Hi, As somebody who actually practices a different sport but draws a lot of inspiration from SC2, I am very curious as to what it takes to get to the top in Starcraft.
So many people play SC2, only some make it to GM. I am sure there are a lot of people in the lower ranks that spend a lot of time playing the game... so this is the reason I post this question.
As to me, I have these possible hypotheses but I would like you to refute or agree with them, since I am not a competitive SC2 player myself but I am a competitive player of another sport... I want to draw inspiration from this post and apply similar strategies in my sport so I can become the best.
HYPOTHESES:
-Time investment. So, does it mean that the more you practice the higher you get? By that measurement, do GM players practice 12-14 hours a day, master players practice 8 hours a day, diamond players practice 6, platinum 4, gold 2, silver 1, and bronze 0? I know it may not be that simple, but how much of a factor is PRACTICE TIME?
-Type of practice. I do not know how much master players practice. But do GMs think a lot about the matches they play, analyzing their weaknesses and so on? Do GMs just analyze the game more than masters and so on? In that case, would that mean that masters and GMs just practice a similar amount but approach the game differently?
-Training environment. Does being in professional teams have an influence? And your practice partners? How big of a factor is this? Is being in Korea an advantage? Also, how are Serral and Reynor so good without being in Korea? What makes their practices different or more effective? How important is training environment?
-Financial and time resources. Are the GM players the players who have financial backing and do not have to stress about life? Are they the players that can only focus on the game? How much do time and resources influence your skill level? For example, are the GMs fully funded players with good resources and only SC2 to focus on, whereas Masters are a bit less funded? Also, do different professional teams provide different types of resources which would produce different results? I am aware this point may be related to previous one.
-Age, Natural Ability. How important are age or natural ability? Reynor is young and started young. Serral, on the other hand, seems naturally gifted. Is Serral simply a genius with God-given super high IQ or the type of intelligence that is ideal for Starcraft? Maybe his physical mechanics allow great play due to his genetic makeup as well? Do you guys believe you can start SC2 at 30 and be competitive? What is the age factor's significance and it's influence on Starcraft?
-Personality. Do you think personality traits have a strong effect on where you end up in the ladder?
...
Basically, I want to know what it is that distinguishes the GM players from the lower ranks. I want to know what it is that makes people reach the elite level in a game that has so many damn people playing it.
The main reason is I want to draw inspiration from this and use these "traits" in my own sport.
You guys will have to educate me since I have no competitive experience in Starcraft 2 other than making Gold league and playing some 2v2s and 4v4s some time ago.
I am really curious about this.
Also, whatever your opinion is, it would also help if you posted your current league or experience to have an accurate idea of where you are coming from.
I think a natural talent for thinking quickly is required. Not IQ but more like executive intelligence (processing and making decisions quickly) that you can see in top football players. That and lots of practice of course.
Mechanics are a big part in hitting GM. For races like Zerg staying alive till hive for Terran hitting your timings and protoss defending most aggression while you build up your army. But I think game knowledge and understanding of a lot of concepts is something that is heavily underrated. I found while watching a lower league game in diamond from a TvP that the Terran opened with something really aggressive (a 3 marauder rush) and although he did kill a few early units he never followed it up with a timing. This leads to his early aggression being basically pointless as the protoss was allowed to just macro up and cut corners to come back into the game. I've also seen Zergs who play against Terran neglect hive by staying on lair too long and not teching up appropriately. Zerg midgame units are strong but they excel a lot more when with other hive units. Counters for units as well as taking the right or smart engagement is also really big. But the main component to being gm is understanding what is required at your level and how to execute it. Afterward, it just becomes repetition until you've mastered it which varies in time from person to person.
You need a ton of games played. Not necessarily hardcore 1v1 practice but you need to get your mechanics down.
The other main part of just playing a lot of games seems simply enough but it’s really important, you (or your brain) need to know what wins what engagement, and there’s a lot of possible compositions and number differences. Even watching a lot of StarCraft helps here.
You watch pros a lot and they’re routinely taking fits and just barely winning them and that comes from that experience.
If you don’t hit whatever threshold of experience that is, you might have a few builds down and decent macro/micro, but continually lose games taking bad fights for example.
1. Know what you’re doing. 2. Automate as much of it as you can.
As to how and when this happens I don’t know, but top players don’t really think about very much, they just do things, or have more instinct on not just their own build but their opponents too.
