At the height of my career as a professional gamer, I was ridiculed for any and all mistakes I’ve made when the stakes couldn’t have been higher. I was competing at something that meant the world to me, my passion. I devoted a decade of my life to self-discipline, work ethic, study and practice of this one particular game. I made sacrifices in life with family, friends and experience that I can never get back. Yet to fans and commentators all over the world, this was nothing but mere entertainment and it was hilarious to post memes, send tweets and share videos of a so called ‘pro’ slipping up. Don’t get me wrong, it was not just me, it was all of the players being mocked and I don’t say this to play the victim. I merely want to illustrate a point of perspective, so bear with me.
I get it. As a spectator in any sport it’s fun to make bets on outcomes and create fantasy teams and curse the high heavens when your man chokes. It’s highly meme-able and I have just as much fun as anyone. It’s par for the course and pro’s tend to develop a thick skin one way or another, it just bounces off at a point.
Losing is seen as failure by onlookers, throw on a streak of losses and forget about it. The professional, however, has a deeper sense of purpose and takes failure in stride. A pro has a long-term mindset, a vision for the future. This allows them to internalize mistakes and turn them into learning experiences.
One major experience I’d like to share revolves around when my team was qualifying to a major tournament in Shanghai, China. We were sponsored by an organization, later co-owned by Shaquille O’Neal, who had put us up in a bootcamp scenario in a Las Vegas mansion. This was a time where we’d all fly from our homes and live together as a team for a month or so to focus intensely on our game. No distractions, no barriers and team-owners/managers looking to do everything possible to cater to our needs.
Usually this is a period where we see tremendous growth and comradery, however I got into a brutal disagreement with one of my teammates who threatened to no-show. What had happened was that we recruited this rookie earlier in the year, who was a very young and emotional type of player. I’ll refer to him as Brad.
Going into the bootcamp we had a really tough few weeks of practice. One of our key players bailed on the team and we hastily replaced him trying to meet a deadline for registration. It was a real struggle to totally reinvent ourselves and a tough task for me to develop new strategies and build team cohesion.
One of the most important aspects of a team is, well, teamwork. This comes down to one principle I tend to stress as a leader, which is to follow the plan, right or wrong, and then break it down in post-analysis. I would rather fail as a team than to succeed as a bunch of individuals. It’s extremely difficult to break down and recap randomness. Imagine trying to do review on setups where you’re not even able to define edge, you simply hit the button where your odds to go up, down, or sideways are nearly identical. You would make many inaccurate assessments, similar to when I was paper trading and said “wow making $5k a day is easy if I just buy at the open and sell into the spike!”.
During one of our practice games leading up to the bootcamp, we had a situation where he felt it was best to do one play and I was doing my best to coordinate the entire team to mobilize an offense. My line of communication is to ask each individual what they’re status is and when they’re going to hit timings where their power level goes parabolic, from there I can build a scenario where we come together at an optimal time. Brad decided he was postured to make an aggressive play out of line and fervently made issue of the fact that I wanted him to wait for the team. He profusely refused to coordinate with my instruction. Four of us went on an assault together across the map, meanwhile Brad was off miles away doing God-knows-what. He managed to take an important objective and snickered at me, but the battle was not won. Their players saw Brad off alone and decided to sprint towards my formation where they quickly dismantled us one by one. We were outnumbered, despite having the overall advantage as a team… I was livid.
I spent the next 5 minutes in game letting Brad know that he needs to step in line or we were going to throw the entire game away. He started defending his actions, citing his ability to take an objective by HIMSELF. I could not have been less impressed with his actions, nothing about it was controlled. During this time, we lost fight after fight, objective after objective and I simply QUIT the match. I have never, in 8 years of competitive play, left a match before.
The communications went dead for a few moments before erupting in what can only be described as a plethora of derogatory, degenerate, and irate low-blows. Our flights were scheduled for the following day. I said, “Let’s cool off and reconvene in an hour or so.” After some time, I was met with the reality of just quitting outright or pushing through this to meet our goals. I decided it was more important than any ONE of us to make an attempt at this tournament, afterwards we could part ways… there was simply not enough time to rebuild. I sat down on the mic and told the team that we were going to continue with the bootcamp and that Brad better be there because this is not going to be personal, I will let bygones be bygones if we can just get together in person and work this out as a team. Brad left the call and didn’t utter a word.
The next day I woke up and headed to the airport. I touched down in Vegas and was anxious to meet up with Brad and figure out what I would do or say. When I arrived at the door he was off to the side behind my managers who understood what had just happened. After saying hello to everyone, I went up to Brad, reached out my hand, and then gave him a hug. I said, “We’re going to figure this out, we shouldn’t throw away this opportunity.” Again, he didn’t know how to take it, I don’t think he expected a hug. He walked away after muttering “Ok” under his breath. We settled down, got our configurations under way, sorted out all the technical issues and then got to practicing the next day.
