Guys, it's true when they say that sometimes we are our own opponents. I played ranked last night because there was no one online. The first match of ranked was another double Vanquisher team, this guy was solid, his only downfall was that he wasn't punishing a few of the moves that I was doing.
I lost to him, not because he was extraordinary, but just because I was trying to style on him, instead of trying to actually win against him. You see, winning can't always look cool or flashy, it's a lot more about getting the job done. No one is really that hard. Most of the time, during these rank matches, I'll end up losing due to impatience, or by doing impractical moves that are more for show than for efficiency. To me that means, less perfunctory actions, and more actions based on what the opponent does.
A lot of time a got a little whiff of the
impostor syndrome. I kind of felt like maybe going from Duelist to Destroyer was supposed to be harder. And since it wasn't hard, I thought that I didn't deserve the rank. What eluded me was that, because it wasn't hard, it meant that I was just decent at the game, and not that I undeservedly got the ranks due to coincidence.
I few years ago, Manny Biggz told me something important, I doubt he even remembers saying this. I'm paraphrasing, but it was something along the lines of,
"if you've won two rounds in a row, there is no reason to fuck up the last round just because you're feeling a little over confident". To be able to win that last round, it would behoove you to play that last round the same way you played the first two rounds. Not, I won two rounds in a row, so that gives me room to mess around on the last round, wrong. That's what fucks me up, and that is the knucklehead mentality. Don't be a knucklehead and eat your vegetables my friends.
Road to Vanquisher, also no sound