The cream always rises to the top.

RIP Randy Savage

BETTER THAN THE BEST

This is now a pro wrestling thread.

.

Easily the most charismatic person in wrestling, ever.

[+]

[img1]

tell me about it
ECW was the only wrestling company i really cared about in the 90s.
It was just so gritty and cheesy, and epitomized everything about the 90s. man, what i would do to go back to those halcyon days

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1st1uk_stev...0-95_sport

edit: just watched your video. holy shit, that was awesome

Yup.

For me personally, I don't play enough, and when I do play, I don't play to improve, I just play to have fun. They are just so incredibly good, even without playing for weeks, they are still strong.

I'm shit now anyways, ql feels fucked up. Laggy as fuck for me :-< (pre update also, when I came back)

>> what differs the pros from those other people?

15 years of no-lifing quake?

Well, according to that someone like Zero4 should not lose to Rapha for example...i think we cant take it as simple.

WIth rapha we can easily bring intensity of training into the equation and call it reasonable. All the top players are very talented in their own ways, either way.

except rapha was playing at like 12 or 13 cause his dad loved quake and showed him

imo every pro I see who's a top player was playing quake at 12. sure there's exceptions, but overall I think it has to do more with when they started playing and how much they played

it's time x enviroinment x motivation x talent. I could play for a hundred years with my friends, and I would never beat cypher.

z4 has children and a full time job.

rl sucks for the old hardcores

He still wins in real life.

hope so

He can beat up ql nerds because he's a giant.

dkt approves

cypher is the best and played for 7 years.


edit: in comparison to people his level he's played somewhat the LEAST

I am quite sure cypher have played quake for longer then 7 years.

Lot more ;)

Perhaps played professionally seven years.

IEM players vs. people who weren't good enough yet

Ofcourse guys like Cypher etc have a much higher total experience, that is ingame (quake 3, 4 QL total) and tournament experience.

But the main thing is that the current top QL players put a lot of time and effort and dedication etc in quake 3 and 4, and they still benefit from that these days. Even though some semi top players have more playtime than the actual pro's in QL, the total time and energy spent in quake games and tournament play is much higher for the guys like Cypher.

it's one of keys , why they are so good, but it's a lot about personality and talent.

Also they played a lot in times when there where more good active players.

>WHY IS CYPHER BETTER THAN ME
>the thread

Sounds stupid, but i bet next to every top player was once sitting there and asked himself this question about Cypher and just couldnt really find the answer...of course there are alot of theories such as his very odd playstyle. But i wouldnt say its as simple ... its crazy to see that Cypher seperates himself from all the others such as Rapha/Tox/Strenx, id be pretty proud if i could say that i was better than these people.

Imagine Quake is a book. Cypher has read it over 9000 times. That knowledge + disgusting aim = his performances.

"The Quake Book"


Written by ddk



With cooller as the protagonist



10/10 would read

you can't put rapha / tox / strenx at the same level, rapha is way better.

he's just a tiny tiny bit below cypher. There's clearcly Cypher / Rapha and the rest

really? I've seen quite some people saying like 1./2. Cypher/Evil and 3. Rapha.

Evil won 1 major tournament,

Rapha won something like 16 and Cypher something like 17

which of these players, worked with id with the development of the game?

tox banged rapha just with average of ~3 games a day practice for 2 weeks vs low skilled.

for someone who said "zoom is cheating" you're rather a loud guy

...but that is not what I said. I said that it is easy and that the game would be better off if it had restrictions.

sadly i have not bookmarked the thread, but im sure you said zoom is basiclly cheating

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

He's certainly good at "no evidence, loud talk" thing, Retr.

pretty much

swag

to me top players tend to be more successful to hit shots or predict things correctly when they really need to do.

They almost do no mistakes in aim, timing, execution etc. and they can take advantage of your own mistakes easily

why? experience, skill, practice

imho

Big dicks.
/thread

Grand gonads.

if it were true, i should be at least top ten

Because theres no competition in QL.

as some lvl^ feget said: theres no pot full of gold at the end of the Quake Live rainbow. Cypher/rapha/Av3k/dunno who else, had better prac circumstances, with all the semi pro contracts and lans every 3 months.

nowadays theres bunch of whiners who will suck your e-dick if you're good, nothing more, so people have no motivation to level up their gameplay to top level.

im dat feget!1

explain evil then.

Looking at his interviews, I think evil is someone who can't stand performing below his own standards. At one point he said that he trained so hard for dh12 because he was so disappointed in his performance at adroits. He's an exception because he doesn't seem to need rewards as a motivation

... Who has been playing since 2003. And he was always good. QL just suits him I guess.

Since 1997

explain a player who was widely known and respected as one of best q3 osp russian players, a guy who was considered on par with eswc champion cooller?

he just got back to his old standards. he didnt have to learn how to, just tweak his gameplay.

that's one

it's pretty clear you're a product of your environment and training "when you have time" is different than when it's your job and the level is really high

demon has been playing for 10 years but came to duel too late, baksteen rose quickly because he practiced religiously but faded as soon as he lost his motivation to improve

do you think the level of football would be as high if it were just a hobby and not played professionally ?

that would be my answer, but that's a bit boring, isn't it ? you know what's not boring ? speculations and walls of text

you could argue that somebody like cypher is talented and would naturally rise to the top, the same way there aren't many playing at messi or ronaldo's level. but I find it odd how a lot of players seem to get to that 2300-2400 elo level and stay there, have they peaked ? do they need an incentive to really push through ? the higher you go, the tougher it gets to become better.

ddk often asks why pavel isn't winning more, I agree with him. he has the complete package, just like ash, but never seems to overcome the top 2 (evil and cypher). it could also be a case of being a very good all around player but without an elite skill ? getting beat too many times by the same guy and thinking "well, this is my level I guess" then losing motivation ?

the age criteria can't be ignored, you're young and hungry, you want to be the best, to impress. remember that epic post by av3k in one of the donations thread, or that cypher interview, all they could think about was "how to get better at quake ?" "how to win tournaments ?". those very high (but not top, winning LAN) level players are all in their 20's, mid-20's and maybe aren't caring as much.

talent, hunger (because those losing to evil now are the same as him losing to strenx during the zotac days), old school high level player. ash was taking the same road, being around for so long and suddenly improving (2 years ago, ash was top 16 material, I thought he was a young prospect in the 102 roster at the time) but he's either satisfied with his current level (being able to push the top 2) and would rather have fun (often seen goofing around with an estonian chap) or he's missing something and can't bridge the gap with the two constantly pushing each other

that would still point towards evil being a special case, destined to greatness, but... I don't know, maybe because he arrived late to the party or because he wasn't among the contenders when it counted the most (in QL), in my opinion he's more of single minded hard worker, like a late bloomer in sports (drogba). which would conveniently validate my argument about motivation and grind to be the very best. I just destroyed facts with my subjective view on the matter, have you picked up on it ? now you certainly have.
without taking the "champion's mindset" very slippery slope, it certainly seems to take something special mentally to be number 1, something evil has always show. then again, cypher can get emotional and still wins when it counts... I would say he wins DESPITE being emotional and he makes up for it with everything else

mmmhhh I'm actually bored of writing this, 3 people will read it so I'm going to conclude, here it comes : so there you go, it's all in the head. iron resolve can carry you pretty far if you have some ability to begin with, something hard to come by when there's nothing to gain besides self improvement in a video game. it's a borderline disease to be that competitive at something so empty. yup, a fantastic life lesson has we've learned today

if you've read this to the end, congratulations, I won't give you these x minutes of your life back but you have all my admiration for being so patient/bored/stupid (multiple choices allowed)

tl;dr : evil winning cause everybody left to make money in shootmania, I'm polish and I don't do legs

+

But man, legs are so important.

Never skip legs day <3

It is all about the money at the end of the day.

Also it's like judo, great individual combat sport, but there's no money in it, cus sadly the game is not as popular / played as other sports.

there used to be a time when i tried to improve at quake, now i play 2 hours each month

At some point you just gotta realize that there's always gonna be tons of people who are just more commited than yourself. :p

I don't even masturbate everyday

Many peoples dissmiss it for merely "they practiced more", but that's just an excuse and/or a misunderstanding, in those cases.

