Starcraft 2 Skills: Learning from the Best

One of the most valuable concepts I ever learned in a class that I paid for, was the idea of Modeling, also know as Observational Learning.

Now this class was focused on learning physical skills, think sports, so they had a slightly different interpretation than the psychology link above.  They strongly suggested getting personal instruction from an expert, in part because it is more efficient to learn something right the first time, than learn it "wrong" and then have to relearn the skill correctly.

Watching a highly skilled professional demonstrate something would also allow you to pick up many small nuances that words often fail to encompass, or that a skilled person doesn't even think about any more (i.e. Unconscious Competence) so they fail to mention those nuances.


In addition to, or in place of, if you were unable to get professional  instruction, they suggested watching a lot of video of top level people.  They also urged plenty of practice.


An old study of Racquetball or Tennis players was mentioned, where using high speed film it was discovered that skilled players were actually responding to were the ball was going to go, before their opponent had even hit the ball!


Eventually it was determined that the skilled players could tell subconsciously, or perhaps pattern recognition would be better term i.e. they had seen it before and recognized what was possible, were the ball was going to go from their opponents body positioning, momentum, and similar elements.

The idea is that we learn many things by seeing something and trying to imitated it, often on the subconscious level.

I remember Tasteless, commenting one time that someone had asked him why he boxed the workers constantly, the way many skilled SC2 players do, and he really didn't know why he did it.  He said something like, "just habit I guess".

I think this was a case of Unconscious Competence, he did something correct without thinking about  it!


Boxing workers does a few good things, it keeps you focused on how many workers you have, so you keep constantly making more workers.  A critical, though basic, skill in Starcraft 2, but it also provides practice of a critical skill.  The skill of boxing, a lot of micro skills, like splitting Marines, relies on boxing.

So even if you don't know why you should do the seemly pointless boxing of workers, you would benefit from it if you just started copying a high skill player that did it.

It seems to me to work a lot better to pick one or at most two skilled players to watch in a conscious attempt to model.  I like to watch WhiteRa, Protoss is my main race, and Stephano, since Zerg is my off race.  Since I coach and blog I also watch Goody, for Mech centered Terran play, and Drewbie for bio/drop centered Terran play.  Those are the players I focus on for game play modeling.

For Deep understanding of the game I watch Thundertoss.  Day9 is also excellent for this, but Thundertoss' perspective of the game fits me better than Day9's.



 I also find Thundertoss' Predictions impressive, here is a stunningly great example:

zergs will use their overlords in ZvZ (bread crumbed from their natural to their opponents natural as they should  be) to actively turn on (and off) creepy highways when they want to be aggressive 

So one of the things you can do to improve, is to watch a skilled person perform.  The only difference between this and watching them because you enjoy their play, is that you strive to focus on the game.  Focus on it as hard as you can, if you feel a little tired after watching your preferred Pro Gamer play, like you would after driving a car in a Blizzard, word play intended, then your doing it right.

GL HF!

~Cliff