Platinum Promotion

So yesterday, it finally happened. I was promoted into Platinum league. I knew it was coming. You can always tell when you’re about to get a league advancement, becuase the system will start matching you against plats. I wasn’t winning at first, but I made it.

The funny part is that I never got to see the actual promotion. Probably because I’m playing on a shit computer with a shit video card. But this patch, I get a blank screen whenever I press ESC or menu. It’s like the screen just blanks whenever the screen changes. I can still play, but to exit the game I have to hit the windows key and close the window from outside of the program. Same thing went for the league promotion. I was matched against  plat, won, and then the screen went black. But I knew it was the promotion screen.

One of the best parts about the promotion was the circumstance. You see, my worst matchup by far is TvZ. My win percentage was somewhere in the 20% range. So I wasn’t too excited to see myself matched Terran versus a platinum zerg. The map was Catallena. Now I love the map Catallena. I love the video of the Korean girl group that they always play on Basetrade TV. But Catallena is also one of my most losingest maps.

It is, however, a good map for a proxy two rax. Which I did. If you can get three bunkers down, you can probably kill the hatchery, which I did. My opponent played it out, and I eventually won with auto turrets. But let’s face it, I won off a proxy two rax.

My opponent whined, “Auto turret OP.”

What’s even better is that someone from my guild noticed, and congratulated me. I never do anything with guilds, and yet someone out there in the StarCraft world noticed, and took the time to say so. It was a good day.

That being said, my previous Toss strategy of prism 5 gate … it hasn’t been going so well in Platinum. As a matter of fact, in Plat, it’s more of a scout than an attack. Oh well, it was nice in gold while it lasted.

StarCraft and Pull Ups

So I got this big idea the other night. I was imagining the spin class that my girlfriend goes to. Where all of the equipment is setup in a circle, and every so often the blow a whistle and the girls all change stations like a clock.

And I was thinking, what if guys had a way to exercise like that. But instead of all work out, they’d need to have some video games in there, to keep me interested. So what if there were video games at every other station?

I wonder if that kind of a gym would get the geeks to exercise. Why not try it out on myself first?

So the only thing I have in my house to exercise with is a pull up bar. I decided to do a set of pullups before every game of StarCraft I play. The results, so far, have been encouraging.

The first thing I learned is, I can only do so many pull ups. Which is a good thing, because there are actually three ways to do pull ups. In order to play more StarCraft, I now have to exercise all of my upper body muscle groups.

It’s funny, because I wind up exercising more, but playing StarCraft less. Sure, I’ve cheated a few times. But I’ve also had a few days where I could really feel the improvement, too.

The second best benefit I’ve found is that my wrist no longer hurts after playing too much. I’m not sure if this is a result of averaging fewer games. Or if somehow the stresses of doing pull ups can help to round out your typical repetitive motion injuries.

When I can’t do anymore pull ups, I do push ups. I’ll do triangle push ups, even elevating my feet on the couch to make the angle more difficult. In this way, I have a routine I can pretty much carry out each time I’d want to play a game, cycling through the different upper body muscle groups.

But now for the best part. I’ve been winning more! Isn’t it grand? I’ve even won a TvP, one of the most difficult matchups for me.

I think one of the reasons why I’ve been winning more, is that doing that exercise really makes you think about the game you’re going to play. It makes you less likely to take a chance you know you shouldn’t, or to simply stop caring. When you do a set of pull ups to earn a game of StarCraft, you really care about the game.

Then there’s the heart rate factor. Of course, I love to drink coffee. I drink coffee all day. And nothing is better than a little caffeine before a game of StarCraft. But you can’t play every game on a caffeine high. Sometimes the timing can be off. Doing twenty push ups really gets your blood pumping. It’s like an ersatz cup of joe, before every game. Somehow, it really helps me to focus and deliver my A game. I wouldn’t be surprised if I got out of gold league soon. If I switched from Random to Protoss, I could leave gold whenever I want to.