A typical day ranged from 9am to 7pm straight at the desk practicing versus other top teams around the world. As the captain, I also had the added responsibility of crafting the strategies, planning our tactics and facilitating meaningful review within the team. During such reviews, Brad was keeping his opinion to himself and tried to let the team have discussions without friction. However, behind closed doors he would gossip, complain to managers, make little scoffs and basically look for opportunities to find fault.
It went on like this for the entirety of the month until we were about 1 week away from the tournament. I am not shitting you, we lost every single game (0-40 in total) to even the worst teams in the region. Each day I would prepare with our coach and review statistics after hours from 8pm to 12am and update our excel documents with strategies against our opponents. My teammates had mostly given up… they were watching anime on the couch and playing other games most of their off-time. I was the first one up each day and the last one to get to bed… it was exhausting. Day after day, our managers and team owners would come to me directly and invite me to talk with them in private and voice concerns with the team. I was given speeches about team management from someone who actually managed a casino for a decade. I’d listen to leadership videos and podcasts at night until I fell asleep as well.
Everyday I would take notes, write down things we could improve and then try my best to keep us focused on the goal. I wanted to make sure everyone knew the writing was not on the wall. I was not just talking out of my ass, I had been there before. I was on the brink of giving up the first time I got invited to the largest tournament in esports (3 years prior), at the beginning of my career. Not a day went by, at the time, where I didn’t want to give up and let someone else represent North America. It was tough, I was mentally and emotionally drained most of the time but the one thing that kept me going was the goal. Going from that, to then competing on the largest stage and performing at my peak was the foundation for what would be my own self-confidence. I learned that no matter how difficult things get, if you keep your head down and take every failure as a lesson with a long-term view you’ll be able to make tremendous leaps towards your goals, if not falling just short.
“Reach for the stars, so if you fall you land on a cloud”
I also realized that I’m happy with any result, without regret so long as I tried my absolute best. I knew one thing was true with my experience; when push comes to shove, when there is more on the line, when backs are against the wall, that is when people do everything they can to avoid defeat. I knew that my players might not have known at the time, but stakes change people.
The tournament began, nothing had really changed. We still lost basically every game of practice up till that point, attitudes were still negative and I was still tired as hell. Our first match started extremely poorly, we were taken out in a seemingly record pace in a best of 3. During that game, I noticed something interesting. I noticed that we were thinking about the game incorrectly, our opponents clearly had a stronger idea of the game than we had. I felt hopeful for a moment and then went into game 2 with a plan. We were going to deny our opponents everything they felt comfortable with and then go one step ahead and counter out their options. I told my team at the end of the planning phase what needed to happen. As the game progressed we took momentum, we started meeting the criteria for a well-executed plan and then handily destroyed our opponents. It was like a light had switched. From there we took the series, much to our surprise.
The data that I was compiling with my coach started coming to fruition, we had mapped out exactly what our teams were practicing and playing in tournaments and could identify their unique weaknesses and strengths. My players were listening to the calls and working together, during drafts they told me to do what I thought was best and kept quiet. Finally, we were working together as one entity. Throughout the tournament we faced favorite after favorite and didn’t drop a single bo3 set. Eventually we reached the grand final and during the final moments of our victory, we let out a team-wide roar. The whole house- players from other disciplines, coaches, owners, and managers were met with huge catharsis and adrenaline. We were seeded directly into the tournament at Shanghai. It was truly a magical month of practice and it all came together. I immediately called my fiance, then girlfriend, and started to cry. She knew how ridiculous the journey had been and was my bedrock when I had no one to talk to about the stress. I booked a flight to see her the next day and went on to celebrate with my team.
That was another pivotal lesson in my life where I was able to reaffirm my belief that hard work and a vision for your future was key.
As traders it’s in our best interest to adapt such a mindset. It is vital to our existence to come to terms with loss and the associated heartache of a major loss. I largely believe success is not entirely based on luck, but rather a concerted and meticulous effort. It is in the peaks and valleys of our journeys that we learn the most about ourselves and with some passion for what we are doing, we’re able to keep pushing despite the odds and the unflinching setbacks. The experiences we develop from loss shapes our lives and our beliefs. They give us something to lean on when we are at our lowest.
Thankfully trading is a single player game where you don’t actually need to win every time. With a sound risk/reward profile that is in harmony with your emotions and strategy you can be successful. I have really come to appreciate what it does for me personally, I am able to take loss after loss and still profit. I always want to inspire others to recognize the same and focus more on this aspect than the intensely stressful, and totally viable, world of high winrate = success strategy. It can be, for a lot of people, a realization that can take the edge off a little. I highly recommend you comb through my twitter feed and find the nuggets I’ve left along the way while discovering myself as a trader. I really believe they can make a difference for you, many traders have let me know it’s impact thus far.
What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. Does a ‘Brad’ exist in your own psyche? What can you do to follow your plans without deviation? Will you persevere against all odds and do your actions align with your long-term goals? You are your best and worst teammate simultaneously.
So traders, let me know what were some of your stories where you pushed past an obstacle and made it to the other side?
Happy Holidays everyone!
Truly,
Brian
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