Create Blog Entry All Blogs What's New / Popular

TWIL, Other stuff, and general good goodness. Mon, 17th-Dec-2012 10:00 AM Kez Views: 21,421 Replies: 12

Slightly delayed but here nonetheless is the weekly installment of: This Week I Learned (TWIL), Where after a week of rigorous practice, I briefly discuss what my goals of the week were, how (if) I achieved them, and what I can do better to achieve said goals.



This week I was trying to get in better mental states for tournaments, and also better my mechanics, the latter not going so well, but the former going ok I felt.



So, on to a more in-depth discussion about the mentality of a game like Starcraft 2.

Sc2, at high levels, and at least in my opinion, is about 50% strategy/mentality, and about 50% mechanics and micro and skill at the game. But, I would say people spend about 80% of the time going over mechanics and build orders and such, and a lot less time focused on how can I get myself in the best shape to win before we've started playing.



I posted a blog before on my thoughts on mentality on sc2 before, just after ACL Melbourne, where I did poorly. I felt this happened because as I played and did not to terribly at various other tournaments, I though better of myself and felt like I SHOULD be winning certain games. With this expectation I felt frozen. Suddenly every game I was thinking "omg what if he does x strategy that I know is pretty good against mine" or "Omg what if i 15 hatch and he 10 pools, then I'm only 1 game away from losing and then I'm out!!!" or "Omg he's pushing, usually I counter-attack at this stage but ughh I think I just need to defend omg I think I'm going to lose!".

Now, that's a lot of omgs for someone who isn't a 15 y.o teenage girl (trust me, I'm not) but that is how I felt in just about every tournament.



Until the other week when I had somewhat of a breakthrough.



You're going to ******* lose. It's gonna happen.



You're going to get cheesed.



You're going to drop maps, sets, tournaments, everything



Get the **** over it.



The moment you stop caring so much about what could possibly happen, what could possibly go wrong, what could possibly go right, is the moment I start playing to my full potential.



If you're worried about every single decision you could be making then chances are you're probably making the wrong ones, or you need to eat a slab of cement and harden the **** up.



A lot of this reasoning has to do with my blog the other week about wanting to do this as a career in some way, shape, or form. This decision led me to KNOW deep down that if I want to do this, these things are gonna have to happen, and eventually we'll get over it, and eventually it'll work out because that's what I want to make happen because that's the only thing I've decided I want to happen.



So, a few things I've started doing to act out these feelings into actual games:

In series now I'll either throw in a cheese or do something greedy.

For the life of me I can't think of what else I've changed, but just doing that has changed my whole mentality and I feel like I'm playing better in tournaments because of it.



Now on to mechanics:

My mechanics are pretty terrible I think, and are probably the worst aspect of my game, in tournaments and in ladder practice. A lot of it comes down to being a bit lazy and not fixing problems bad habits that I've had for a year or two now. Because for so long with my current habits and mechanics have gotten me by ok I felt I didn't really have to change them, because as long as I was more intelligent than my opponent then my mechanics would be good enough.

"The enemy of the great is the good"

"Good enough" is probably the worst sentence anybody can ever say, ever. Except perhaps "I just killed this kitten". Nothing is ever "good enough". You can, and should, always be doing something better. If you think you've done something better than good enough, wait 2 weeks whilst you've been "doing better" and you'll find you can do better than "doing better than good enough".

So this week I'm going to work on my mechanics hard out, fixing all the problems with them. This WILL cause me to drop more games on ladder, but will hopefully be a productive change in a few weeks or maybe a month.

To improve said mechanics I will be:

Changing Hotkey/inject method (currently I just click around minimap injecting) to shift injecting with queens hot keyed.

Try incorporate camera hot hot keys for bases.

Play faster.

Try a new mental checklist for what is happening in the game. As a lot of times in game I'll assume he's doing something normal and standard, only to be caught of guard because I neglected to notice he took a 3/4th gas really quickly or something.



So yeh, that's about it for TWIL.



As this is getting pretty long I'll just summarize a few last things:



Qualified for stage 2 of IEM, then in stage 2 got knocked out by FlashDrake, he played well, I went for 2 cheese timings to try help mental game, didn't work, bummer



Played CubyBy, who played a lot better than I thought and looks like he has been improving a bunch.

I can't exactly remember the games, but I think they were mostly macro games where I did my builds and did too much damage and won out from there.



