"I play like I post - I play like a bot."

I said this after my battle count was mentioned to be rivaling the bot account activity - *It is only half a joke. I have been very busy this season and have played an inordinate amount of games.

How many?

Oops.

That is a lot of battles for one season and what is worse, is that I am almost precisely where I finished last season with a few hundred games less. And, my win rate is worse too - it is at 44%, whereas last season it was just under 50.

What have I learned?

As I mentioned the other day, I almost made it into Champion League 2, which would have kept me "safe" from falling into Gold 1 next season. I was 95 points away, which would currently have me in 71st position, instead I am now 477 points away and only 23 points from dropping back into diamond. I stopped at this point because the losses are too expensive and even though I was one win away from doing the daily quest, my chances of getting a gold foil legendary aren't high enough to warrant it.

I learnt many things, but since we are here at this point, the first thing I will do is go on a tangent and reference from the paragraph above. I am currently sitting in 226th position, 477 points (almost an entire league) away from the next level, but between me and the last person in C2, there are *only 164 people. This means that in almost the entire Champion League 3, there are only 164 people + anyone who has between 3700 and 3723 points. This is a problem.

The reason is that there is no incentive for the best players to push into C1 as the rewards are the same even if they are in C2 at the top. Why is this an issue? Well, because they hardly play any games in comparison, because they are able to win so many.

That is great in some ways, but it is also a problem for everyone else, because it means that in order to get up the ranks, there is less chance of meeting people ranked higher to get additional points, which means playing people ranked lower, where a win doesn't gain much, but a loss is very costly. five or six wins can be wiped out in one loss.

This is the nature of the game, but it is an interesting problem for the developers, because for a couple months now, no one has gone into Champion 1. It is like having the Premier League open for players, but they are all choosing to play Division 2. Remember, these players are very good, they have great decks and all of that, but they also know that they can get into the top 50 without breaking a sweat, so why battle more?

But on the other side, there is someone like me who can occasionally beat some of these players (getting lucky with the ruleset or getting lucky overall), but the pressure from below to get into C3 is immense, so many of the people I play that set me on a downward spiral, are a few hundred points below me. one loss leads to the next and the next and suddenly, hundreds of points are gone. So, I think that rather than make it easier to climb, there should be incentive to get up higher and that requires playing more, opening the best up to more risk.

Anyway, that tangent is important for several reasons IMO, but not actually what I am writing about, but segues into what I am.

I played a lot of games yes and I know that I could have played a lot less if I had played more strategically, like those top platers. For example, @jacekw knows he can win so leaves it to the last few days to play, so that way he can power through all of the people who have a lot more points than him, but don't have decks or skills to match. This gets a Premier League player high points, playing people who are Division 2 players - or for a visual, kind of like Ronaldo playing in the U16s city league, or LeBron suiting up in the WNBA - it is a different class of skill and power.

But, this is a strategy game and I can play that way too!

But I don't!

Lesson #1 - play later in the season.

Because I am impatient and start playing too early in the season (I was ranked 22nd in Champions at one point), which means that I end up playing a lot of people who are around my point level so I don't earn many points and, as the days burn, a lot of people who are higher skilled than me but because they started later in the season, cost me a lot to lose to. So, if I want to play less games, I have to start much later in the season - but I don't think it should be that way. Now, this only really works if you know you are a decent enough player to get up there, otherwise it is going to be an exercise in futility anyway. I think I have proven that with a pile of rental cards, I can mix it with the not too far below best.

Lesson #2 - Quit while ahead

The next thing on the list of learnings from playing like a bot is, once I have a good streak of high-point wins, I should stop playing completely. Screw the quest! The reason is that I hit a "vein of gold" with players that are highly ranked above me, but I can beat - but just after a run like this, I am more and more likely to meet those highly skilled but lowly ranked players on their charge through.

This means that all those sweet, sweet points melt away fast, as the loss sets up lower level opponents and the good player win rate sets them up against higher rated players... in this case, me. They can gain 72 points, while I will lose 36. The best thing to do is not be greedy and come back the next day, as the better players as well as similar level and some bunnies are likely to have passed me by. That gives me a pool of higher ranked players to play.

Lesson #3 - The Stare but don't Care phase

The other things I learned from playing so many games is more personal and even when I notice it, I tend to keep playing with the "one more" approach. This happens when I have been playing for too long, got my winning streak of points and then play one too many and take a large loss. It is even more pronounced when I am close to the next league - unit bias. I take the loss and then like a gambler, I think just one more round and I can get it back, but I will then meet players that will not get me many points, but cost me heavily for a loss. Then it is the Slippery Slope and after losing a handful of games, suddenly it is 200 points less and I call it quits. But, to get those 200 points back, I am going to have to play another hour or two of games, unless I hit another lucky streak. But even then, I am back where I started.

Lesson #4 - Rent to pOwn

Do people still say pown? This last season I rented over 2000 DEC worth of cards a day, sometimes seeing the battle set, renting the card I need and refreshing to reset the team. It is expensive for me to get this high, and I already own a pretty decent deck of cards and have put a ludicrous amount of money into it. Earning the DEC from my battles is useless as an ROI for me, especially since with playing so many games, I am sitting around a 25% capture rate most of the time. Without some of these cards, I wouldn't get into Champions and perhaps struggle at the top of Diamond. I really wish I owned some of these key cards as it pains me to rent, but not own, but they are out of my range for now.

Lesson #5 - Patiently Bold

Lists are always better with odd numbers, so there has to be a final lesson to make this post "valid" and "valuable" - and perhaps that is the lesson here. There are many ways to approach this game and life in general and we have to find our own way. For instance, @azircon has taught me some of these things here, but I have to really prove it to myself for me to onboard it. He says that I should be patient, which is true, but he also has a few years of playing Splinterlands and a couple decades of Pokémon on top of mine, so I have a lot to learn on how to play so I can play less.

Given the timeframe playing, the deck I own and the personal challenges I have to be here at all, I think that I am doing pretty well to be able to mix it at the top at all. I have gone boldly into Splinterlands across nearly all the assets except LAND, which is just too expensive for me now - but who knows - if I am patient, maybe it will be more than a win on the scorecard and being a full-time-bot playing and posting can be my new lifestyle.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]