Gaming
The European progamer says more balance in his life has helped his StarCraft.
After a frustrating couple of years, Dario "TLO" Wünsch enjoyed a quietly successful 2013 that marked a possible reversal of his fortunes. He got off to a great start in Season 1 of WCS EU, and finished well in the WCS standings and managed to make a Premier appearance in each of the three WCS seasons. On the other hand, he only managed a couple deep tournament runs throughout the year.
That’s why TLO's terrific IEM Sao Paulo performance caught a lot of people off-guard. Choi "Bomber" Ji Sung had a particularly unpleasant surprise when he lost to TLO in a five-game quarterfinal. It was a less inhibited and daring TLO that we saw at Sao Paulo, and that may have something to do with what TLO has learned from his prior struggles.
"I think over the past two years, I made steady progress," TLO said when we interviewed him for a story on the current state of Team Liquid. "I started changing a lot in my life. Trying to be a little bit more active in my life. Not just be solely focused on SC2, and try to do more things on the side."
Balancing Life and StarCraft
Finding a new center for his life besides StarCraft has been vital for TLO's growth as a player. "As a competitor, you can become very extreme in your emotions," he said. "If you only live for the game, as long as you're winning you're going to be super happy. But as soon as you start losing, you're just going to plummet into depression. That is a problem I had a lot of times…Because as soon as I started losing, it seemed like all my effort was in vain."
For TLO, the secret to his second-wind success has been spending less time on StarCraft and more time on other things he loves. While there is widespread belief in the community that pure, grinding hard work is what players need to compete at the highest level, TLO has his doubts.
"There's people who train eight hours a day every single day. But there's a lot of top players who have different approaches," he said. "A good example for that — and he stands out because now he's living in Germany and everything — but MC, he's a great player, he's very smart, but he's definitely not playing eight hours a day. There's a lot more people that average 4-6 hours a day than average 8-12 hours a day. Even among the Koreans. ...At some point you're going to hit diminishing returns."
Practice Doesn't Always Make Perfect
The problem is that a grueling practice schedule doesn't make players more insightful or creative, said TLO. “At some point you're just going to be so narrow-focused that you're not going to make any progress anymore. I mean, mechanically, playing a lot can help you more than playing a little. But when it comes to improving your game in terms of strategy and finding out what kind of mistakes you're making, playing too much can be dangerous," TLO said.
TLO's routine now involves a lot less StarCraft than in the past, and he's playing his best games because of it. "One of the biggest realizations for me was that playing 5 hours a day, being happy and healthy, eating good food, and getting fresh air and sunlight and exercise is going to help me improve much more than a day when I practiced 8 hours but was just staying home and doing nothing but StarCraft. So I feel like I have a much more holistic approach to StarCraft 2 than just grinding games."
As good as TLO was at IEM Sao Paulo, his biggest test this year is what he does in WCS. He got off to a fantastic start by winning his WCS group. It wasn't easy: he had two good Protoss to deal with in Jeong "Genius" Min Soo and Manuel "Grubby" Schenkhuizen. It's not an easy matchup for Zerg, and TLO doesn't making things easier on himself, either, as his distaste for the Swarm Host is so strong that he rarely employs the siege unit.
"I like to play a much more flexible play style of multi-pronged attacks and counterattacks, and that's hard to pull off with Swarm Host," he said. "There can be games where Swarm Hosts can be really fun. As long as there's only six to eight of them and you're trying to use them actively, it can be a fun unit. As soon as there's just Spores and Spines and 20 Swarm Hosts with Corruptors and Vipers — I seriously just want to kill myself as soon as I'm in a game like that."
The Match Up Game
Heading into his WCS games, just tried to focus on his standard Zerg vs. Protoss.
"I mostly prefer to play the matchup, because playing the man can be very dangerous," he said. "Especially someone like Grubby is going to be actively preparing for me. So that is something I'll keep in mind when I play, because I know I have weaknesses. I try to think more about myself: what could be exploited against me? Instead of thinking about how I can exploit my opponent."
TLO was confident that he can play his normal game and find success in WCS. "I don't think I have to play any gimmicks to advance,” he said. “It would be a little different if there were extremely high-level Koreans in there, because I know my style is not cut out for that. But I'm just going to play my best ZvP and ZvT, regardless of the players behind them."
TLO's Saturday games may not have relied on gimmicks, but he continued to show the same kind of creativity and flexibility that got him so far at IEM Sao Paulo. His second game against Grubby, with a swarming Nydus Network attack, was one of the most unexpected and exciting moments of the weekend. If he can keep that up over the course of the year, his goal of a top 16 WCS finish might be within his reach.
