Competitive games are a means of expression as well. Players seem to have trouble approaching a game differently than they approach life in general. The way they take in information, the way they make decisions, the aspects they value, and the skills they excel at are usually similar inside and outside of the game. In fact, many people, myself included, have come to understand a lot more about who they really are through the way they end up expressing themselves in games. There are many forms of expression in the world, but one of the advantages of competitive games is that they force you to test your worldview against the worldviews of others. It’s easy to develop highly unpopular theories about life in general that you have no real way of testing, but competitive games force you to jump in, get dirty, and see how those ideas really stack up. If you are an unconventional genius, you will prove so beyond all doubt. If you are a confused quack, that too will be borne out, and you will have the opportunity to learn from others and change your ways.

Furthermore, competitive games teach you to focus on results. You can define yourself to be a great player, but the community will define winners in terms of their ability to win. They care about results, and you should too. Everyone “could be” the best player if only they practiced more, if only they had the chance to play more, if only this or that. But none of that really matters when the gold medal is handed out. The gold medal goes to the person who gets the job done. That is great lesson for anyone who is involved in any business endeavor at all. The grand, unfinished product or project is of little value compared to the one that demonstrates results. The brilliant, half-finished book is of little value compared to the published one. The daydreams of a better life are not as valuable as getting out there and effecting real change in your life, and getting results.

So the application of Playing to Win to real life is not a simple, direct relationship. It may require some wisdom on your part to know which aspects of games are diametrically opposed to real life, and which ones are not. Those are decisions you’ll have to make for yourself. Should you choose to truly Play to Win, though, I would expect your path to be as difficult and fulfilling as almost any other worthwhile personal journey you might undertake.

Happy gaming, and make your own luck.

—Sirlin

One way to go is to be a total jerk during your reign. You certainly can be. You can be shady, always involved in questionable rules calls and investigations of possible cheating. You can openly trash talk and belittle your competitors. You can be rude and obnoxious. You can be the villain. Some players act this way, drunk on the power they command in their little corner of the world. Some players are jerks to begin with and will act this way, power or not. Competitive gaming communities value the ability to win tournaments so much that they will put up with you, possibly even “love to hate you.” Tournament judges will probably be looking for excuses to make your life harder, but if you’ve gone down this path, you probably don’t care about that since you love the infamy of it all.

The thing you might not be thinking about, though, is that your involvement with your gaming community is likely to far outlast your reign of terror at the game. To get where you are, you’ve probably met many players who have become friends and acquaintances, and since you have common interests with them (the game you play), your relationships are likely to outlast your win streak. How will you be remembered when new kings of the game take your place?

My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

—Percy Bysshe Shelley, English Romantic Poet

Shelley’s poem was about a traveler who encountered a pedestal at a ruined statue surrounded by nothing but endless stretches of sand. Though the king’s accomplishments are long forgotten, his ire and arrogance live on. Incidentally, “Ozy” comes from the Greek “ozium,” meaning “breath” or “air.” “Mandias” is from the Greek “mandate,” meaning “to rule.” Ozymandius was a “ruler of air” or a “ruler of nothing.” Something to think about before getting too drunk on your own measure of “power” in your gaming community.

Good and Evil

It is not so easy as you might think to judge the actions of a powerful player as good or evil. Consider two examples: The Slaughterer and The Teacher.

The Slaughterer

This is the case of legendary Street Fighter player Thomas Osaki. I did not actually play with Thomas during his heyday, but I have since met him and I hope he forgives any misrepresentation of his conduct during his glory years.

In his day, Thomas Osaki dominated the game of Street Fighter in Northern California. His reputation for “playing to win” was quite extreme. They say he never really engaged in “casual play,” but rather always played his hardest, as if every game had something on the line or was a serious tournament. They say he played this way regardless of his opponent, even if his opponent were a nine-year-old girl with no skill at the game. He would “stutter step, throw” her like all the rest (a particularly “cheap” tactic). Did he have no compassion at all? Was he just a jerk? I like to think of Thomas (or his legend, in case it happens not to be true) not as mean player, but as an inspiring player. He set a bar of excellence. In his path of self-improvement, he was not willing to compromise, to embrace mediocrity, or to give less than his all at any time. His peers had the extraordinary opportunity to experience brilliant play whenever he was near, not just at rare moments in a tournament.

And what of the nine-year-old girl? Perhaps she had no business playing in the first place. From Thomas’s view, getting her off the machine allowed him to face the opponents he “should” be facing anyway.

Shadows and Vorlons

Before we get to The Teacher, and before you write me letters on any of this, consider the parable of The Shadows and the Vorlons from J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5 television series. In this space epic, the Shadows and the Vorlons are the two “ancient races” that have opposite belief systems about how to treat all of us younger races. The Shadows cause chaos and unrest. They make deals engineered to incite war between races and they double-cross their “allies.” They use nearly invulnerable spooky black ships piloted by kidnapped telepaths to attack, unprovoked. Obviously, they’re evil.

The Vorlons, on the other hand, are diplomatic and nurturing. They prefer to stay out of the action, letting the younger races develop on their own, but the Vorlons do make critical moves to help the younger races unite. In fact, the Vorlons even seeded the galaxy with certain DNA during the beginnings of life to guarantee that all of us younger races would grow up to view them as gods when they appeared. This way, we will all be sure to listen to their message and unite against the forces of the Shadows when the time comes. The Vorlons represent good.

Or do they? The Shadows eventually reveal that they are after the same thing as the Vorlons: to ensure that we younger races become strong and wise. The Shadows believe that showing up every few eons to shake things up frees the galaxy of the weak to make room for the strong. Coddling the weak, though poetic, is not healthy for the long-term survival of a race, they argue. The Vorlons seek similar ends, but through nurturing, promoting growth, and peace.

One argument against the Shadows is that they are imposing their will and their beliefs on everyone, which is seen as wrong. Consider the application to competitive games, though. There are two key differences. First, the Slaughterer does not impose his beliefs on everyone—only those who play his game. While humans were not free to simply ignore the beliefs of the Shadows, no one is forcing you to play competitive games at all, much less the Slaughterer’s particular game. You have entered his domain by choice. Second, the very nature of competitive games is that one player (the winner) imposes his beliefs about how to play the game on another player (the loser). Perhaps this is inappropriate in galactic politics, but it’s exactly what competitive games are about. Those who are turned off by the notion of the Slaughterer imposing his values of winning and losing really shouldn’t be playing competitive games in the first place (or they should adopt the values of the Slaughterer).

Although this Shadow approach may seem harsh, I am often reminded of the meetings between American and Japanese players of Street Fighter. In general, the Japanese are on a higher level of play (I won’t go into the reasons for that here). When faced with a new set of incredibly strong opponents such as the Japanese, wouldn’t you rather your own community of players were trained in a results-oriented system that pruned the weak and produced winners forged in fire? A nurturing, kindergarten-like system may have many more civic virtues, but when you face the Japanese (or any fierce opponents) only military virtues will save you.