Then played Petraeus, game 1 I did my normal macro muta build, he defended a LOT better than I've seen anyone else, so lost. Game 2, roach baned him when he was going mutas. Game 3, I 10p he 15p and defended his hatch annoyingly well, and that was it, I was out!



Melbourne LAN which happened yesterday:

Lost to Rival 2-1 in Upper Bracket round 3, game 1 did muta macro build and won, game 2 he ling all-inned and I was to greedy, game 3 I threw away a decent advantage and didn't transition quick enough out of mutas and barely lost when my counter-attack failed to kill him, but he played well.



In lower bracket took out pezzaperry, first game I 3 base baneling busted him and failed, 2nd game 10p into 2 base baneling bust which worked, game 3 he went some weird chargelot archon mothership off 3 bases build, I scouted to early templar archives and went mass roach style doing roach run-by's into his main and multi prong attacks and eventually won.

Defeated arrival in 2 standard macro zvzs.

Then my moment came where I would hope to exact revenge upon pox, who is now officially my arch nemesis in Melbourne Lan tournaments.

Game 1 I said YOLO bitches and 16 hatched, he 10p

Game 2 I went greedy muta macro build and he roach baned.

And that was it.

In the last 4 Melbourne Lans I have played him 6 times and won once I believe, so I hope to remedy this quite soon.

My Melbourne lans have this pattern: Defeat few players, lose to someone in upper bracket, go to lower bracket and knock out TOR players, then lose to pox in lower bracket final or round before lower bracket final. It's getting quite annoying haha. (I'm kidding I love pox and the tor guys and its more of a fun rivalry)



Ermmm So I think that's about it.



As always I'm streaming more where I am learning the things I preach about in these blogs, You can check out my stream by clicking the link in signature or go to



We'll be doing SEA News Podcast number 10 On Tuesday at 7:30 So definitely go ahead and check that out as well, with thread announcing it today actually which I totally forgot to do.