Top players will make additional decisions based upon what isn’t there, or suspicious unit movement that turn out correctly, while lower players who haven’t that ‘Starsense’ yet will be looking at what is there.
It’s interesting, I can’t remember what player at HSC but I think Artosis was asking ‘what about that probe’s movement is suspicious’ and the player said ‘I don’t know, it just was’
It’s an interesting topic. I think there’s a lot of crossover to other things, in my case learning musical instruments to a good standard, I’m pretty decent at other games and was alright at Starcraft wayyy back but am on seemingly permanent hiatus from actually playing, for various reasons.
Since you mention Serral and Reynor in your post I want to start by pointing out the massive gap between a low GM and Serral - Approximately 2k mmr. Additionally it is important to keep in mind that the skills required for professional level tournament play and reaching GM are fundamentally different, a tournament player needs to not be too predictable and they need to be consistent over map changes and patches. In comparison many people reach GM once or twice by repetitive use of their own (usually weird) individual style that happen to work really well in a certain patch/map pool/meta game - I think I may have first reached GM in a map pool that was good for tempest rushing a long time ago. I was not very good at playing solidly.
But to more directly answer your question, I think time, type of practice are both important.
When it comes to training environment I think the majority of people get almost all their practice from the ladder, it is very hard to find people that want to train deliberately in custom games, especially near GM where most people are crazy about gaining mmr to finally reach it. And GM players refuse to practice with masters that never reached GM. This would be great though to improve skill, but grinding ladder makes it easier to understand the current ladder meta at that level to make it easier to blindly counter your ladder opponents for easier wins. Having a higher level player tell you exactly which strategy to do can make life much easier though.
Financial and time resource - I think the important part is how much you think about the game, how much passion you have and how much you allow yourself to think about Starcraft during the day, it is not uncommon that people make sacrifices to focus more on Starcraft even at low GM level.
Age and natural ability helps some people, but without any of the other above it will not be good enough by itself. It is certainly not necessary though, especially if you get help with your weaker areas.
Personality certainly matters, Starcraft is a rough game that punishes you very easily and you will typically not be able to do what you want to do because of difficult mechanics. To reach GM you most likely will need to at some point play 12 games in a row and try your hardest to win and lose all of them and see your mmr plummet without giving up. People that do not give up deal with this differently, some people push through with anger, others say they will quit and then come back the next day anyway with a fresh mind, and others have an amazing competitive mentality which is of course the best.
Being GM is not about doing everything above perfectly, keep in mind the skill-gap between top and bottom GM. You need some of the above which leads to a very diverse set of people that reach GM.
This has the potential to be a great thread. Terrific discussion already.
Shockingly, not a grandmaster myself, I'm not ultimately qualified to contribute with authority here, but you gotta think almost every variable in the OP matters.
What I'm particularly interested in is if there are ways to practice more efficiently, the whole 'smarter not harder' cliché.
I also think passion is a key asset. You gotta love it to genuinely commit the time.
i've been playing since 2010 and have GM mmr on with Z and P on NA. I don't play that much, to be honest. I play probably two days a week, and I'll play 3-4 hours each day that I play. I watch every replay of every game I play from my perspective and my opponents perspective. Mostly, I focus on my execution of my build and if my scouting information lead me to deciding on the correct build. I put a lot of attention on what information I gleamed and how i reacted (or didn't react) to it. My mechanics have always been rather solid as I've been a musician my entire life (Guitar and Piano) so fortunately for me those are things that don't deteriorate for me very much. I'm 30 years old as of last month. I personally believe extremely strong fundamentals will take you all the way to low GM. It's important to understand there is oceans of difference between low / mid GM and top gm, and even then the difference from high GM and top pro SC2 player is even greater IMO.
For reference, if you are a 5k player on NA (Right at the cusp of GM), you are closer to plat / gold than you are to Serral.
On December 04 2019 21:45 MockHamill wrote: I think a natural talent for thinking quickly is required. Not IQ but more like executive intelligence (processing and making decisions quickly) that you can see in top football players. That and lots of practice of course.
They go hand in hand. You can’t process a whole bunch of such decisions without having the data to crunch in the first place.
