Feeling lost and confused in your league? How to redirect rational and simplify decisions

In lower level leagues, its easy to get lost in the game. What do I mean by that? Ever felt like during a game, you could only react to what your opponents were doing, and were constantly unsure of how to respond to certain situations? Perhaps it was because you were losing pretty badly, and basically anything you did, your opponents had a counter for it. 

It all comes down to map control and reference experiences. Having map control allows you to be able to find out what your opponent is doing, and at the same time deny his ability to find out what you're doing. That is why hellion banshee is a great opening in TvZ despite doing very little physical damage to the zerg. The zerg cannot scout, and really have no way of knowing how many bases you are on, and what tech you're going, unless he wants to sac overlords. If you have a cheese build prepared, you can aim to place marines in the right spot or get an early viking to further that confusion. 

Usually, you get these feelings of confusion when you are playing people better than you. They seem to have a response to any little attack you do, and eventually, you feel like you are out of options. This is what happens when you lack references, and basically you have to "wing it". More often than not this doesn't end up well and you lose, and you blame it on imba, or OP. 

And here's the important part of the message. If you are in any league besides grandmaster, there is a very EASY solution to your problem. When I say easy, I'm not trying to say, micro your MMM like MKP and of course your 15CC build will work vs toss. I'm saying that you are 

1. You made a false assumption. 
2. You didn't scout. 

Most of the time its number 1 that happens. For me, it was realizing that when I see Zerg open gas-pool from a 14 hatch, I should ALWAYS just stay in my base. I can't micro my 3 marines and 4 hellions against 7 roaches and 15 lings, but I can use the ramp and defend, and maybe lose 40-50 minerals but have a much BETTER chance of stopping the rush. 

In fact, to go further on my point in number 1. I saw the lecture series in reddit.com/r/allthingsterran where OptikDream showed that a 15CC gave me hellions and banshees 5 seconds later than a 1 rax expand, with the benefit of a MUCH stronger economy. 
My false assumption was that I HAD to go 1 rax expand to defend roach/ling timings, but the truth was that I could be even MORE GREEDY, but took the necessary precautions (staying in main until banshee) to cover all my corners. 

Another thing I learned, is to trust your own statistics, and not necessarily popular opinion. People in diamond league rush more, because its that rushing that got them to diamond league in the first place. 14hatch->gas->pool is much more likely to lead a roach-ling timing in diamond than in grandmaster. Save all your replays, and take a tally of how many games involve cheese. You may find that its pretty high, (for me its around 40%) and adapt your game plan accordingly.

So my message sounds like I'm just trying to say "play safe" in a fancy way. Its not. I'm saying its OK to generalize your league into stereotypes. It helped me move from diamond to masters in the early days. I learned how to play standard bio/marine tank in all 3 matchups. I learned all the anti cheese responses, and my stronger mid/late game is what set me apart from the people who cheese 24/7. I leveraged my skill (late game reference experiences) and was mentally prepared for the "stereotypical strategies" that came my way in the league. 

Now, I play mech in all my matches. Did okay, got demoted to diamond, and now I'm reinventing the wheel. I'm relearning all the anti cheese responses that was so familiar with standard bio (because pros did it all the time). Now I'm rank 1 diamond and consistently beating master league opponents by going strictly mech in all 3 matchups. The reward is, that I understand the game so much better in terms of the game tempo, map control, and why pros cut so many corners. Instead of only taking "common advice" that anyone knows, even your opponents can predict what you are about to do next because they are so used to the common builds. 

In a sense, I've become more like the player Mana, who meta-games every game. He's not the best mechanically, but his insane game sense allows him to beat top level Koreans without necessarily having the same mechanical ability.

So improvement can be made in two areas. 

1. "Star sense". The ability to always have map control, always dicated the other player, and always have a response before they can think. Players like Mana, Flash, MKP and Stephano are quite good at this. (note MKP has strong mechanical ability as well, but he uses it in a different way...will explain this on my next point)
2. Pure mechanical skill. Hone in your fingers, play like Bomber, DRG, MMA, be so good by doing the standard, that the opponents know what they should do, but they can't! For MKP's case, he takes a risky build, and he basically knows that the opponent will usually do the "greed stopper build". He then manages to stomp the greed stopper build with less units than ever thought possible, basically having their opponent play right into his hands.

To do all that, you need to know how to scout (there are plenty of guides on this), and understand how denial of scouting (map control) puts you in the winner mindspace, and puts your opponent in the reactive clueless mindspace.