Anatomy of a Top Ranked Player

[swordsman3003]

This is a revision of a forum post VillageIdiot wrote a while back. It's been published in the Briefing as well (see the article for a link). However, I think this is just an amazing piece and wanted to enshrine it in a way it would be easy to find for beginners. VI obliged me, so, here we are!

Anatomy of a Top Ranked Player

[ABM1]

I can certainly speak for the quality of the piece! As per most things on your blog (which I've been binge-reading for the past few days), it's written articulately & engagingly and seems to contain tons of valuable info. I'm just a beginner myself, and it's great to find analysis like this that goes in-depth and gives tons of tips to improve whilst still being comprehensible to someone like me. Now to try to go about applying it haha!

[gimix]

Great post, as usual.
I would be curious to know how would VI describe his own unique top player trait

[Yonni]

Very interesting, but I'm not sure that the topic is covered in full. Maybe I'm wrong, but as if something is missing.

Give a damn. I think that's the last spice needed in the mix.

[VillageIdiot]

Great post, as usual.
I would be curious to know how would VI describe his own unique top player trait

Great question.

I'm especially good at a "play-the-player" approach. I get to know the players within the game on a geniune personal level, which helps me understand personalities and motivators which I'm able to leverage to assist my goals. In higher stakes games I've done homework on players to further understand them and recognize their habits and patterns and have a notorious knack for cracking identities in anonymous-ish games. I'm able to identify players with short fuses and deflect them onto other players, vet players efficiently to see if they would make for good allies, and recognize tells that can tip me off if a player is deviating from their norm and likely lying or trying to set something up.

And I'm also highly adaptable. I rarely go into a game with much of a plan, I work better in a more organic situation. From round to round I usually will have thought up 2-4 different plans worked through and finalize close to deadline which is best based on how things played out during that rounds diplomacy. This helps me to be well prepared to best capitalize on developing opportunities or avoid developing risks.

[MadMarx]

Well written VI, impressive as usual!