"You're such a mediocre player!"
If you follow the match summaries for all of our various competitions, you may have noticed a rather distressing trend when it comes to yours truly. And that is that I'm actually a fairly average player, if not slightly below average. Jeez it's starting to sound like my performance in the bedroom. It has also been mentioned by my fellow competitors (my performance in Yahtzee, not the bedroom, obviously). And that begs the question, why do I bother? Why do I try? Why do I carry on? Who am I kidding? Who am I to dish out advice in various blog posts when I rarely scrape a win. Well, the answer to these questions are not nearly as cut and dry as they may appear on first inspection.
I love the BHO league. Love playing in it, love writing the summaries, love the people, love the smells, the occasional secretions (what?). But for whatever reason I just can't seem to put my mark on the League in any meaningful way. I can't say for an absolute certainty what it is about it that makes me suck balls (figuratively, not literally), but I have my theories. For one, League matches in our faction can be a bit chaotic. Actually they can sometimes make you downright mentally unstable! There are a lot of people involved and usually a lot of distractions. All of this hubbub does tend to get to me. I'm sure it gets to others too, but I can only speak for myself. But these kind of distractions do tend to get to me in general. If things don't run a hundred percent smoothly, I tend to get cranky. It may be a slight symptom of my very slight OCD, but I think this certainly contributes to my overall suckiness. I'm not using this as an excuse, because I can't. There are others in our faction, Kerrie and Miles, for instance, that can just seem to block out all that external noise, and it has no effect on them. Oh, to have that quality. It does amaze me. If it were up to me, Yahtzee matches would be more like snooker matches than football matches. But saying that,I do think it is something that I have the ability to learn to control somehow, but I'm buggered if I know their secret, and I doubt they'd tell me if I asked them anyway.
On the face of it, my excuse does sound a bit fatuous, a bit like a bad darts player blames his flights. But, if you follow my thought process, there is a scintilla of evidence to support my theory. If you can be arsed in the slightest to take a look at my track record in the smaller matches, such as The Core Championship, I do tend to fare decidedly better. Now, the cynics amongst you may argue that there's less people playing so there is a higher likelihood that I would be nearer the top. This, on it's own is true. And i would be the first to reject it as evidence. BUT, and to me and my pride, it is a big juicy booty of a but(t), my scores do tend to trend upwards also. This, I think, is because the room is generally emptier, therefore quieter, significantly so, and these matches tend to be a lot more subdued, perfect for someone like myself, who seems to need a calmer atmosphere to weave his particular style of Yahtzee magic.
It's not just the horrors of the outside world and the greasy tendrils od asinine conversations that tends to affect my game. My very own brain (the little shit) has a habit of sabotaging itself a lot of the time. I have alluded to this unfortunate quirk of my squidgy grey matter in many a match summary and have even offered tips on how to combat this. The trouble is, I KNOW the best way to overcome the mental aspect of the game, well enough to even offer advice about it, my problem is putting it into practice. But, once my head has dropped and I've convinced myself I'm gonna lose, more than likely because I am not rolling squat, or some lucky git keeps getting Yahtzees, I actually do, usually, lose.
Last but not least, I am a creature of habit, which tends to lead me to play the same way all the time. That's not to say that I'm not adaptable, if an opportunity presents itself, I will take it, but I'm not the type to gamble. I'll never try to get a Yahtzee, unless it's my last roll of course. I usually wait for it to present itself. Same for a Large Straight and a Four Of A Kind. The worst part is, I know this is likely poor play, but I can't help myself. There is something in me that just restricts me from "going for it". I don't think Kerrie (bless her rotten socks) rolls so many Yahtzees without sticking her neck out. And that has led me to believe that perhaps I play way too conservatively. Something I think needs to change.
So, I've identified some weaknesses in my game. So what? What am I going to do with that information? Just accept that I'm mediocre and carry on regardless? Hell no! I'm not gonna sit back a let my opponents railroad me! No! I'm gonna do all I can to improve my game, starting now! And I thought I would take you along for the ride. Consider this an introduction to a new series I call, "Diary of a Yahtzee Try Hard". In each post I'm going to focus on a particular weakness in my game and approach it scientifically. I'm not going to be a total egg head about it, but I hope to test my attempts to improve my game and come away with results that either prove or disprove whether my approach is effective or not. This kind of post may not be for everybody, and that's okay. This series is a personal endeavour, first and foremost, and hopefully I'll come out the other end a substantially better player than I was before I started. With any luck, this series will not only help me, but I hope it can be helpful in improving your own game also. Or at the very least it will illustrate what not to do!
So stick around boys and girls and keep your eyes peeled for part one of the series. 'Till next time, you lovely people...
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