10 Principles of Practice that you can learn from Games & Gaming Communities

I’m currently playing and trying to master Dota 2 and Chess, both extremely famous and mainstream games, but unfortunately, they don’t have a finite point at which they end. They, much like life are infinite games.?

If you know both the games, I’ve been struggling to cross the 1500 ELO rating (I know!) on Lichess for Chess and on Dota 2, I’m just about scraping to the 100 hours of battle time till I get to play the ranked matches.

Both these games start off easy and get extremely complex as you keep playing, hence they have many people playing at any given point in time.

Overtime, I realized that it takes some serious effort to move from being a beginner to being an intermediate and from being an intermediate to being an expert.?

The progression mechanics that help the players keep moving through the narrative of the game. The grind that every player willingly undertakes to reach the end-objective of the game that they’re playing is something that is worth thinking through. To get the thinking process started, here are 10 principles of practice that can be borrowed from the world of games.

1.?????Clarity of Objectives:?In chess, you must capture the opposite color King and in Dota 2, you must capture the base of opposite team. Simple and clear objectives do the trick all the time, for players of every kind.?

Games also have a unique way of slicing these easily defined end objectives into smaller, achievable objectives. Both Dota 2 and Chess have the concept of winning the opening, mid-game & endgame to win the match. You can go as granular as you wish to, even to every single move.

2.?????Practice Quality over Practice Quantity:?I’ve tried this the hard way; I’ve tried to brute force practice my way around to get better at both these games. I’ve realized how stupid I was to do that, it’s the most ineffective way to get better at them.

In the case of chess, it’s important to get the theory right in terms of 2-3-4 openings and then practice the opening theories with high rigor. In the case of Dota 2, it’s the same. If you mess up the opening, you’re trailing almost throughout the game and are hoping for the opposition to blunder. So, opening theories are important for both these games.

Kobe Bryant was the real deal when it came to this thought, he said something on the lines of ‘If your practice isn’t more competitive than games, you’re doing it wrong’. He did walk the talk with his mamba mentality and his daily 400-800 baskets training routine.??

If you practice a lot without real effort and quality, it’s just time wasted that you’d rather utilize to get more rest that helps you condition for better practice.

3.?????Reduce the difficulty level if it’s too difficult:?There’s no point in getting beaten day-in and day-out by your opposition if you’re playing in a league that is out of your competency boundaries. You will lose the motivation to play even before you figure out a solution to beat your opponent.

Both in Chess and Dota 2, the ELO rating systems and the league systems help you to play with others who are within your competency range, that help you hang on to your motivation to keep playing and learning. Better practice happens when it’s with people in and around your competency league

4.?????Get a Coach:?There’s nothing better than getting some coaches to help you excel. Coaches are available for both Dota 2 and Chess. The beginners as well as the experts use coaches to accelerate their development within the game.?

Coaches help you get deeper in the subject faster because of the personalization of the knowledge about performance you’d get while training. The feedback, corrective actions, mental and technical aspects of the game can be identified and optimized by the coach.?

However, Coaches are usually expensive and only few have the privilege to get them.

5.?????Study Material:?Both Chess and Dota 2 have extensive study material online; Games that have been analyzed, learning paths, theories etc. Players keep consuming all the knowledge and the strategies that exist on the internet and tinker with them to develop their own way of playing.?

This material could be free or behind a paywall or it could even be a book. For those who cannot get themselves a coach can opt for consuming the study material to get better.

6.?????Find Reasons to be Emotionally Excited:?I want to play a game of chess that’s got moves that even Mikhail Tal or Stockfish would be happily surprised by. Becoming a grandmaster, reliving nostalgia through Dota 2 or even being petty and being the best in the game out of spite could be some of the reasons that emotionally excite you to play the game and move through the skill plateaus.?

Skill Plateaus are frustrating, and they require massive emotional pushes along with intense practice. So, we got to always keep our emotional reasons handy. Most games do that by integrating stories within the game, however, it’s something that needs cultivation in infinite games

7.?????Learning from Losses:?Chess Super Grandmasters (ELO 2700+) know every single game of chess that they’ve played. If you ask any of the SuperGM’s to remember a game that they played a decade ago from an obscure tournament, they will recite all the moves in perfect order from that game. The community encourages even the beginners to do a post-game analysis of every game to get better and help evolve our thinking about our game.

Even in Dota 2, the players keep rewatching their highlights and others' highlights to learn from the mistakes of others. The ethics and the rigor of these professionals to learn not just from playing, but through observation, reflection, theories, and creative thinking is what sets them apart.?

8.?????Devouring the Resistance to Level Up:?Gamers are inherently curious, but sometimes, they face resistances – they are thrown into situations that they’re just not able to get out of. For me personally, in chess, it’s the Caro-Kann defense. Every time I encounter that opening, I get a bit shaky, I’ve had a bad record against that opening.

It's become natural to be a bit shook after seeing the Caro-Kann even after studying its counters. To be calm, calculated and focused while playing those counters is extremely difficult for me and has become a dominant resistance.?

Recently, something took over me and I decided to be extra-aggressive against it and believe that it’s possible to beat the Caro-Kann. In this process, I overcame the resistance to not just beat the Caro-Kann but also beat the deep-seated belief that I can’t win against it. Gamers do this regularly; they level up by devouring the resistances that are thrown their way.

9.?????Understanding the Mastery Curve:?Every game has a mastery curve. In every game, we don’t progress constantly. There are growth phases and there are dull, learning phases. Sometimes players struggle and plateau. All of this is part of the mastery curve. The better we get, the slower it becomes to learn and improve.

Every unique skill also has its unique mastery curve, it’s extremely important to understand this fact and not become frustrated if you’re stuck in a plateau. Keep grinding till you get the next power up.?

One of the ways to accelerate your progress on the mastery curved is to have a dashboard of all the data-points from your games and practice. Identify key metrics you want to improve on and keep pushing on those. Identify which blunders led to you losing the game and correct them to get better.

10.??Regulation and De-Regulation:?The difficult part about practice is that it’s really about balance. We can’t keep playing the same way for hours and hours together to find breakthroughs. We need to spend enough time off the game to rest, relax and provide ourselves enough nutrition, material etc. to let our brains figure the breakthrough.

Constant playing or practice only deteriorates your competency. Ask any gamer this and she will attest to this. Zoning time is extremely important when it comes to practice.

Hope these 10 principles help you get your thinking started on how to practice like a gamer.

P.S.: I hate listicles. They’re my resistance, and I just devoured it!