Competing

I am one of the most competitive people I know. When it comes to something like board games and sports, I can go just a slight bit over the edge (I've broken a few arms, legs, etc in High School and University), but in the end, it's just a game / comptition to me, if I win, great, if I lose, so what? I'm not gaining anything from winning a board game. However, if someone tries to 1-UP me, I may get a slight bit in over my head, but I definitely know my boundaries. But in the end, just think about one thing. Is what you're gaining (if anything) from winning a competition really worth going over the edge?

 

I don't make everything into a competition, especially in real life, but I definitely treat my competitive video games a little too... competitively? League of Legends is a game I've been playing for a long time, and it involves a reasonable amount of skill, so as a player currently in Platinum 3 (~top 4-5% of players) I do expect myself to play well, and when I play poorly I am not happy with myself. The same goes for Pokémon VGC, but for different reasons; VGC is a hell of a lot of fun, and participating in both the online community and my local community is something I spend a lot of time doing, but this year due to the way the metagame has fallen due to the ruleset it is incredibly frustrating. Not getting tilted after playing only two or three games and seeing Groudon/Xerneas/Kangaskhan/Talonflame/Smeargle/Salamence every time, or some small variation with Cresselia or Thundurus or something instead of those, and losing these games to things like Smeargle's evasion boosts off of Moody, or speed ties between Xerneases and Groudons and Kangaskhans, et cetera, is something that becomes incredibly frustrating. While I'd like to take VGC competitively, it is very, very difficult to do so. I end up falling in and out of it as tournaments roll by; now that Portland regionals have passed, and I'm not too worried about anything until Seattle regionals in mid-May, I'm probably just going to chill out and treat it casually for kicks.

 

I am a competitive person. Competition let us to enhance our abilities. We try to be better than the person we are doing competition. I am sometimes a loser and sometimes winner. Failure let me see my mistakes and let me improve them.

 

I play so that I may say, at the end, I had fun, win or lose. If I cannot be at, or get to, that point, it is not worth my time to play. Winning is not the primary objective; enjoyment is. Some may say that people have fun when they win, and that's true, but that's far from the only way to have fun. In the end there will only be one winner, so make it a point to accept loss as a possibility and enjoy the game regardless of what the outcome is.

 

Competition is my blood flow. I live and thrive on the competition. If I honestly were to call anything my passion, I would say competition. Games like Pokémon (both VGC and TCG), super smash bros, many board games, I just love the competition. I love putting my mind against another and fighting for the victory. Sports included too, I love the thrill even if I'm only watching. Given my extremely competitive nature, you'll see me despising things that put the game to chance like coin flips dice rolls, or in Pokémon, confusion. People winning a game because they threw it to chance on the dice but then claim the glory as if they did something deserving of the victory... really pisses me off. I'm all for chance games more casual, but when it gets to the competition I hate it when people rely on chance to claim victory.