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Valorant 25: Blunder Chess

Byjack

So today, my girlfriend and I were discussing how to make better decisions in Valorant and it made me think that we are playing low level blunder chess. Blunder chess at 200-800 elo is simply playing chess with these main ideas:

  • Check for blunders (hanging queen, bishop, knight or rook)
  • Check for checks on king
  • Look only one move ahead
  • If no clear threats, work on positioning

The idea behind blunder chess is simply that people at low elo will make a lot of mistakes and you can simple wait for them to make a mistake.

I strongly believe my elo (below diamond) that “blunder chess” is highly effective since a lot of simple mistakes are made.

I wonder if I can do the same simple ideas in Valorant where I don’t strategize too much, but check for very simple positioning and big mistakes:

  • If I pull my util or knife out, can I be shot?
  • Am I under time pressure?
  • Positional advantage:
    • Taking space or map control
      • In order of lowest to highest risk
        • Utility/teammates
        • Shoulder peak
        • Jump peak
        • Jiggle peak
        • Wide swing
    • Defending map control
      • In order of lowest to highest risk
        • Utility/teammates
        • Hold and fall off method
        • Spraying
        • Jiggle peak
  • Treat teammates as utility

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The Project Management Crash Challenge

Byjack

It is time for a crash course in project management!

Objectives:

  1. Understand and be able to apply major project management methodologies (PMP school, waterfall, agile project management)
  2. Review other methodologies that I already know (design thinking, OKRs, SRE, DevOps, UI/UX)
  3. Formulate resources and learning into distinct repositories of knowledge and simple shortcuts and worksheets that I can use as shorthand reminders and ways to kick off processes

Total time: 4 hours

PART ONE: Master project management (2 hrs)

  • Section one: Learn, research, and gather (1 hr)
    • Subsection one: Warm up via listening to videos and gathering resource lists (20 minutes)
    • Subsection two: Create own practice scenarios and find questions in them (20 minutes)
    • Subsection three: Consume and build resource repos off of resource lists and answer my own questions (20 minutes)
  • Section two: Create practice scenarios (30 min)
  • Section three: Question and answer (30 min)

PART TWO: Review other methodologies (1 hr)

  • Section one: write down everything from memory basic searching (20 minutes)
  • Section two: watch videos (20 minutes)
  • Section three: search for resources and worksheets (20 minutes)

PART THREE: Create and organize resources (1 hr)

  • Section one: create a structure for folders and docs (20 minutes)
  • Section two: create resources for project management (20 minutes)
  • Section three: create resources for other methodologies (20 minutes)

Here is a video that I started out with:

Project Life Cycle
Project Management Process

Links to the worksheets

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Bedtime Challenge 2: Wavering and Innovation

Byjack

I’ve done it, started to waver on my sleep challenge. The main issue is that I no longer take a hard stance on when I go to sleep, but the one thing that is holding over, is that I get to my bedroom by 11.

I want to recommit to getting into my bed by 11, even if I continue to stay up after.

However, despite wavering, and getting into bed at 11:30, I have started to innovate and think more carefully on how I spend the rest of the hours of my day:

  • I stop playing Valorant at 9 (or in the case of yesterday, don’t even play Valorant)
  • I started writing in my journal every night before bedtime to process any feelings that need to be processed
  • I started doing cupping before sleep to improve circulation
  • I also usually work on posture and my knee exercises

Now that I think about it, I actually succeeded pretty good at this challenge because I’m starting to feel like doing all sorts of things before bedtime such as drawing and reading books.

Another thing I like to do at night is listen to videos that are about AI and are interesting to me to keep up with the latest AI news.

I really like where all of this is going, and writing this at 5 AM in the morning makes me feel like it is nighttime and I’m feeling the vibes. I want to spend more time at night creating worlds. Either drawing, writing a novel or learning.

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Valorant 20: The Combination of Crosshair Placement and Strafing

Byjack

I learned a couple of things when it comes to Valorant. Firstly, I need to either warm up less, or find a different way to warm up, because I notice that both my overall body and my hands get tired after 3-4 deathmatches.