In the football example your footballer needs to figure out what pass he can physically do given his body position, or dribble or whatever. Needs to have a snapshot of where everyone is on the field and how they’re positioned. Say his teammate has started a run, he knows x teammate is pretty fast so he hits a pass over the top into the rough zone that is ‘how long this ball will take to get to a location that is my estimate of my teammate’s running speed’. Plus in football players tend to have a dominant foot, so you have to factor all that in, shape a pass to drop on a teammate’s left side if he’s a lefty etc.
Football more than most but most sports require our brains to do a ton of number crunching and there is a real high level of physical/spatial intelligence in those activities.
It’s a crude analogy but I’ll go with it. Substitute ‘technical ability to kick a football in a variety of ways’ for ‘mechanics’ in the SC sense. Professional players don’t grind it out mechanically every day in training, they’ve already got those abilities, some way keep trying to improve aspects but largely they do fitness and team tactical stuff.
I think people tend to watch and analyse replays when they’re at way too level mechanically and I don’t think it’s especially productive because it’s a time I think people should be grinding their mechanics. It’s like taking a freeze frame of a football match, it’s useful analytically to a player to look at what options were open, what they took and what was maybe more optimal. It’s really not especially useful to a player who can’t execute any of the options available properly.
I think there’s a small difference between a potential top end execution in elite sportspeople and those who aren’t quite capable of it, but much can be learned I think the cutoff of actual potential is more between an elite player and one who’s merely good rather than lower down.
Well, to answer a few of your points (and talking about GM on Europe server, I don't know how stacked KR is at the bottom and NA is kinda easy).
- Age: doesn't matter much if you "just" want to be GM, you can be at whatever age as long as your body is healthy I guess? I don't have many examples of players above 40 being in GM, but it's probably because they have too much other life stuff to do. You can be GM at 30+ (see Ret who is 34 and on top of being GM played good games against top players in Nation Wars) ; and I think you can make it to GM starting sc2 after 30 but usually if you don't have starcraft experience up until that point your life probably won't allow you to practice enough to become good enough to be GM (you usually have a lot more free time to invest in sc2 in your 20s). Maintaining GM is doable tho -> point 2.
- Time investment: starcraft 2 is like fitness / bodybuilding / other sports. It takes more time / effort to build up a solid base, but once you have it, you don't need that much time to maintain your level. Obviously, the higher up the ranks you go, the more time you need to maintain your skill level : Serral has to practice / think about sc2 more to keep being at Serral level, than a random top 200 GM, who needs relatively little time, but still a bit more than top masters, etc. For example I didn't play for like three weeks, but when I started playing again recently a dozen of games my MMR was in the same range. If I stopped for a few months and didn't follow the tournaments (meta and stuff) it'd decay a bit but I would need only a few days to be back at my normal MMR.
As for how long it takes for someone who starts from scratch to become GM (or become pro), it depends a lot on each individual, but it takes more practice to progress when you are just starting. Usually young prodigies (Clem / Reynor etc.) need a few years? Like Clem became GM at 12 or 13 iirc, and a threat on ladder at like 15-16, but only recently at 17 he is starting to explode, and the same for Reynor except he exploded 1 year or two before. Serral also played for a loong time before getting really good in LotV (wasn't full time on the game until late btw) Reynor's younger brother BabyMarine is high master atm, and plays A LOT of games, but still stuck at 5200-5400 MMR which is below GM, maybe he'll be a top pro in a few years? (if the game still exists) Or maybe not. I think some players were able to progress in less games than him for sure.
- Personality: yes it's very important, in a broad way I'd say being a competitive person (whatever that means) is necessary, but not sufficient.
- Financial resources: well this one is only relevant when differenciating between semi pros and pros I guess? You don't need to be extra rich to "just" become GM.
- Type of practice: different for each individual but as you progress in the game, you'll usually get better at practicing efficiently. Some pros need to play a shit ton of games (Kas being the prime example), and other past pros such as FireCake not laddering much but focusing on precise aspects of the game.