The one simple thing that makes the few pros so exceptionally untouchable is their raw TALENT, their NATURAL skills.

They aren't average guys that practiced a ton, they are on the extreme end of the Bell curve regarding brain activity.

They are RARE. Their brains reacts faster, their hands correct quicker and more accurately what their laser-scanning eyes see on the screen.

Those guys brains are constantly delivering a river of toughts, what takes you an second to decide, comes up in their minds in a tenth of that, and they're already acting accordingly.

They are naturally faster, their neurochemicals are more abundant, or their brain are configured differently, maybe more myelin in their neuron's assones, it's impossible to tell.

They have feline reflexes, and can stay focused longer and at a deepness unreachable to average or slightly above the average guys.

It's genetic. Medias lies to us pretending that everybody can become everything they want, but it's merely a lie. With the necessary work and dedication you can develop your potential, but POTENTIAL is the key word.

Those guys are maybe 1/1000, or 1/10000 borns. In other sports, competitions, and crafts the percentage is even lower.

Take this guy, he's probably one on 100000 and even lower. You will NEVER EVER be able to do what he does.







Motor competitions are a category in wich you can find the most sublime and over the top CNSs. Those men are simply wired better than the average, so much that effectively most of the peoples cannot even have a vague idea on how IMMENSELY difficult is to do what they do. Stupid peoples watch this and thinks "tsk, give me a million and i can do the same".
But you can't. Peoples like Sebastien Loeb, Michael Shumacher, Valentino Rossi, are something like 1/10.000.000.

The same can be said of more physical competitions. Cristiano Ronaldo's mitochondria aren't the same you have. His engine is different, BETTER. Eddie Merx didn't have the same lungs and hearth you have. Nor does Michael Phelps, and all the others.

Those peoples are special, there's nothing you can do to become better than them, because they've also practiced and trained their bodies at high levels.

You can remove all the doping from track field competitions, or cyclism, and the winners will still be the exactly same peoples that were winning before, in the same order. Doping is only an addition, if you aren't a champion you aren't a champion.

TL; DR:

Their central nervous systems are way better than the average, there's no training that can overcome that natural gap.


EDIT:

I would like to state clearly that hard work is a HUGE part, wihtout it its simply not possible to become the best. This aspect apparently wasn't clear in my post.
Nobody, for how much naturally gifted may be, can rise to the top without training, proper tools, help from others peoples, etc. etc..

In fact, every single sport legend or unique genius or whatever is almost always the combination of extremely early starting (as early as 3-4 years old, sometimes), with supportive ambient and parents, adequate moneys (even tough this aspect is often not really important), and extremely intense work until the full body maturity.

BUT, this doesn't change the fact that if you don't have the "x factor", you won't make it.

Peoples are different, there's nothing that can deny this. There are kids that learn to read ALONE when they are 4 or 5.
There are kids that speaks better than average adult peoples at the age of 2, while others are only able to mutter some uncoordinate nonsense at the same age and with parents that spend all their time educating them.

At kid's sport courses it's easy to see that some are naturally cut to master that sport, while others will always be behind. You can see that fatty short kid that shows an incredible natural prediction ability regarding the ball's moves, in spite of having never played it seriously. While you have other bigger, leaner, athletic kids that struggles twice than him to learn as fast as him.

Talents distribution in population follows a Bell curve, like anything else. To become the best you have to have some crazy natural skills, AND to work them hard since you're little and young, otherwise you'll just be a "could have been".

Mediocre skills with hard work will beat high skills and bad work.
But the extreme human limits are only reachable by few gifted individuals. There's only a Gauss, and after his death they analyzed his brain and found that he had an unusually high intensity of brain convolutions. No average people can develope his mathematical skills.

ezy plusses ;)

Best comment i have seen here on esreality since years. People need to realize, we are NOT equal.

cheers

You are totally wrong.
It's all about hard work and gaining experience from competitions. Also top players know that they have limited time on their career and winning a tournament i's very very rare. That's why they prepare like mad men for every single tournament.

There are a shitton of peoples with more duel hours than Cypher, yet there's only one Cypher and all those peoples ends up 20:-1 against him.

Shitton of people that have more duel hours and tournament experience than Cypher ? You are kidding, right ?

Why would i? In some other videogames, like Starcraft or Dota or WoW, it's really difficult to keep up with the work intensitiy of the asian champions, (and still there are thousands of peoples in the world that plays as much as them, 6, 8 or 10 hours at day), but in quake, the hours played by the champions aren't that much, and tons of peoples plays more than them, and often WAY more.

A specular example could be Fatal1ty: he was famous for practicing 8 hours at day, something that's unheard of from the likes of Cypher, Rapha, Cooller- and yet he got dismantled and retired and now avoids playing duel because peoples with a tenth his life playtime and no international experience owns him and makes him rage.

Most quake champions plays an average of 1-2 hours per day, more before the competitions but way less when far from it.

A good third of the active playerbase plays more than that.

Do not deviate from the topic. There are not so MANY people with TOURNAMENT EXPERIENCE and DUEL HOURS played like Cypher.
Remember that he is basically playing the same game since the launch of Quake 3 which was in 2000.
Of course he took some brakes but the number of hours accumulated is huge, not to mention that some of the maps remained in tournaments pool till today (ztn, aero, dm13, dm6 ...).
In the past he used to train with av3k which boosted his skill and confidence alot and those practice hours can't be tracked. Nobody really knows how many hours a professional player allocates in his training sessions.
Finally I don't deny the talent of top players, but being a champion means more than that.

But i didn't deviate from the topic. The tournament experience has less importance than you think. Before winning his first tournament title, Cypher was already a destroyer online. In fact, the tournament experience is only a little part of your overall asset, if you aren't good online you aren't going to be the top one, with some tournament experience.
And he won his first tournament at around 16 years old. He didn't have that much experience. In fact, he was a scrub compared to the other contenders. And yet he won. And how do you explain that he steamrolls the new players on the new maps? Where he have as much experience as them?

You are badly underestimating the insame amount of time the majority of quakers wasted on the game. There are a shitton of players with more time played than Cypher. Time played is not sufficient to justify the disparity of performances.

Was talking about tournaments in general both offline and online.

According to the link below he won the first international tournament (not russian) in 2008 at the age 18, not 16.
http://www.esportsearnings.com/players/1156-c..._year#2006

I don't know about owning new players on new maps. For example I remember him having trouble playing the map "Silence" where he lost games to Agent/Ash.

About time spent in the game, I will tell you again, there are not so many people that have accumulated more hours of Quake DUEL than Cypher.
There are people who play CA/CTF/TDM and then some duel. They don't count.
There are people who play duel many hours for a few years and then they stop. And then they return for a while and stop again. They don't count.

Also after reaching a high skill point in DUEL you don't have to practice that much to get back in shape. An example would be Strenx performance at QCon 2014

From what i remember, he was already top level at 16, and the youngest to have such success in quake with Cooller.

Anyway there are a lot of quakers with more or comparable time played than him, and yet they would never ever be able to win a tournament, while he won even too many of them.

They all use +zoom

Nope

It's funny that you used Rubik's Cubes as an example. The #1 guy right now is entirely based on practice. He developed those skill, and himself claims that anyone else can too. You do realize they practice for 4 hours a day 2 months straight before competition arrives? That's roughly 43 thousand solves. There's rarely not a cube in his hands otherwise.

To say that someone is the best without practice being a MAJOR factor is absurd.

As for motorsports, the know the track from countless practice laps. They aren't making spit second decisions, the decision is already cataloged and they execute it.

Some people are gifted. Some people are determined. There's examples of both getting to the top. Neither is necessarily better than the other. Gifted usually comes hand in hand with poor work ethic.

Yep. His examples are crap, as he picked the most hardworking guys and that also had the most advantages for becoming the best.

The Rubik cube example is not one of the best, but it's still accurate. Yes, Rubik solving is all about memorizing hundred of solving algorythms.
Then why there's only one world record holder, and few peoples in the world able to come close to his performances?

Because he can apply those algorythms faster and better. It's the speed that counts in his case, because at least 80% of the population or more can learn to solve a Rubik cube.