Still, though, the Vorlon’s approach has some appeal. I know everyone wants their way to work and is rooting for good to triumph over supposed evil. Many players need coddling before they can mature into strong warriors. The gaming community as a whole needs nurturing teachers who can guide new players in the right direction. Surely the community as a whole would benefit from having nurturing teachers working to increase the number of overall players, and increasing the skill level of those players. By mentoring weaker players rather than just slaughtering them, they are increasing the overall level of competition and slowly forcing everyone to improve.

So who is right? Unlike the Shadows, I’m not here to impose my beliefs on you (on this topic, at least), so you will have to choose for yourself. I think either approach is viable and perhaps a gaming community needs people from each of these camps to be complete. I will say this, though: taking the Shadow’s approach will generally strengthen your own play skills, while taking the Vorlon’s approach will generally weaken them. Teaching has its virtues, but it is often bad for the teacher.

The Teacher

The Teacher does have to learn both the fundamentals and the nuances of a game well enough to teach. He will have plenty of opportunity to observe common mistakes and to critique the play of others. Unfortunately, there are no medals for critiquing play, only for winning, though there is something to be said for living vicariously through the success of your students.

The Teacher has several forces working against him. First, all the time he spends on helping weaker players could be spent playing against stronger players. Next, he can develop bad habits by using techniques on weaker players that would never work on stronger players. And what’s worse, he will not have even a fraction of the practice that the Slaughterer will have when it comes to “pushing as hard as you can for as long as you can.” The Teacher will often need to push just enough to challenge the student, giving them chances to learn this or that concept. Remember, even I advised playing weaker players as part of your development so you can hone a technique you’ll only get a brief chance to use in a real game. The Teacher must often take on the role of that weaker player.

Meanwhile, the Slaughterer learns to push and push and never let up, never give up. Every moment he plays the game, he plays as hard as he can. Even if his weaker opponents don’t give him practice in tactics, they always give him practice in keeping his intensity at 100% at all times, an invaluable tournament skill.

Slaughterer or Teacher, it’s up to you. Everyone defends the merciful teacher, but I hope I have made a case for you to appreciate the virtues of the cold slaughterer. He’s the one pushing the envelope of play skills, which makes his contribution incredibly valuable, even if it is not often popular.

When you’re king of the hill, there’s always someone waiting in line to knock you off the top.

—Sagat, boss character in Street Fighter 1,
to Ryu upon passing his title

You have probably thought a great deal about how to beat your peers and how to stay ahead of them in the race to improve. But your current peers aren’t your only competitors: new players, even players who have not yet started playing will eventually threaten you. You have so many advantages over them (knowledge and experience) that they are easy to dismiss, but they have youth on their side. Eventually, they will have more physical strength than you, and more powers of mental concentration—at least some of them will. Whether it’s tennis or chess, experienced players reach a point where they become vulnerable to newcomers, whether they like it or not. Newcomers are not without their own advantages, chiefly their ability to think “outside the box” because they either don’t know what the conventional wisdom is, or they reject it, as young rebels are known to do.

So if it’s not your current peers who dethrone and surpass you, the future generation of players combined with the ravages of “old age” will eventually get the better of you. By the way, “old age” can be as young as twenty-five in some games!

Will you do as the poet Dylan Thomas advised?

There are more forces than just other players and old age seeking to subdue you. The demands of the game itself on your lifestyle are serious concerns. No matter your inherent skills, dominating a game takes a huge investment of your time and thoughts. Life has many ways of pulling you away: a girlfriend (or boyfriend), spouse, kids or other family obligations, career obligations, a social life, or even other hobbies. And if all that isn’t enough, you may no longer have “love of the game.” Continuing to be the best at a game you no longer love, or never loved, is a difficult and hazardous thing to attempt. Those who love the game will find an easier time sticking to it, improving, and giving it their time and thoughts. Even if you can keep up with them, devoting such a large part of your life to something you don’t love is going to create its own problems that will no doubt eventually lead to your downfall.

Some games have it easier than others here. If you’re really so good and your game happens to be basketball, well, you don’t have to worry about your career at the pencil factory: you should be raking in the cash by now with your basketball career and advertising endorsements. Several of those life forces just lined up for you, so consider yourself extremely lucky.

Competitive video game players should be so lucky. Unfortunately, as of this writing, organized competitive video gaming is still in it’s infancy and “going pro” is only a reality for a very small number of players of select games. A few gaming organizations are trying to change this, and I’d love to help them make it a reality, but it just hasn’t come true yet. I deeply wish our society valued our mental games more than our physical games, not the other way around.

Since going pro is not a reality for most gamers, it’s entirely possible that sustaining any kind of balanced lifestyle with career and social or family life is incompatible with the time commitment necessary to stay on top of the gaming world. Savor it while it lasts.

1. Recognize that you have power, even if it is over the small group of people in this world who play your game.
2. Understand that your power is fleeting. There are many forces seeking to revoke your power and you may choose to combat them, or to give in to them.
3. Decide what to do with your power while you have it. What good or evil can you do? Who decides what is good or evil in the first place? What obligations, if any, do you have to other players and community members?

Now You're Playing with Power

You got the touch,
you got the power! “The Touch” by Stan Bush; Transformers: The Movie Soundtrack

If you are merely “theoretically” the best player of your game, I hate to break it to you: no one really cares. Instead, let’s focus on players forged in fire who have proven themselves in organized competitions. These players have taken on all challengers and have publicly demonstrated their dominance of the game. These players have power.

Competitive gaming communities are naturally hierarchical organizations with the very best players in an elite club at the top. Sometimes accompanying the best players at this highest echelon are other leaders: tournament organizers, website administrators, or presidents of player organizations. The only thing certain is that the very best players are always in this unofficial club, and they have enormous influence over the masses below them.

When these players speak about how to play well or correctly, the masses listen. If they believe that the game or the associated tournaments need rule changes or bans, they can rally support among the troops to effect change. (Maybe their ideas about things outside the game are ill-conceived, but their power does allow their message to be heard.) And whether they are seen as villains or heroes, they can assert dominance over anyone who disputes their in-game techniques. The high expert need not listen to the cries of scrubs, because the ultimate power—the power to win—is the final arbiter in any competitive gaming community worth its salt.

When the misguided scrub complains to you, or the earnest beginner challenges you, their fate is in your hands. You can strike them down without mercy. You can nurture and teach them. You can lose on purpose to them, either secretly or overtly. You control not only the outcome of the game, but also, to some extent, the perceptions of your opponents about the game, about you, and about competitive gaming in general.

The book Built to Last asks a similar question about which traits make a company the best in its industry. If Built to Last merely compared all #1 companies, it would have discovered such similarities as “they all have employees and buildings.” In order to avoid “discovering buildings,” Built to Last compared the best company in a number of industries to the second best companies in those industries. The best and second best shared a lot of traits, but the real question is whether there is a set of traits shared by the #1s that the #2s don’t have. So I tried to determine what distinguishes the best players of a game from the pack of near competitors, the top ten.

