Maybe it's weird for me of all people to be writing about this subject. I've had emotional control issues in every part of my life for years now. Rage, depression, you name it and I've probably had to deal with it. It might actually be more accurate to say that I have not been dealing with it. At least not very well.
Until recently, I more or less ran into the same mental and emotional walls while I played. It was not until around this March that I finally stopped to ask myself questions that needed answering and made some improvement.
Maybe this does make me qualified? Either way, I hope this helps give other players some perspective. Like everything else in this game, I also hope you can find ways to translate them into other areas of your life. If you don't have trouble with controlling your emotions, this whole thing will probably seem like a no-brainer. If you do have problems with emotional control like I do, then maybe this will help you out.
For better or worse, there are a lot of personal anecdotes and viewpoints in here. This writing is based on my experiences, and perhaps they differ utterly from yours. I can only really write what I know, and what I know best are my own emotions and reactions.
Like most of what I write, this is split up into two parts: anger and depression.
For starters, let's talk about the emotion I'm somewhat famous for: anger. I've ragequit, thrown controllers (and other stuff), punched/kicked/headbutted walls (and other stuff), stormed out of venues, and so on. I'd say the culmination of all this happened at Mango Juice earlier this year when, after getting obliterated by Silent Spectre, I did all of the above.
So... anger. One thing I've noticed about it is this: you aren't just "angry." You have a lot of emotions, thoughts, attitudes and experiences combining and boiling inside of you. With the right catalyst, they become a singular, explosive emotion.
Let's take a look at my most explosive outburst. I was just about to get 3-stocked. I was in front of a big crowd of people, almost none of whom were cheering for me. It happened at the tail-end of a long and arduous tournament day, so I was tired; I'd also just made a long trek through loser's bracket after getting stomped on by Zhu (something I also didn't take well).
And then there was my mental state. First off, I put a tremendous amount of pride and ego into the match. Even though I was thinking to myself before the match, "I'm probably going to lose," my mind wasn't prepared to accept that happening, let alone getting 3-stocked. I've built a lot of my identity around being a high-level smash player. I had just screwed up an infinite, my trademark move. A large crowd of people was watching me get reamed. I was the last Arizona player in the bracket and felt like I had to represent my state. I had to represent myself and show people I was a good player.
Every mistake I made was like an insult to myself as a player. When I screwed up an L-cancel or wavedash, it felt like I'd wasted the previous four and a half years of practice and dedication to the game. When I botched my infinite, I wasn't only thinking about the stock I failed to take, but the fact that I screwed up something I can do--and actually *have done*--blindfolded. It peaked when I did an empty short-hop by mistake (to this day I can remember spazzing out and missing the buttons I intended to hit) and SS landed a knee in my face. That was the point I quit the game and flung my controller at the wall, then stormed outside.
Not to mention, I was tired. Managing tournament fatigue is an important part of playing well and placing highly, and I had been doing a very poor job of it. I'd also had *two* emotional outbursts earlier, one after a loss in 2v2 winner's bracket and another after losing to Zhu in singles. Two large outbursts of emotion, a long day... my brain was exhausted. And after that match, assuming I won, I would have to play Zhu--and repeat the same ordeal--and if I somehow won that I'd play Mango, and if through some crazy miracle I beat him in one set, I'd have to do it again.
To top it all off, I'd been looking forward to the tournament for months and now I was--in my mind--completely ruining it (you know, ignore the fact that I'd already made it to fourth place among some of the west coast's toughest competition, and the two people who eliminated me are both really flipping good players).
Mentally speaking, I did not prepare myself to play that match at all. I psyched myself out, so I wasn't prepared to win and keep playing. I invested my pride and ego in the match, so I wasn't able to deal with losing. There was no way for me to come out of this situation feeling good, and the hole I dug for myself got deeper and deeper.
Here are the two main points I want to make by describing that experience. First, anger is a combination of a lot of different things. If you don't want to get angry, you have to be aware of the things causing your anger and manage them. You can't magically decide "I won't be angry," because anger doesn't just magically happen. It's the natural result of a chain of thoughts, feelings, and events, so you have to catch it in advance. If you *do* start getting angry, remove yourself from the situation ASAP before your rage gets the better of you.
The second point I want to make is that every factor contributing to my anger, except for the fact that it was late at night when I played the match, I inflicted upon myself. I decided that I absolutely had to win that match or I'd look like a fool. I decided that making mistakes was an insult to myself as a player. I decided that losing would be unacceptable, that if I won I'd have to play matches I didn't want to play, that I wanted to be anywhere but in the chair I was sitting in, and so on and so forth endlessly. Having decided all that, it was inevitable that I would become angry with the way things turned out. However, I didn't need to make those decisions in the first place. So you can't suddenly put the brakes on your anger, but you *can* decide how you react to what causes it. That, in turn, keeps the anger from ever occurring.
So more or less, I did it to myself. What's funny is that if I hadn't been so bent on winning and playing perfectly, I wouldn't have become so angry. I probably would have played a lot better, maybe even to the point of winning.
It's surprisingly Zen. You have to hold two contradictory ideas in your mind at the same time. Giving everything you have to win and pushing towards perfection, yet being content with losing and making mistakes. To get what you want, you have to stop wanting it so badly in the first place. To avoid being angry so you can play well and win, you have to decide that playing well and winning isn't as important as remaining calm.
This, I think, is the key. However, you can't focus on keeping calm without knowing what will keep you from doing so. Let's look at what factors can lead to anger, and what we can do to control those factors and hopefully keep anger in check.
Pride
I believe that pride is one of the main roots of anger. I'm not talking about positive aspects of pride, like integrity and honor. What I'm talking about is self-importance, ego, and lack of humility.
When you have too much pride and someone or something challenges it, it's very easy to beome angry. When you're proud of something you've accomplished and somebody else says that achievement was worthless, it probably upsets you. If you have a positive view of yourself and something happens to turn it upside down, it probably hurts.
Personally, I've developed a lot of pride in myself as a Smash player. It makes me feel fantastic to say that I may be one of the best ICs in the world. I can say that I know way more about this game than most people, that I know more about the Ice Climbers than almost anybody. Weird as it sounds, because I've learned so much about Nana's AI and weird behaviors, it feels like I know her as a person. I've invested a lot into this game, and integrated it into my self-image When things start challenging and contradicting that self-image, it hurts me, because this is an important part of my identity.
So what's the solution? I think it's pretty simple: abandon pride. What good does it do you? It can help you push yourself further, but it can also hold you back. More often than not, pride blinds you to things that are actually happening around you. You can't accept the things that challenge your pride, and being unable to accept them (even when they're true) easily leads to anger.