But average peoples will NEVER be as fast as him, no matter the time spent practicing. Average peoples aren't "wired" as good as him. Skilled peoples are still not wired as good as him.

His brain is faster.

The guy can claim that everyone else can be as good as him, but he's knowingly lying, maybe because he's trying to be modest and humble and winning someone's simphaty.

Your motosport comparison is COMPLETELY flawed, to the point you're insulting them. It's not about flawless repetition. Their driving may look flawless to clueless ignorant peoples, but in every kind of competition you're constantly correcting, reacting, predicting.
You don't even have an idea. Rally cars, F1 cars, Moto gp bikes, they are all constantly unstable and revolting to your inputs.

You don't know it and you don't care, but motogp bike's heels are constantly spinning more than how they should according to their speed. Both the posterior and the anterior. Even on straight sectors. You can't see it, but they do. And even when they look like driving on rails, inside the elmets their brains are MELTING trying to coordinate and control 250 horse powers distributed on the surface of an hand.

In "speedcubing" repetition/practice is of the essence. All what you are watching there is a response, nothing more. Also luck is a huge component too, so record attempts until the best appears combination is crucial too.

If you knew something about advanced driving you'd see how flawed the Senna example is. He was the best of his time because he was the best trained (he had huge advantages growing up) and on his pro career he was by far the most hardworking and meticulous on the grid of his era, but not only because of "talent". The sense of grip is essentially a learned skill, in which it's quite crucial to learn it as a kid, that improves on one particular application by walking down the track and analyzing it. Mastery of a track requires studying it and several hours of dedication to it, not an inherent ability.
Not to mention that cars in motorsports are truly of the essence, so in F1 he happened to have the best car around for many seasons. As much as people like to hype Senna, if he hadn't died in that accident he wouldn't have won the championship again in many years if not ever again, because his current team and car wasn't as good as the others. In other words, if he hadn't died in that accident his career would have been way less legendary, to the point he wouldn't be considered the best ever above Schumi, Fangio, Vettel (he has more titles and in way less time) and others, By the media, differences between top level drivers and drivers' influence on results are very, very much overrated, because in reality cars and teams matter the most by a whole lot, and of course they like to do historical comparisons when in actuality it's impossible to do that in motorsports (besides being a fanboy for external reasons, which is something anyone can do :P).

No idea about bikes though. Haven't even ridden one on a circuit so won't say I'm an expert just because of having a license and having watched the cornering bible.

Anyway, lets go back to quake duel. It's very safe to say that cypher, rapha, cooller and others are the ones that have put the most hours into "deliberate practice" and thinking about the game in the whole world.Also cypher is the only one that is paid to play and practice and has access to play other great players, unlike rapha. With all that said, it's no coincidence he's the champion.

I know very well that Rubik solving is about memorizing and applying those solving memories to the initial configuration, read my post, i even explain it. But why are those guys the record holders?
Because they're faster than 99,99...% of the population will ever be able to be. They have something more, they can choose faster, i don't know exactly what are the details that makes them so much better, but the undeniable fact is, that they have higher natural skills.

All the work of this world can't change this fact.

The Senna video wasn't meant to show the strongest f1 driving ever, it was merely an example of insane coordination, control, reaction times.

Those things can be trained only to a point, and training is a huge factor, but without the natural faster reflexes, hand-eye coordination, etc., you can't reach those levels.

It is a scientifically established fact, and really, not that there is the need to prove anything.

Some peoples are taller. Some are stronger. Some have better stamina. Some have an IQ of 150. All those are natural gifts, that can be modified only partially.

Take IQ, for example, some peoples discovers at age 15 that they have 20 iq points more than their peers, without having ever trained or even given a fuck about it. They are simply born with better brain genetics. You can't train to become a 160 iq genius.

The persons that took their activity or career most seriously than everyone else are the ones that excel. Families play a huge part in the early development and on teaching priorities as well.

No matter if someone is more suited for something, that 'talent' still means nothing when compared to someone putting the hours. Can't care less if a guy has 50ms reaction times, is 8 feet tall and remembers everything he has ever seen or read, still he will suck at everything he doesn't do when compared to someone that does. The same holds true when comparing pros as well, in which that 8 feet tall pro still can't compare with someone shorter that's better at basketball.

Also you can train your mind and body to become better, you know. You can become stronger, faster and wiser, if you train to become so or do activities that indirectly will. Some sports will make you taller too. Bodybuilders aren't born with that body you know.

Haven't you noticed all that in your personal life?

Also, your justification of Senna's skill shows you don't have knowledge of motor racing, so shouldn't have used him as an example. On contrary to what you say, in racing faster reaction times and faster reflexes practically don't matter; the average is more than fine. Furthermore, the required coordination is something anyone has and can do by just being an amateur or enthusiast at that.
The differences between an amateur and a pro driver are not what you say, nor the differences between pros. The main differences in both cases are judgement of situations, consistency and making faster lap times without destroying the car or tires, all of which come down to experience and training, not this so called talent.
In actuality if there's something like being born with a talent for racing, that would be being short (tho reach the pedals :P) and with a tendency to be as slim as possible. Still doesn't matter much though.

And again, cypher, rapha, etc. aren't the best because they are more talented. They are the best because they were the guys that were more motivated than everyone else and put the training and thinking to become the best. Do you think cypher has such rocket aiming skills because he was born with them? No, he just put lots of hours into thinking about how to shoot rockets.

I think Rapha and Cypher are the best because they are the most talented. It's only at their level (where everyone has put in the required practice and hard work) that small inate differences ("talent") will actually matter. For the remaining 99% of us the only distinguishing factor between us would be how much work we put in.

It's because they were the most motivated (wanted to win more than anyone else), put the most dedication towards studying the game and in the end are the only two players that whose lives were quake in that time, full time. All the rest took it as a hobby, time included, whereas those two they took it as a profession; like all previous top (#1) players did.

We could ask them directly what they think about the matter, but I'm almost certain they think alike me :P.

If there's anything as talent in quake duel, I don't think the most impressive players won anything, just because they didn't play duel that much. Fox, linkin, winz and noctis come to mind, again names that rapha and cypher would put above themselves as more talented.

Again, all this discussion about training and motivation is useless.

It is obvious that without insane training, motivation and all the right conditions you can't excel.

But all those things alone aren't enough to make you the best. In every competition, there are infinite amount of peoples trying it even harder than the actual champions, and yet miserably failing and disapperaing into oblivion.

Because they don't have it. Everyone can train as hard as Arnold Shwarzenegger, in fact a lot of peoples today are more gym rat than Arnold was even in his prime, yet they aren't as big as him (steroid abuse included, ofc). And why is that? Genetic.

We aren't all equal. We can compensate those differences only partially.

We are animals, aren't we? And it's the same thing. You can take every random horse, and train him as hard and harder than Varenne, but only extremely few of them will run as fast as him, and probably no one of them will beat him.

Why? Because they don't have Varenne's supreme and RARE genetic asset. But according to your reasoning, peoples that have spent THOUSANDS dollars just to have a sample of Varenne's semen to inoculate in high quality mares in the remote hope to obtain something at least similar to him are just clueless fools.

They could have just took some random foal and trained him as good as Varenne, and boom, thousands of Varennes! Everyone can have his Varenne!

but you do know Varenne was supposed to be bad trotter, because of leg malformation, which by nature is result of bad genes? :D

i like how you try to make examples, yet you make fool out of yourself. you obviously have no talent at all. dont worry, its not improtant. a bit of patience when you research is enough to make your point. no talent needed.

But this don't disprove the point. The majority of olympic gymnasts are short. And yet they have perfect bodies and coordination. Many quakers are also short. But this don't stop them from being good in what they're good.
Stephen Hawking suffers of ALS, and yet has the IQ of a genius.

trotter uses his legs to run, same as Hawking uses his brain to think.

find me a genius with only one half of brain.

"Find me a genius with only one half of brain. "

http://tinyurl.com/pmpvce9

Guys, did you know that Stephen Hawking has the IQ of a genius?

