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You don't need any age to be good.
You just need practice time.
I don't ever use age as an excuse or a crutch to say why others are better than me, the only thing that matters is your own effort.
Being a bit older helps with your mental game, but honestly I feel that even at 16 I have a better mental state than most pros / can outthink people easily. 12 might be a little low but you should be fine as long as you're a smart / good logical thinking kid you should be fine.
I started playing BW on ICCup when I was 12, reached B- a bit after turning 14. That's way way harder than master league in sc2 lol.
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On June 05 2012 10:29 iS.Pyre wrote:Don't be discouraged by age. There are plenty of pro gamers who are young such as jjakji and Leenock. And I'm not just talking about Koreans either, GoSu's Pokebunny, Quantic's Illusion, as well as a few others such as Boyo (three grandmaster players) are currently ages 17, 16, and 15, respectively. I, myself, am also grandmaster and age 17  Practice hard and you'll find yourself doing as well as anybody else.
i'm not 17 yet dood
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I started playing RTS around age 14. It took me about a year to develop the skill set of using hotkeys and attempting to be 'quick' in the game, the utter basics of RTS; building workers, creating an army, basic strategy ect. It took me another year to get 'good' at RTS in general, from Constant Worker Production -> BO's -> Strategy -> Army Control ect.
In retrospect, it all comes down to the amount of time you put in. I'm 19 now and I remember over one 2 week school holiday break playing 12 hours of the same RTS game for 2 weeks straight and I improved dramatically. In SC2 terms I probably went from low platinum to masters in terms of having the ability to control the game. This is basically what we call mechanics. I feel there are two parts to RTS however.
Real-Time: Mechanics
Strategy: Understanding the game and what can happen in the game.
I don't think I really grasped an understanding of strategy until my third or forth year of RTS. It's ok to think, I'm just going to have more stuff than him and win. That's a strategy obviously, but what I'm talking about are the miniscule details which give you that edge so that when your mechanics are on-par with your enemy you still come out with more stuff than him because you understand the game better.
Alot of this is discovery and understanding what is going on. The older you get the more you can understand about how something works because you naturally spend more time doing it. So yes, started young is a good thing, but you can't and shouldn't be discouraged by the rate of your improvement. We can't all play games for 12 hours a day every day of the week but if you want to get good, you know what you need to do and that is devote time into it. Just like everything else.
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Age does make a difference, but that difference doesn't translate to winning or not, it just changes how you approach the game, and thus people have different play styles
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Age is quite irrelevant if you plan on laddering and learning. However, I feel the peak age group for RTS is 17-22. At this point, you gain immense intellectual knowledge and your dexterity is peaking. Being 27 myself, I find it very hard for my hands to keep up with what my mind wants them to do. Back when I was 17-22, I was much faster and precise with my mechanics. I may be older and wiser now; however, my mechanics are slowly slipping with age. At my current age I can easily break down a game and pick out the errors in my game play, but I simply can not keep up mechanically. It obviously also doesn't help that I am older and have more responsibilities and therefore can not put as much time into the game as I used to.
Starting young definitely helps. My first RTS was Warcraft 2 back in '97. I learned a lot of the fundamentals(hotkeys, unit groups, etc) at a very early age, so progressing from one game to another has been quite fluid. Compare this to my friends whose first RTS game is SC2 and they are complete dogshit. Lots are stuck in bronze/silver league no matter how much I coach them. Can't teach an old dog new tricks!
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I think that belief about age is ridiculous... I'm 14 and gm but nowhere near pros
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The younger you start the more foundation your build for yourself to become a pro-player and the better you become later in life
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If you focus on improving you will be diamond in no time. Make sure you are not just cheesing all the time or making excuses for your play and then age doesn't matter.
Note: I started SC1 when I was 19... I'm 34 now. I'm old.
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My biggest advice, specifically about this community, don't pretend you know anything until you actually do. If you want to contribute, that's amazing and we love new comers... But to many people believe they understand the game better than anyone else.
In the game? Basics for a kid should be to have fun, the more fun you can have the more imaginative your playstyle will be... You're handspeed will improve on it's own, and so will your ability to process the information you are seeing (that you don't even notice) but just have fun, you'll improve.
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If you've played it (it sounds like you have) and you are enjoying yourself, why would you quit? Age is completely irrelevant... unless you're 6 months old or something and don't have the motor skills to do anything.
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speaking from personal experience I'm much more intelligent about the game now than I was when I was younger. I think what's most important is to really try and think critically about learning/understanding/getting better and you'll do big things goodluck!
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the problem with young players is to have the humility to lose games and analyze them.
I had the same problem when I was young.
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By.Baby was a pro BW player at the age of 13.
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Whats with all the Masters and Grandmaster people my age? D:
Like I've been playing it fairly often and I'm still silver ;o
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i think age is irrlevent, but im 14 and im diamond protoss
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On June 05 2012 07:17 Nagano wrote:
Not at all. Flash was playing at your age. There are chess grandmasters that are your age. You are still young so you can mold your brain with SC2 better than a person who's older than you. You may not have the critical thinking of a 25 year old, but you have calculating power and tons of room for potential.
yep. use your young brain to wrap around code S ideas. watch lots of streams. make sure the person you're watching is code S.
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No stop being a pussy and just practice.
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On June 05 2012 13:32 Garth wrote:
No stop being a pussy and just practice.
Feel so bad that I laughed at that. 
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On June 05 2012 07:16 Fetchystick wrote:
You know what would be great, a poll for each individual league asking what age you are. No joke man, the time is ripe for a survey. Take control of this situation and let's set us up a poll!
well the past polls have indicated that the average age of the TL user was overwhemingly 23, so naturally your poll idea will not work even if you divided it into leagues.
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I doubt that age matters. Back in the day when I was 12 I was top 50 on Cases Ladder on Kali for warcraft 2. Beating players like Tillerman, IN.hellX, agent911 etc. I was just a kid but I was better than most people at the game. Although this was way before replays and the like. But maybe that means more. It means I had to figure strats out on my own.
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EPT