Or if abandoning pride seems impossible, change the things you take pride in. I've started to put my emphasis on how I feel and think during tournaments rather than how I perform. For most of my career so far, I've entered matches wanting to play at my peak, wanting to win, wanting to be the best. In recent tournaments, however, my emphasis has been on the following things: keeping calm, being a good sport whether I win or lose, maintaining a positive attitude, never getting discouraged, never quitting a match out of despair, and having fun with a game I love. If I can achieve those, then I can take pride in my time at the tournament, even if I've taken last place.
Funnily enough, since I started doing that, I've been playing better and better. When I'm playing poorly and getting angry, I start asking myself questions: "why do I want to win so badly?" I want to be good at the game, but getting pissed doesn't make me any better--it usually makes me worse. "What's the worst that happens if I lose?" Maybe I'll get eliminated from a tournament, but at least I can have fun in the mean time. If I enjoy the time I spend doing what I'm doing, then the time was fulfilling regardless of the outcome. "Who cares if I make a bunch of dumb errors?" Maybe I look stupid, but it's better than looking like a sore loser and getting angry over a bad performance. If I laugh at my mistakes, I can even turn a bad performance into something enjoyable. And then I remember that even players like M2K in his prime would make technical errors; thinking that, I can't honestly feel that mad about my own.
What's most important here is that even when things around me are outside my control, *I* can choose how I view them and how I react to them. If I keep these things in mind, I don't think it's even possible for me to get angry at all. However, if I let them get out of control, anger isn't an emotion I'll just be able to shut off.
In all honesty though, I still haven't gotten rid of my pride, but I think I've channeled it somewhere more useful. I'm proud of the new player I'm becoming, and if something challenges or contradicts that pride, I can use it as a guide for my own improvement. I recommend others do the same.
Denial
Denial, it seems to me, is another part of anger. When things don't go our way, sometimes we deny their legitimacy. Because we can't accept that the problem exists, we can't fix it. It's nice, cliched, and stolen from the twelve-step method for fighting addiction, but that doesn't make it less true.
Let's say that you believe you are the best player in the world, and then you lose. There is now a contradiction between your view and reality. There are several possible responses:
--Claim that the other players aren't really better than you. They clearly just got lucky, or they were playing cheaply or unfairly. You're still the better player.
--Blame your loss on something like a controller malfunction, or an unfair counter-matchup, or that you just got over the swine flu, or that it was raining and made your amputated leg ache, or that your mommy didn't hug you that day. You're still the better player.
--Accept that you lost, and use your loss as motivation to practice.
--Accept that you lost, and decide that being the best isn't as important as having fun.
--Other stuff.
In the first two cases, it's easy to imagine somebody getting angry in those situations. The world is not how they thought it was; they've been humbled in front of other people and can't accept the disgrace of losing.
Of course, maybe your controller DID break or you caught SARS right before your match or something. The point here is not to say "you are always completely 100% to blame for a loss" but for you to honestly acknowledge the source of your defeat.
Often when I'm angry, I start muttering things to myself like "I'm better than this" or "I should be better than this," and, internally, I begin fighting reality.
It's not just Smash. Most people have a tough time accepting hard truths about themselves and the situations around them. People justify and rationalize their own shortcomings and failings because they really don't want to admit certain facts. It's part pride, and part denial.
In place of denial, you want honesty. You need to honestly assess the causes of your loss before you can change them. It's not helpful to say "he picked a gay stage" and pretend that you, not your opponent, is superior. Instead, you have to say, "I was not prepared to win on that stage," and practice it so it will never be a factor again. Don't deny that you weren't ready, and you will help eliminate your anger. You also give yourself a clear plan for improvement. With that in your mind, you won't even have room to be angry; you'll have a positive goal instead.
Outside Factors
There's a lot of stuff going on in your head at all times. Sometimes you're hungry, tired, sick, cold, hot, whatever, and it's throwing you off balance. Sometimes you're worrying about a job you lost, or a fight you had with a friend. I've gone into tournaments worrying about sick relatives on more than one occasion. Sometimes you hate the person you're playing against and want very badly to beat them. Maybe somebody is talking trash about your region, or your friend, or your mother, or your Hello Kitty backpack. Maybe everything just seems to be going wrong; your car breaks down on the way to the venue, and when you get out to see why, a truck splashes you with mud, and then when you get to the venue you find you forgot your controller and during one of your matches a power surge resets your Gamecube....
These things originate outside of you. Though you can try to have some influence on these environmental factors, you can't possibly control them all. The only thing you can do is decide how you will react to the things happening around you. Here are some questions I've come up with to keep myself from getting into out of control rage at external factors.
--Does it actually matter? If it doesn't, I do my best to ignore it. If it does, I move on to the next question.
--Am I somehow able to deal with it? If no, then I just accept it and move on. You'd be surprised how easy it is not to get angry at something if you just acknowledge its existence. If you *can* deal with it, however...
--What's the best way to deal with it? When I ask this, my mental energy gets transferred to solving the problem rather than raging at it.
Steadily eliminate the factors that can cause you stress and anger, and the anger will never become an issue.
I hope this helps. The next section will be about anger's close relative, depression. See you next time.
* *
Below is a write-up from last weekend's tournament, so check that out too!
Peace.
Monday, September 28, 2009
ActiveGamers tournament and notes for improvement.
This past weekend I attended the ActiveGamers tournament in California.
Even though I only took 7th in Melee Singles, the event felt like a major victory to me for several reasons.
1) Even though at many times I felt myself beginning to get angry, I caught myself very early and kept my cool. Except for when I became incredibly tired, the tournament remained a fun experience for me the entire time.
2) Typically in the matches that I lose, I feel as though I could have been playing much better. I'm making lots of technical errors, getting flustered and impatient, not thinking clearly, etc. This was not the case this time; I managed to keep good control over my nerves and play at a level I was proud of. There was obviously room for improvement (for instance, I could have won ^_^) but I was pretty happy with my play, and I would say it accurately reflected my current skill level. That is, pretty good, but with a lot of places to improve.
3) I took 3rd in doubles with Romeo even though both of us showed up to the tournament without a partner, wondering if we'd even be entering the event. We worked together surprisingly well!
4) I learned some very important stuff about Melee that I can start focusing on and practicing that may be the next step in improving my game.