He says anyone can do it because at one point he was just anyone. You realize he has solved the rubik's cube easily more than a million times? He solves it 43 THOUSAND times within a 2 month span before a competition. His brain is not necessarily faster, his ability to catalog where pieces are and mechanical output is faster.

Then why there's only one world record holder, and few peoples in the world able to come close to his performances?

This is a silly question. 861 people are sub 10 single. 159 are sub 10 average. I'll bet that anyone with a sub 10 average has a Personal Record better than the current World Record.

If you spent more than 4 hours a day doing one specific thing for years and years, anyone would be able to compete at that level.

It almost completely is flawless repetition. The reason they would have to make those adjustments is because they screwed up, something interfered, or they are still learning the track.

rofl @250 horse power. That's intense! I have a 380 2 stroke KTM that is in a 250 shell. When that thing hits sand, then we can start telling me about wheel spin. I've ridden my co-workers 600 Yamaha crotch rocket. I know how a motorcycle works.

Saying their brains are melting is more of an insult. They're very calculated and collected.

"He says anyone can do it because at one point he was just anyone."

Of course. All of us are just anyone, at one point. But not all of us can become THE one.


" His brain is not necessarily faster, his ability to catalog where pieces are and mechanical output is faster."

I don't know what is that advantages him and allows him to do those things, the point is that there is something, like you admitted there.

And the "their brains are melting" wasn't a literal phrase, i think i may have heard it on some duel casted stream, i meant that they are processing an insane amount of inputs/outputs, of course you can't drive like that if you aren't calm and focused.

or they just practice right

!

Just because you're bad doesn't mean others have to be as well, keep laying the blame on genetics.

ye, i like how he says:

Many peoples dissmiss it for merely "they practiced more", but that's just an excuse.

and then he proceeds to find more excuses :b

but well, he is well known rapha lover, and im quite sure he finds him godlike.

Sort of like hitsu and cypher where hitsu gives text-based handjobs to cypher on ESR, weekly.

:D

no no no, i just give respect to best quake dueller in history. respect he deserves.


and tbh if av3k was still active, you would see real text based handjobs :b

Ehhhhhhhhh, I'm not so sure about that.

Respect is one thing. There's been times where I was certain you were wearing your pink heart t-shirt with cypher's pic in the middle of it, while sipping a beverage from your I<3CYPHER coffee mug and typing up things that you'd never accept from a mere rapha fangirl.

"Cooller is the best quake dueler in history" (c) cypher @ djwheat's show, some weeks ago.

hes just being modest

This has nothing to do with me being bad or strong. While your out of contest personal attack clearly shows that the points of my post transmitted the message.

Genetics matters, and no disney's "you can do it!" will ever change this fact. That's why at the age of 30 years old Cypher will still be able to steamroll peoples 10 years younger and that practiced more than him.

But you have admit, Cypher 2006 was more deadly and innovative then now.

it's a weak man's excuse and I've heard it before. You say Cypher is like a 1 and 10,000 born Quake player, but there aren't even that many active Quake players. There are no video game prodigies, because even at it's hardest, Quake is just a video game. Put in work and you'll excel. Good talk.

Well, but of course the 1 in 10000 number is just an example, how can someone calculate that number? It's impossibe, it's just to give the idea.

And it's true that those are only videogames, but it's not enough to put in work to excel, as elo ranking and time played clearly shows.

Otherwise we would have a lot of peoples better than Cypher and the likes.

That's it. I'm going to take this argument to its furthest, most ridiculous extent, just to get it off my chest and out of the way. It's a long post. Read it or don't(actually, I just read it. It took less than 60 seconds, so, I really don't wanna hear any crying about it):

We don't even know who the potentially best quake player of all time is. And we never will, statistically speaking. We only know who the best is that has every bothered to try.

There are over 7.1 billion people currently on earth. Many of died since quake's inception. Many have been born, so, that number is actually a little bit higher. But, that's besides the point and I'm getting off track, here.

Very, very, very few of that overall number have even heard of quake. Let alone actually played it, even if they have heard of it.

If every single one of those 7 billion+ sat down and tried to be the best, our current best(cooller, cypher, rapha, dahang, and so on and so on) would not even be in the top 100,000(or, the top 0.00001428571%). Again, that's if every person since quake's existence tried to be the best.

I wanted to make this point in a different post(?) or maybe different part of this thread, even, but I'm not going to go digging through all the posts and replying to you with my thoughts is good enough.

Anyway...

That's why, sometimes, in many sports or competitive scenes of any kind, some person that nobody has ever heard of just shows up, destroys the current 'best' at any given activity and then disappears again, into obscurity. Meanwhile, that particular scene is left in awe, confusion as to how it's possible, and what it means for those left behind(ie: the scene of X activity that existed before mister prodigy showed up for 1 game and then left, never to return).

Take Mir Sultan Khan, for instance. A slave from India. Here, we have some guy that only learned the rules of Chess right before he went to England, was unable to read or write(meaning that he absolutely could not study or read *any* theory books on chess) and did not even speak English, thus needing a translator.

This guy shows up, basically says 'sup, Capablanca? Ready to fucking smashed?' And does just that. Out of nowhere. Destroys the best players in the world while having only known even the rules of the game for a very short time. His understanding and raw ability was something no one has ever seen, before or since. He appeared, made the Chess world look like a bunch stupid monkeys and then disappeared, right back into the obscurity from whence he came.

There is always someone better than you, even if you happen to be cypher or some other top pro. There is always someone that just understands things better than even the current top player of any game, sport, or whatever, even if we never find out whom that person is.

Just like what's about to happen with the Steam update: Some new person is going to come along and play a few duels and decides he hates QL, only to uninstall it. Unbeknownst to him or her, they have the potential to be the best and shock our tiny little community with what, for them, would require not much training at all(relative to the training the current best have done) beyond learning the maps and guns. However, we'll never know who that person is for whatever it is that makes that person hate QL, even though they could have been the best we'd ever seen.

But, that's the whole point, isn't it? the best that 'we've seen' is never, ever going to be the best potential player that exists. If only they had tried, yet, never did for whatever reason, our understanding of quake and the meta game could have been turned upside down.

Bit too much mystery in your post mir sultan khan was the best player in indian chess and started with 9 years he only learned european chess shortly before winning british-indian championship. He placed poorly at first in england then he was taught theory and after that he won vs capablanca.

The point was that someone that should not have been able to do it, according to what the masters of his time and, yes, even today must sacrifice to so much as compete with the best. Yet, there he was, being called a genius by Capablanca and people like him. No small compliment, to be sure. :D

That's why he was famous. Not for being so good. But for the way he was so good.

As for your correction, I'll admit that my facts about him may be somewhat cloudy as it's been a long, along time since I first learned of him and many things chess related. However, that doesn't change the point I was trying to make, even if my example wasn't 100% best example, due to my memory. =)

donīt wanna take anything away from him he surely was an absolutely outstanding player, a genius however, he had 12 years of experience in a similar game maybe even a more complicated one. your point that the best is not the potential best stands of course. But only few people are actually scratching their potential most just leave it untouched.

Yea, right, somewhere in Siberia lives the best quake player who instead wrestle bears. This is very childish thought. Player need to grow, so he's a product of a local community. It doesn't matter how fast his reflexes or how creative he could be, without healthy practice and competitive environment one can't become number one.

New players now have the same bank of info to draw from as what the pros have already learned due to people discussing meta game. Part of the reason it took so long for the pros to learn what they know is because the meta game was still being developed. It's not really being developed, anymore. The top players had that ability to understand and develop things how they do a LONG time ago. That's why they've been the top for so long/

Lots of people out there have the raw ability to understand in the same way that rapha and cypher understand things, or even better than the pros. To think otherwise is just silly. Just because they never play QL doesn't mean that capacity is non-existent.

If you allow such new people to develop their aim, meta game and map knowledge through practice and you will have someone able to challenge and beat the pros in less time than it took pros to become known.

I never said you can just take some bear wrestler and he'll beat cypher on his first day. I said that, considering 7 billion people on earth, there is no way that there aren't a lot of new, potentially better players with the potential to become BETTER than cypher in less time than it took cypher to become known.

There's also the case of perfect, or near-perfect training.

