pajada Awesome, I can totally understand that finally winning the tournament you've been organizing for so long is a dream come true! Especially since the competition is probably only getting harder as time goes by.
Thanks for your suggestion about questions, I have quite a few!
1) What realizations have helped you step up your game? Is there anything you started to do differently, that brought you to the highest level?
2) If we take player skill in Grandmaster as 100, what is the average player skill in Master, Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Wood, by your estimation?
3) What are good learning strategies in order to get so good to win Grandmaster? For example, is it important to play a lot of games, or play few games but with deeper focus? Any other training you do?
4) Do you play challenges? Do you think they help you improve?
5) Any plans to organize a Super Blitz tournament? That would be awesome!
6) In your opinion, how many players will be participating in International 5 years from now?
7) What are the top 5 combos in the game?
8) How do you feel about food vs resources vs science trade-offs? Has that changed for you as you were improving?
9) If you could formulate it in one sentence, what is the key to winning high level games?
10) Do you often feel that at some point the game winner is "90% decided"? If so, in what age does it typically happen?
11) What are the most common mistakes you noticed in your high level opponents?
12) As the level of opponents increase (say, going from Gold to Grandmaster), do winning strategies become more diverse or less diverse? Do you feel that everyone in Grandmaster is generally playing a similar game, or it's the opposite: the best players start to win with non-mainstream strategies?
That's a lot of questions, but I hope they are entertaining. Congrats again on your huge achievement, really happy for you! And thanks again for doing such a great job in organizing the tournaments and calculating ratings. That brings a lot of joy in our lives.