I also did pretty well in Brawl doubles too, taking 9th with my teammate Darklink. I also improved quite a bit at doubles from this, and if it wasn't for our Brawl 2v2 matches I don't think Romeo and I would have taken 3rd in Melee.
Some highlight moments from the tournament:
--In Brawl 2v2, my teammate played as MK and I played as Wario; during several of our matches we landed our new signature team combo, tornado into fart. Not only that, during one match I actually managed to use Wario's u-air and clap somebody out of MK's tornado from above by falling down into it.
--After winning one of my Melee matches, I got text messages from two different people congratulating me. They'd been watching it on live-stream and were supporting me from completely different states. It was a great feeling and gave me a major confidence boost.
--At Denny's with Mew2King, he opened up the menu and started shouting. The very first thing that he saw on it was strawberry mango tea and he shouted, "I can't get away from him! He's everywhere!"
* * *
Now for the *really* interesting part, which is the stuff I learned and get to improve on.
Studying the opponent's movement
During one of my money matches against a Fox player, I began falling behind and felt like I had no idea where he was going to move next. I was trying to catch him but it felt like I was playing the match with a blindfold on.
Suddenly it hit me, *really* hit me that he actually used relatively few approaches. He would dash dance until he reached the right distance, then come in with a SHFFL'd d-air or n-air. He would drop through platforms and double jump back onto them until I hit a certain distance, then he'd fall through with retreating b-air. If we were under one of the side platforms, he'd run off the edges to b-air me.
As I thought about my other matches, it was the case with almost every other player. They had about three or four approaches that they rely on, and maybe one or two tricks to bait me into approaching. A Falcon might throw out a full-jumped u-air to trick you into attacking, but he has more than enough time to fast-fall a b-air and then retreat. He might land on platforms with a d-air then run off with an u-air to punish you for approaching.
But even knowing this, I was still getting hit by a lot of this stuff. Is it just a lot of spacing errors? Not always; I typically have pretty good spacing. I realized that when I got hit by this stuff, I would only see it coming at the last moment, just in time to realize that I was about to get my face kicked in.
I got to thinking about this and understood that predicting your opponent isn't just knowing what the trick is, or what move is coming. It's about studying how they move and where they move.
In a sword fight, good fighters spend less time watching the sword and more time watching the opponent's feet and torso. In martial arts and boxing, you study the opponent's footwork to understand where they plan to move, how they've shifted their weight and what that means about the attack they're going to launch. So in Smash, it makes sense to me that if you want to be a good player, you don't study only the opponent's attacks, tricks, or techniques, but their movement. The rhythm of their dash dance, the way they fall and guide themselves through platforms, will tell you exactly where they plan to go, and as a result, exactly which move you can expect them to do.
This also tells you that to be better, you need to have as many solid approaches mastered as you can, and that you have to be as unpredictable with your movement rhythm as possible.
Concentration
How do you know you're actually focused on the match?
--Your movements are sharper, faster, and have less error.
--Anytime you have a thought like "how could I have messed that up?" or "what an annoying cheer," it passes quickly from your mind.
--You make your decisions faster and with more confidence. They are also typically better.
--Moments in the match seem to flow naturally together and make sense; each event seems perfectly, completely connected, like it's impossible for anything else to be happening.
How do you do it? I don't know. I'm one of those folks who has trouble concentrating on anything period, so... I have no idea how I can improve in this area. My one experience with absolutely perfect concentration feels very far away from me now.
It makes me wonder if good concentration is a thing that you make happen, or you allow to happen. Or maybe it's different for different people. I don't know. All I know is this is the area of my game that requires the most improvement, and I don't really know how to do that. At least, however, I know *what* I'm looking for, which is a step up from where I was before this tournament.
I'd love it if people posted some advice or personal experiences with good concentration so that I can get some ideas. I'll post my own as they come; for now I can only identify how it feels to be utterly focused and assert that this focus is what creates consistently strong performance. So Adderall, basically.
Kidding! But only kind of.
Doubles
This one is very short. If you want to win in 2v2, don't play 2v2. Turn it into 2v1 as often as possible; wall out the other player and then go in to help your teammate. Any time your teammate gets hit or punished, the opponent should suffer equally if not more. Any time your opponent hits the opponent, you should be there to add damage.
Teams usually have some kind of skill imbalance, so focus on the weaker player. Force the better of the two to make constant sacrifices to help his teammate out, and you can decrease both players' efficacy.
If you know for a fact that you and your partner are better at 1v1, turn the game into two 1v1s! Before Taj retired and we played a lot of doubles together, I was always confident that if he could get a Fox or Falco off the edge, that Fox or Falco would be toast. As a result, my goal was to keep the other player distracted and unable to assist. Likewise, if I land a grab with my ICs, his goal is not to help me combo them but to keep me as free as I can to punish with all my might.
When Romeo and I played M2K and Zhu, Zhu was doing an excellent job of bouncing me around and keeping me occupied while M2K focused on fighting Romeo. M2K was playing Sheik against Romeo's Falcon, so as long as Zhu's Fox kept shining me, M2K could abuse the character matchup advantage he had to its fullest potential. On the other hand, when I got a successful chaingrab against M2K going, Romeo put all his effort into keeping Zhu occupied while I hit M2K with a zero-to-death ledge CG and edgeguard.
So here's the basics: you want to make it 2v1 as much as you can so your opponent can never gain a good foothold with a combo or edgeguard. When your opponents have good teamwork but aren't as good when fighting straight-up 1v1s, you want to force 1v1 situations and abuse their weaknesses.
So pay attention to fighting with your teammate and keeping the opponent from doing the same. It's kind of general, but it's hard to get into the specifics of it when there are so many team combinations and individual playstyles... I'll be posting much more about doubles at a later date though, so look forward to that :)
That's all for now. Peace, folks.
Even though I only took 7th in Melee Singles, the event felt like a major victory to me for several reasons.
1) Even though at many times I felt myself beginning to get angry, I caught myself very early and kept my cool. Except for when I became incredibly tired, the tournament remained a fun experience for me the entire time.
2) Typically in the matches that I lose, I feel as though I could have been playing much better. I'm making lots of technical errors, getting flustered and impatient, not thinking clearly, etc. This was not the case this time; I managed to keep good control over my nerves and play at a level I was proud of. There was obviously room for improvement (for instance, I could have won ^_^) but I was pretty happy with my play, and I would say it accurately reflected my current skill level. That is, pretty good, but with a lot of places to improve.
3) I took 3rd in doubles with Romeo even though both of us showed up to the tournament without a partner, wondering if we'd even be entering the event. We worked together surprisingly well!