Even someone with low talent, if they're given an excellent setup, lan pings, constant practice and guided supervision with a logical training program that starts from the ground up, they'd likely become really strong in a short amount of time. Perhaps even faster than someone with a lot of talent but with a much less ideal learning scenario.

It's the age old debate over talent vs. conditioning, and conditioning includes ideas such as practice vs. perfect practice.

I'm happy that you have analyzed this point, because it is one that i wanted to explore in my first post, but i opted not to because it was already long enough and it was a little too fantastic and out of topic.

Anyway, it is completely true, and mind blowing to think about; that not all peoples in the earth practice every kind of human speciality as hard as they can, therefore, it is statistically ---certain--- that for every champion or genius we know, there are a lot more that could beat them.
In some american basement, some russian prairie, or some philipine slum, there's a man that could be quake champion, or strongman competitor, or welterweight boxing champion of the world, and yet he's just sitting there, masturbating.

What a waste of potential.

But the original point isn't changed of course, that the ones that are at the very top today, are there because they are MORE, better, than average. And somewhere out there there are others that are even more, and yet they didn't practiced or cared enough to become it.

I'm glad that people actually got what I was trying to say in my initial reply to you. I wasn't sure it would make sense, especially after cerb0z' reply.

I agree. Of course the top players are better. But, when speaking of those statistics and seeing that even cypher and rapha or dahang are capable of mistakes, I still question if they'd be in the top 100,000 out of all 7 billion. The whole 0.00001428571% was the actual number I got by dividing 100,000 by 7,000,000,000. And 0.00001428571% isn't exactly leaving much room for mistakes, I'd think. hehe :D

It would be nice if we lived in a world where the absolute best people for each job were known, from birth. But, to have that happen, we'd be living in an Aldous Huxley world.

+1000 the "you can become what you want" is a huge lie.

Even if you train as much, and in the exact same conditions as the Chess world champion there's 99,99% chances(to take the example of the 1/x people) he will beat you

same goes for Cypher or Rapha vs any random guy. If you've been struggling at 1500 elo for a year or so playing regularly, you will never, EVER beat them in a proper best of 5, even if you train 10 hours a day for 3 years

Why do you think so? Especially chess is about studying positions and opening variations. The more openings and endings you know and understand (!) The better player you are. if you struggle at 1500 elo you probably are not studying in the right way.

I dont think you can become anything you want but you have a huge probability to truly master a subject if you start early and study hard and long .

The more openings and endings you know and understand

The current #1 ranked guy has no idea how to start or end a game compared to the other greats, lol.

Uhm in fact carlsen is the best endgame grinder of all time winning positions everyone else would draw. Thats his style and his openings are chosen accordingly

Karpov says that his strength is the ability to create situations. Carlsen admits to never playing a great game, just making good choices.

He's a very tactical midgame forcing his will on other players.

Yea but he also studied openings and endgames a ton like every super grandmaster did. Of course every player has their own style but
Each of them studied the badics a great deal aswell.

I'm saying, if you compare him to the greats, his start and endgame is rather unnoteworthy. To you and I, he's amazing.

Who are you refetring to with the greats? imo his endgame technique is what won him most games. His ability to maintain high pressure on his opponents with very slight advantages is simply outstanding.

Kasparov, Fischer, Karpov, and Tal (my fav).

When you describe any style of chess, his name is not you think of first. Lasker and Capablanca come to mind for positional style before Carlsen. Carlsen needs more time to really establish himself.

Capablanca and lasker basically invented the endgame these guys are legends. of course young magnus cannot compare with them but he was dominating the scene for a year or two with his playstyle only recently he lost his grip a bit and seems beatable again. And if carlsen starts to dominate again being 70 points higher rated than 2nd and maintaining his level he will be up there among these greats.

Completely disagree on the endgame. His endgame skills are precisely one of Carlsen's huge assets.

Especially chess is about studying positions and opening variations.

thats not exactly true :b

you could say mastering the opening is cooller's school. stable, typical gameplay, that will lead you to succes.

however there are examples of other styles, eg: Carlsen's openings are medicore, but his endurance and excellent finishing made him champion. other example would be Mikhail Tal, who played on opponent's emotions, making sacrifices in order to confuse, and complicate the situation on the board.

I didnt mean mastering the opening alone but just studying tons and tons of positions openings middle games and endgames gaining
a deep understanding of the game makes you a better player. So e.g if you understand what the plan of your opponent is in a off beat gambit line you have a better chance of finding the right setup to counter it.

you can beat them,

but you need to choose situation when to be agressive (c) cooller

This is typical attitude for people that will achieve nothing.
It's so easy to sit down and do nothing right? Fine do it, but why do you discourage people that could potentially do something worthy in the meantime?

Not to mention the fact that QuakeLive is one of the least appropriate places to look for these theories.

But this post didn't discourage anyone, in fact, between average peoples there are statistically peoples that have the potential to rise to the top.

Anyway it's merely the reality in wich we live.

It's the same between animals, yet peoples aren't shocked so much and accept it easily.

For example, you have 10 dogs of the same race, some of them are stronger, some smarter, etc., etc..

Well, I'm not going to argue with your beliefs. I just think that in that particular case it would be more fruitful not to spread it.

Those are not "my beliefs", it's a simple fact that peoples are NOT equal, exactly like animals aren't.

Of course we are not born equal. Only morons argue with facts.
Thankfully we're not common animals and there are more factors that contribute to our success or failure.

That is what he is not getting yet. He's simplifying the matter way too much so his point can stand, which is flawed.

Certainly people are different, but we are not animals. We aren't destined or determined: our continuous efforts, home education and resources can make up for anything, among many others, to the point they matter way more than genes do.

As you said, there are way more factors than just genes and actually we can't even know how much they were a factor in the success or failure of someone, as the mind and body develop as a consequence of what you do. Plus the usual "correlation does not imply causation" can be applied :P

For example, lots and lots of the most successful people around, across all fields, would have died under wild conditions, as they are very much omega, but they actually dominate the lives of the alphas (and reproduced even :P). Using his very own examples, Senna would have been no one if it wasn't for his family, no matter how talented he was. Heck, even ins could have been taller if he played basketball instead of quake and he could be a phd by now if he wanted to.
As for the best in some field, the best of each physical sport aren't the most physically gifted guys by any means. Actually quake itself is filled with "pros" that aren't brilliant persons, to say the least.

You know, if I were to say that there's something that distinguishes people when they are born, I wouldn't say the main factor is genes but that money and their family is. After all we are how and where we were raised, what we did and do (hobbies, profession, sports, etc.) and what we eat, too. Anyway.

In the end it if you want to simplify this, you still have to consider that we make rational decisions, also that we mostly rely on experience, knowledge, judgement, tools and mind in general instead of on our physique and also of that we are raised by several people under our development, all unlike animals. For example animals can't "practice, practice, practice" and think about something in order to improve at it.

Or in a nerdy way, human life is like a continuous RPG game, where you take a skill tree, way more than spawning fully stacked. The first levels advantages only get you so far. And the mandatory nerdy example, if you aren't earning that much money or can't get a gf- for example-, then blame the time you consciously spend on esr, not your genes.

But those factors can be modified only partially, like already explained. And those modified factors alone are not enough to make us what we aren't and to make someone the best in a category.

michael schumachers parents had a cart racing track btw...so.. :DD just saying

That's another thing he doesn't get: motorsports is by far the most elitist sport of them all. Senna, Schumi, Fangio, Vettel, Alonso, (hopefully) future champion Rosberg, etc. etc. had opportunities almost no one in the world has.

I knew, i knew :)

and i recall a documentary about phelps vs lochte...bottom line was phelps had superior technique..he dived his hands in the water with less resistance and stuff ;)

also , training methods have not been optimized for quake. so maybe those who come out on top..just practice better. if you take any NBA or NFL or whatever team...training methods overall should not differ too much.

