You're in the Right League

I should really be in Diamond, but...

Have you ever found yourself thinking this?  Or have you ever heard another low-level player say this?

Sometimes people find themselves in the Top 8 of their league and wonder why it is that they haven't been promoted.  They look at their rank and think that they're so close to getting to that "next level" that they basically "are" at that next level.  If only 11/11s, deathballs, and Zerg remaxing weren't so OP...

It's an easy trap to fall into.  After all, it's only natural to look at your ladder ranking, see that you're in the top 8% of your league, and assume that you're close to promotion.  Just a few more points and you'll make it, right?

The problem with slipping into this mindset is that it takes your focus off of improving and puts it on the "reward" you get for improving: league membership.  Once you fall into this trap of thinking that you should be in league X, your progress becomes stagnant.  You'll start grinding out games, thinking that since you're so close, all you need is just a few more wins and you'll get there.  You'll stop watching replays, you'll stop focusing on fixing your failures, you'll lose to the same things you always do, you'll start to rage, and you'll start blaming broken game mechanics, imbalance, and overpowered units for your failures instead of the thing that's really failing: you.

Your league and rank are indicators of your win percentage weighed against the rest of the Starcraft player base.  If you're not moving up in your league, it's because you aren't winning as often as you need to be in order to get promoted.  As I've discussed before, you can get to Masters and beyond just by cheesing.  If your goal is just to get to Masters, then you can certainly change your map settings to cheese friendly maps and 11-11/sixpool/proxy gate all day.  However, a lot of players might not define someone who can only cheese as being good at the game, and just getting to Masters isn't a good enough goal for you (I'm assuming, since you're reading this blog :P)

At the end of the day, if you actively focus on improvement and then improve as a result, you will win more games.  If you win more games, you will ultimately move up through the Starcraft leagues.  If you focus on moving up through the leagues, rather than improvement, then you run a good chance of staying exactly where you are - or even getting worse as you get lost in the frustration of going nowhere.  So if you find yourself thinking that you're "owed" a promotion, just remember this: You are in the correct league based on your win percentage.  If your win percentage was higher than it is now, you'd already be in the league above your current one.  If you were constantly improving, your win percentage would be going up.  Ladder points are ultimately meaningless - you can have a 50% win percentage and be at the top of your league, but a 50% win percentage isn't going to push you any higher than you are now :)  Bottom line: You belong where you are, and you are where you belong.  Get better, and you will move up.

There is an (admittedly) cheesy quote from Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon that encapsulates this a bit.  "It is like a finger pointing away to the moon.  Don't concentrate on the finger or you will miss all of that heavenly glory!"  The ladder leagues (Bronze, Silver, etc.) are fingers, pointing to the moon (being good at the game).  Focusing on the pointers will cause you to ignore what you need to get to the moon - constant improvement - and cause you to miss out on what you actually want - which is to get better at Starcraft.

A Quick Test and a Look at Emotions

When you get that pop-up in the middle of a game saying that your opponent is having connection issues, what goes through your head?

Do you take the moment to recalibrate, calculating your next few moves?  Are you bored?  Do you enter a zenlike calm?  Are you annoyed that your opponent's poor network connectivity is wasting your time?

Or do you sit anxiously with your mouse hovering over the "Kick" button, waiting for the counter to reach zero so that you can claim those sweet, sweet ladder points for yourself?

If you get excited when you see the "Waiting for Opponent" screen in the middle of your game, it's likely that you care more about winning than improving.  Now, there's nothing wrong with wanting to win - after all, it's probably the driving force that makes you want to get better at Starcraft - but if you're getting more excited about gaining ladder points than correcting your play, you might find harder to improve as efficiently as you want.

I wrote before about changing your win conditions, which is about adopting your mentality to one where you psychologically reward yourself for succeeding at specific in-game goals rather than for obtaining a VICTORY! splash screen.  But in talking about classical win/loss conditions, you need to keep the following in mind:

You win the game if your in-game actions force the opponent to surrender.

Not if your opponent disconnects due to network issues.  Not if your opponent leaves mid-game.  And not if your opponent beats you, but decides to give you the ladder points by GGing out before you do.  It might feel good to see that green text and ++ points in your match history, but it isn't a real win and it isn't proof of improvement.

The proper response to a disconnecting opponent should be no different than any other game.  Evaluate how you performed against your win conditions, watch the replay, take notes, and approach the next game with a plan and a desire to do better.  It's hard to not get excited when you think you might get an easy "win", and at the end of the day it's okay to feel good about them so long as you continue to work towards improvement.  But you always need to keep an eye on your emotions at the end of each game.  Anger at a loss will keep you from being curious as to why you lost.  Elation at a win makes it easier to gloss over your errors.  It's possible that you'll never feel entirely neutral from  wins/losses, and again, that's fine - so long as you're able to look past your emotions in order to do the work that you need to do in order to get better.  If you can build up the willpower to do what you need to do regardless of how you feel, then you have a good shot at efficient improvement and more wins overall.