- Training environment: again not relevant for the question of the topic, which is about "just" GM. But to answer your question anyways, some players benefit a lot from KR practice (SpeCial and Scarlett became notably better for example, NaNiwa back in the days), whereas others become worse (PtitDrogo tried to play like the KR protoss when going there but when coming back to Europe he got crushed by other players because his abilities didn't allow him to play like KR protoss, during the phoenix - adept era ; maybe in another era or now that he knows himself better he'd benefit more from KR practice though ; source - what he said during a NW cast or HSC cast recently on french stream), and some don't need to play there to be top dogs even against koreans (Serral, Stephano)
On December 04 2019 22:36 Poopi wrote: Well, to answer a few of your points (and talking about GM on Europe server, I don't know how stacked KR is at the bottom and NA is kinda easy).
- Age: doesn't matter much if you "just" want to be GM, you can be at whatever age as long as your body is healthy I guess? I don't have many examples of players above 40 being in GM, but it's probably because they have too much other life stuff to do. You can be GM at 30+ (see Ret who is 34 and on top of being GM played good games against top players in Nation Wars) ; and I think you can make it to GM starting sc2 after 30 but usually if you don't have starcraft experience up until that point your life probably won't allow you to practice enough to become good enough to be GM (you usually have a lot more free time to invest in sc2 in your 20s). Maintaining GM is doable tho -> point 2.
- Time investment: starcraft 2 is like fitness / bodybuilding / other sports. It takes more time / effort to build up a solid base, but once you have it, you don't need that much time to maintain your level. Obviously, the higher up the ranks you go, the more time you need to maintain your skill level : Serral has to practice / think about sc2 more to keep being at Serral level, than a random top 200 GM, who needs relatively little time, but still a bit more than top masters, etc. For example I didn't play for like three weeks, but when I started playing again recently a dozen of games my MMR was in the same range. If I stopped for a few months and didn't follow the tournaments (meta and stuff) it'd decay a bit but I would need only a few days to be back at my normal MMR.
As for how long it takes for someone who starts from scratch to become GM (or become pro), it depends a lot on each individual, but it takes more practice to progress when you are just starting. Usually young prodigies (Clem / Reynor etc.) need a few years? Like Clem became GM at 12 or 13 iirc, and a threat on ladder at like 15-16, but only recently at 17 he is starting to explode, and the same for Reynor except he exploded 1 year or two before. Serral also played for a loong time before getting really good in LotV (wasn't full time on the game until late btw) Reynor's younger brother BabyMarine is high master atm, and plays A LOT of games, but still stuck at 5200-5400 MMR which is below GM, maybe he'll be a top pro in a few years? (if the game still exists) Or maybe not. I think some players were able to progress in less games than him for sure.
- Personality: yes it's very important, in a broad way I'd say being a competitive person (whatever that means) is necessary, but not sufficient.
- Financial resources: well this one is only relevant when differenciating between semi pros and pros I guess? You don't need to be extra rich to "just" become GM.
- Type of practice: different for each individual but as you progress in the game, you'll usually get better at practicing efficiently. Some pros need to play a shit ton of games (Kas being the prime example), and other past pros such as FireCake not laddering much but focusing on precise aspects of the game.
- Training environment: again not relevant for the question of the topic, which is about "just" GM. But to answer your question anyways, some players benefit a lot from KR practice (SpeCial and Scarlett became notably better for example, NaNiwa back in the days), whereas others become worse (PtitDrogo tried to play like the KR protoss when going there but when coming back to Europe he got crushed by other players because his abilities didn't allow him to play like KR protoss, during the phoenix - adept era ; maybe in another era or now that he knows himself better he'd benefit more from KR practice though ; source - what he said during a NW cast or HSC cast recently on french stream), and some don't need to play there to be top dogs even against koreans (Serral, Stephano)
I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head. One of the sad jokes of SC2 is that being "Just GM" isn't that impressive, at least to anyone who's actually been GM. I remember the first time I got it, I was obviously super excited, and then nothing changed. It was the same mediocre play from both sides. I kinda felt like everything was gonna change and i was finally in the big leagues, but nope. Sure, to a gold player GM play is probably super impressive, but once you actually grind up to it it's such a slow and iterative change that it doesn't feel that special. I'm sure pro's feel the same once they got to the very top, it's just a slow, never ending march and since it's so gradual it doesn't feel impressive.
Honestly, I believe most GMs (and even most masters) have sunk at least 5k hours into the game. Some might have spent more time reflecting and watching vods while others grind the ladder and customs.
