Take another look at the youtube video I linked at the start. I am constantly outfarming the competition when it comes to creep score. Microing units no longer requires my full attention, and last hitting perfectly has become so routine I can do it half asleep. Not having to worry about my clicks allows my mind to focus where it needs to be, on strategy and decision making. Overall it has led to an improvement in my gameplay. Even when creeps are bunched together I'm always able to click on the one that will give me the last hit. I never fail to click that lone defiler in the midst of a tense battle (when I'm noob and forget to hotkey it). Once I started playing minesweeper regularly all these problems disappeared. It some cases it was that misclick that caused me to lose the game and few things are as frustrating as losing a game simply because you moved your hand too little or too far. After I started playing Dota competitively I would get annoyed when I would misclick a creep to last hit, or accidentally click that fat Pitlord in a battle instead of the carry. My strong suit was always macro, because I was very good at spamming hotkeys. When I was playing Starcraft years ago, I used to get frustrated at how many mistakes I would make with my mouse. Understanding these abilities is incredibly important for improving your play at games that require precision clicking (Starcraft, Counterstrike, Dota, HoN, LoL, etc). It gains you insight into your limits on how fast and quickly you are able to move and click. It lets you realize your maximum potential to think while moving the mouse and clicking. Minesweeper teaches you how to be precise when clicking. Does that sound familiar at all? Can you think of any other games that require fast and precise clicking where a single mistake can be the difference between a win and a loss? Starcraft of course! A misclick on the wrong box is an immediate game over, and if you want a fast time you must learn to click fast without making a mistake. Like the title implies, minesweeper is a game of precision clicking. The numbers on each square correspond to the number of mines that are next to or touching that square (diagonals included). Your goal is to uncover all the squares that are not mines. Quite simply, each square either contains a number or a mine. Most people know of minesweeper but many do not know how it is played. As long as you have a brain that can think and a finger to click you can play minesweeper too! Do not be put off by this though you do not need to be an expert in logic to solve minesweeper. Thus it was only natural for me to find interest in the game. I enjoy solving puzzles and I'm a very logical thinker (I have a math degree and my graduate school work is in combinatorics and optimization). I started playing minesweeper because it is a game of logic. Though I am not quite at that level, I've been playing for many years and have followed the competitive minesweeper community from time to time. A quick youtube search will find you expert games being solved in under 40 seconds. (This is not of me, just an example to illustrate how fast my average game goes). To get an example of the speed of my average game watch this video I only play expert now, and my average time for completing a game is 85-90 seconds, and my fastest time for completing expert is 72 seconds. Let me start by first saying that while I'm a master at the game I am by no means at the very top level. I will walk through some of the basics of the game as a starting point for playing and demonstrate how the game can be beneficial to you and your gamer skills. Yes, that is an eyebrow-raising claim to make, "minesweeper can help the competitive gamer?!?!" Indeed it can I have witnessed the effects both on myself and on others. Particularly, since this is a gamer community, how minesweeper can help your gaming skills. I am here today to tell you about the benefits of continual play of minesweeper. The rewards are self-satisfaction, bragging rights if you're fast enough, and in the old days a smiley face wearing sunglasses. You click squares and numbers appear, or if you're unlucky you click a mine and the game tells you to try again. For the majority of people, it's a game that you tried after you gained access to a computer for the first time as it was conveniently placed in the "Games" folder. #1 Minesweeper is a game that most everyone knows about.
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