First, I identified a list of factors that I thought might be the most important ones, then looked at the best players of various games to see which factors really set the gold medallists ahead of the pack. This is all highly anecdotal and unscientific and slanted toward games I know about, so take it for what it’s worth, but I do believe that I’m on to something here.

Here’s my initial list of traits that I thought might make a gold medallist:

Familiarity with Tournaments & Deep Knowledge of the Game

If you are on the outside of competitive games looking in, then every single one of these traits is important to strive for. But again, some of them don’t actually distinguish the good players from the great ones. For example, “familiarity with tournaments” is something that pretty much all expert players had as a prerequisite to even be considered top ten. And “deep knowledge of the game at hand” is definitely something that separates expert players from average ones, but in no game was the very best player the one with the deepest knowledge of the game.

Love of the Game

“Love of the game” is a close one to call. #1 players are probably more likely to genuinely love their game than other top ten players who merely “call in” their performances. Having a love of the game probably allows a #1 player to remain #1 for much longer than he otherwise could, but there are plenty of terrible players who also love their games, so while it’s important, it’s hardly a solid distinguishing factor.

Mental Toughness

“Mental toughness” showed more promise. Almost by definition, the #1 player must possess a wealth of concentration and willpower that keeps him on track for the long hours of an organized competition. I’d like to emphasize how much easier said than done this really is. If anyone would be good at this, I’d think it would be me, yet I have often thought in the back of my mind how much easier it would be to lose the next round and be done, rather than to face the upcoming lineup of superstar players. That’s a horrible thing to ever think, and a lack of mental toughness probably does hold back some top ten players from becoming #1, but still there are even more important factors at work.

Mental Attitude Toward Winning, Losing, Improving

This was a tricky one. At first glance, many of the #1 players had extremely poor attitudes. Many are unwilling to give opponents any credit or respect and are generally full of themselves. But they were not always this way. They tended to have a much better attitude during their climb to the top than when they actually got there. Apparently, power corrupts. Those who have always had poor attitudes find it difficult to truly break through, so this really is a distinguishing factor, even though at first glance you see poor attitudes across all ranks of players. Of course, you also see bad players with great attitudes.

Technical Skill

I would think that in theory “technical skill” would be one of the defining traits of a #1 player in a “mature” game (a game that’s been around long enough that it has a low rate of new discoveries about gameplay). In actual fact, this does not appear to be true. Having more ability at executing difficult techniques surely never hurt anyone, and the best players of games that require dexterity usually do have a wealth of it. But the absolute best players are not the ones with the absolute best dexterity and technique, so there are more important forces at work.

Adaptability (Versus Planning)

“Adaptability” is a loaded term. First, let’s look at its opposite: Planning. Some players are highly concerned with knowing exactly how the game “system” works. They have deep knowledge of the game rules, the consequences of the rules, and the optimal situations they want to create. They have a plan. They will know that in a certain situation the opponent has, say, five reasonable responses. They will know the optimal counter that minimizes overall risk and maximizes overall reward. Perhaps the optimal counter ends up “even” versus responses 1 and 2, gives a small advantage versus 3 and 4, and a large advantage versus response 5. The Planner knows all the ins and outs of this situation, how to steer the game into it, and the “solution” to it. I once heard a player claim that he could beat anyone in a very particular character matchup in a particular fighting game. When asked why he was so confident, he said “because I know the algorithm.” “Knowing the algorithm” is something I have been known for and teased about for years. It’s the perfect motto of the Planner.

But this quality is rarely seen in #1 players, which is somewhat surprising to me. I would think that players who have a deep knowledge of the game system and know the optimal responses to all guessing games are the players who would tend to come out on top. Perhaps the personality type of the Planner is so rare that it simply occupies a proportionately small number of the #1 spots in various games. Or perhaps, the entire approach is inferior to Adaptability. A great many players I asked listed Adaptability as one of the three most important traits of a #1 player, and I didn’t even list it as a choice to color their responses. Some even use it as their main measure of determining how good another player is: can the player adapt quickly to new situations? Oh, and if the Adaptive player were put into the situation described above (with the 5 possible enemy responses), then how would he react? He might not even need to know the totality of the situation. All he knows is that you will do response 5, and he’s not falling for it.

Here is an anecdote about Adaptability. The “B3” tournament was a landmark in fighting game history. It marked the first meeting between virtually undefeated players John Choi and Alex Valle in the game Street Fighter Alpha 2. Each easily cut through the field, eventually to face each other in the finals. At this time, Alex Valle unleashed a new technique never seen before, something he had saved until this moment. I should note that “saving your good stuff” backfires 99 times out of 100, but this is one of those storybook situations almost too extreme to be true. Valle’s technique, which an untrained eye would probably not even notice, went on to become the single most powerful technique in the game, it changed the way the game was played, and it was immediately named “the Valle CC” after the man himself. The point is, this was no ordinary trick, but the most powerful, game-changing tactic the game would ever know.

How did Choi fare in such unfamiliar waters? Many players would have lost the entire set without even realizing what Valle was doing. Choi may not have fully grasped what was going on, but he knew the rules were suddenly very different. Choi ultimately lost that match, but to leave it at that is an injustice. He changed his gameplay, got caught fewer and fewer times by the new trick, and even managed to do it back to Valle! Valle dominated several rounds, but his grasp slipped more and more as the games went on. The crowd was in utter awe that Choi could possibly even hang in there against such odds, much less slowly shift the momentum in his favor. The match went the full count of possible games: all the way to the last bit of health of both players in the 3^rd and final round of the 14^th and final game. By a razor’s edge, Choi lost. Yet even today, that match is cited as the most amazing display of Adaptability in fighting games. Planning would have been of little use to Choi in that match, yet Adaptability is seen by nearly all as a rare and distinguishing factor of the most elite players. And don’t let that story give you the wrong impression of Valle either. He richly deserves his status as a #1 player, and while he may not be a strong Planner, he has proven time and again his utter dominance in the realm of Adaptability.

Knowledge/Ability in Other Games of the Genre

“Knowledge/ability in other games of the genre” is a somewhat unexpected trait for a #1 player to have. After all, if a player is really so good as to dominate a field of obsessed, bloodthirsty competitors, then how could he possibly have the time or energy to play other games at a high level, even other similar games? While not all gold medallist players show this trait, a surprising number of them do. I believe this is more of an effect than a cause of their greatness, though. It demonstrates that there is a heart to competitive gaming that lies beneath the details of a particular game. The best players are in tune with these underlying concepts, and carry them into any game they play. Furthermore, the #1 players tend to be highly Adaptive rather than Planners, so they don’t need deep understandings of a game system to do well at it. They can often just stumble into a similar game, learn the bare basics, and quickly adapt to avoiding the deadly tricks that more knowledgeable opponents rely on.