You can say talent, you can say skill, but honestly I think it's about age and when they started

Celebrities are similar, how can someone make it so big and have such a huge following? Singing, acting, whatever, you see people at the top and wonder how they got there

Then you see old videos surface, those same celebrities doing TV interviews or on Kids Say The Darnest Things. You realize it's not some kid discovering himself and getting known, it's the parents pushing their kid to be an actor or singer or performer. You wonder how Justin Beiber made it big, but then you pictures of him when he was 9 on the street playing guitar for money. There's tons of parents who want easy money, start their kid in diaper commercials and go from there.

So when you think about the factors that come into play for actors and singers, you can't help but see the similarities in something like Quake. I always thought it was about talent, skill and practice when it came to Quake, but I don't believe it as much anymore

It seems every top pro was playing at a young age. I saw a pic of strenx playing at 12, I heard Rapha was playing around that age too from his dad, Av3k and Cypher I'm sure started around that age too

Now take me for example, I didn't have a good PC until I was 15 or so, even with the family PC it didn't have a good video card, or a proper case to support an upgrade. So when I was 15 or 16 I got to play Quake and UT a lot, and by 17 or 18 I was taking it seriously. I got better and peaked, I found I was improving less over time, and plus college screws with your time.

It's hard to be critical of yourself when you're up against someone who started at 12. Sure someone at 16 can pickup the game and play, but you can't ignore the importance of those four years, especially from a younger age. Starting at 20 is different than starting at 10.

I'd hate to tell people to give up, but honestly does anyone expect someone to start at 16 and be a top level pro like Rapha or Cooller? It pisses me off when players like that talk about going to an event, and say comments like "if you're not going to win first place you shouldn't be going". It's like they forget all those tournaments they went to before, where they were really happy if they got a top 16 or top 8 finish because they were starting out. Additionally, it's ignorant to talk about winning first place when you were playing at 12 or even younger, automatically getting years of experience before other players.

I think everyone hits a wall, they can improve more and more, but eventually they will improve less and less, so much that a player can feel like they've practiced for months and feel no improvement. I found that personally, after a couple years of playing seriously I noticed I was improving less and less. Doesn't matter how many demos I watched, I felt like I hit a peak. Sure I could have gotten better, but I was already in college and waking up at 4am to watch dreamhacks and watching demos. I felt like I could have been a tier better or moved up, but it would have required way more time and focus. If I didn't go to school, and worked a part time job like most pros here did, it would have allowed me to work some whatever job, and focus on Quake and improving. College isn't an excuse because many top pros were in College, but once again if that player started at 12, those years where he's learning and improving will be before college, not during.

So yeah, age is definitely a variable to consider. I think it's just as important as talent and skill, a player learning something at 16 is very different than a player learning something at 10 or 11.

Celebrities for the most part, especially Justin Bieber (which is not hidden in this fact at all), are manufactured. There's thousands upon thousands of people who work harder than any celebrity and get a fraction of anything for it.

Young age makes things easier, old age does not make things impossible.

Juan Manuel Fangio

His record of five World Championship titles stood for 45 years, until German driver Michael Schumacher took his sixth title in 2003. Schumacher said, "Fangio is on a level much higher than I see myself. What he did stands alone and what we have achieved is also unique. I have such respect for what he achieved. You can't take a personality like Fangio and compare him with what has happened today. There is not even the slightest comparison."

He started racing (very slow heavy cars, mind you) when he was 23. He started F1 racing when he was 37.

Highest percentage of wins 46% (24 wins out of 52 entries)
Highest percentage of pole positions 55.8% (29 pole positions out of 52 entries)
Highest percentage of front row starts 92.31% (48 front row starts out of 52 entries)
Oldest World Champion 46 years, 41 days

I think the point you're trying to make is that life is a variable, not age necessarily.

They're manufactured after, but pre-celebrity there's usually some talent or skill they have, if you're bad at singing you better know people in high places. I'm just saying it's similar, no one just appears as a guitar player and is a celebrity, just like no one can just come into Quake and win tournaments. I always wondered when pros started, and surprise surprise, I think all of them started playing at 12 or 13, even earlier. It's extremely difficult to get to same playing field as others when they not only have years of experience on you, but thye started at a younger age too. This is important because Quake involves reflexes, something that doesn't stick around and something that isn't 'obtained' by anyone.

I agree, you could get a kid to play Quake at 10, that doesn't mean he will be a champion. But on the flip side, learning something at age 10 is different than learning something at age 20.

it's common knowledge that a kid picks up a second language way quicker than an adult. Their minds are growing and are different than someone older than them. I've seen articles that talk about reflexes and brain age, I think a study said that you couldn't improve your reflexes after around 20. You could maintain the reflexes you had, but you're not going to respond to something quicker. When you're younger, you can improve your reflexes with practice. In addition, life priorities change. The amount of time you have to practice and other responsibilities also come into play, think about playing for hours at 12 vs 16 vs 20. If you want to be successful, school and college comes into play, and if you have to work now you're putting hours into a part time job or something similar.

It's all those variables that come into play when you're discussing age and playing competitively. Upbringing is huge, if you had a dad who played Quake and pushed you to play that might help certain people succeed and improve.

Yes, I agree that age makes it harder to learn and train, that doesn't mean it's impossible.

99% of celebrities are manufactured. I challenge you to name one that's not, and we will see how much their skill or talent has to do with their fame.

There's quite a difference though, qlranks is pretty telling...

Depends on what you consider famous really. If you say 99% of the western world knows them, then I gotta agree (discounting maybe people like the beatles or jimi hendrix). If you narrow it down just a little bit though, there's plenty of people who got famous purely by the merit of their work. Picasso, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Sartre, Dali, Murakami. etc etc (yes. I am aware some of the people I listed are relatively obscure, but meh, cba to spend time thinking of better examples)

I'm not saying it's impossible to name one. Try to name one from the MTV/internet age :)

Yes but my point is that there's still an outside variable attributing to the success of someone like rapha. it's that extra experience that keeps people at the top.

For example lets cram 10 years of Quake into a player. Would you rather play from age 12 to 22, or from 17 to 27? If you're talking about a player with a competitive mindset and someone who wants to win, 99% of the time the player with 10 years of experience from age 12 will beat the player who started at 17. This is why it's more than just years played, it's when you started. If someone starts Quaking at 15 or 16, they can be really good, but I'm almost certain they're not going to be best in the world. Your mind is different when it's younger, it wants to learn and grow. When you hit 17 or later, your mind has slowed down in development, it's not growing as much and you're going to learn things at a different rate compared to someone younger.

I just can't overlook how important starting at a young age is. Every single top player who has won worldwide events seem to have started around 12 or earlier. I've yet to see a Quake player win an event that started when he was 15 or 16. I always thought it was just talent and skill, but the more I found out when top players started playing, the more I realized how important age is, if anything we underestimate it.

except that you have no idea if its causation or a correlation, so all your musing on brain plasticity etc. are totally speculative

^ well put.

Take out life. Both sets of ages have equal opportunity.
The 12 year old has the advantage of a faster growth rate (the mind doesn't stop until about 25 years old, mind you), but I'd argue that the 17 year old will probably have better critical thinking skills and better discipline to more properly make use of his time.

what do you mean by celebrities?

because while Kim Kardashian is worthless slut, well know only for being well known, and having enormous ass(would tap dat btw), while people like Benedict Cumberbach or Jennifer Lawrence are skilled actors.

Agree or disagreeing with their acting talent completely aside... Do you think their hard work and talent is why they are famous, as opposed to why other actors with the exact same qualities and skills are not famous?

Anyone who can walk the streets and get recognized by enough people for it to be a hindrance on their daily life.

Louis CK is the main example of a celebrity that I know of that completely came through based entirely on hard work and great business decisions. When I say manufactured, I mean other people are controlling some aspect of your life or making choices for you. Louis CK had neither.

actually, no one really cares for old people.

Yup, very true, if you're not 10 years old, you should not even be playing games seriously. You will always be beaten by someone younger than you. That's just a fact of life.