Sure, some have more talent than others but executing at a high level at macro, micro, scouting and decision making all at once it simply very complicated and takes a lot of dedication.
when i first got GM i was ~18? highest rank achieved was 17th? never played more than a few hours a day until that point.
stopped playing daily/very often when I was ~24 (3 yrs ago) - just casually in 2v2
new season just started, reached GM in 38 games on a fresh account with no real hourly practice or anything.
I think most people who get mid/high GM think of it like riding a bike. Korean pros often talk about how once you learn mechanics, its hard to unlearn the very basics of it. That's why people like bisu can go to military duty and come back and still be gods of their race after not playing for 2 years.
for some people, practice makes a lot more difference than thinking about the game. Puck is a pretty good example of that imo. He trained and trained and got very good through self learning and self correction and he started at the bottom more or less. Kelazhur is a good example of practice, quick learning curves and studying gameplay paying off. He got really good in a relatively short amount of time.
What it takes to be the best?(don't know about GM, thought this was the question you actually wanted to ask) There is passion There is opportunity There is natural ability There is vision
I think vision is paramount. Day[9] talked about that in one of his dailies, how competitive frisbee taught him some things, but he never envisioned himself in a stadium, being the greatest frisbee player of all times. On the other hand, with BW he soon developed fantasies of dominating his foes. You need vision, you need to see what the thing you do could be, see what no one else sees.
The other three all help, but: passion beats natural ability -> natural ability beats opportunity -> opportunity beats passion. If your heart ain't in it, you might be the next Mozart but you never gonna reach your potential. If you have all the chances in the world, but no talent, someone with maybe just one chance and all the talent in the world is going to triumph. If you have all the passion in the world, but no opportunity, you become artosis.
On December 05 2019 01:11 Conut wrote: It's just practice and knowing how to win from what position, if you know you cant kill them how do I survive and give myself the best chance.
Oh they are being greedy well let's skip this and hit them extra hard, oh yes spreading himself thin let's attack from both sides and get damage.
It's just a matter of having great mechanics and then thinking on the fly to the situation.
Or just being so good at something that you win in ways people aren't prepared for. Like ruff lol
You discibe more the endgoal, than the way to get there, wich was the actual question
On December 05 2019 01:11 Conut wrote: It's just practice and knowing how to win from what position, if you know you cant kill them how do I survive and give myself the best chance.
Oh they are being greedy well let's skip this and hit them extra hard, oh yes spreading himself thin let's attack from both sides and get damage.
It's just a matter of having great mechanics and then thinking on the fly to the situation.
Or just being so good at something that you win in ways people aren't prepared for. Like ruff lol
You discibe more the endgoal, than the way to get there, wich was the actual question
I heard HeroMarine complain on stream that some low GMs players relied almost 100% on mechanics, namely harassment and macro.
I am a basketball coach and referee. Since 2011 I help ppl with SC2.
IMHO Tom Brady and his dedication to Football sets an example for every SC2 player heading for GM.
In 2000 no one could see his potential. You cannot prove talent, you cannot prove your ability to read a defense. But when he was chosen, draft pick #199 (6 round), he just said "That is not what my skill set is, but fortunately for me, that is not what's quarterbacking is about it either."
He said in one interview something like this: "I want to earn it every day on the practice field. If I do not earn it there, I should not play on a Sunday."
Tom Brady (and his coach Bill Belichick) studies a lot of games and tapes. They prepare a ton for specific situations. This works in SC, too, as you can see in ShoWTime vs. ByuN (PvT, WCS Global Finals 2016). ShoWTime watched a ton of ByuN's games. 4 ppl talked about the match beforehand, 4 of them predicted: "ByuN will win". He lost. ByuN later won the "Grand Finals", though.
Quote ShoWTime: "I watched a series against Zest (...) and I kinda realized he [ByuN] is a bit weak against quick Collossi play, I think."
Tom Brady has talent, loves his sport and works a ton.
Two fundamentals will help in SC2 as well:
===
> Time investment
A major issue like in every other sport as well. Often you hear: "Just play the game", which is one-third right.
(thanks to JaKaTaK)
> how much of a factor is PRACTICE TIME?
A huge factor. One of my "students" (Mamba) told me once: "It's about mechanics and mechanics are about muscle memory. Without good mechanics, you are overwhelmed by SC2. If you have good mechanics, you are able to think about the game and strategy."