4) I learned some very important stuff about Melee that I can start focusing on and practicing that may be the next step in improving my game.
I also did pretty well in Brawl doubles too, taking 9th with my teammate Darklink. I also improved quite a bit at doubles from this, and if it wasn't for our Brawl 2v2 matches I don't think Romeo and I would have taken 3rd in Melee.
Some highlight moments from the tournament:
--In Brawl 2v2, my teammate played as MK and I played as Wario; during several of our matches we landed our new signature team combo, tornado into fart. Not only that, during one match I actually managed to use Wario's u-air and clap somebody out of MK's tornado from above by falling down into it.
--After winning one of my Melee matches, I got text messages from two different people congratulating me. They'd been watching it on live-stream and were supporting me from completely different states. It was a great feeling and gave me a major confidence boost.
--At Denny's with Mew2King, he opened up the menu and started shouting. The very first thing that he saw on it was strawberry mango tea and he shouted, "I can't get away from him! He's everywhere!"
* * *
Now for the *really* interesting part, which is the stuff I learned and get to improve on.
Studying the opponent's movement
During one of my money matches against a Fox player, I began falling behind and felt like I had no idea where he was going to move next. I was trying to catch him but it felt like I was playing the match with a blindfold on.
Suddenly it hit me, *really* hit me that he actually used relatively few approaches. He would dash dance until he reached the right distance, then come in with a SHFFL'd d-air or n-air. He would drop through platforms and double jump back onto them until I hit a certain distance, then he'd fall through with retreating b-air. If we were under one of the side platforms, he'd run off the edges to b-air me.
As I thought about my other matches, it was the case with almost every other player. They had about three or four approaches that they rely on, and maybe one or two tricks to bait me into approaching. A Falcon might throw out a full-jumped u-air to trick you into attacking, but he has more than enough time to fast-fall a b-air and then retreat. He might land on platforms with a d-air then run off with an u-air to punish you for approaching.
But even knowing this, I was still getting hit by a lot of this stuff. Is it just a lot of spacing errors? Not always; I typically have pretty good spacing. I realized that when I got hit by this stuff, I would only see it coming at the last moment, just in time to realize that I was about to get my face kicked in.
I got to thinking about this and understood that predicting your opponent isn't just knowing what the trick is, or what move is coming. It's about studying how they move and where they move.
In a sword fight, good fighters spend less time watching the sword and more time watching the opponent's feet and torso. In martial arts and boxing, you study the opponent's footwork to understand where they plan to move, how they've shifted their weight and what that means about the attack they're going to launch. So in Smash, it makes sense to me that if you want to be a good player, you don't study only the opponent's attacks, tricks, or techniques, but their movement. The rhythm of their dash dance, the way they fall and guide themselves through platforms, will tell you exactly where they plan to go, and as a result, exactly which move you can expect them to do.
This also tells you that to be better, you need to have as many solid approaches mastered as you can, and that you have to be as unpredictable with your movement rhythm as possible.
Concentration
How do you know you're actually focused on the match?
--Your movements are sharper, faster, and have less error.
--Anytime you have a thought like "how could I have messed that up?" or "what an annoying cheer," it passes quickly from your mind.
--You make your decisions faster and with more confidence. They are also typically better.
--Moments in the match seem to flow naturally together and make sense; each event seems perfectly, completely connected, like it's impossible for anything else to be happening.
How do you do it? I don't know. I'm one of those folks who has trouble concentrating on anything period, so... I have no idea how I can improve in this area. My one experience with absolutely perfect concentration feels very far away from me now.
It makes me wonder if good concentration is a thing that you make happen, or you allow to happen. Or maybe it's different for different people. I don't know. All I know is this is the area of my game that requires the most improvement, and I don't really know how to do that. At least, however, I know *what* I'm looking for, which is a step up from where I was before this tournament.
I'd love it if people posted some advice or personal experiences with good concentration so that I can get some ideas. I'll post my own as they come; for now I can only identify how it feels to be utterly focused and assert that this focus is what creates consistently strong performance. So Adderall, basically.
Kidding! But only kind of.
Doubles
This one is very short. If you want to win in 2v2, don't play 2v2. Turn it into 2v1 as often as possible; wall out the other player and then go in to help your teammate. Any time your teammate gets hit or punished, the opponent should suffer equally if not more. Any time your opponent hits the opponent, you should be there to add damage.
Teams usually have some kind of skill imbalance, so focus on the weaker player. Force the better of the two to make constant sacrifices to help his teammate out, and you can decrease both players' efficacy.
If you know for a fact that you and your partner are better at 1v1, turn the game into two 1v1s! Before Taj retired and we played a lot of doubles together, I was always confident that if he could get a Fox or Falco off the edge, that Fox or Falco would be toast. As a result, my goal was to keep the other player distracted and unable to assist. Likewise, if I land a grab with my ICs, his goal is not to help me combo them but to keep me as free as I can to punish with all my might.
When Romeo and I played M2K and Zhu, Zhu was doing an excellent job of bouncing me around and keeping me occupied while M2K focused on fighting Romeo. M2K was playing Sheik against Romeo's Falcon, so as long as Zhu's Fox kept shining me, M2K could abuse the character matchup advantage he had to its fullest potential. On the other hand, when I got a successful chaingrab against M2K going, Romeo put all his effort into keeping Zhu occupied while I hit M2K with a zero-to-death ledge CG and edgeguard.
So here's the basics: you want to make it 2v1 as much as you can so your opponent can never gain a good foothold with a combo or edgeguard. When your opponents have good teamwork but aren't as good when fighting straight-up 1v1s, you want to force 1v1 situations and abuse their weaknesses.
So pay attention to fighting with your teammate and keeping the opponent from doing the same. It's kind of general, but it's hard to get into the specifics of it when there are so many team combinations and individual playstyles... I'll be posting much more about doubles at a later date though, so look forward to that :)
That's all for now. Peace, folks.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Big announcement...
I have some exciting news. Though I don't know how successful this project could be, and I alternate between being pumped for the possibilities and doubtful as to its feasibility, what I'm talking about is...
My Smash memoirs! I intend to write a full-length book about my experiences as a competitive gamer; this would be about my induction into the scene, the crazy experiences I've had while playing Smash competitively, and how it's affected me.
I also plan to write a little about *other* games and the competitive experience in general, as sort of an introductory guide to what competitive gaming is all about. I fully intend it to be a marketable item of interest to as many people as possible, gamers and non-gamers alike.
