Results Oriented
Thinking
The single biggest obstacle to becoming a better gamer
Down to the final two in a big
poker tournament the dealer dishes out your cards for the hand. Your opponent
looks nervous, his stack of chips is dwindling down with each round of blinds. All you need to do is close out this hand.
Here come the cards, Ace-Ace, the best possible starting hand. You bet enough
to put him all-in, which he reluctantly does to avoid being worn down to
nothing. The flop comes out, Ace-Two-Three. Sweet I've got Trips! The turn
comes, another Three. I have the best possible hand still. The river? Another
Three. Since he's all in you flip your cards to reveal your Aces full of Threes
Full House. He flips to reveal Four of a Kind Threes... STOP
What happens in your
mind immediately as this occurs is incredibly important. The average person
will say one of two things:
1) "He Got Lucky!": This is,
mathematically, accurate. Pocket Aces provides you with more than an 80% chance
to win before any other cards are dealt in Texas Hold-em Poker. Hitting the set
on the flop makes it even more so.
2) "I shouldn't have put him all in. I
should have slow played them.": In most situations where you have
the opportunity to put an opponent away you take it. He likely is going to have
to continue doubling up from all-ins to make a comeback to beat you so this is
your best chance to put the nail in the coffin.
What the majority of people don't realize is that there is another
way to look at this scenario...
3) "I made the right play and had the
right thought process behind that decision. That's all I can do. Let's look
forward to the next hand."
What is Results
Oriented Thinking?
Results
oriented thinking is a psychology term which describes the human condition
whereas we closely link the outcome of a task to how well we did the task. In
other words, when a person "wins" with a certain strategy they will
more than likely go back to that strategy again when provided a similar
scenario even if it wasn't correct. Conversely this also applies to losing. In
the example above, that player may never put an opponent all-in with pocket
aces ever again, even if it is the
correct play simply because they have lost with pocket aces a handful of times when they, statistically, shouldn't
have and FEAR the same result.
What causes us to
be results oriented thinkers?
It's
much easier to remember the extreme situations in our lives whether it's a
really tough paper you had to write for school or when you earned a scholarship
but these scenarios are few and far between. Statistically the majority of our
lives occur somewhere in the middle of these extremes. We've all seen a Bell
curve. You don't exactly remember your typical Wednesday where you woke up,
went to work, came home, ate dinner, and went to bed when you're reminiscing
with friends because your mind has no reason to label that day as memorable.
Now if you had gotten a raise at work that day you would probably remember that
day much more fondly. In competitive activities you tend to remember the
extremes just as you do in your life. It could be a really tough loss that
eliminates your team from the tournament or that time you scored three goals to
get the win but you rarely remember a "typical" game. Often we recall
the actual result and not the process of getting to that result. However it
isn't just this approach that causes us to have results oriented thinking.
One of
the most difficult things in both life and in competitive games is to accept
variance. What is variance? Variance is running into traffic because there was
an accident on the way to work. Maybe you get sick the day you have your final
exam, or the power goes out or any other myriad of unfortunate events that
hinder you from accomplishing what you came to do. Most good, competitive games
have a lot of variables that make them interesting from game to game. In poker,
each hand at an eight person table has, literally, millions of possible
layouts.
How does all of
this apply to League of Legends?
In
League of Legends there are currently 119 champions, 5 players on each team, 6
bans (in ranked games). If you crunch some numbers you'll be baffled at the
amount of possible combinations. If you compound other variables like DC's or
server lag or "feeders" the possibilities are nearly endless. The
point I'm making is that there is only one thing that every single solo queue
game you play has in common other than the actual game itself (League of
Legends in our case)...
The only constant
from game to game is YOU
There is an outstanding post from a League
forum that I read that compared League of Legends solo queue to poker and other
skill based gambling games like poker (I'll put the link at the bottom of this
article). The author describes your rating as the sum of three variables:
1) Your input:
This is everything from your mechanics to your decisions and other techniques.
Whether it be runes, masteries, item build, deciding to stay for the extra
wave, to roam for a gank, etc. Most importantly however, this is ALL
CONTROLLED BY YOU.
2) In-Game Events:
These are the things that are out of your control. A player DC's, the other
team makes an outstanding outplay, an invade fails miserably, your teammate is
a beast and carries you, etc. THESE ARE OUT OF YOUR CONTROL.
3) Volume/Sample Size:
This is simply your sample size. Amount of games, amount of times you've played
a specific matchup, amount of times you win with first blood. This can be
anything but the key point we're focusing on here is the volume of solo queue
games you play. YOU CONTROL THIS.
** The main point
here is that you control both 1 and 3 but you DO NOT control 2! **
"The exact same attitude that pro/semi-pro online poker players
have regarding individual hands is the one that pro/semi-pro LoL players have
regarding individual games. They both look ONLY at 1 for analysis/improvement
and completely ignore 2." -evmode (reddit)
The
moment that you make a conscious decision to ignore 2 and accept it is when you
can now choose to focus on both 1 and 3 which are the factors that will truly
help you improve as a player. However, it is not an easy mindset to accept and
apply.