Cooller school.

ma friend, i have spent such money on beers that you need to listen to what i listen!!!!! such as Dr Sin and Dream Theater!

loveh em tho! :D

ask prot he got the MOJO this weekend!!!!

this is cool, but nowadays Angra has playing with the Rhapsody of Fire singer, much better than this shemale blond! :D

fabio leone i think, is the name of the rhapsody's singer!

there is no mystery
new stars didn't emerge because there was no hype or $ to bring them.
q4 was the last arena fps to bring in loads of new talent,
it's been downhill ever since.

pavel, ash, etc need monthly lans and sponsorships(will give them more free time) to make the next jump. doubtful that quake ever gets that much support again

And fuck any tournament that still uses old maps(dm6, aerowalk, lost world, furious heights were at qcon), it's a big advantage to old players. top players already know those maps inside out, so they can just focus on the newer maps, it probably cuts their "study" time in half. 5 fresh maps every year would have helped the scene a lot. too late now. gj, id

no about the map part. its just stupid superstition.

new maps in a competitive enviroment do nothing, because the old pros will be motivated to learn maps to win monies.

new maps in a non competitive enviroment are a bit better, but still - cypher needed 10 games to get the grip how to play silence, while baksteen had like 200. cypher still won. the experience factor is impossible be avoided.

This.
[+] :<

A D D E R R A L L

Seriously, uppers are a game changer

stop the whine and practice everyday, 3 to 5 hours everyday, but with intelligence, like taking notes of what you do, watch demos from top players, some old demos too, buy all the equipment necessary in order to have a best performance you can get.. then when you reach a certain top level you just have to practice a little bit against top players in order to remain very skilled.

I decided to play more duels when QL arrived, I was already 20-21 years old and beforehand had no other motivation than having fun playing scrims with my ctf buddies in OSP.

No, what really brought me this far is motivation that came when LLL decided to pick me up and send me to IEM Cologne. I discovered that ball mouse was shit and that it was better to use a mousepad than playing on your desk. I also received a nice sennheiser PC350 headsets that greatly improved my ingame awareness as opposed to before using only shitty earplugs found in mcdonalds boxes.

Later on, around 2012 I think, I discovered I was playing on 75 hz and upped it to 100 hz (despite beeing on a CRT for a ton of years - this also probably raped my eyes and would explain my small myopia I got starting at around the age of 17 :D)

And around a year later I guess, I discovered I could up my wmo to 500hz instead of 125.

I would describe myself as a non-talented individual who got motivated step by step to improve and test myself beyond my limits. The idea that I could become one of the best duel players in a game that has been a huge part of my life so far was that much of a motivation factor.

I'm a slow-learner and needed a lot of practice to reach a level some people could reach in close to no-time. Eventhough I often like to point out that I've had a relatively low amount of duels played in my entire carreer as opposed to most of the players playing on my level (or above or a little under). I never used a fake in QL and barely played any duel in OSP/Q4. Atleast not for the sake of improving.

Cool story bro.

nice and honest :)
did you unscrew the bottom of the mouse to clean the ball wheels? So much junk used to collect on there. I had a Logitech at one time pretty nice 3 buttons...

yes, and I remember loving to clean it with my nails and to feel them wheels turn swiftly and my mouse beeing "smooth" again for a little while :D

"little while" exactly, rolls of it all over the place, was a massive improvement then. Think my mousemat was a pretty cheap as chips plastic one, with some funny characters on it, can't remember now. ps2 ftw

That was one of the most satisfying things one could do with a ball mouse. The dirt accumulated slowly and it had to pass a certain threshold to be annoying enough so that there was no choice but to clean it. And joy was to be had when the dust that had gathered over the wheel was scraped away in nice big continuous chunks. And once again the ball was rolling freely without shitbrakes hitting on randomly.

Your man's joy is another man's misery :D

"shitbrakes" love it :) yeah that's a memory lane, that was annoying those little "shitbrakes" glitches, especially at a crucial moment.

and actually it was pretty therapeutic, making sure that every bit was off. I used to use nailvarnish remover and cotton bud at the very end so it was squeaky clean..

That's like comparing dial-up to modern day broadband. There are no positive points.

People like to get nostalgic over inferior tech - I've never understood why.

I bet there are many more things you don't understand.

You're finnish - I believe you're in the ball-park in that area.

At least we know how to properly use the idioms of our native language here in Finland.

Probably containing phrases such as "Let's all fuck each other naked in the sauna"

Do Irish people usually fuck with their clothes on then? Oops.. Didn't realise you wouldn't know.

Lmao what kind of insult is that. At least mine was relevant to Finland haha

You are not very good at this. Bye bye.

im prolly just being sentimental, but i still think the best gaming mice i had was some ballmouse model of a4tech.

once you have good skills you also need a proper mindset

That kicks in when you deal similar skill. Almost every interview Cypher, Cooller and Avek were telling stories about how they are achieving winning mindset.

I'm just saying you can beat someone with less hours of practice

Everyone is really fucking good at something, they just happen to be really fucking good at video games, and put the time and effort into developing their skill.

Guys, I think that main reason is not experience, skills, gear, luck.
Main reason is physical differences in brain structures capabilities.

One man can learn and remember 2000 new English words in one day and remember 500 of them after two weeks (I know such person). Other man can not learn even 300 in one day and after two weeks will forget all these words (myself).
What is the reason? Brain differences.

In other test this 2000-word-per-day guy has reaction time of 280 ms (trying hard to get lower!!!), while I have 160 ms.
What is the reason? Brain differences.

There is area in brain, that is responsible for face recognition. All good chess players have this area much bigger (and active too, I guess) then any average man has. And this is something that people born with. Sure, you can start to play chess at age 5 and this area will be developed very good at age 20. But if you was BORN with this area big enough and you start to play chess at 5, then at age 20 you become top chess player.

Now, don't forget about different drugs that can be taken to activate this area even more (for the game time). And if we already talking about sport - is anything like doping check for quakelive competitive play? Funny, but there is nothing like that. Players even not forced to submit their demos while playing online tournaments. I am not saying anything about any player, I just try to analyze facts.

In short, if is someone is taller then you, you will never beat his height with yours (only if you will put some metal bearings in your legs or something like that). If guy is smarter then you, you will never be smarter then him.
Its how mother nature created us - all different! With different qualities!
That's why people talks about "equality" as base make me laugh.

ye ye ye, probably every single Quake player has better reaction time then average Joe, we're all fucking prodigies. wohoo!

the case of the polgar family proves that geniuses can be made (at least in chess its hard to make your children basketball pros if they arenīt tall enough of course)

Sad story.. But same as with quake players - " ... for eight hours a day, no friends, no toys" ))

:D

humans are actually robots programmed by life experiences. We think we have control over our body but that is merely an illusion. Imagine somebody invented a new type of television that connected to your brain and this new television would send electronic responses to your brain to create an illusion of feelings. A TV show director decides to make the script as realistic as possible they should send electronic responses to the brain to make the viewers feel the thinking of the action before they perform and feel said action. This is what i mean by we are actually robots, but with feelings. So all this genetic stuff is bs. It's life experiences that matter and obviously certain people will have advantages over others but that doesn't mean they can't be overcome by. It's just hard to pinpoint and trace what to do to overcome it. WAKE UP SHEEPLES!

In the future humanities biggest killer will be when they discover the ultimate drug.that induces pure satisfaction. When they unhook themselves from this pure satisfaction drug they will think the feelings we consider normal as depressing and hook themselves again until they die from starvation. Drugs such as heroin haven't even reached 0.1% of societies definition of satisfaction which is why you don't see this as much of a problem in today's society. This is why the government is trying to illegalise drugs. WAKE UP SHEEPLES!

