Little background first:

I've won several local tournies, a few i've traveled to, and consistently place in the top 4 before dropping to let others compete if i already have the prize support from a OP kit.

I feel like sometimes that I might be a bit competitive for my own good.

Small 15 person summer OP kit event today, I absolutely tank even after using a list I've been playing almost exclusively for a month or so and a different version for about 2-3? months now.

I can identify most if not all of the mistakes I made and I feel like my dice where about average over the day (maybe a bit below but not gonna blame them at all thats a cop out), yet i've had this gross nagging feeling all evening.

How do you recover from a poor performance when you know you are a far better player than the results show?

Everyone can have a bad day.

Well, You've identified the mistakes. I'd say stop making them.

And how was hobbytown?

My go to.

​https://youtu.be/6z9MHWvJM9w

I don't play X wing competitively, but do play wargames, specifically Advanced Squad Leader in several tourneys a year. Step one is indeed identifing mistakes, but step two for me is the "why" was the mistake made. Tired? Playing too fast? Got too emotional after the dice failed to cooperate, etc.

I ask myself essentially the same question.

How do I consistently play my best over a 5 or 6 round tournament?

It's so easy to throw a game of X-wing. But that challenge is why I like the game.

I don't have the answer. Other than, more practice.

It sounds like you are one of the top players in your area. It also sounds like you are a pretty nice person — dropping out of top 4 so that others can compete for prizes you have already won is very rad.

So...imagine how psyched the players you lost to are feeling. Try to be psyched for them too, and I'm sure the nagging feeling will fade soon.

Go buy some ice cream and breathe. :-)

Breathe.

Be a gracious loser.

Identify where you went wrong.

Learn from it.

Accept that murphy's law is real and will play with you just as much as your opponets will.

If you never lose you never truly learn where you need to improve. If you believe you don't need to improve, you're wrong.

Um, so I think I actually know who this is, but I'm not 100% sure. I wasn't at the tourney today. What was your list?

Our meta is weird, it's almost "anti-meta", which makes it nearly impossible to plan around.

One thing to do is not only look at what you might have done wrong, but also what your opponent did right. Sometimes, your opponent just outflew you, and that's okay. That means the competition is finally catching up to you which is a good thing.

It's also beneficial to get feedback. Talk with them after the game. Ask them why they approached the way they did, what they thought about your approach, and what they thought about your list, your maneuver choices, and the dice overall. This also shows that you are humble and don't think it was a "fluke" you lost since you have had so much success in the past. People will like you even more for it as well.

I can identify most if not all of the mistakes I made and I feel like my dice where about average over the day (maybe a bit below but not gonna blame them at all thats a cop out), yet i've had this gross nagging feeling all evening.

How do you recover from a poor performance when you know you are a far better player than the results show?

Without prying, this seems like the sort of thing that will manifest in other parts of your life, not just X-Wing. How do you deal with it elsewhere? Can those techniques be used to deal with the way X-Wing makes you feel? (yes, these are rhetorical questions. I neither want nor expect answers)

If the answer is you don't deal with it, Ralgon has the basics down. Take a breath, practice being a gracious loser, be mindful of maintaining your composure when the pressure is on. After the fact? Well, talk to someone. Ideally you have one or more friends who will lend a sympathetic ear and murmur the right noises. Yes, even when it's X-Wing that's getting you down. Maybe have some of your comfort food/drink/whatever. Go for a run; it can be cathartic to channel some of that negative feeling into strenuous exercise.

I find that any decent bourbon or an absynthe and lemonade help quite a bit.

Also, try switching between a high THC sativa and something with lower THC and more CBD. A mild indica on game days.

I over think my moves

Some times you get into the zone where you can do no wrong and then there is that other place, where you can do no right. Maybe you didn't sleep well or are coming down with something. Maybe everyone got sick of losing to you so they all pitched in for a little something for your drink.

Identify the mistakes, learn from them, don't repeat them.

Also worth noting that with MANY skills you get this kind of pattern - once you learn the basics, you plateau for a while or even backslide as you practice and experiment with what risks you can take and what advanced skills you're attempting. Especially as an increase in your skill level tends to coincide with you playing against more skilled people who are more likely to beat you. Don't sweat it.

(It's also worth, if you can, keeping a vague track of your dice results on a less than/better than average count - on any 4 attack dice, average is hhfb, on any 3 defence dice average is efb. Sometimes you're genuinely having a good day that's wrecked by dice, and it's useful to know roughly whether that's the case.)

.

What a nice thread =)

Yeah.

Depends how you mean to "deal with it".

I want to say "walk it off", but that sounds a bit more callous than I mean it to be. Everyone has bad days, even the best. Accept that, move forwards.

In terms of analyzing the losses there is lots you can do.

Assuming you play these guys fairly regularly then you have a good idea of what they usually play, and how they fly.

Are there any new lists there that you haven't really played against before? You might want to examine your list vs what you faced on the day. It may not be obvious at first, but there may be some bad matchups in there.

Try to identify in your mind any occasions when you were just plain outflown which resulted in the loss.

It's very easy for someone at the top of the pile to adopt a sort of "wash, rinse, repeat" attitude (even if they don't realise they've done it). This is obviously bad because it makes you kinda predictable, which usually means dead.

So, to recap...

Don't: Beat yourself up over it. Everyone loses sometimes, even the best players have tanked a tournament or two in their day.

Do: Try to figure out why you lost each match that you did lose. Identify the problem(s), and see about fixing them.

Maybe you're not as good as you think and the others had consistently bad days.

X wing 100 pts game are short enought to try this simple trick... Replay it alone a couple of times from your opponent's perspective. Think how he selected his squad, perhaps ask him why he choose A and not B. Then replay. Sometimes you will sendurprising things.

Many years ago, after a rulebook revision I suffered badly playing World in Flames as the Brits. Grey wolves hit my merchantment pipelines hard and nasty. One cold Sunday I simply deployed my maps and counters and played some game turns from the Kriegsmarine perspective. It was far from easy to him if I constructed more small carrier vessels. Next game more scort CVs and less DDs... and it worked much better.

Little background first:

I've won several local tournies, a few i've traveled to, and consistently place in the top 4 before dropping to let others compete if i already have the prize support from a OP kit.

I feel like sometimes that I might be a bit competitive for my own good.

Small 15 person summer OP kit event today, I absolutely tank even after using a list I've been playing almost exclusively for a month or so and a different version for about 2-3? months now.

I can identify most if not all of the mistakes I made and I feel like my dice where about average over the day (maybe a bit below but not gonna blame them at all thats a cop out), yet i've had this gross nagging feeling all evening.

How do you recover from a poor performance when you know you are a far better player than the results show?

Unquestionably the best thing to do is drink beer, and remember that it's just toy spaceships.

Play other lists, play fun lists. I don't think you can be a good player by only playing one list when you focus on it. You always need to know your matchups from the other side as well.

Fun lists put the fun back into your perception of the game. I had a spree of tryharding as well with the current Vassal league season, now I have a phase of cooling down trying to come up with a usable Redline list under the assumption that he needs to be kept cheaper than what people used to be running him. It hasn't been wildly successful so far, but I have had a lot of fun and a few insights already.

In the immortal words of Queen Elsa of Arendelle, "Let it go."

I used to find that smashing my opponents headlights in the car park outside after a loss to be quite soothing.