A Quiet Game of Mini Mafia - Page 73

"When you consistently win with something it's only natural that your belief in the validity of your
strategy is reinforced constantly. For progamers this is a great way to test the strength of their ideas. If
they keep winning with it, it's probably a good strategy because they are testing it against the very best.
That however does not apply to foreigners testing their ideas against other foreigners. If Flash shows up to
the MSL nals with 1 base bio openings he is going to get mercilessly crushed because Jaedong will know
how to beat it. But foreigners can easily go higher than even b- with such atrocious strategies because they
play against people who don't know how to react at all. The problem only grows worse because they believe
their ideas are correct because they reinforce their beliefs by beating clueless opponents. When such things
are possible, it's no wonder the overall strategic understanding becomes warped."

"Losing to stupid things will happen and there might be a point where you can beat a decent player
who plays correctly yet lose to a poor one who uses inferior strategies. This bizarre situation occurs because
you are jumping over a large period of growth by rigorously learning from the correct ideas (those by the
pros) instead of learning much slower, but more incrementally, by personal trial and error. Thus there will
come a point when you have a gap in your knowledge: you understand what is right, but not why it is
right, and thus do not have the know how without a direct example of how to defeat inferior ideas. Seeking
explanations certainly does help here as the accuracy on solved problems is usually better than for unsolved
ones, but on its own it might not be enough. If you have the skill to play as other races, playing from the
other side of the eld is a great x. Try playing that 1 base bio against a bunch of Zergs and see what
happens. It really helps to feel, not just read about, the problems from the other POV. Regardless, this is
a problem that will vanish after your understanding grows, but it may make a painful bump in the road.
The worst part about the second problem is that due to the inherent nature of learning, the initial period
of growth is always slow and will show little results. A beginning student cannot eectively comprehend the
nature of what they are seeing because they have not built the mental framework to place it in: to them an
SC game, especially a pro one, is just a series of actions happening for seemingly incomprehensible reasons.
They can't understand their own games, so how could they even begin to relate to one played many levels
higher? The slow growth during this period can easily lead to discouragement and is a stumbling block for
many people; the inability to establish a mental framework is likely the reason why only a small fraction of
SC players can ever get above the level of a d/d+ iccup player."

from the same guide, a quote from iloveoov

"When you play, you have to start off with a mind to turn the game into a rape.""