious and so angry about being beaten, that I got my stuff together and wanted to be the best. This especially developed as I got to know the guys more, and like I said, I never want to be worse than somebody I know and like. Well, anyways, the friend of mine that invited me into the round looked like an idiot that invites cheater-friends into the game, and I felt like I betrayed him even though I didn't. It was just such a stupid moment, I did never ever cheat, I was just so rapidly improving because of my anger and self-pressure, that it made me look a cheater.
This is just a story I wanted to tell u, so u can imagine on how I can explode due to this pressure I constantly put on myself to improve. Well and now, lets get back to Starcraft: Starcraft is a game that just catched me right away, as I bought it, I was amazed. I started to watch some of the progamers play, and I was just so excited about it, that I wanted to become really good. I would again play with my best friends, and I would try the hardest, I would play the most, read the most and know the most stuff, and yet, on ladder I failed. I had huge ladder-anxiety and I just couldn't properly focus. I always felt my race was the weakest, because, there has to be a reason I am the one that trains/knows the most, and yet loses the most , right? (:D) Of course that's not true, but like I said, I just cant accept to not be the best, and even though I actually knew the most, had the highest APM / bets mechanics and the best of our group (words of my friends, not mine), I would be the lowest on ladder.
I mean, can u imagine how bad I feel, as competitive as I am / was, this is something I have the hardest time with, being the hardest-working, and yet the less-rewarded person of all of us. I had some serious mental breakdowns because I always felt i underachieved myself, but the next day i just tried harder. Anyhow, in Bronze/Silver I had huge ladder-anxiety so I didn't play all that much, but in Gold-league I finally started playing a bit more. I think that my social environment, that developed with me, that I always beat in 1v1s but yet has always grown faster on the ladder, has helped me to really improve, because again, I set myself under such immense pressure to be better. So, as soon as I started playing more and more, I improved a lot and got from Gold to Masters in roughly 5-6 months at my first ever RTS. I was very proud about this because I have had this goal from the beginning, when I started to play in Bronze-league, I tried so hard, and eventually I would reach the Masters-League.
So here I was, finally in masters, but no, I'm noone to give up on this, my next aim was Top25 Masters, then Highmasters (top8 ~1000) and eventually GM. Even though most of my friends except for one have stopped playing StarCraft, my ambition grew from day to day, and now I'm in the 2nd season where I'm in Masters and I'm currently ranked Top20. Even though that is not a big achievement, I am playing a very solid style, I'm never cheesing or allin'ing , I want to play a very solid style, that just purely relies on skill and not luck or gamble. Anyways, I currently do my Abitur (in roughly a week) which is my final exams for school, so I'm doing kind of a break in SC (just playing at night atm), but as soon as school is done, I want to dedicate all my time to try to break to highmaster in one month, and I hope as many people as are out there, will tell me that it is impossible, that I can't do it, because that is eventually gonna make me to reach that goal. I want to become professional with StarCraft, no matter what it takes, no matter how much I have to train or how hard I will have to try, I think that the right mindset and huge amounts of ambition is what is really important.
I have one huge problem though, and that is my bad-side of the mindset, I think I have one of the best mindsets when it comes to ambition, when it comes to telling yourself to train harder and when it comes to huge aims that I want to reach and when it comes to self-confidence, but I definately have a huge problem dealing not with losses, but with playing bad. I sometimes am just "off my game". I have a good friend who's top50 GM, and in my good games, I beat him once or twice so far (macro), because I can be really good, in my bad games, I lose to Diamond/Platinum again, because I do stuff, I know I shouldn't do. I think too much about who I am playing against (league), and then I get very very sloppy, cocky and do stupid stuff. Afterwards I completely get insane, I hate myself for losing against somebody I should be able to beat and I go into the next game with this mindset, this broken mindset. And I lose the next one, and the next one, and on it goes, up until even people on stream realize I get a little angry.
Some of u may have checked out my stream and realized this as well, I also talked about this on stream, that I have huge problems dealing with emotions after one game where I didn't play up to my level, losing is one thing, it is something I can learn of and i grasp experience off, but not playing up to my skill makes me insane, makes me angry and makes me lose all my games afterwards. I sometimes have huge amounts of potential I feel like, If I'm in a good mood (sometimes streaming), I win like 7-8 consequent games brilliantly, and people are writing to me (in streamchat/ingame) how good I play today etc. but unfortunately, all that has an end as soon as I mess up one game horribly and start to get angry about that, because for a game like Starcraft, u need your full focus on what is happening, otherwise, u miss your upgrades, u miss parts of your multitask and lose more and more games, and If you are into dealing with the anger of a game that u played in a very bad way, u will have a hard time to win against an even opponent.