Yomi

“Yomi” and Adaptability often go hand-in-hand. A Planning-type player can exhibit good yomi skills by knowing a particular situation so well, that he knows all reasonable responses and their payoffs, so he can make a strong, educated guess about what you will do. But the Adaptive players are more likely to just “know what you will do” in the first place. It pains me to have to speak about yomi in such non-scientific terms, but it appears to be a mysterious, right brain function that is inherently hard to explain. One thing is for sure, though: the yomi abilities of top players are unmistakable. Perhaps it must be seen to be believed, but believe me: I’ve seen it over and over and over. Some players just “guess right” almost every time. I used to believe that yomi was the single most important factor in distinguishing #1 players from the rest of the pack. The reason is that it’s the one absolutely clear factor that #1 players have and their close competitors don’t. And I have never seen a player who consistently gets 8^th place who has people gossiping about and fearing his yomi abilities. That honor rests squarely in the hands of the best, and only the best players.

Some games are designed to reward yomi skills more than other games. Perhaps poker is one of them. But in the realm of fighting games, there is one game that requires, or at least rewards, yomi skills ten times more than any other fighting game: Virtua Fighter. This game has a very elaborate system of paper/rock/scissors (with unequal payoffs) going on. The high speed at which you must make these decisions makes yomi even more important than it otherwise would be, because it will all go by too fast for you to even enter a guess unless you have a very good idea of what the opponent will do.

Virtua Fighter puts the player in a series of rapid-fire guessing games. The number of interactions—that is, the number of guessing games per second—is so high that masters of yomi shine above all others. The game offers the Planners a wealth of systems to understand as well, but I don’t think any Virtua Fighter player would disagree that yomi is the primary skill of unbeatable players in that game. Does Virtua Fighter merely demonstrate which players had the best yomi skills all along? Or does it develop yomi skills in all its players more than other games do? I’m not sure of the answer, but perhaps both are true.

Consider the Japanese Thumb game. In this game, all players start by holding out both fists. One player starts the action by yelling “1, 2” (to get the other players ready) and then another number, which is his guess. Right after he yells “2” each player sticks up either 1 thumb, 2 thumbs, or no thumbs. The active player is trying to guess how many total thumbs (including his own) will be up. If he is wrong, the next player takes his turn. If he is right, he removes one of his hands from the game and takes another turn. The first player to remove both hands from the game wins. There is a special exception rule that if the active player guesses “0 thumbs” and he is correct, then he wins the game instantly.

The Japanese Thumb game is pure yomi. I see no logical explanation for why one player would be any better at it than any other player. And yet in gatherings of fighting game players, the Virtua Fighter players always win this game. Yomi is an inexplicable, unseen force, but it is very real, and possessed by the very best of all players.

Appraisal

“Appraisal” or “Valuation” is the ability to judge the relative value of different pieces, moves, tactics, or strategies in a game. This might be the most important skill in competitive games. If Yomi is understanding the opponent, then Appraisal is understanding the game itself.

In some sense, this skill is, by definition, what all competitive games are about. Games are about making decisions, which of course makes them about knowing the relative values of the pieces and situations in question. Some claim that “Appraisal” is just too obvious and basic a thing to place on such a high pedestal. But when I looked at all the best players of the games I know, this skill tied it all together for me.

The best players are usually doing somewhat weird things that most players don’t understand. I picture a bell curve of “valuations” that players have about their game. What I mean is that there is a large number of players in the middle of that curve who share common beliefs about what is good and effective, and what is not. They represent the “conventional wisdom” about the game. But there are a few players at the extreme end of the bell curve who have different views on what is good. In their world, some of the commonly known tactics don’t work on elite players, so they are worthless. Some moves or tactics are seen as worthless to most, but the elite player has a very specialized or refined use of them that makes them highly effective. Basically, because these players are on a higher level of understanding about the game—either with an explicit, logical analysis or through inexplicable intuition—they see the game through different eyes and see different relative values. Sometimes the conventional wisdom is just wrong about a game, and only the best players are able to step out of the mold and not be bogged down by how the masses incorrectly think the game should be played. And these elite players very often cannot explain in full, logical, step-by-step detail exactly why they value one thing so much more than another. I think the mental process for arriving at these valuations and the process for fully explaining them to others are very different things. You are better off watching what the masters do than asking them why they do it.

The moment all this crystallized for me was when I was thinking about taking up a new game. I knew a player who knew quite a bit about this game and was at least fairly good at it. It seemed natural for me to ask for his advice on how to learn the game. And yet, I hesitated to do so. I thought at first it was some deficiency of my own, perhaps an irrational fear of losing to him that made me shy away. But then the real reason occurred to me: I did not trust his Valuation skills. It’s not that I knew anything about this game that would contradict what he thought (I knew almost nothing), but I knew his personality and his style and performance in other games. He always has a clear, well-articulated argument about why a certain tactic or character or whatever is good and why another is bad. It’s usually hard to refute his views in a debate, as he has facts and reasoning behind them. And yet, they so often prove incorrect once tournament play reveals which characters and tactics are actually good.

And then I realized that all my #1 players displayed unusually good Appraisal skills in some way. In fighting games, they often tended to play characters that others didn’t think were good, or characters no one else could play well. These players are just a little out in left field with what they’re doing, because only they know what really is good to be doing in the first place. Many of them were not “innovators” since they didn’t personally discover these weird things, but they all were able to recognize a good thing when they saw it, more readily than their peers.

The reason I now put Appraisal even higher than yomi on my list of traits for the gold medallist is mainly that in most games, there are only so many opportunities to yomi, but almost everything you do in the entire game is some measure of your Appraisal skills.

I should make another distinction in Appraisal, breaking it into two categories, because it applies to both the Planner and the Adaptor. Consider the example of chess. The “conventional wisdom” of the game ranks the value of pieces according this scale: pawn 1 point, knight and bishop 3 points, rook 5 points, queen 9 points, and king infinite points. But how true is the conventional wisdom? Maybe, when all is said and done, bishops really are worth a bit more than knights. Or even more to the point, how much are pawns really worth? One of the great advances in chess theory was the realization that chess is really all about the pawns. Open versus closed pawn structures lead to very different types of games.

Pawns are the soul of chess.

—Philidor, Musician and unofficial World Chess Champion of 1750

So this type of Appraisal comes from deeply understanding the system of a game and realizing which forces are more important than others in determining the outcome. Often, a Planner-type player is thinking in these terms.

The other type of Appraisal is of a much more specific nature. Rather than caring about which general principles are more correct, the player is adept at judging the relative value of moves in a particular game situation. Yes, bishops are generally worth the same as knights, but in this particular board situation, perhaps the bishop is worth everything and the knight is worthless. A player good at this type of Appraisal does not necessarily have a good grasp of the underlying game system or the theories about the game’s strategy, but he knows exactly what is good and what is not, right here and now given a specific, complicated game position.