"The difficulty with implementing this (approach) in LoL is that
each game takes so long - it's harder to emotionally isolate yourself from a 35
minute investment than in a 1 minute investment in a game like poker."
-evmode
The
reality is that it's extraordinarily difficult to completely remove emotion
from such a large investment of your time. For the vast majority of people
League is their leisure time and it sucks when your leisure time is ruined.
Ever gone on vacation and the weather sucked the entire time? It's not fun but
you make the best of it and enjoy your time off. You don't go on a psychotic
rampage directed at the weather and take it out on all of the people around you
because that would childish wouldn't it? Anyway, it's not easy to
"emotionally isolate yourself" from the result so how can you start
doing so?
STOP focusing on
the RESULT and START focusing on the PROCESS
The
best advice I give to people I'm coaching or giving tips to for ranked play is
to "Try to win but stop caring about winning." It's a little strange
I'll admit but the thought process behind the phrase is to get people to focus
more on their own play and less on others. Remember our poker example from
earlier? Someone that is thinking about the process (instead of the result)
will remember that he put his opponent all in because he knows that a pair of
aces has an 80%+ win rate in a heads up (1 on 1) situation against any other
pair before the flop. He knows why he made that play and that it was the
correct play to make so he has no reason to even question it afterwards. Heck,
if he won he probably wouldn't have even thought about it.
Hopefully
it's becoming a bit easier to see the big picture here but it can still be
difficult to get into this mindset consistently so here are some questions that
you can ask to start testing yourself:
- Why
did I choose this champion, this build, this rune page, etc.?
- What
did my opponent do well against me?
- Was I
monitoring the game state (buff timers, current builds of the strongest
players, etc.)?
- Was I
contributing positively in chat (or at least not negatively)?
You can also start doing the following:
-
Asking higher rated friends to review a replay with you
-
Practicing 1 v 1 against better players
-
Tracking advanced statistics (like I do!)
-
Consulting better players about pre-game strategy AND in-game adaptation
(#1 + #3) - #2 =
???
Going
back to our little math problem I think you can begin to piece together the
simple reality here. You need to play well consistently (#1 or 'your input')
and play A LOT (#3 or 'volume') to overcome variance (#2 or 'in game
events'). Simple right? Wrong!
The Dangers of
Flawed Self-Critique within a Mathematical System
"You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same
decaying organic matter as everything else." -Tyler Durden from
"Fight Club"
Losing
sucks. Having DCs sucks. Trolls suck. But the system doesn't care about your unfortunate
(or fortunate) series of events. The system only cares about the one constant
from game to game which is you. It doesn't care that you want 25-0 or that you
went 0-25. You are just a number. If you fed 10 games in a row and won 9 of
them all the system knows is that you won 9 games and lost 1 and it gives out
LP based on the "quality" (rating) of your opponents in those games
compared to yours. Does that mean you played well or "deserved" those
wins? Absolutely not. Once again #2 DOESN'T MATTER but the difference in this
situation isn't variance, it's your input (#1). You obviously made a lot of
wrong decisions and misplays but you were rewarded anyway.
The
point is that the rating system, be it ELO or League Divisions, is just another
thing fighting against you. You might be going up through the divisions with
ease even if your play isn't improving or is maybe even worse. Conversely you
might be dropping like a sack of Teemo's but your play could be significantly
higher than where you typically perform. Once again, the only constant from
game to game is YOU and you need to be your own evaluator because the numbers
and league divisions will only tell you a small part of the story. You need to
accept responsibility and take the proper steps fix errors whether you are
winning or not. THE RESULT STILL DOES NOT MATTER!
League of Legends
Solo Queue: The Second Job
That's
a hard truth to swallow for a lot of people. There are millions of people
playing this game and if you want to be great then you have to outwork the
competition. If you actually want to improve League of Legends isn't unlike
most jobs. If you get outperformed in the workplace you get replaced or that
other person that outworked you gets a raise while you're stuck twiddling your
thumbs and likely making excuses like "I've had to spend time with the
girlfriend" or "I went out and partied last weekend". Well guess
what? While you were doing that your co-worker was putting in extra hours,
working on a new program, cleaning the store, and doing other things to EARN
THEIR RAISE. In League, Mr. NextGreatPro88 was busy grinding out solo queue
games, practicing his last hitting, watching replays and discussing strategies
with high level players while you were busy playing Diablo 3, or hitting on
chicks at the bar. So why is it right to get mad at them? They deserve it more
than you don't they? Why do you feel you're entitled to that raise when you've
been outperformed? Because you're not, that's why.
Tempering
Expectations
I'm not
saying you need to drop everything you're doing and grind solo queue full time.
