zonic's zoom: Gaming Advanced

TO GET THE MAXIMUM OUT OF PRACTICE

Yo guys, last week you read Part 1 in which I wrote about how we practice in mTw, who we play against, how we go through tactics, communication and last but not least, what we do the day we are playing an official match.

Today I will show you more detailed how we practice and what kind of problems we had in mTw before.

PART 2

- Motivation & dedication is necessary to get the maximum out of practice
- What kind of tactics you should train
- What to do after practice?
- Inspiration
- PUBLIC -> PRACC -> CLANBASE MATCHES -> OFFICIAL MATCHES

Motivation & dedication is necessary to get the maximum out of practice

Motivation is probably the most important thing in CS, if you don’t have it, you’ll start losing your matches. A classy example is SK. They have had a tough year in 2006/2007 and they seemed to have lost their motivation, but here in the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008 with lineup changes they started to get back on track. Anyways, Dedication and motivation makes you the player you wished to become, now how can you get the maximum out of your practice?

It’s very simple, its dedication and motivation, if you are motivated and really dedicated on becoming a better team in your praccs you will get there someday. However if you get tired of pracc’s and lose that motivation, and many of you probably have tried that feeling, it’s worthless trying to play even more or keep playing. Take a week off (depends on if there are any tournaments coming up, but let’s say there aren’t) and then simply just stop playing CS for a bit, when we play a tournament in mTw, and let’s say we win the tournament, we usually talk about when we are going to play again after the tournament. Then we usually agree on taking a week off, and after that week, I’ll be motivated to play again.

What kind of tactics should you train?

Sounds like a stupid question, and if you are a team that praccs a lot then use all tactics, but a trick we use in mTw is to kinda rate our tactics by how good they are.
Let’s say we have a b1 split called NoA and a b2 rush called mTw, and a really good tactic called Asylum.

Asylum: rated 5 out of 5
NoA: rated 3 out of 5
And mTw rated 3 out of 5

Let's say we have practiced all 3 tactics a lot, so we know how good they are. Then let’s say we play 10 pcw’s.

Asylum 3 out of 10 pcw’s
NoA 10 out of 10 pcw’s
mTw 10 out of 10 pcw’s

What I’m trying to say is, if you really feel you have a great tactic here, then don’t show it, because people really steal your ideas, I remember ave and I trying to throw a flash one day we were bored, and we haven’t played a single official match with that flash. Then me and ave sad down and watches another Danish team playing a official match, and then they throw the exact same flash, and It’s a really difficult flash, so there is no way he had seen it from anyone else.

Anyways just to make this short: don’t show the best tactics you have when you face an opponent you might meet in the near future, however don’t forget them either, because the tactics still need training.

What to do after practice?

Probably 99% of you guys don’t sit down after a practice and go through tactics there, and it’s a common mistake and most of the time we don’t either, but some of us stay and talk about he did this and that wrong, and it’s really great because people forget the mistakes next day, and then what’s the point of playing then.
Inspiration

Another thing to improve, write down how your opponents play in document, so you get a hint of how they play if you meet them in an official match. And the most important thing, visit www.HLTV.org and download demos of your opponents – also if you need some new tactics, then get some inspiration of your opponents, and don’t just look at their tactics, if you cover b2 (inner site) on train and you need ideas to cover some spots, then watch some demos of SK, fnatic etc and see how they play the bombsite. If you are going alley on train as T, then download a demo of your opponent and see how they cover alley, so you got a hint of where they might be.

PUBLIC -> PRACC -> CLANBASE MATCHES = OFFICIAL MATCHES

This is a short one; this is my perspective of what these categories give you.

Public - Mouse feeling, you don’t really get inspired by shooting a Terrorist in T spawn or shooting 4 guys in big pit on Inferno, you need to shoot people where they actually could be in an official match.

Pracc - team practice, your team gets better, I don’t personally become that much better a player by just playing pcw’s, because I HAVE to stand there, and I’m not that free to try new spots etc.

CLANBASE MATCHES - becoming a better individual player, you play with a team, against a team but you can stand wherever you want to and get some inspiration by some new players who aren’t on your team.

That’s it; just ask questions if you didn’t understand some of it, I know it can be difficult to get my point.

See ya next week

Danny 'zonic' Sørensen