Just as Virtua Fighter is an unusually good test of yomi skills, Magic: The Gathering is an unusually good test of Appraisal skills. It is a card game with thousands and thousands of cards, where the player must build a deck of only 60 cards (or 40, depending on the tournament format). There are cards that are bad, but seem good. There are cards that are good, but seem bad. There are cards that are strictly better than other cards in most situations, but far worse in very specific situations. There are cards that are incredibly good, but no good deck can be built around them. There are cards that are bad, but are used in the very best deck because the rest of the deck is utterly dominating and desperately needs a certain ability, even if the best available source of that ability is on an otherwise terrible card.

Perhaps the hardest lesson to learn, the lesson that every Magic player seems to have to learn over and over, is that there are great cards that come together to make great decks that ultimately do not win because they aren’t as good as something else that’s out there. It’s easy to get excited when you see a great deck come together, but the “great deck” does not exist in a vacuum. Very often, there is some completely different deck that’s trying to do completely different things, and that other deck is ultimately stronger than yours. It’s not that yours is bad per se, but the opportunity cost of not playing the even better deck is just too high. It’s all about the relative value of the decks, not their absolute measures. Even when you’ve learned that lesson and have found the actual “best deck” to play in a given card pool, you still might be foolish to play it. You also have to judge the “meta-game,” which is the landscape of deck choices all your competitors have made at a given tournament. Perhaps they all know about this “best deck” and have all decided to play decks that do nothing at all but beat that deck. Sometimes, the “best deck” can still win even when subjected to extreme hate, so again it’s all about judging the relative value of the pieces.

The so-called “limited” formats of Magic (including sealed deck and draft formats) require you to make choices on the fly about the relative value of cards that you will put into your deck. In limited formats, it’s more difficult to rely on the conventional wisdom of which decks are good, so some players value these formats even more highly because they test Valuation skills more.

Magic is an interesting case, because some players argue that the game is too random, yet the same few players are able to consistently win tournaments. Currently, Germany’s Kai Budde is the #1 Magic player in the world, and I believe the main factor is that his Appraisal skills are that much better than everyone else’s, especially the second type of Appraisal, the moment-to-moment type. Everyone knows that Wild Mongrel is a great Magic card and that Merfolk Looter is a good card. Which is more valuable in general? Such things are debated endlessly on forums and chat rooms about the game. More importantly, though, which one is more valuable in a specific game situation? When you factor in the life totals of each player, the time left on the clock, the number of cards in each player’s hand, the quality of those cards (some might be useless, “dead” cards), the other cards in play already, etc., you’ll find that it all depends on the exact situation. So who knows if it’s a good idea to make a move that kills your Wild Mongrel and their Merfolk Looter, given a specific, highly complicated game situation? I’ll tell you who knows: Kai Budde knows.

Basic R&D

Playing to win and playing to learn are often at odds. If you play the game at hand to maximize your chances of winning, then you won’t take the unnecessary risks of trying out new tactics, counters, moves, patterns, or whatever. Playing it straight is the best way to win the game at hand, but at the cost of valuable information about the game that you may need later and valuable practice to expand your narrow repertoire of moves or tactics.

Here’s a simple example from Street Fighter. Let’s say I know for a fact that one split second from now my opponent will do a particular “super move.” To win the game at hand, the smartest thing to do is just block the move, but that doesn’t teach me a whole lot. How invulnerable is his super move, anyway? Could I have stuck out an early kick that would knock him out of his super? Or could I have waited for the “super flash” to happen (signifying the beginning of his super move) and then done an invulnerable dragon punch 1 frame (1/60^th of a second) later? Maybe my invulnerability will last longer than his and I’ll knock him out of it. Maybe his will always win. That’s valuable information to have for the time when you have zero energy and the opponent forces you to block the super move and die. This situation will happen in the tournament, so you better know what your options are.

Very often in “casual play” I will forgo the safe option in order to try possible counters to certain moves. Even if I lose a game when a possible counter turns out not to work, the knowledge gained is well worth it, since I’ll never make that particular mistake again (I hope!). If you really want to play to win, you have to know all the options open to you at every moment and that doesn’t happen without a lot of disastrous experiments.

This concept applies to pretty much any game, of course. “Will my six Corsairs really beat his twelve Mutalisks in StarCraft?” Or, “I know I have the flak cannon, but will the shock rifle combo work just as well around corners in Unreal Tournament?” You will never know unless you try it.

Honing Suboptimal Tactics

Early in a game’s life, players have not yet figured out which strategies and tactics are actually the best, though many players will claim to know all. Those players may very well know better tactics than other players of their time, but games evolve. New things are discovered that make old tactics obsolete. Usually, radically different and better tactics are discovered that put the old ones to shame. Sometimes, new counters are discovered that can entirely defeat the old “best” tactics. In a fighting game, you also have the concept of figuring out which characters are the best. It can take months (or years!) for players to figure out that character X, though widely thought to suck, is actually able to abuse bug/feature Y in such a way as to be nearly unbeatable.

So how does all this relate to playing to win? The hardcore “Play to Win” player will choose his one character, his set of powerful tactics, and hone them to perfection over time. He’ll know all the tricks for that character to perform those tactics. For example, in the fighting game Marvel vs. Capcom 1, he might pick Mega Man and learn the “rock ball trap.” This is a pattern of attack where Mega Man creates a soccer ball (“rock ball” in Japan), kicks it diagonally across the screen, then fires one blue projectile in the air, then one on the ground. That’s three projectiles total, controlling the play field. While the opponent deals with that, Mega Man has time to summon another soccer ball and repeat the pattern.

A serious Mega Man player will learn the rock ball trap variations needed against Chun Li, the different variations needed against Venom, and so on. Other players will find tricks to negate the usefulness of the rock ball trap in general, then the Mega Man player will find the counter-tricks that allow him to keep the pattern going. This will feel a lot like “Playing to Win,” but in the end, this player will do precious little winning. He will have mastered a suboptimal tactic that in the end is not bad, but isn’t one-tenth as good as other things that other characters can do.

I think of a game as a topological landscape with lots of hills and peaks that represent different tactics/strategies/characters. The higher the peak, the more effective that strategy is. Over time, players explore this landscape, discover more and more of the hills and peaks, and climb to higher locations on the known hills and peaks. Players can’t really add height to these peaks; they are only exploring what’s there, though that is a rather philosophical distinction. The problem is that when you reach the base of a new peak (say, the rock ball trap peak), it can be very hard to know that the pinnacle isn’t very high. It might be really difficult to climb (lots of nuances to learn to do the trap), but in the end, the effectiveness of the tactic is low compared to the monstrous mountains that are out there. You have reached a local maximum, and would do better to go exploring for new mountains.