I also learned that it isn’t always good to position for the strafe kill since usually you want good first shot accuracy and even though you are hard to hit when you are strafe shooting, I realized strafing is more of a niche skill rather than how you want to take most gun fights.

However, the best way to use strafe shooting is using cover to shoot.

Here is a step by step breakdown:

 

We strafe to the right to clear left.
As we move to the right, we expect the enemy somewhere on our left.
As we peek out, we try to predict/micro adjust to the head. We are already thinking about moving left now.
As the shot fires off, we are already back behind cover.

Here is a short clip of me demonstrating this concept in a deathmatch.

The point is to always look for cover, if you notice, I get overexposed a couple of times in this clip and I recorrect behind cover quickly. These are a lot of long shots, but it gets even cooler for tight close angles and you can use it hold angles after peeking as well (you don’t need to overpeak everything).

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Fitness Challenge 3: Sleep and Pills

Byjack

So I’ve fallen off the weight challenge a little bit due to losing my phone and having some serious trouble with routines.

But here are some updates.

In terms of appetite, I realized that stuffing yourself with food simply doesn’t work with me. I tend to feel stressed and bloated, and end up somehow losing weight as my digestion falls apart. A major tip for me that seems to work is eating enzymes. They always seems to help me a lot when breaking down food and I definitely seem to gain weight after that.

In terms of routine, I started implementing daily walks morning walks with a cup of tea and that has been working great. What hasn’t been working great is getting enough sleep and going to bed on time.

The main blocked appears to be Valorant. Today I thought about how I always focus on the problem itself as the issue but I was wondering whether or not the issue actually manifests earlier.

For example, I know in Valorant, I always blame my aim for losing gun fights, but I never think about what led up to the gunfight and how that might have put me in a unwinnable situation, or at least, a very difficult to win situation.

In terms of going to bed on time, I always blame gaming late at night. But thinking about it more deeply, I theorized that the issue actually occurs much earlier in the day, specifically during noon and afternoon. This is when I start to feel discomfort and turn to Valorant to start numbing out the pain.

Fix noon and I fix bedtime.

Today I tried taking a nap at noon and it seems to work. It’s 11 PM and while I feel pretty shitty from playing Valorant, I actually feel like it was easier for me to stop, and I may go to bed around midnight instead of 2 or 3 AM.

Today is actually the end of unit one (Baseline health: strong enough to exercise bulk and be normal health). The next unit starts tomorrow (Bulking and buildup: Gain 3 pounds of muscle).

I’m excited to see how I can start to use the rhythms I’m starting to build up, with the energy exercises and increasing diet to greater effects.

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Sova Fanart 6: Class Unit 2 Day 3

Byjack

UNIT TWO: Dynamic Figure Drawing | Day 3 – Animate

Today it is too late and I’m too tired to work on this, but I can create the mini syllabus for this day and maybe even get some preliminary work done.

Est time: 90 mins (30 mins per unit 10 mins per part).

Unit 1: Shooting from Vandal

  • Part 1: Stickfigure thumbnails
  • Part 2: Main keyframes
  • Part 3: In betweens

Unit 2: Shooting from Bow

  • Part 1: Stickfigure thumbnails
  • Part 2: Main keyframes
  • Part 3: In betweens

Unit 3: Camera movement

  • Part 1: Stickfigure thumbnails
  • Part 2: Main keyframes
  • Part 3: In betweens
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Valorant 19: The True Warmup

Byjack

In my Valorant journey right now, I’m very interested in perfecting strafe shooting and proper clearing. 

I heard that one of the elements of getting really good is about focusing on fewer things. What I’m really working on right now is getting something out of my warmups.

I usually play deathmatch until I feel like I’m hitting my shots and then jump into a match. But, now I’m thinking I need to let go of trying to push off from the confidence in a good deathmatch and instead working on making the mechanics more intuitive…meaning I need to deathmatch until I can hit shots even if I’m not match mvp, my clears, peeks and jiggles feel COMFORTABLE. Even if that means going into some deathmatches where it is really hard and everyone on taps me. The point of warmup should be when I feel like I’m not having trouble hitting shot anymore.