Until next week,

Byeeeeeeeeee! Hello again fellow sea enthusiasts!Slightly delayed but here nonetheless is the weekly installment of: This Week I Learned (TWIL), Where after a week of rigorous practice, I briefly discuss what my goals of the week were, how (if) I achieved them, and what I can do better to achieve said goals.This week I was trying to get in better mental states for tournaments, and also better my mechanics, the latter not going so well, but the former going ok I felt.So, on to a more in-depth discussion about the mentality of a game like Starcraft 2.Sc2, at high levels, and at least in my opinion, is about 50% strategy/mentality, and about 50% mechanics and micro and skill at the game. But, I would say people spend about 80% of the time going over mechanics and build orders and such, and a lot less time focused on how can I get myself in the best shape to win before we've started playing.I posted a blog before on my thoughts on mentality on sc2 before, just after ACL Melbourne, where I did poorly. I felt this happened because as I played and did not to terribly at various other tournaments, I though better of myself and felt like I SHOULD be winning certain games. With this expectation I felt frozen. Suddenly every game I was thinking "omg what if he does x strategy that I know is pretty good against mine" or "Omg what if i 15 hatch and he 10 pools, then I'm only 1 game away from losing and then I'm out!!!" or "Omg he's pushing, usually I counter-attack at this stage but ughh I think I just need to defend omg I think I'm going to lose!".Now, that's a lot of omgs for someone who isn't a 15 y.o teenage girl (trust me, I'm not) but that is how I felt in just about every tournament.Until the other week when I had somewhat of a breakthrough.You're going to ******* lose. It's gonna happen.You're going to get cheesed.You're going to drop maps, sets, tournaments, everythingGet the **** over it.The moment you stop caring so much about what could possibly happen, what could possibly go wrong, what could possibly go right, is the moment I start playing to my full potential.If you're worried about every single decision you could be making then chances are you're probably making the wrong ones, or you need to eat a slab of cement and harden the **** up.A lot of this reasoning has to do with my blog the other week about wanting to do this as a career in some way, shape, or form. This decision led me to KNOW deep down that if I want to do this, these things are gonna have to happen, and eventually we'll get over it, and eventually it'll work out because that's what I want to make happen because that's the only thing I've decided I want to happen.So, a few things I've started doing to act out these feelings into actual games:In series now I'll either throw in a cheese or do something greedy.For the life of me I can't think of what else I've changed, but just doing that has changed my whole mentality and I feel like I'm playing better in tournaments because of it.Now on to mechanics:My mechanics are pretty terrible I think, and are probably the worst aspect of my game, in tournaments and in ladder practice. A lot of it comes down to being a bit lazy and not fixing problems bad habits that I've had for a year or two now. Because for so long with my current habits and mechanics have gotten me by ok I felt I didn't really have to change them, because as long as I was more intelligent than my opponent then my mechanics would be good enough."The enemy of the great is the good""Good enough" is probably the worst sentence anybody can ever say, ever. Except perhaps "I just killed this kitten". Nothing is ever "good enough". You can, and should, always be doing something better. If you think you've done something better than good enough, wait 2 weeks whilst you've been "doing better" and you'll find you can do better than "doing better than good enough".So this week I'm going to work on my mechanics hard out, fixing all the problems with them. This WILL cause me to drop more games on ladder, but will hopefully be a productive change in a few weeks or maybe a month.To improve said mechanics I will be:Changing Hotkey/inject method (currently I just click around minimap injecting) to shift injecting with queens hot keyed.Try incorporate camera hot hot keys for bases.Play faster.Try a new mental checklist for what is happening in the game. As a lot of times in game I'll assume he's doing something normal and standard, only to be caught of guard because I neglected to notice he took a 3/4th gas really quickly or something.So yeh, that's about it for TWIL.As this is getting pretty long I'll just summarize a few last things:Qualified for stage 2 of IEM, then in stage 2 got knocked out by FlashDrake, he played well, I went for 2 cheese timings to try help mental game, didn't work, bummerPlayed CubyBy, who played a lot better than I thought and looks like he has been improving a bunch.I can't exactly remember the games, but I think they were mostly macro games where I did my builds and did too much damage and won out from there.Then played Petraeus, game 1 I did my normal macro muta build, he defended a LOT better than I've seen anyone else, so lost. Game 2, roach baned him when he was going mutas. Game 3, I 10p he 15p and defended his hatch annoyingly well, and that was it, I was out!Melbourne LAN which happened yesterday:Lost to Rival 2-1 in Upper Bracket round 3, game 1 did muta macro build and won, game 2 he ling all-inned and I was to greedy, game 3 I threw away a decent advantage and didn't transition quick enough out of mutas and barely lost when my counter-attack failed to kill him, but he played well.In lower bracket took out pezzaperry, first game I 3 base baneling busted him and failed, 2nd game 10p into 2 base baneling bust which worked, game 3 he went some weird chargelot archon mothership off 3 bases build, I scouted to early templar archives and went mass roach style doing roach run-by's into his main and multi prong attacks and eventually won.Defeated arrival in 2 standard macro zvzs.Then my moment came where I would hope to exact revenge upon pox, who is now officially my arch nemesis in Melbourne Lan tournaments.Game 1 I said YOLO bitches and 16 hatched, he 10pGame 2 I went greedy muta macro build and he roach baned.And that was it.In the last 4 Melbourne Lans I have played him 6 times and won once I believe, so I hope to remedy this quite soon.My Melbourne lans have this pattern: Defeat few players, lose to someone in upper bracket, go to lower bracket and knock out TOR players, then lose to pox in lower bracket final or round before lower bracket final. It's getting quite annoying haha. (I'm kidding I love pox and the tor guys and its more of a fun rivalry)Ermmm So I think that's about it.As always I'm streaming more where I am learning the things I preach about in these blogs, You can check out my stream by clicking the link in signature or go to www.twitch.tv/heyitskez We'll be doing SEA News Podcast number 10 On Tuesday at 7:30 So definitely go ahead and check that out as well, with thread announcing it today actually which I totally forgot to do.Until next week,Byeeeeeeeeee!

Twitter ~ Stream

Coaching: ___________________________________Coaching: kezcoaching@gmail.com Tags: None



Previous Blog | Next Blog »

Replies to Blog: TWIL, Other stuff, and general good goodness. Mon, 17th-Dec-2012, 10:04 AM BnetId: arteezy Race: Location: Singapore Total Posts: 622 Race:Location: 1 Antel0pe



Re: TWIL, Other stuff, and general good goodness. Pox vs Kez grudge match gogo~



Check my stream out

RIP SolaRity 4/1/2013 Check my stream out here RIP SolaRity 4/1/2013 ___________________________________ Mon, 17th-Dec-2012, 10:04 AM BnetId: cR.kez772 (NA) Race: Clan: cR/TA Location: Melbourne, Australia Total Posts: 966 Race:Location: 2 SLCN.Kez



Re: TWIL, Other stuff, and general good goodness. Oh yeah I forgot, Would you guys rather see TWIL in a video format with brief in game stuff for mechanics and whatever else is necessary, or would you rather a brief summary/write-up style perhaps with screenshots? Let me know!