My main doubt is whether or not I'm the person who should be writing this, and if a more successful player should embark on this kind of journey, but I feel the urge to do it.
So the project begins today! I still plan to update the blog with various things, but my primary focus will be on this project. I'm still trying to think of a working title, so any suggestions are welcome :) I'll also be posting random sections from the book on here for you guys to read.
Here is what I'm thinking: for starters, many members of the Smash community might be willing to purchase this book. If I could communicate to a publisher a willing and receptive audience, that would increase the likelihood this could find its way into bookstores. More people buying it = more attention for the book, which = more potential buyers. The bigger it gets, the bigger it can get. I have emphasis on this because my goal is to be a writer of sorts, and it's hard to make a profession out of something that makes you no money.
Most importantly, I'm passionate about this game and I love to write about it. This project is ideal for me.
Why would it be interesting to anybody? I intend to make it as non-technical and emotionally accessible as I can. People would hopefully read it for the same reason they read sports memoirs: for the the ups and downs of the competitive experience. And as far as I know, there are no books quite like this on the market.
This project has a lot of potential factors in its favor and with some savvy I should be able to overcome the cons. So I hope with the community's support, I can turn this into something successful.
And of course, if this book somehow gets any attention at all, it can only mean good things for competitive gaming in the future. So... yeah. This is a big thing for me, and I hope that people will continue to pester me about it to make sure I stay on track.
Next up on the blog will be stuff about emotional control and a tournament write-up.
Peace, folks.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
What's in the works...
Right now I have a bunch of ideas for different articles and posts that I'll be creating in this coming month.
I'll be transcribing some of my thoughts on:
--Playing doubles well, with a bonus feature on using the Ice Climbers in 2v2,
--Managing your emotions during play,
--Being efficient and choosing good options,
--Concentration and attention as in-game resource,
and others as well, probably. There's also an exciting new project that I'm embarking on (non-smash related) that I plan to write about as well, if only to help myself achieve the goal. So that's what you have to look forward to regarding this blog. I hope it proves interesting!
I'll be transcribing some of my thoughts on:
--Playing doubles well, with a bonus feature on using the Ice Climbers in 2v2,
--Managing your emotions during play,
--Being efficient and choosing good options,
--Concentration and attention as in-game resource,
and others as well, probably. There's also an exciting new project that I'm embarking on (non-smash related) that I plan to write about as well, if only to help myself achieve the goal. So that's what you have to look forward to regarding this blog. I hope it proves interesting!
Thursday, September 3, 2009
The Best Melee of My Life, Part 2
Before I start talking about this mentality, I want to link to a Wikipedia article that correlates strongly with how I felt during my matches:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushin
And then this related article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
Lastly, there’s this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerkes-Dodson_law
For awhile I was wearing the tag “flow” from reading a book of the same name by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, because I thought it was rather inspirational and wanted to remind myself some of the book’s concepts during matches.
In any event, the first two links should give you a good idea of how I felt during my matches, and the third may be part of explaining why it happened.
I’ll repeat from the previous entry: my mind felt like it had no room for any emotional response to anything happening on screen. When I was winning, losing, making mistakes or doing things perfectly, I had almost exactly the same reaction: “okay.” I did some stuff I normally never have the presence of mind to do, and I occasionally did things that were just completely outside my normal playstyle. What was going through my mind? In a lot of ways, nothing, which is weird.
Most people who know me (or read anything I write) know that I’m very analytical; I’ve usually got an analytical voice running non-stop in my brain even when I’m playing important tournament matches. This voice didn’t completely go away, but it felt extremely muted.
Because I’m so analytical, I want to break down that tournament day and see what sort of stuff I come up with.
To begin, I had a decent amount of sleep and woke up refreshed. I’m a total insomniac, especially before tournaments and especially considering I’d just *had* a day full of tournament play. I wasn’t expecting to get even four hours of sleep, let alone a solid seven-and-a-half.
I was pretty anxious about the tournament because I’d played a little Melee the day before and felt really sluggish. That seems to be the case when I move from Brawl to Melee, but it felt really exaggerated and I was thinking I might not place top 3 (or possibly top 5, even). It was looking like the tourney would have me, Taj, Forward, Axe and Light, AZ’s top 5 Melee players; all of those four folks are more than capable of beating me in any tournament on any given day, whether I’m playing well or not. This doesn’t even account for Tai, who plays decently technical space animals and—randomly—goes on rampages where he plays really well. Later that day, he would handily 2 stock my ICs with Falco in a friendly before the tournament, which didn’t help my nerves.
I’m getting ahead of myself. My ride showed up and we stopped by Taco Bell before the tournament; normally I don’t do so hot if I eat a lot, so I got a taco, a chicken burrito and a small Dr. Pepper (cost me about $3.50, go Taco Bell). When we got to the venue I sat down and finished the taco and ate about half the burrito before giving it to Forward. For whatever reason (might have been the nerves) I wasn’t hungry anymore and couldn’t finish.
I played friendlies with some people, and probably won about 30% of them, losing a lot of games with ICs. I was getting the feeling that I wouldn’t be doing well today; even worse is that day was also Brawl low-tier and my lowest tier character, Sheik, is in C tier, one tier too high to enter. I’d been messing around with Mario for the week to try and prepare, but I didn’t have any real hopes about winning.
Here is where I think the making of my mental state began. At this point, I was thinking rather negatively: “I’m going to lose,” “I’m playing badly,” and so on. Thinking like that though I also came to the conclusion, “so what if I lose?”
Most people, particularly after my spectacular rage explosion at Mango Juice, believe me to be a sore loser. This is probably 40% true. I don’t like losing, and I like winning. I want to clarify something though; apart from taking medication and going to therapy for two mental disorders, I invest a lot of my emotion into this game. I practice a lot. I think about it a lot. When I don’t play well, I get very mad, thinking “I shouldn’t be this bad.” I also get mad at my inability to control my temper. I start thinking things like “I can’t. This takes attention away from the game, causing me to make more mistakes, making me angrier, etc.
I don’t want that to be a justification, just an explanation. People shouldn’t flip out and throw their controllers and storm out of venues and if they want to be part of the community, they should learn to control themselves. My recent retirement announcement was based on two things: I felt like I wasn’t improving, and I felt like my mindset and presence were too destructive for me to belong in the community anymore. Good advice from a friend has helped me with the first one; flipping out at Mango Juice made me strongly re-evaluate the second. I’m happy to say that I haven’t flipped out since Mango Juice, haven’t thrown a controller, and haven’t acted like a total disgrace.
