Opportunity Cost of Attention

New and old players alike often lapse their concentration on important matters when concentrating on what they deem to be higher priorities. The problem is that often where they are spending their attentions does not require that amount of focus they are dedicating to it.

When moving out with your army, you don't -need- to hover your screen over them all the while. Send a worker, observer or single unit from the composition further ahead to scout for you. This enables you to continue macroing right untill the point where your minimap flashes red (The scout gets attacked, or sees enemy forces).

Create an expansion just before you push out. It allows you to get ahead economically during and after the fight for minimal effort. If you lose the fight, they will most likely go straight to your base and not see it. If you win they have little chance of finding it untill rebuilding their forces.

During a battle, you don't need to micro all the time if you can avoid it. Once the concave is set up, make use of shift queued commands to cast abilities and focus fire. Watching the battle the whole time allows you to pull injured units out and back in, but you may be missing out on all of the reinforcements you will need whether successful or not. Too many people suffer from this and amass minerals during fights.

Make use of the F1, F2, F3 etc. Hotkeys to highlight important locations and quickly return to them, it works better than devoted hotkeys to unit production. You can use these to map areas fights are most likely to occur, the enemy base to recheck what tech they have after each scouting and your expansions.

Fundamentals

http://day9tv.blip.tv/file/3991475/

A really exceptional shoutcast to make you think more about what you're doing in game. Practice, practice, practice. When things feel fluid you are probably doing it right.

Every small bump slows down your overall game. Don't concentrate on rushing buildings to fufill set build orders. Concentrate on making sure there is never a gap between a workers actions, your scout is always moving, you have control of the watch towers with 1 zergling, marine or probe. Concentrate on never being supply blocked.

These fundamentals will allow you to improve whatever the situation, whatever the map, whatever the build order you are going for. Even if you are building the incorrect strategical unit, the fluidity of your play should win the game.

At most levels perfect execution of any strategy > subpar execution of the optimal.

StarCraft 2 - Crota - ArgoOs(Z) vs Roweaknina(P) on Lost Temple Part 1

StarCraft 2 - SC220 - Eizcaj (Z) vs NightEnd (P) on Scrap Station

Diversification

Should I include chess and poker strategy aswell?

-Edit: Come to think of it, so many things are applicable in game theory. Forex trading, derivatives, portfolio management, blackjack.. Which areas are you guys interested in?

SC2 vs LoL

Both use ELO system for online gaming matchmking. But one is vastly superior.

League of Legends matchmaking simply cannot be balanced around ELO because of 8 other variables in the game. I believe we will start to see a large drift from LoL / HoN within the coming weeks as people realize that their arbitrary system for matchmaking repeatedly yields poor results.

The only way to fix this in DotA was by using third party software to banlist people or private servers with level requirements and integrated account baning. LoL could learn a thing or two.

Chronoboost

In SC2 all the races now have an advanced way of speeding up their production, but only Protoss has the advantage of being able to use it to bolster its army after the economic, mineral-saturation phase. Use it late game to quickly reinforce your troops or develop upgrades quickly to gain the long term advantage.

Balance

For my second post I would like to remind people do not complain about balance. It is most likely if you are at the level where you read guides / strategy sites that you are not playing optimally. There will always be things you could be doing better in game (micro, macro, strategy, scouting, etc). If you lose at this level it is not because 1 unit or strategy is imbalanced, it is because you were outplayed. Face up to it and improve rather than hitting a wall because you declare this 1 unit or strategy imbalanced and become unwilling to learn how to counter it.

First Impressions

Well guys,

I just got the game and let me say it is awesome. Starcraft 2 is one of the most well thought out, anticipated sequals any company has ever pulled off. It has done what most games struggle to do by turning every casual player into a competitive one, then paired them accordingly to opponents of equal rank. This hopefully should ensure that every game is a decent one in the eyes of the player. Anyone who is vastly better than the skill bracket they are in should quickly rocket out of it and anyone using cheese strategies to cheat the system will eventually fall in ELO when playing against the higher echelons who know how to counter it.

Within the coming weeks I will hopefully be uploading some strategies and concepts for people to mulll over and with any luck raise the collective skill bar.