Firebathero from the Korean Starcraft scene knows a few things about rhythm.

I started playing Company of Heroes, a WW2-era RTS with one of my friends online. For a while, we hit kind of a minislump where we would lose to people with bad fundamentals. Sure, we could blame luck, and sometimes we did. (This is the kind of game where a mortar hit can wipe out every single person in a squad... or wipe out no one.) Then, in another game, we barely won against players with very poor strategy... they allowed their entire army to get killed, but somehow they were still able to come back and push us to the brink of death.


When I looked at our games, I started to notice that we were playing very predictably; we'd push in one area, they would counterattack, and we'd retreat. We followed a very obvious tech path. We would allow the opponent to sit on resources and turtle comfortably before they would roll over us with strong units like tanks.


This is something that tends to happen to many people when they play something competitive. They get that mental block, but they can't really do much to escape it. Sure you're losing, and sure you know you're supposed to change, but when you do, you change in a very obvious manner that is predictably read and shut down.


I did the only thing I could think to do; change my tactics completely. I played a little bit unconventional, but still within strategic reason, and I played a lot more aggressively. By really attempting to force the opponent's hand, I would establish my own rhythm instead of being my mesmerized by the typical game.


At first, our timing was off and we got beat pretty early, but after that we just smoked our next 3 opponents. It wasn't even fair. The confidence I got after that was overwhelming, and all of a sudden my control was a lot better and even using my old strategies worked far better than before.


Sometimes, that's what it takes to get out of a predictable rhythm: going crazy.