But yeah, losing is something I highly dislike. That day, however, it really hit me: “so what if I lose?” People lose all the time. The game doesn’t care about who you are, doesn’t care what your screenname is. There will be more games. There will be more tournaments. Pride and ego have done almost nothing but backfire on me throughout my entire career; maybe it’s time I got rid of them.
My first set against Axe was difficult, and I played about as well as I expected. I won a game from my counterpick, Fountain of Dreams, but otherwise he solidly outplayed me.
It was until I got into my match against South Paw that I started thinking more about my own mentality. He was playing viciously in our first game, landing lots of shines and controlling most of the match. I thought , “at this rate, he could definitely win.” For some reason, I was fine with that. Losing to an opponent who is on top of his game is more of an honor than anything.
At this moment, I had two things in my head at once: I didn’t want to lose, but I wasn’t afraid of losing. Suddenly, they were both gone. I was thinking almost entirely about the game.
I didn’t really see its effects until I got to game 3 against Forward. During games one and two and right before we started game three, I was talking to other people, talking to Forward, and not acting at all like I was 1-1 in Loser’s Finals. Then the moment we hit start and began game three, something changed.
I don’t know if it was Mushin or Flow or what. I just wasn’t thinking about anything but “what next?” Normally I feel like I’m fighting with my hands to get them to cooperate; this time they were just ready and willing to do whatever I wanted. By the time I realized I needed to do something, I did it with no hesitation. Everything was sharp. My conscious mind was only thinking one thing: “keep it up, he can still come back.” And I kept it up, and won. We went to game four, Peach vs. ICs on Dreamland, and I felt the exact same way. I wasn’t playing perfect by any means, but I was playing better than I ever had in my entire life.
Axe came over and sat down to play me, and it was the same. Regardless of the circumstance, winning, comboing or being combo’ed, my mind stayed calm; I remember one thing that stood out—his Falco was approaching me while I was facing backwards. A laser hit my shield and I did the fastest b-air out of shield that I’ve ever done in my life, caught him DI’ing down out of his SH approach and won the round. For a brief second, I thought “did I really do that?” It’s more like I watched it happen.
It sounds absurd to say this in the context of a videogame, but it felt like enlightenment. I felt tranquil, serene, peaceful, quiet, and every other synonym I can throw out there. It’s like nothing mattered but being there and playing. It’s like I wasn’t even holding a controller, like I wasn’t sitting on a couch in a friend’s apartment; it’s like I was somewhere else entirely.
Afterwards I went into Brawl low-tier grand finals (which earlier I had unexpectedly made it to) still feeling this way. I was just watching things unfold, really seeing things, understanding them in ways I never had before, and won 6-0 with a character I barely played. I just could see what worked, and my body just let me make it possible.
What happened and how did it happen? This is what I know: I wasn’t hungry or tired, but I wasn’t full or energetic either. I wanted to win, but I was perfectly willing to accept my losses.
On the one hand, it was the greatest feeling in the world, completely unique and unlike anything I’d experienced before. On the other hand, I’m worried I might never feel it again.
I don’t really know what else to say. See you folks next time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushin
And then this related article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
Lastly, there’s this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerkes-Dodson_law
For awhile I was wearing the tag “flow” from reading a book of the same name by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, because I thought it was rather inspirational and wanted to remind myself some of the book’s concepts during matches.
In any event, the first two links should give you a good idea of how I felt during my matches, and the third may be part of explaining why it happened.
I’ll repeat from the previous entry: my mind felt like it had no room for any emotional response to anything happening on screen. When I was winning, losing, making mistakes or doing things perfectly, I had almost exactly the same reaction: “okay.” I did some stuff I normally never have the presence of mind to do, and I occasionally did things that were just completely outside my normal playstyle. What was going through my mind? In a lot of ways, nothing, which is weird.
Most people who know me (or read anything I write) know that I’m very analytical; I’ve usually got an analytical voice running non-stop in my brain even when I’m playing important tournament matches. This voice didn’t completely go away, but it felt extremely muted.
Because I’m so analytical, I want to break down that tournament day and see what sort of stuff I come up with.
To begin, I had a decent amount of sleep and woke up refreshed. I’m a total insomniac, especially before tournaments and especially considering I’d just *had* a day full of tournament play. I wasn’t expecting to get even four hours of sleep, let alone a solid seven-and-a-half.
I was pretty anxious about the tournament because I’d played a little Melee the day before and felt really sluggish. That seems to be the case when I move from Brawl to Melee, but it felt really exaggerated and I was thinking I might not place top 3 (or possibly top 5, even). It was looking like the tourney would have me, Taj, Forward, Axe and Light, AZ’s top 5 Melee players; all of those four folks are more than capable of beating me in any tournament on any given day, whether I’m playing well or not. This doesn’t even account for Tai, who plays decently technical space animals and—randomly—goes on rampages where he plays really well. Later that day, he would handily 2 stock my ICs with Falco in a friendly before the tournament, which didn’t help my nerves.
I’m getting ahead of myself. My ride showed up and we stopped by Taco Bell before the tournament; normally I don’t do so hot if I eat a lot, so I got a taco, a chicken burrito and a small Dr. Pepper (cost me about $3.50, go Taco Bell). When we got to the venue I sat down and finished the taco and ate about half the burrito before giving it to Forward. For whatever reason (might have been the nerves) I wasn’t hungry anymore and couldn’t finish.
I played friendlies with some people, and probably won about 30% of them, losing a lot of games with ICs. I was getting the feeling that I wouldn’t be doing well today; even worse is that day was also Brawl low-tier and my lowest tier character, Sheik, is in C tier, one tier too high to enter. I’d been messing around with Mario for the week to try and prepare, but I didn’t have any real hopes about winning.
Here is where I think the making of my mental state began. At this point, I was thinking rather negatively: “I’m going to lose,” “I’m playing badly,” and so on. Thinking like that though I also came to the conclusion, “so what if I lose?”
Most people, particularly after my spectacular rage explosion at Mango Juice, believe me to be a sore loser. This is probably 40% true. I don’t like losing, and I like winning. I want to clarify something though; apart from taking medication and going to therapy for two mental disorders, I invest a lot of my emotion into this game. I practice a lot. I think about it a lot. When I don’t play well, I get very mad, thinking “I shouldn’t be this bad.” I also get mad at my inability to control my temper. I start thinking things like “I can’t. This takes attention away from the game, causing me to make more mistakes, making me angrier, etc.