In other words, playing to win involves exploring. It involves trying several different approaches in a game to see which you are best at, which other players are best at, and which you think will end up being the most effective in the end. When you are perfecting your rock ball trap (your best chance of winning at the time), you have to realize that “playing to win” might actually involve taking up a new character you know nothing about—a character that you will eventually play ten times better than you could ever dream of playing Mega Man.

It cannot be found by seeking, but only seekers shall find it.

—Sufi Proverb

Learning Secret Lore

Tournament play often creates critical moments of decision when you are exposed to a very strange situation in the game. In a tournament, the best players get to play each other, often with a clash of play styles. They each have their own tricks and must find immediate answers to the tricks of their opponents. And it’s not just for fun anymore, it’s “real.” It matters. Under this pressure, players find creative and unusual solutions to the tricky spots they get put into.

When these strange situations come up, will you be familiar with them? Do you know the options and the risks involved? Knowledge of “secret lore” or unusual interactions in a game often means the difference between winning and losing.

And how will you learn this secret lore? Perhaps you are preparing for a tournament, practicing, playing to win. What will you practice? You’ll practice the things you know you need to do the most in a match. You’ll practice against the things that you know you’ll face. Basically, you’ll do it all “by the book.” Consciously preparing for a tournament is pretty much the opposite of exploring “unusual situations.” In your practicing, will you seek out a player of a character you think sucks? Will you play characters you have no intention of playing in the tournament? Probably not. But what happens when a mysterious player out of nowhere shows up with that “sucky” character, and shows everyone how good that character really is? That other character you were messing around with might be just the thing you need. Too bad you didn’t explore that, you were “playing to win.”

The Karmic justice of it all is that love of the game really does count for something. Those who love the game play it to play it. They mess around. They pick strange characters, try strange tactics, face others who do the same, and they learn the secret knowledge. Those who play only to win can’t be bothered with any of that. Every minute they spend playing goes toward climbing their current peak, attaining their local maximum. Perhaps they don’t even like the game enough to be bothered with anything except the most mainstream character and the most mainstream tactic with that character.

I practiced pretty hard for a tournament in Super Turbo Street Fighter that occurred on August 9-11, 2001. Before the tournament, I decided to play only Dhalsim and to practice him a lot against whomever I could. I also happen to actually like the game, and I’d sometimes mess around with my “fun characters” of Honda and Ryu, and occasionally with my “professional” character: Bison. Dhalsim was my focus, though.

When the actual tournament came around, I would have never guessed what it all came down to. My Dhalsim did well, and it came time for me to face a well-known Japanese player who plays T-Hawk. T-Hawk is known to be terrible, especially against Dhalsim, but this was a prime example of a player who could work magic with a “sucky” character. After one game, my Dhalsim was utterly destroyed, and I needed a change of plans. I figured that my “casual play” Honda would do well, since I could sit and do nothing the entire game and be safe from T-Hawk. If he ever got near, I could head-butt and knock him away, then sit and do nothing. Anyway, my performance—a true exhibition of stubbornness and boringness in tournament play—paid off. I defeated the Japanese player in an utterly ridiculous character matchup that no one would ever predict actually happening in a tournament. I went on to lose another ridiculous character matchup against a different Japanese player, but that’s another story.

The unlikely moral here is that playing to win is often counter-productive. Those who love the game and play to play will uncover the unusual nuances that might be important in a tournament. Those nuances might never be important, but the “play to play” player doesn’t care. It’s all for fun, and he’s happy to accumulate whatever knowledge he can. The “play to win” player might lock himself into perfecting certain tactics/strategies/characters that will eventually be obsolete, as hard as that will be to believe at the moment. Meanwhile, the player who is able to take a step back and mess around will either discover new mountains to climb, or at least take a stab at climbing some other known mountains. The joke’s on you when his mountain turns out to be ten times higher than yours.

My Own Advice

In 2003, I began to realize that there’s a higher mountain out there in Super Turbo Street Fighter than the characters I had been playing. Given my personal skills and deficiencies and the meta-game of which characters I often lose to in tournaments, I decided to take up Vega as a new character (the Spanish fighter with the metal claw). For several tournaments I played Vega, and if I lost, I switched back to my old standby, Bison. That Vega practice paid off once the East Coast Championships 9 tournament rolled around in 2004. Besides a single match where I played Bison, I played Vega the entire tournament and won 1^st place, with a record of 8 rounds to 0 in the finals.

A Note From Japan

Months after writing the above chapter, I traveled to Japan in March 2003 as part of Team USA, representing the United States in Super Turbo Street Fighter. I also played a bit of Capcom vs. SNK 2 over there. One interesting thing about Japanese players is that they stick with just one character (or one team of characters in CvS2), since their tournament format requires keeping the same character the entire tournament. In the United States, we can switch characters between games, giving us an incentive to learn at least two to four different characters.

The Japanese players definitely proved to me that by sticking to one character and learning everything about that character, you win the unwinnable matches. In both Street Fighter games I played in Japan, I saw Japanese players who devoted themselves to supposedly weak characters and demonstrated that the topological peaks for those characters are miles higher than I had realized. One might think that that invalidates some of the points I made about exploring many mountains in hopes of finding the highest, yet the winner of the CvS2 tournament used the same old unfair, broken characters and tactics that we’re all aware of (A-groove, roll-canceling Blanka/Sakura/Bison for those who care). That same player, Tokido, won the CvS2 portion of the 2001 tournament I mentioned above, so perhaps he’s proved my point after all. He’s identified what many players agree is the highest peak of that game, and devoted himself to perfecting it. Unfortunately he’s an incredibly boring player, but nonetheless a boring player who won the US National and Japan National tournaments!

You should seek out formal matches in the form of tournaments. The best way to measure your progress is to measure your ability to win, but matches you play outside of formal competition, real as they may seem, are rarely a good measure of much. The strongest steel is forged in the hottest flame, and fiercest competitor is forged in the most serious battle. Casual play is often for “fun” but tournament play is for blood.

In a tournament, even the same opponents you are used to facing may rise to a higher level of play. Players sometimes save their secrets—their best tactics—for serious competition. In a tournament, players tend to be more conservative. They also tend to find answers to tactics they have never answered before, because now they have to. They may cling to life in the game like the fate of Earth depends on it, whereas in casual play they freely give up a game in a position of disadvantage.

As you can see, playing for “fun” and playing to win are wildly different pursuits. Edward Lasker (who only coincidentally shares his name with the ultimate grandmaster Emanuel Lasker) summed this up at the beginning of the second half of his book Chess for Fun & Chess for Blood.

In the preceding pages, we have looked only at the pleasant side of chess—the kind played among amateurs for the excitement of a battle without bloodshed, in which the supreme command is in their hands, but the outcome of which is of no grave consequence to either player.

There is another side to chess, however, which is quite different—tournament and match games played by masters or those striving to become masters, whose standing, if not livelihood, may be seriously affected by the outcome.

