Outbreak

I just started playing my placement matches, still as Terran, after a few practice games against other novices. No matter how bad I was, the people I met were worse. I played against a Protoss who had a mothership and a few zealots at the ten minute mark - and nothing else. I decided to hop straight into placement matches against actual ladder players, and man, am I getting my ass kicked!

It's wonderful.

I've played four games and won one against another new player. The other three thoroughly crushed me. I saved the replays and watched them. It's obvious why I'm losing. They execute their build plans well, their macros slip less than mine, and most importantly, they can multitask. If I scout, I lose my macro. If I don't scout, I have no idea what to build. Before I started playing online, I watched a lot of games and read about builds on forums and wikis. I understand the basics of good builds - in theory. My last game was against the player Pka, who was nice enough to stay around afterwards to talk to me. Pka pointed out a few of my mistakes. I built my first SD at 9 food, not 10. I know that this is bad, but it slipped my mind in the game. I didn't expand. I thought that the Orbital Command requires gas since my newbie brain confused gas cost with build time, so I built a refinery first. I've done this in at least five games now. In the practice games, this didn't matter, I won anyway. But against real players, all my flaws become glaringly obvious.

That is why I love losing. You can't improve if you trick yourself into feeling "Gee, I sure am better than all these other players fresh off the campaign". Sure, it felt nice to crush some other newbies with my small theoretical knowledge from wikis and forums, but it didn't make me improve. Obviously I'm not arrogant enough to think that I know even the basics. But the things I've read are starting to make sense, and I think that the way to go is to simply keep playing, losing and watching replays until I have enough experience to transform what I've learned into actual practical knowledge.