I don’t want that to be a justification, just an explanation. People shouldn’t flip out and throw their controllers and storm out of venues and if they want to be part of the community, they should learn to control themselves. My recent retirement announcement was based on two things: I felt like I wasn’t improving, and I felt like my mindset and presence were too destructive for me to belong in the community anymore. Good advice from a friend has helped me with the first one; flipping out at Mango Juice made me strongly re-evaluate the second. I’m happy to say that I haven’t flipped out since Mango Juice, haven’t thrown a controller, and haven’t acted like a total disgrace.
But yeah, losing is something I highly dislike. That day, however, it really hit me: “so what if I lose?” People lose all the time. The game doesn’t care about who you are, doesn’t care what your screenname is. There will be more games. There will be more tournaments. Pride and ego have done almost nothing but backfire on me throughout my entire career; maybe it’s time I got rid of them.
My first set against Axe was difficult, and I played about as well as I expected. I won a game from my counterpick, Fountain of Dreams, but otherwise he solidly outplayed me.
It was until I got into my match against South Paw that I started thinking more about my own mentality. He was playing viciously in our first game, landing lots of shines and controlling most of the match. I thought , “at this rate, he could definitely win.” For some reason, I was fine with that. Losing to an opponent who is on top of his game is more of an honor than anything.
At this moment, I had two things in my head at once: I didn’t want to lose, but I wasn’t afraid of losing. Suddenly, they were both gone. I was thinking almost entirely about the game.
I didn’t really see its effects until I got to game 3 against Forward. During games one and two and right before we started game three, I was talking to other people, talking to Forward, and not acting at all like I was 1-1 in Loser’s Finals. Then the moment we hit start and began game three, something changed.
I don’t know if it was Mushin or Flow or what. I just wasn’t thinking about anything but “what next?” Normally I feel like I’m fighting with my hands to get them to cooperate; this time they were just ready and willing to do whatever I wanted. By the time I realized I needed to do something, I did it with no hesitation. Everything was sharp. My conscious mind was only thinking one thing: “keep it up, he can still come back.” And I kept it up, and won. We went to game four, Peach vs. ICs on Dreamland, and I felt the exact same way. I wasn’t playing perfect by any means, but I was playing better than I ever had in my entire life.
Axe came over and sat down to play me, and it was the same. Regardless of the circumstance, winning, comboing or being combo’ed, my mind stayed calm; I remember one thing that stood out—his Falco was approaching me while I was facing backwards. A laser hit my shield and I did the fastest b-air out of shield that I’ve ever done in my life, caught him DI’ing down out of his SH approach and won the round. For a brief second, I thought “did I really do that?” It’s more like I watched it happen.
It sounds absurd to say this in the context of a videogame, but it felt like enlightenment. I felt tranquil, serene, peaceful, quiet, and every other synonym I can throw out there. It’s like nothing mattered but being there and playing. It’s like I wasn’t even holding a controller, like I wasn’t sitting on a couch in a friend’s apartment; it’s like I was somewhere else entirely.
Afterwards I went into Brawl low-tier grand finals (which earlier I had unexpectedly made it to) still feeling this way. I was just watching things unfold, really seeing things, understanding them in ways I never had before, and won 6-0 with a character I barely played. I just could see what worked, and my body just let me make it possible.
What happened and how did it happen? This is what I know: I wasn’t hungry or tired, but I wasn’t full or energetic either. I wanted to win, but I was perfectly willing to accept my losses.
On the one hand, it was the greatest feeling in the world, completely unique and unlike anything I’d experienced before. On the other hand, I’m worried I might never feel it again.
I don’t really know what else to say. See you folks next time.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Another Weekend, Another Tournament, and the best Melee of my life.
Warning: Long post ahead!
This past weekend an AZ smasher held a semi-small tourney in his apartment. The events included:
Brawl Singles
Brawl Doubles
Melee Singles
Brawl Low-tier
I took first in Brawl Singles with Wario and 1 round of Metaknight, first in doubles with my teammate JustinKamikaze, who played MK and Snake. I went MK for a few of the matches in Winner's and Grand Finals of teams because my Wario wasn't really shaping up, but fortunately my fat man helped bring in the win in the end :) I dislike switching off Wario because too many people have MK experience, I don't seem to have the right mindset to play him well, and relying on him seems like it will be detrimental to my game in the long run. However, he's such a strong character in doubles and I play different in teams than I do in singles, so I guess it kind of works out sometimes? :)
Melee Singles came the next day, and something interesting happened to me (mentally) during one of my matches in loser's finals. Whatever it was, this one day [i]officially[/i] made five years of playing Melee worth it. Every crappy day, every botched victory, every heartbreak tournament elimination, every ragequit, every john, everything.
I'll just give a rundown of my play. First round I got a bye (thanks to the # of entrants and some seeding). Second round, I wound up playing one of the few AZ Brawl players who's also invested some training time into Melee, Jar'd. He's got a remarkably good competitive attitude and he's actually kind of okay at Melee for not being part of its scene.
My next match is against another (relatively) young guy, Axe. For people who don't know him, Axe is AZ's newest up and coming Melee star, beating JMan at Genesis with his Pikachu; he also holds a beastly Fox and Falco. It's bad enough that he's technically flashy, he also knows when to go for efficiency instead, and he makes a LOT of irritatingly smart calls. I think he needs more tourney experience and confidence, but he's also got one of the best attitudes of any gamer I've met and he's unbelievably nice too.
Not in game though. In game he's a jerk, which he demonstrated by repeatedly killing my Nana off the top of Yoshi's and Battlefield with shines and up+b as Falco. He called me out on some of my gambles to try and take the edge rather than return to the stage, so he also got some clutch KOs that way which were a bit disheartening, since I normally get away with that stuff. It sucks when your opponent can kill you AND Nana before you're at fifty just by being intelligent. He wound up defeating me 2-1, and game 3 wasn't exactly what you'd call close :(
Do I want to say that I wasn't really warmed up yet because I'd spent the entire day before playing Brawl? Yes. But I'd also had all morning to get back into my groove, which consisted of Axe destroying me in friendlies as well. No johns!
Loser's bracket I played AltF4Warrior, Southwest forum mod (whom I finally got to congratulate in-person on his engagement.) It wasn't difficult to beat his Marth, but Dan's been out of the serious scene for quite some time and his attendance/entrance was mostly a social thing.