Such games are no fun, even for the winner. They are the hardest work imaginable. You play for blood! You avoid the lure of beautiful combinations unless you see clearly that they do not endanger your chance to draw the game at least, if you cannot win it. For it is not the beauty of a combination which wins a tournament, but the number of points you make—a whole point for a win, a half a point for a draw, and an ‘egg’ for a loss.

Understanding Tournaments

I remember at one of my first game tournaments, I did not perform as well as I thought I should have. I entered with a friend who happened to be the one of, if not the, best players in the country, John Choi. (Yes, he won that day.) He counseled me “Don’t worry. You just aren’t used to tournaments yet.” I disagreed and responded, “No, it’s not that. I just didn’t play well today.” I now know that Choi was correct.

The tournament is a strange beast to those unfamiliar with its workings. There are many rules and nuances that have to do with running the tournament, apart from the rules of the game itself. Perhaps the tournament is single elimination format, or double elimination with a loser’s bracket, or round robin, or Swiss. Perhaps players are seeded based on past performance. Seeding ensures that the best players have early matches against the worst players. But why should this be? If you are new, how is it fair that you have to fight the best players right off the bat? You might be inclined to complain about this or challenge the entire concept. The purpose of seeding is to prevent the very best players from eliminating each other early in a single or double elimination tournament. This is an example of something that you should waste no mental energy on during the actual tournament. (It is a matter of course to the veteran.)

There are many customs in a tournament. How will you determine whether you are the 1^st player or 2^nd player in a game where that is meaningful? How will you pick your characters in a fighting game or your side in war game, or your color in chess? The newcomer to tournaments, even if he is an expert at the game, will find himself a stranger in a strange land of foreign customs. When others talk to you, are they genuinely interested in being friends? Or are they “scouting you out” to find out if you are a threat or which tactics you might use? If you have a thorough understanding of tournaments and how they work, this is a much easier question to answer and you will need to expend no mental energy on paranoia.

What is the format of a match in the tournament? A match is an encounter with an opponent that may take the form of a single game, or a set of games. In a single or double elimination tournament, the winner of the match (overall set of games with that opponent) is usually all that matters. Do you need to care about winning individual games, perhaps for tie-breaker reasons? Or is only winning matches important? What about the feel of a match? If a match is best 3 out of 5 games, you will need to have a feel for the flow of gameplay over the course of 5 games. Often, one player will be able to “figure out” the other, and the scales will tip more and more in his favor as games go on. You must be able to identify the moment that this is happening, and if you are the victim, then you better change things up one way or another. Does your tournament allow you to change what it is you control in the game between matches? In a fighting game, you can switch characters if you lose. (At least in America you can. In Japan, you cannot!) In a real-time strategy game, usually both players may switch “races” (sides) after each game. In the card game Magic: The Gathering, players are not allowed to switch decks between games, but both players are allowed to alter their 60-card decks by swapping in and out cards, one for one, from a pre-registered “sideboard” of 15 extra cards. It takes time to be able to identify when you should switch your strategy and when you shouldn’t. All these factors are tied up in the strange practices of tournaments and can really throw off excellent players who are simply not excellent tournament players.

The only way to truly test yourself is through formal competition. You should not become merely an excellent player, as that is a very subjective thing. You must become an excellent tournament player. You must win tournaments.

Preparing for tournaments

Depending on who you talk to, preparing for tournaments takes either an enormous amount of work unthinkable by the layperson, or it takes none at all. In college, I used to say that the more you prepare for a final exam, the worse you’ll do. The reason is that if the final exam is mere days away and you need to cram for it then your battle is already lost. Despite your best efforts, it will be hard to compete against students who have developed a natural understanding of the material and have been able to think about it and mentally manipulate it over the semester.

Gaming is not so different. Things learned at the last minute just aren’t as effective as things you’ve fully integrated into your play over a long period of time. If something requires physical dexterity, you’re much better off if it becomes deeply engrained in your muscle memory. If it’s a tactic, you’re much better off practicing it over time against a variety of opponents in order to gain a full, first-hand understanding of it. Basically, if you stay on your path of continuous self-improvement then you are prepared for a tournament.

However, an upcoming tournament is a way to refocus your approach to the game. There might be a few techniques you know you are bad at, but you usually get away with not doing them. If you are serious about the upcoming tournament, you will isolate those techniques and practice them by rote, no matter how boring or time consuming it may be. You might have a tendency to explore the unusual corners of the game. In a fighting game, perhaps you often play bad characters because you can. In a real-time strategy game, you play your “fun race” rather than your “business race” or you build “fun units” rather than “business units” in order to show off or have a little more variety. In a first-person shooter, you might develop skills with ridiculous weapons that are mostly useless. All of this may give a deeper understanding of the game, but in the tournament, you will not have the opportunity to explore every facet of the game; you will have just a few chances to show what you can do, and you better make them count. In a fighting game, you’ll be playing your best character so that is what you need to practice. In a real-time strategy game you will pick your best race, use your best build order and your best tactics. In a first-person shooter, you will use your best weapons and run your best routes on the map. It’s nice to have some backup options, but let’s be practical. Preparing for a tournament forces you to set aside your “fun” and develop the skills more important for winning. In a fighting game, you might be able to improve your skill at a certain character from a 20 to a 75 out of 100 (in arbitrary “skill units”) in the same time that you could develop your main character from a 93 to a 93.5. But your main character is what is going to win you the tournament, and you need every edge you can get with him.

Another aspect of preparing for a tournament is knowing the meta-game that you are facing. That means knowing the prevailing trends of how the game is being played now, and how it will be played at the tournament. In Warcraft, is everyone going to play Night Elves and rush with Huntresses? In Street Fighter, is everyone going to play Chun Li? In Magic: The Gathering is everyone going to play a mono-red Sligh beatdown deck? If you don’t know what you are going to face, you can be really thrown off come tournament day. Having an inkling of the meta-game lets you prepare for the right things. This is unusually important in a game like Magic: The Gathering where everyone brings their own custom-made decks to the tournament. If you know everyone is going to play a certain type of deck, you can make a deck that would ordinarily be bad, but is designed to beat what is popular. Being well-connected with your gaming scene and regularly attending tournaments gives you an advantage over the more isolated players.

In my own fighting game experience, I have seen that at high levels of play, the “meta-game” has an entirely different meaning. Top players usually don’t need to consider the prevailing trends of how the game is played overall, because they can easily crush the mid-tier and below players anyway. But they often do need to consider the “mini-meta-game” composed of the current tricks and techniques of the two or three other players in the tournament who can actually beat them.

Either way, you can see that knowing your enemy is part of preparing for tournaments. Time and time again, I have seen new players who think they are very good claim that they would do well in tournaments, and they basically never do, at least not right away. Part of being good is being plugged into the tournament meta-game, and it’s extremely difficult, and in some games impossible, to simply develop skills in a vacuum then waltz in and win a tournament.

If there were ever a player who played to win, it was Capablanca. Throughout his career he refused to study chess books or openings, which would ordinarily not be considered the attitude of a champion, but Capablanca was no ordinary player.