Michael Jordan does not think about how he dribbles the ball. He does not even look at the ball like beginners do. He is able to think about strategy (Pick and roll, Triangle-Offense) because he has trained his muscle memory to perfection.
> Type of practice
See "quality of practice" in the video above.
> Do GMs just analyze the game more than masters and so on?
You see two Master Players (PvZ, emctwo vs Quaterno) playing a ladder game. This game was sent to Harstem, because Zerg is IMBA. But Harstem proves with precision and logic: "[emctwo] You just suck."
I have seen Replays like that a thousand times. "emctwo" looses 9 Probes vs 4 Speedlings at 6:14 in the game. This is a major mistake. Harstem points out more critical mistakes. But emctwo thought after this game: "Zerg is IMBA, let's sent this Replay to Harstem. He will see how IMBA Zerg really is."
emctwo is not alone. I have encountered a lot of players who blame X, Y and Z for a losing streak or a single loss. But the truth is: They lost because they made mistakes. Or simply put: They suck.
To improve as a Basketball referee it is almost mandatory to watch yourself on tape. Almost nobody does that in the lower leagues.
Most of the times lower league players do not watch there Replays at all. And if someone does it, they watch the main fight.
Quote PiG: "... they zoom through the start talking in vague terms about their game plan (...) there is very little focus on the economy. And this goes right to high-level players." Source: The PiG Daily #47 - Learning From Replays - Beginner Basics
This is a Protoss-Master, who tries to copy a build order (BO), sends in a Replay saying "Zerg OP", but he is not able to play the BO correctly in the first 4 minutes.
Ask a Plat/Diamond player about "Timings and Benchmarks" ... "Never heard of it"
Harstem talks about specifics of a BO all the time. "Usually this push arrives at around 4:35 with about 9 Adepts."
This is not a "vague term" (PiG) this is the opposite.
So, why is that?
1. Knowledge about your BO needs reading and training. 2. Replay analysis needs time and understanding. 3. Mechanics (and muscle memory) need a lot of time and training.
Most ppl I know just want to ladder, play 1on1 and reach Master. Without analyzing your Replays, without finding every error in your GamePlay, you will not reach GM.
> In that case, would that mean that masters > and GMs just practice a similar amount > but approach the game differently?
I have coached a Master1-Protoss. He advanced to GM later, but it was his victory, not mine. He played only 4 hours a day; sometimes 2, sometimes 6. But he copied BOs of a ProGamer almost perfectly. His major problem was: His opponent does something weird. 4 to 8 minutes: He would scout and get 700 or 800 minerals, without managing a fight or so. Serral never has this problem, not on a regular basis. He scouts, reacts and is prepared. He keeps his money low, his injections on point. In GM even little mistakes can have a massive effect on the game. This is especially true for the early game.
> Training environment
If you live in a team house with professional players and professional coaches, one thing is very easy: Finding your mistakes. It gets easier to solve your problems. X could ask Y (at breakfast): "Could we practice this map and this BO ten times in a row?"
> Financial and time resources
If SC2 cannot pay your bills, it will be hard to practice 10 hours a day. The more you can practice, the more you will improve. I don't think you can beat Serral, if you have to work 8 hours a day in a regular job.
> Age, Natural Ability
I doubt there will ever be a WCS champion above 30. But there are (a lot of?) GMs above 30, e. g. White-Ra.
1. Build workers! (Zerg: DroneTiming) 2. Keep your money low! 3. No SupplyBlocks! 4. MiniMap 5. Scouting
Finding your mistakes and actually solving all your problems is hard to do. Show me a Replay (loss, defeat) of a Diamond Player and I show you mistakes in at least 3 out of 5 of these areas.
In lower leagues Scouting sometimes is done without a reaction. But this rarely happens in higher leagues.
But it is much easier to say "X is IMBA" than "I will analyze all of my Replays, find 3 reoccurring mistakes and then fix them."
Below 6K MMR: "Is it IMBA or do you suck?" In my humble opinion ... you suck, but so does everybody else.
Printf is a GM, who once said: "There is no Replay, where I did not make any mistakes, and there is no Replay, where my opponent made no mistakes." Background: He sent some Replays to PiG for explaining how to play CannonRush.
It's a really interesting question as to what makes a GM player or pro and I'm coming from a position that is nowhere near that level, however, having played music and trained in martial arts competitively there are a few key aspects that go hand in hand that makes one a better player, competitor.
