I used to play poker...
a lot of poker. I ate and slept with poker on my mind, even to the point where I quit my day job, and turned professional. As a professional ‘grinder,’ I spent a lot of time contemplating the psychology of poker, because it makes up such a large part of the game.
What you are about to read is an extract of these thoughts. Although I have since returned to a more mundane career and don’t play poker much anymore (it has been replaced by a different game), I still apply these ideas in not only
Company of Heroes, but almost every part of my life.
Thanks to poker professional
Todd Arnold, who made me aware of situational thinking, the
Mad Professor Mike Caro for coining the phrase ‘Threshold of Misery’, and
yojimbo252 for helping me write this.
Why We FightWhy do we do it? Why do we spend so much time passionately duking it out with other people whom we have never met, and then meet up with them here on
Gamereplays.org to argue even more passionately about it? What do we all have in common, regardless of nationality, age and gender? The answer is simple: we love to compete.
Whether we play football, race cars, play chess, poker or
Company of Heroes it is the same need to test our strength against others that we share with every living thing. It is hard coded in our genes, and this is why we seemingly invest so much of ourselves in what at the surface is just a game.
Another way to look at it is that competition is intrinsically meaningful, and one of the basic drives of every human being is the need to create meaning in our existence.
To me,
Company of Heroes is more than just a game, it's a hobby and a passion and although I will probably never see my name next to a shiny level 20 badge, it's not going to stop me from trying to win every game I am in. It doesn't make me richer or a better person, I just love the satisfaction I get from a game well played.
You may of course be one of those strange people who just likes the game for it's beautiful graphics or because it creates a space where you can hang out with friends and don't really care whether you win or lose. If this is the case, I still urge you to read on as I strongly believe that the following holds true for life in general as well.
Situational thinkingPlans and strategy
always work great before the game, but often fall apart when the opponent doesn't oblige, and refuses to do what you want and expect him to do. For example, you start a game as Americans versus Wehrmacht. Your last games seem to have been nothing but a desperate struggle against medic bunkers, trying to break through before you get mauled by the inevitable uber Wehrmacht tanks and/or the dreaded King Tiger. So you hatch a plan; it's a good solid plan for dealing with med bunkers using Rifleman squads upgraded with grenades and BAR's, Flamethrowers, Machine Guns, Snipers, and Mortars: it will be a beautiful symphony of combined arms, and you revel in the expected glory as the load bar finishes.
Unfortunately, at the 7 minute mark you take a Puma to the face, and have absolutely no counters because you spent your fuel on rifle squad upgrades and you went for the right side of the Infantry doctrine. Backed up by Snipers and MP44 Stormtroopers, the puma kills your support weapons and drives off your Rifle squads, and you end up pinned in your base while Volksgrenadiers and Pioneers cap the map singing 'LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL'.
This is where you need to
let go of your disappointed expectations, and start applying situational thinking, which is the ability to devise a plan based on your assessment of the situation. If you can adapt to primarily what your opponent is doing, and just as importantly what he is not doing, this is a huge step forwards. Map control and your own relative force strength and composition are the other primary factors to consider.
Another way to say this is that you must at any given point in time be able to produce, and execute, the correct counter to your opponent's ditto, and at the same time conceal what you are doing to hamper his situational thinking. This will cause him to make mistakes. Furthermore, you must also be able to estimate what the most likely situation will be in 5, 10 and 15 minutes.
The ability to correctly assess a given situation, adapt and be proactive is a big part of what separates the great players from the merely good ones.
