LarcyBrown! I love your observations here, yes, there is a very high chance of "smart-aggression" taking fast victories at low ELO. It tends to overwhelm people who are 'learning the game'.

In fact, "smart-aggression" is such a great topic, I think it deserves a whole post. It's also not my preferred playstyle, mostly because I dont feel the people I tend to fight with are all that 'smart' with their 'aggression' -- ie: they transform it to greed, as you said.

One minor thing I'd like to clarify - in my experience, a person can be ANY skill level to PRACTICE adaptation. In fact, it is only with practice that one becomes 'good'.

Great stuff, Larcy, keep ryzin'!

I'm a little surprised at the quality of your insight and ability to convey it. Your guides contain quite a few nuggets about learning fundamental play and managing one's own mental state before, during, and after games. These are the same kinds of things that coaches for sports and other competitive activities do with their students to prepare them for matches.

Perhaps I'll see you online sometime so we can trade notes. I've done a little bit of math and posted it in various places in the forums regarding solo queue Elo. I've concluded that winning in solo queue ranked is not intuitive and that's why a lot of people are frustrated with it. Unlike 1v1 StarCraft, the idea that you need people (soft) skills to be more successful is foreign to most people. In RL I used to be a lead of several teams and it was all about coordination, communication, and understanding the strengths and limitations of my teammates so I could intelligently give assignments and set expectations. Yes, I agree with many of your observations and strategies regarding winning.

Is your in-game nick the same as your forum nick? Mine is the same-Vichar.

Hey! Make more please! Me is dying without these.........

I, for one, would love to see you write about the concept of "OP". It's a pet peeve of mine.

(accidental necro, thought this was the #8 thread, sorry)