Time spent: A simple one really but there's a saying that it takes 10 hours to learn something and 1000 hours to master it. I remember someone posting a graph of the amount of games played per day on average for each starcraft league and it was something like GM 10 per day, Masters 7 per day, Diamond 5 per day etc. So yes time spent is really important.
Correcting your own mistakes: this was something I found particularly in martial arts but which very much applies to starcraft. You learn something a certain way e.g. you hotkey one probe to build all your buildings and that becomes an ingrained thing you do because for a time it works. Then the further up you go where there are more efficient methods of building buildings you have to actively relearn it in order to become more efficient.
Forcing yourself to do things: the most obvious example for this would be scouting. For most people it is not their natural inclination to scout, however, it gets to a point where if you want to progress you have to learn how to scout. In this way you are making an active choice to do something until it becomes a passive habit and you get better and better at it.
Micro management: I refer to it as micro management but I really mean breaking up the whole into smaller, more manageable chunks. The idea of constantly producing workers while constantly producing out of your buildings while also scouting and meaningfully harassing sounds quite daunting at first, however, if you focus on one individual aspect one at a time then you improve as a whole to the point where eventually it just clicks.
Taking Criticism: This is a big one if you're wanting to make that step forward. You eventually plateau if you don't have people to tell you how else you could do something because at the end of the day you are only one brain. Having more people around you means there are more people to interpret the same information and they can provide fresh perspectives on a problem. I think Demuslim at homestory cup said that he once suggested something to Reynor and Reynor took it on board and fixed it and his play improved just a little as a result. While not all criticism is useful there is a lot that is.
Having played SC since the first release of the game in 98 I can say attaining game understanding will benefit you an incredible amount. It will make your practice more efficient because you will draw the correct conclusions from every game you play or watch,(Your own or others). If you have a poor perspective of how the game works you will constantly make illogical and poor conclusions from your experiences playing or watching.
That is one thing I believe a lot of coaches in SC2 do wrong when they coach people, they explain to a bad player what he is supposed to do, but they don't make sure he understands why.
If you can get someone to help you understand the game your progression will skyrocket.
Even pro players have bad perspectives of the game which is holding them back which could easily be rectified.
Basically you have to create a cognitive reaction in the player from every single event in the game which will constantly drive him to improve since he reflects over every single thing that happens. (this is hard for some people which is why watching replay of all your games is 100% must regardless.)
Of course, this will slow you down in the beginning as you do a lot of thinking while you play, but that same cognitive reaction will transform into instant decision making over time which will make you a much better player.
As you do less and less thinking while you play and it turns into instinct, your brain has more capacity to multi-task macro and micro, etc.
You also have "robots" who get into GM who will constantly do the same builds on a barcode who we like to refer to as one-trick ponies. They master a very small amount of all inn builds and do them on repeat til near perfection but actually have a very bad game understanding and would get absolutely destroyed in a best-of series by more complete players who might even have worse micro/macro. Their reflection on a game they lose usually consists of "I got scouted unlucky" and proceed to queue again and do the same thing since their build has a 50+% win rate.
This is where you have to ask yourself if you want to be good at the game or if you want to reach GM for bragging rights only.
All I can say is once you reach a high level of game understanding and mechanics combined you will laugh at the above mentioned 1 trick pony robots GM's and enjoy the free ladder points every single time.
It doesn't take much to become GM. There are GM players that have probably never watched a pro game in their life, have awful mechanics/understanding, or never even built a 3rd base. GM is just a portrait, nothing more. It means you know how to win, which is an important attribute when playing sc2, but it doesn't suggest anything about your skill/understand overall, apart from the fact that you probably have passable mechanics (but again, you don't need amazing mechanics by any means).
To become a good player, well that takes hours and hours of practice and discipline and self-criticism. Which is why there are only a handful of players in the world that are good. The rest of us are pretty much plebes, GM portrait or not.
EPT
![[image loading]](https://i.redd.it/s6s4lkqozj511.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d2/b0/f4/d2b0f48d0a1569a52924008541763780.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://eddierockerz.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/bruce-lee-quotes-i-fear-not-the-man-who-has-practiced-10-000-kicks-once-but-i-fear-the-man-who-has-practiced-one-kick-10-000-times.jpg)
Timings and Benchmarks