This is exactly why I made this blog, I hope that people understand in what situation I am, I can never be a good player if I don't work on this attitude, I have to just find a way to stay calm, find a way i can work on my mentality so I can only focus on improving and not dealing with such bad emotions. At least 60-70% of my games lost are mental-problems, games that I lost due to anger and emotional problems. Starcraft is just so important for me, I love the game, and I have a lot of fun with it, and I want to take away that part of the anger, that part of sometimes flaming people because I hate myself for not beating a strategy or for not doing something that I know I should have tone to beat something. I want to use this blog to openly criticize my mindset, try to work on that stuff together with u guys, try to tell u if i had another mental breakdown or if i can finally get it behind me, I hope I really can, and then, I think there's nothing in the way to eventually grow a ton as a player and hopefully go professional.
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the issue with large walls of text is that it makes readers not want to read simply because it feels like it never ends. It is better to have a lot of paragraphed out, structured lines that are just as long, so long as the reader doesn't feel exhausted while reading. I read about 1/3 of this because I just didn't get where you were going and didn't understand how the structure worked. I got the main ideas, but if you want more people to read it thoroughly, I'd suggest restructuring dude .
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@BisuDagger: Oh my god, TL is such a nice community, thank you so much! Can't believe u put that much effort into my wall of text!
@dovoc: lovely BisuDagger fixed it :D sorry for that, next time I'll structure everything better !
gg shock
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I just read it all and I can relate. I have the exact same "drive". I've raged at friends even when we were just playing Mortal Combat on the 360 while having a few beers. With neither of us having played the game before, I still couldn't accept the fact that I wasn't better at it than them.
I've also raged at friendly SC2 matches, but only when I know I should win. If I get my ass kicked over and over by someone I consider "better" than me I don't have a problem with that. I just want to keep playing and feel good when I win.
Recently in HotS I've struggled (as a Z) with dealing with widow mines. This completely tilted my play. I had a hard ZvT loss that I would have won 100% of the time if it wasn't for the widow mines and it set me on a tilt for the next 2 days, losing close to like 20 games in a row. Even non ZvT's. I was just rage-joining every game I entered.
I went from winning 70% of my matches to losing 70% just because my mindset was completely bodged.
I don't think it's a bad thing to want to be the best at everything, as long as it doesn't drive you insane.
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@disco: Yes, this is exactly what I experience, playing and losing against people that u consider better, do I have a problem with that? Hell no I don't! U describe very well how I feel in terms of competition, it is good to try to be good, but its bad to go insane on it. And for me it doesn't really matter what game, I'm just not good at accepting bad performance.
shock
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I kind of had the same problem as you OP. I get really competitive when playing with friends but I do have that balance, where this game doesn't matter I'm just going to have fun with them.
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You need to find some non competitive aspect of your life that you can be proud about.
The way you try to add meaning to meaningless games tells me that you're trying to compensate for something else. I know; i've done that.
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@MysteryMeat1: Okay that is right, there are games (f.e. Flatout) that I can be bad in because it is really just hilarious, but I want this "no-anger-environment" in competitive games :D to just focus solely on improvement/skill and not on emotion, and thats the challange
@1Dhalism: It's possible I'm trying to compensate for a girl, there's definately a few reasons for this, u could be right about that. I am not sure if i can ever be proud of something non-competitive, I mean be proud of what? Can i really be proud of something I just gained by doing "nothing"? I'm not quite sure about that, I'm not proud of being a talent in something or so, I'm proud of being the one able to just say that I "worked hard to achieve" a certain thing. I am proud of things that I achieved because I wanted to stop over and over again, but I didn't, because I broke barriers and so on. But maybe you are right
shock
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The fact that you went from bronze to masters is....pretty amazing. I started in masters but stayed in masters..
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Wow, thank u that really honors me @ihreartEDM, thanks for the kind words !
I'm gonna stream a bit now, let's see if i can force myself to look at bad games a different angle, u can find my stream at /shocksc2 on twitch if u want to tune in,
thank you for all the nice / kind responses, would love to hear some more toughts!
<3
shock
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Oh well, today was kind of a mixture of feelings, I could kind of keep me calm with the first few stupid losses I got, and then I suddenly played well so I definately overcame a little obstacle, but in the end it was me losing 6/8 PvTs and that just kind of got me on the wrong foot, so that eventually I was getting a little frustrated again. But I think it's definately starting to get better, I'll just have to work towards a professional mindset, nothing just happens overnight right 
peace shock
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I experience the same frustration with losing, and I've often wondered if all the years I spent playing Pokemon might have something to do with it. Pokemon is a game where it's not uncommon to do an entire playthrough and never lose a single battle. My hypothesis is that this constant winning conditions you to not accept anything less than winning 99% of the time. I often feel like I've been "win spoiled" by pokemon and that that discourages me from laddering. Even when I do win the fact that there will have been some even army exchanges kind of bums me out. Idk, maybe I'm just crazy, but I've been wondering about this "win spoiling" effect of pokemon for awhile.
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Haha, yeah pokemon certainly gives u a high-win percentage :D. But i guess in StarCraft, winning is not of importance, but improving is, and if i feel (like f.e. my PvT) that it sucks, and you lose like 7-8 consequent games it's just a huge pain :'( xD
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EPT