Twitter ~ Stream

Coaching: ___________________________________Coaching: kezcoaching@gmail.com Mon, 17th-Dec-2012, 10:06 AM BnetId: fur 282 Race: Location: Melbourne Total Posts: 303 Race:Location: 3 fur



Re: TWIL, Other stuff, and general good goodness. 'Bout time you got back to writing stuff and earned that purple title!



Mechanical improvement is tough, old habits die hard. ___________________________________

ToR.fur



Mech master. Protoss h8er. #1 Spook fan. Mon, 17th-Dec-2012, 10:06 AM BnetId: cR.kez772 (NA) Race: Clan: cR/TA Location: Melbourne, Australia Total Posts: 966 Race:Location: 4 SLCN.Kez



Re: TWIL, Other stuff, and general good goodness. laziness is a terrible problem I have haha

Twitter ~ Stream

Coaching: ___________________________________Coaching: kezcoaching@gmail.com Mon, 17th-Dec-2012, 11:08 AM BnetId: Spook.389 Race: Clan: ToR Location: Adelaide, Australia Total Posts: 1,570 Race:Location: 5 ToRSpookToR



Re: TWIL, Other stuff, and general good goodness. sorry about being a dick to you before was uncalled for. hope we can still get along! ___________________________________

@mcaspook Mon, 17th-Dec-2012, 11:10 AM BnetId: cR.kez772 (NA) Race: Clan: cR/TA Location: Melbourne, Australia Total Posts: 966 Race:Location: 6 SLCN.Kez



Re: TWIL, Other stuff, and general good goodness. Don't worry about it dude

Twitter ~ Stream

Coaching: ___________________________________Coaching: kezcoaching@gmail.com Mon, 17th-Dec-2012, 11:14 AM BnetId: eehanProAnnn.969 Race: Location: Singapore Total Posts: 694 Race:Location: 7 ProAnnn



Re: TWIL, Other stuff, and general good goodness. Write up is better! I dislike watching videos and like reading alot more. Mechanics are really important, especially to a zerg, once you have better mechanics, you can adjust your mindset by thinking that even u get behind in the build orders, by having better mechanics than your opponent, you would win. Mon, 17th-Dec-2012, 12:02 PM BnetId: RuineD.430 Race: Location: Melbourne, Australia Total Posts: 442 Race:Location: 8 RuineD



Re: TWIL, Other stuff, and general good goodness. i gotta get off the ol' tilt train in tournaments Mon, 17th-Dec-2012, 12:13 PM BnetId: cR.kez772 (NA) Race: Clan: cR/TA Location: Melbourne, Australia Total Posts: 966 Race:Location: 9 SLCN.Kez



Re: TWIL, Other stuff, and general good goodness. you n me both

Twitter ~ Stream

Coaching: ___________________________________Coaching: kezcoaching@gmail.com Mon, 17th-Dec-2012, 12:21 PM BnetId: Thrasher.544 Race: Location: Christchurch, New Zealand Total Posts: 56 Race:Location: 10 Thrasher



Re: TWIL, Other stuff, and general good goodness. Can I join the club? Mon, 17th-Dec-2012, 1:16 PM BnetId: Soundwave.916 Race: Clan: ETL Location: Canberra, Australia Total Posts: 1,228 Race:Location: 11 syfSoundwave Leader of ETL





Re: TWIL, Other stuff, and general good goodness. "The moment you stop caring so much about what could possibly happen, what could possibly go wrong, what could possibly go right, is the moment I start playing to my full potential. "



I agree with your point that tournaments go well (or better, at least) when you don't care as much. It's really quite odd, but I wanted to just get knocked out of Master's Cup first round yesterday (since I have no realistic shot at top 3 anyway) so I could go and watch proleague, but I ended up making Ro32 and losing 1-2 to IrisCrimson.

The Transformer Zerg, Jadron Burgerman @ ___________________________________The Transformer Zerg, Jadron Burgerman @ Soundwave Mon, 17th-Dec-2012, 8:33 PM BnetId: CautioN.106 Race: Clan: pX Location: Melbourne Total Posts: 360 Race:Location: 12 SLCN.CautioN



Re: TWIL, Other stuff, and general good goodness. Kez fighting!!!