I'm bored

I'd say that it's a combination of 4 things
1) enjoying the game
2) not wanting to lose
3) being able to seperate yourself from "ingame".
4) having a lot of free time (at least in order to learn the game, when you understand it then it's not a big deal to not play for a long period of time although playstyles do slightly change which would give a small addaptation period)

NO MAN, WE'RE ANIMALS, WE'RE NOT EQUAL, YOU NEED TALENT MAN

I didn't say we were equal... a lot of people don't enjoy quake and a lot of people give up when they lose... also a lot of people don't have the time and some can't "get out of the game".
Tada :p

Sorry buddy. I watched a lot of animes but still... in real life sometimes wanting to do it badly and putting all your efforts in it will not be enough. In real life Yugi doesn't draw the right card at the right time. Why? Because life is not an anime. Believing doesn't work. There is no god damn heart of the cards. Cards have no f*cking heart, they are just freaking cards.
Life is unfair. Santa does not exist. You can pray all you want to any god you want, mom and dad will not get back together. That bitch who broke your heart is not going to suddenly realize that she was wrong and come back to you either. Also you will most like not live long enough to see the invention of time travel so you can go back in time and kill the people who invented country music before they do. Not gonna happen. You can try really hard if you want to, but let me tell you it will most likely be a waste of effort.
I stopped trying to teach my sister in law. She just won't cut it, no talent at all, can't learn. In fact do you know what hope is? It's the best shortcut ever to disillusion. Drop your hopes, they won't get you anywhere but to despair. Best case scenario it miraculously works out and you end just being like "Oh yeah ok. That actually happened..." Be depressed and hopeless and it becomes your worst case scenario and you actually get a shot at a pleasant surprise exceeding your expectations. Even better: don't have expectation, they are useless. Be a machine that only exist to work and make money that you can spend on not giving a shit.

Conclusion of this topic: what a bunch of pointless argument. When life gives you lemons, what do you do with them?

put that lemon into a bottle of corona and enjoy :) that little moment alone is worth living

Produce a kid. Be a decent parent, i.e. grow a kid with confidence in its abilities etc.. Take it to LANs and put the mouse in its fingers when it's ~4 years old. Try to make playing the game fun and be a good teacher. Make its brain grow along with Quake. Bam, future pro.

yup.

From your link :P :

""The Polgar sisters are a beautiful coincidence," says Ognjen Amidzic. A neuroscientist in Switzerland, Amidzic once aspired to become a professional chess player. He had the "rage to master" and even moved to Russia as a teenager to study intensively with grandmasters. But he reached a plateau at age 23 and had to quit. Reeling from his wrecked dreams, Amidzic went into cognitive science to understand what went wrong. Through the use of brain scans, he discovered a marked difference between grandmasters and highly trained amateur chess players like himself: When grandmasters play chess, the areas responsible for long-term memory and higher-level processing are activated.

Chess titans have anywhere from 20,000 to 100,000 configurations of pieces, or patterns, committed to memory. They are able to quickly pull relevant information from this mammoth database. With a mere glance, a grandmaster can then figure out how the configuration in front of him is likely to play itself out.

Amateurs, by contrast, use short-term memory while playing chess. When they take in new information, it stays in the "small hard drive" of working memory without passing over into the "zip drive" of long-term memory. "Amateurs are overwriting things they've already learned," says Amidzic. "Can you imagine how frustrating that is!"

Amidzic's research suggests that chess whizzes are born with the tendency to process chess more through their frontal and parietal cortices, the areas thought to be responsible for long-term memory."

You are exceptionally talented at misunderstanding. If only that were a competitive sport, you'd be at the top.

Here's the thing though: would he be the best at misunderstanding because he was born with that talent, or because he developed those misunderstanding skills in his life.

Oh yea that guy for sure is not biased at all...

Because other peoples aren't? If anything, that guy is less biased, because he practically admits of having wasted half his life chasing an unrealizable desire, and of being naturally handicapped compared to real natural talents.

The sole reason so many peoples refuses the obvious fact that there are peoples more talented, with better skills and better bodies, is because eveyone of us likes to think "i could be there if only i bothered/someone paid me/etc. etc."

Basically, ego.
We all like to think we are quake duel champions, heavyweight boxing champions, exceptional drivers, master swordmans, and to have the dick of this man.

But we aren't, at least not all of us, and we should rather focus on what we have and what we are and trying to pull out the best from it, rather than wasting our times feeling bad for not being something else.

I looked up his games in my database and what i found is that he clearly ran in to a wall in 1991 having not won a single rated game. However, he ruined his games early with crucial mistakes in the opening, hence giving his opponents an early advantage. Without going into too muany chess specifics, his peak rating was 2370 elo which today is a level you can earn money with. it surely is not enough to live from but you donīt have to pay to play. also his rating today would be a little higher maybe 2440 due to elo inflation, where 2500 elo is basically the border to grandmaster. I really think after that terrible year in his career he just lost any confidence in his abilities and went into the wrong mindset and eventually gave up. This however does not really suggest that he had the "rage to master".

I definately agree in terms of some physical sports. you will never be a 100m runner if you donīt have the right (fast-contracting?) muscle fibres. you wonīt be 2m tall and you wonīt have a huge dick if you donīt have it in your package. you also will not have an eidetic memory if you donīt have an eidetic memory (although a lot of kids have it and it might be coincidence that some keep it but if you never had it yea...)

BUT in terms of strategic games or playing an instrument it is imo about motivation, starting early about discipline and that "rage to master"

edit: i forgot to mention that in terms of the brain diferences "correlation does not imply causation" comes into effect. maybe the brain can develop in this way if you train it in very early ages.

Yeah, right, the three chess sisters all just happened to have the chess gene, Serena and Venus Williams have the Tennis gene, Janica and Ivica Kostelic happen to have a DNA sequence that makes them awesome at Skiing, and all the great musicians have one for playing violin/piano/whatever. Totally has nothing to do with the fact that all of them were pushed hard into their respective disciplines at an extremely young age, not at all.
Being pushed early isn't a great advantage because you get more time (well, maybe in sports, but you can play music or chess at high level until you die), it's because you're so much faster to learn stuff when you're young and your brain is still growing etc. I started playing violin a year ago and I sound like shit, meanwhile fucking 7 year olds play twice as well as me with the same amount of invested time. It just gives you an advantage that late starters won't be able to compensate even after decades of practice.

Genetics may be a factor as well (they obviously matter a lot in physical sports), but I seriously doubt your DNA has as big an impact in stuff like chess/music (I feel Quake Duel/videogames in general may be somewhere in the middle)). Let's not forget that we're still savannah monkeys according to our genes and that virtually nothing the modern human does apart from moving, fucking, eating and sleeping has any root in DNA.

Of course, to a 20-year old who realizes he's shit at everything he does, knowing that the inferiority doesn't come from genes but from incompetent parents doesn't really make a difference. He doesn't/didn't have a meaningful influence on the factors in both cases

bam, rapha

This thread is real. From my experiecience one improves under competition, I improved under FACEY competition, and improved a lot when iwas having fun. Thats the main thing

i can't stand that demon kid......love to smack him with my hipster beard

Cypher = Messi
Rapha = Ronaldo
Cooller = Zidane

People are just born these way, you cant compete with talent + dedication. Get over it

And still fat ronaldo is better than all those, combined.

lol'd at those comparison's
you quakelive fanboys are the most delusional i've ever seen

This has already probably been mentioned somewhere in the walls o' text above, but a major component is mindset and confidence. I think Rapha has mentioned this in his interviews about how Zero4 coached him on mindset. It is the mindset of playing to win, not playing to avoid losing.

Watching Cypher over the past year in the FaceIt cup finals against Evil, you can see slowly how Cypher's mindset while playing Evil changed. Evil's aim didn't particularly degrade and Cypher's did not go through any sort of revolution, but in many cases Cypher started to play with more and more confidence against Evil (and Evil losing confidence against Cypher).

It's why legacy players (like Zero4, Dkt, whoever) can still come back to the game and despite being rusty can hang with some of the new, much more conditioned players. So much of the game is mindset.

The best decision making isn't always choosing amongst the best of choices, but also choosing with confidence as well.

before zero4 started coaching rapha how good of a player was rapha ?

Duel is a gametype where a small skill difference can mean a lot. I mean, there's no team to back you up, no free frags in form of weaker players, no getting easy kills of enemies busy with each other.

So if you play against a good player, every mistake you make is actually instaneously a benefit for him.

Some guys are born into this shit, they don't need all that much practice to rape people at duel, because they "feel" the map and the game. The practice just makes them even better.

Unless you're one of such guys or suddenly discover a hidden talent in yourself, you will spend a lot of time trying to get decent and then good, but will never match the top tier. The same happens in sports or other activities. Some people have natural talent and inclination to do what they're best at doing.

Cooller I think originally was trained under polosity. I think Polosity himself said that Cooller became one of the best int he world by 2002. And he started helping him in 2000.