At the age of seventeen, he was one of many players to play simultaneous games against the World Champion Dr. Lasker in an exhibition. Capablanca won his individual lightning game. Three years later, he went on a tour of the United States where he broke records on both speed and results in simultaneous play. He played a whopping 168 games in ten consecutive sessions before losing his first game! His final score was 703 wins, 19 draws, and 12 losses. In 1909, he soundly defeated the American Champion Frank Marshall with a score of 8-1 with 14 draws.

He went on to thoroughly dominate chess with a record of losing only 36 games out of 567 during his entire career. He went ten years without losing a single game!!

By all accounts, Capablanca’s style was direct and flawless. He treated every move as a puzzle with an optimal solution. Content with gaining a small advantage of space or material in the beginning and middle game, he would convert that advantage into a decisive win in the endgame, his known specialty.

I always play carefully and try to avoid unnecessary risks. I consider my method to be right, as any superfluous ‘daring’ runs counter to the essential character of chess, which is not a gamble but a purely intellectual combat conducted in accordance with the exact rules of logic.

—Jose R. Capablanca

Poor Capablanca! Thou wert a brilliant technician, but no philosopher. Thou wert not capable of believing that in chess, another style could be victorious than the absolutely correct one.

—Max Euwe, 5^th World Chess Champion

I have not given any drawn or lost games, because I thought them inadequate to the purpose of the book.

—Jose R. Capablanca, on his own book about chess

It’s entirely possible that Capa could not imagine that there could be a better move than one he thought was good and he was usually right.

—Mike Franett,
Chess Master and editor of Inside Chess magazine

Capablanca was possibly the greatest player in the entire history of chess.

—Bobby Fischer, 11^th World Chess Champion and
youngest chess champion ever.

Street Fighter Player: Daigo Umehara, The Beast

The Japanese call him “Ume,” the Americans call him “Daigo,” and everyone calls him “The Beast!” Daigo is the best overall fighting game player on planet Earth. He is sort of like a Choi raised to the 3^rd power, minus all emotion. When it comes to technical dexterity and deep knowledge of a game’s nuances, Daigo is outclassed by many of his Japanese contemporaries, but when it comes to winning, there is no other. Daigo does not merely win; he utterly destroys. I watched Daigo completely humiliate an American player in a tournament match, just moments before I would face him in the exact same character matchup. Though I was armed with the knowledge of exactly what not to do, Daigo completely rolled over me in a virtual instant replay.

More than any other fighting game player in the entire world, Daigo has the power of yomi: the power to know the mind of the opponent. There is no need to execute difficult combos, or to have deep knowledge of the nuances of a game when you know exactly what the opponent will do next. Daigo throws out “risky moves” left and right, and lands virtually every one, because again, there is no risk when you know what the opponent will do. Going into my match with Daigo, I vowed not to attack at the “correct times” so as to be harder to read, but I found that it is nearly impossible not to attack at the correct times. I have ten years of experience telling me to do so. As soon as you feel the presence of Daigo inside your mind, you have that split-second of second guessing yourself, which is the exact moment he finishes you off. Daigo (and Choi) are both great examples that there is a skill to competitive games more fundamental than the language of the particular game at hand. Daigo doesn’t even need to be particularly “good” at a game to dominate it, he simply is Daigo and wins.

I never thought a player was actually, literally psychic before . . . in the supernatural sense . . . but honestly . . . Daigo scares me. I think he might be.

—Romel “Chaotic Blue” Shaheed,
member of US National Guilty Gear XX team

“. . .”         

—Daigo

Lasker was polite, a remarkable player, and a remarkable person by all accounts. He held a PhD in mathematics and he happened to share an apartment with Albert Einstein in the 1930s. Dr. Lasker played bridge, Go, and chess. Although he had many interests, he utterly dominated the world of chess. He held the title of World Champion for an amazing twenty-six years, during which time he defended the title seven times. Dr. Lasker’s winning percentage is the highest of any World Champion: 66%. His record was 52 wins, 16 losses, 44 draws for a total of 74 points in 112 games.

But numbers alone cannot convey the genius of Lasker. He was an attacker, but not overly so. He was a defender, but not overly so. His mathematical mind saw solutions on the chessboard that few others could see, but it was not about “finding the solution” to Lasker. He believed chess has a spirit, and that psychology of the opponent was at least as important as chess theory when deciding a move. His style showed a balance of many aspects and schools of thought, and thus he was versatile and adaptable. Like all masters, he made his art look easy. He was also quite adept at making moves that made his opponents very uncomfortable, and at finding his way out of positions that other players called hopeless. The thing that really calls out to me about Dr. Lasker, though, is that others believed his ability to read the mind of the opponent was simply uncanny. Nebulous as it is to “know the mind of the opponent,” that accusation shows up again and again when dealing with the world’s best players of strategic games.

Lasker won so many games from bad positions that he was accused by at least one opponent of witchcraft, by another of hypnotism and by many more as being grossly over-endowed with good luck. In fact, he often deliberately courted difficult positions because he understood the mental stress that can be built up in the mind of an attacker when he meets with a resolute defense. By building up an opponent’s hopes and then placing a trail of difficulties in his path, Lasker would induce feelings of doubt, confusion and finally panic.

—Bill Hartston, Chess Author

While both Steinitz and Tarrasch . . . [put] into practice a perfect strategy, playing only the best possible moves on every occasion, Lasker’s approach to the game was certainly more flexible. For Lasker understood better than anyone that the true nature of the struggle in chess was not an objective search for the truth, but a psychological battle against both oneself and the opponent in conditions of extreme uncertainty.

—Bill Hartston

It is remarkable, and deserves special mention that the great masters, such as Pillsbury, Maroczy, and Janowski play against Lasker as though hypnotized.

—George Marco, Chess Annotator

Emanuel Lasker was undoubtedly one of the most interesting people I came to know in my later life.

—Albert Einstein

Street Fighter Player: John Choi, The One True Style

Choi is polite, humble, and utterly dominating as a player. In high school, he was a champion wrestler, and now he is a champion fighting game player, probably the best overall player in the United States. Choi has good reaction speed, but not the best. He has good technical skills and dexterity, but not the best. He is, however, one of the most adaptable, versatile players around. Choi quickly learns exactly what it is you’re up to, and soon makes you feel a bit silly for thinking you could really get away with it. Like Lasker, he attacks at times, defends at times, and generally plays a balanced game. His style is one of simplicity, and he makes the game look easy. Also like Lasker, he combines the analytical approach of determining the logically correct thing to do in a given situation with the psychological approach of measuring and reading the mind of the opponent. It’s very hard to get such a player “out of his element” since virtually any situation or turn of events becomes his element, just as much as it is yours. In the end, it’s not hard to see why the central style has proven stronger than obsessive styles like my own, or overly defensive styles like Ortiz’s.

Choi has won far too many US national tournaments to even mention.