I'd actually highly advise against that. What I am saying is that, you can't
expect to step onto a stage and play Sergei Rachmoninov's 3rd Piano Concerto better than a famous pianist, or serve an ace to
Rafael Nadal. The saying isn't "Practice makes perfect" but
"Perfect practice makes perfect." Malcolm Gladwell says in his book
"Outliers: The Story of Success" that it takes about 10,000 hours of
practicing a specific task to truly master that task. Just like any other skilled activity, League
of Legends TAKES PRACTICE. Concentrated, focused, high-intensity practice. For
us League players that practice is best against equal or greater competition.
And that doesn't just mean playing norms with friends, or ARAMs every night.
You can't expect to achieve a high rating in League by playing 10 games and
then complaining about how you had feeders in two of them while you played 4
ARAM's yesterday.
Am I
saying that you can't have fun with your friends? No, you should. Am I saying
that AFKs, and DCs, and trolls are awesome? Absolutely not, they suck no matter
how you present it. Am I saying to drop everything and try to "go
pro?" No. All I'm saying is to have REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS. Much like most
things in life you get back what you put in. The 167th ranked Challenger
xMastaYoshi has put in 1442 ranked games SO FAR in Season 4. His win rate?
50.76% Not that impressive right? But he's put the time in to overcome the
variance. Make up your mind on whether you want it or not before you start
playing because doubling back on your goals because of a bad attitude is a poor
strategy in both life and video games.
Other scenarios in
which to avoid results oriented thinking
While
the applications of this concept reach far and wide across almost all
competitive activities there are a few other scenarios that commonly pop up in
League of Legends that I'd like to briefly discuss.
The
first of which is the concept of being "countered" in lane or
"counter picks." Typically a counter pick is a champion that excels
against the champion you are playing either in lane or in principle (a split
pusher vs a team fighter for example). Simply put, a lot of people either don't
have the proper sample size (amount of games) on a certain champion to even
know its actual counters and neither does the person playing the counter in most
situations. If you've lost to Teemo five games in a row it doesn't necessarily
make him a counter to your champion. You, the player, could have trouble
against Teemo or maybe you've played a handful of great Teemo players. Don't
judge a matchup on a small sample size.
Another
example I wanted to talk about is what I'm going to call "stubborn"
builds. This is something I see ALL THE TIME. Top lane bruisers that refuse to
build tanky even when they're losing because "my build is Hydra to Trinity
Force bro!" or mid laners that insist on Tear over Chalice against Leblanc
because "I need Archangel's not Athene's!" The fact is that people
are stubborn and this is another example of being ROTty (results oriented
thinking). Just because it worked for you in two previous games doesn't mean
it's always correct. The same applies to "odd ball" builds like ADCs
that relentlessly build Hurricane or other sub-optimal items just because
"it worked great this one time!" Grow up, admit to yourself that it's
not working, and do everything in your power to win.
Final Thoughts
The
odds are stacked against you. Millions of players, millions of variables,
constantly evolving game states, etc. Not only do you need to deal with the
external variables, however, you've also got to look inward. Am I making
mistakes? Did I build correctly? Am I doing everything in my power to improve?
I've always pictured your ELO or League rating as a number that defines how
consistently you perform but also how well you evaluate yourself. As we've already
discussed, the only constant from game to game is you. YOU determine how well
you play. YOU make all the decisions. YOU put the time in. YOU are also
responsible for knowing whether or not you're right or wrong which means doing
your homework, eliminating stubbornness and emotion from your decisions, and
ADMITTING YOU'RE NOT THE BEST.
One of
the inherent problems with competitive activities is that the human mind sees
only the result (results oriented thinking!!). Why do you think professional
sports teams have coaches? And why do you think those coaches have general
managers? It's simply because you often don't realize you're making a mistake
or need somebody to make an adaptation in your play for you. Now the
professional players have these resources but we do not. All we have is the
information we've accrued. I personally think that the biggest difference
between most challenger level players and most low to mid diamond players is
their ability to self reflect and adapt according to that information is
significantly stronger. Bronze players don't even know that what they're doing
is wrong. Silver players sometimes know they're wrong but not until after they
fail. Gold players know what they're doing is wrong and do it anyway, for
better or for worse. Platinum players know what they're doing is wrong and can
usually get away with it because they're "gifted" or just used to
making it work.
If I
had to sum up improving at League of Legends in three words it would be "constant self evaluation." Critique
every single nuance about YOUR play that you possibly can. Stop caring about
other people, or winning, or losing, or any of the other myriad of excuses that
are readily available to you. Take control of your own destiny. DON'T LET
YOURSELF MAKE EXCUSES! Focus on your own abilities and decisions, grind out the
games, and temper your expectations and I guarantee you'll find this game
significantly more satisfying. This is the biggest life lesson that a video
game has ever taught me and if you can apply it to your everyday life you'll
become more than a better gamer, but a better person.
