New Focus: Gauging {1208 mmr}

Hello Everyone,

I had a rough week. It started nice, however. I had 5 victories out of 6 games. And the weekend came. The hunger for victory. We all know how it feels, right? And this feeling is what keeps us from victory sometimes. On Saturday I have lost 4 games in a row. I lost 100 MMR in just one day. It was very frustrating. On Sunday I lost another game. Then I decided to watch a replay. I saw myself running around and doing stupid things. I saw how long the time that I've lost was. The time I could just sit in lane an have a last hit or two. I was also very aggressive. I believe that it was because of the frustration that I've suffered from losing too much.
I decided not to play another game on the same day when I suffer 2 consecutive defeats.

After watching the full replay, I took my notes and I've queued for another go. This time it was great! I truly carried that game against two very hard counters: Phantom Lancer and Pudge and closed the game perfectly for my team. I understood that no matter how hard a game is if you play with 100% of what you know you can have a victory at this skill level. Because generally, people don't play with 100%. You can see how that game ended below and watch the game on my YouTube channel (part 1, part 2). See that Mirana abandoned and we played 4 v 5 almost all game. And that Clockwerk complained 80% of the time from the team chat. Against all odds, we won.

After summarizing my last week, I want to continue writing about myself a little bit. After all, this blog is about my MMR journey and you learn a lot about people while traveling with them, including yourself. So you have to realize and recognize your weak sides and deal with them. By doing this you can accomplish the things you couldn't have done as your past self.

I want to make you and me understand what does this weeks topic "Gauging" mean and why it is important. To me, the things you want in life can be acquired with hard work. Whatever it is. And this hard work will overcome anything that comes at your path. This self-confidence makes me strong but it has a backlash. It makes some easy to solve problems more difficult to deal with. How and why?

Well, I believe it is something like this: "If I do my best in this situation, no doubt I will be better than the person that I will be facing!" But what do you know about the problem you are facing? Would you even care about it if you approach it with this kind of a mindset? Well, I'm sorry but I still don't care. At least not 100% and this makes me look ridiculous since I know nothing about what goes on outside myself in many situations. This way of thinking lacks deepness and I'm not just talking about Dota 2 here.

Well, in case of Dota 2, you always have to gauge your enemies and allies. Check frequently what items they have and what level they are at. Some heroes have certain power spikes where they start to take off. This might be getting an item such as Shadow Blade for Slark or Manta Style for Anti-Mage or this might be leveling up a powerful team fight ultimate like Enigma's Black Hole. Therefore you have to check your enemies and allies to see what they have every now and then and try to figure out what's going to happen if you go mass with them or go into a big team fight. On higher levels of Dota 2, you even need to gank that hero at the right time before he gets his power spike item. Now, this is not the case for me of course.

This is something I know but I'm not using it 100% of the time. I forget! I'm a lot better on checking the minimap but I'm not doing that perfectly either. I believe I'm used to my item timings and farming around that clock. But I have to do better gauging to know what to buy. So I'll focus outside of myself a lot more from now on.

Game#	Day	Game	Hero	Result	MMR	Gain	Match ID
41	23.01.2018	1	Jug	Victory	1232	24	3695696509
42	24.01.2018	1	Jug	Victory	1256	24	3697494508
43	25.01.2018	1	Jug	Victory	1280	24	3699157484
44	26.01.2018	1	Jug	Defeat	1255	-25	3700918844
45	26.01.2018	2	Jug	Victory	1281	26	3700994699
46	26.01.2018	3	Jug	Victory	1307	26	3701159385
47	27.01.2018	1	Jug	Defeat	1282	-25	3702958279
48	27.01.2018	2	Jug	Defeat	1257	-25	3703169477
49	27.01.2018	3	Jug	Defeat	1232	-25	3703240827
50	27.01.2018	4	Jug	Defeat	1207	-25	3703302325
51	28.01.2018	1	Jug	Defeat	1182	-25	3704050909
52	28.01.2018	2	Jug	Victory	1208	26	3705116398
-	-	-	-	-	Total Gain	0	-