Next match was against South_Paw, another player who's mostly stopped playing. In our first game he seemed to be on top of things with Fox, gimping me *and* Nana pretty fast and going for a lot of surprising grabs, and I managed to win with a solid one-stock. Strangely enough, the next game I four-stocked him in under 1:30
My next match was against Forward, who lost to Axe in Winner's Finals (I'm telling you, the kid is scary). Round 1 he beat me with Falcon on our random, round 2 I took him to FoD where he went Peach and I went Sheik. Neither of us are exceptional with these characters in singles (my Sheik is kind of slow and clumsy, which is much easier for me to get away with in doubles), but the last time I played his Peach in tournament with my ICs, he walked all over me. Bad times.
I barely won, and then something happened. My mind decided to kick into overdrive. 3rd round he took me to Pokemon Stadium and went Falcon, and... I can barely remember anything of the match, except for three things. 1) I made almost ZERO technical errors, something which never happens to me in tournament, 2) I 3-stocked him, something I've never done to Sean in tournament, and 3) my mind went into an unbelievable state of focus that, once again, never really happens to me. For the fourth game, he took me to Dreamland and went Peach. I stayed ICs and 2-stocked him.
I'm trying to find the right words to describe what happened to my mind during this set. To give you some backstory, I have a clinical ADD diagnosis and a prescription for Adderall. I don't take Adderall during tournaments anymore though, because it makes my hands shaky, I get moody afterwards and then I can't sleep later; I pretty much use my medication exclusively for schoolwork and writing. I bring this up because typically it's impossible for me to concentrate on anything for more than thirty seconds unless I take medication.
However, the state of mind I went into was... beyond Adderall. I felt remarkably serene and detached, yet at the same time more intensely into Melee than I've ever been before. This was more than just "in the zone" play, more than just having "a good Smash day" because until that point, I really wasn't. I'd been playing kind of clumsy, my mind wasn't as sharp or fast as I needed/wanted it to be, and my tournament experience was turning out to be very... "bleh."
Something clicked though. I wasn't talking, I wasn't looking at anything but the screen. I could hear the eight or so spectators cheering, clapping and making "ooooh" noises in the background, but they were like white noise. I was aware of them, but didn't have room in my mind to think of responses besides "oh, okay." My hands were completely listening to me in a way that they never do. It's going to sound rather strange, but I felt like my mind, my body and the game were all communicating. Meanwhile, my conscious inner voice was just spectating, struck speechless by the spectacle. And the alliteration.
This state of mind carried over into my matches against Axe. Against his Falco in game 1, the game came down to the wire but at no point did I feel any hint of nervousness. When the last stock was my SoPo (Solo Popo) against his Falco, I pulled out a clutch victory and barely realized I was doing it. Next game he played Falco again and I can't even remember the counterpick (and normally I have no trouble remembering my tourney matches) and I won solidly. Then he went to Yoshi's, with Pikachu and I won again (though he ended with an SD), taking the first set 3-0.
I did not by any means dominate Axe in these matches, but at the same time I felt like I'd never played better in my life. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say I'd never felt better while playing.
In any event, for the first game of set 2 he tried to throw me off by going Jigglypuff, and we played on FD. I spent my first stock throwing out smashes and doing things seemingly with no battle plan, and to be honest I didn't have one. The part of my brain involved with making plans seemed to be on vacation. We went relatively even and both went to 3 stock (IIRC), and then suddenly my playstyle switched up. I ate about 20 percent before landing a grab and infiniting him. The next stock he went for a rest combo, missed, and I infinited him. His fourth stock I won almost purely by outspacing him with smashes, and finished with a basic SoPo d-throw u-air combo to get the V.
It seemed like my brain in the first stock was just taking its time to learn what Axe's Puff liked to do, then it used the next one to exploit that. His Puff isn't nearly as developed as his other characters so it honestly wasn't tough at all. What's amazing is that at this point, my mind was still focused. Normally, when I go into what several AZ players refer to as "beast mode," it only lasts for about a stock. This weird mindset I was in had lasted me for SIX FULL LENGTH GAMES. Between the matches themselves, time spent on selection screens, that was almost thirty minutes of pure focus for me. It was unreal, yet it kept going.
Between sets I did something that should have been a terrible idea and gave Axe advice on how to counterpick ICs. I told him to play on weird stages because "even if the space animals have good advantages on a neutral, the ICs are at their best on those five levels; they hate the weird ones." So sure enough, for game two he took me to Pokefloats (I had banned Battlefield as it was his favorite Falco stage and I had an almost perfect loss record against him there). I figured that this was going to be a lost round and went Sheik, and his Fox three stocked me by lasering me and hitting me when I tried to come close. I can't imagine it would have gone any better with my ICs.
Normally getting three stocked would throw me out of whatever mental momentum I gained, but then again, nothing seemed to be happening normally this tournament. I just shrugged it off, said "nice" to Axe, then told him we were going to Yoshi's Story. He stayed Fox and we played a close game, but I stayed cool, made some good calls, and linked them into grabs. Thankfully I've been working on my d-throw d-air game a lot, and it paid off. I never relied on it since previously I would just go with an infinite. However, since he was at low percent I used d-throw d-air to link into an infinite and seal two of his stocks off textbook openings.
For the fourth game he took me to Corneria. This stage is one of Chu's favorite counterpicks and most ICs assert that it's good for them, but I've personally never liked it. Axe wanted to camp me under the fin, but fortunately I secured a lead and stayed out on the main body of the ship where he had to fight me in a completely open environment. I got the grabs I needed and took game 4, winning the tournament. There's very little for me to say because... I barely remember any of it.
I hope that wasn't too boring to read. The reason I bother posting all of that is because my mentality was radically different from my typical mindset when I play. Everything from my tech-skill to my thought process to my emotional responses to my reflexes were sharpened in ways that I didn't know were really possible for me. I barely spoke except to ask what stage we were going for counterpick, and I'm usually impossible to shut up.
What's really weird is that even after I won the last game (making for nine games of hyperfocused play) I went into the grand finals of the low-tier Brawl tournament with the same mentality still running strong. I came from loser's bracket in *that* as well and kept my mentality to win 6-0 against my opponent who had, earlier that day, 3-1'ed me with total ease.
So for fifteen games straight (six of which were Brawl matches which lasted almost 40 minutes in total when adding in my opponent's counter-stages and character select screens), I played different opponents, different characters and different GAMES in a mental state that I normally can't maintain for more than thirty seconds at a time. By my count, it lasted almost eighty minutes. When the tournaments ended and I snapped out of it, I was both exhausted and exhilarated. The second day of this local tournament was, without question, one of the best days of my career as a Smash player and possibly one of the best days of my life.
I'm going to post again later today with more thoughts on that mentality; this post has gone on long enough. Peace.
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