I think that the main difference between people who do and don’t excel at SC2 isn’t that experts don’t follow algorithms, it’s that their algorithms are more advanced/more complicated.
For example, Day[9]’s build order focused shows are mostly about filling in the details of the decision tree/algorithm to follow for a specific “build”. Or, if you listen to professional players talking about how they react to beginners asking for detailed build orders the response isn’t “just follow your intuition” it’s “this is the order you build things in, spend your money as fast as possible, react in these ways to these situations”, which certainly looks like an algorithm to me.
Edit: One other thing regarding practice: We occasionally talk about 10,000 hours and so on, but a key part of that is 10,000 hours of “deliberate practice”, which is distinguished from just screwing around as being the sort of practice that lets you generate explicit algorithms.
I think that the main difference between people who do and don’t excel at SC2 isn’t that experts don’t follow algorithms, it’s that their algorithms are more advanced/more complicated.
For example, Day[9]’s build order focused shows are mostly about filling in the details of the decision tree/algorithm to follow for a specific “build”. Or, if you listen to professional players talking about how they react to beginners asking for detailed build orders the response isn’t “just follow your intuition” it’s “this is the order you build things in, spend your money as fast as possible, react in these ways to these situations”, which certainly looks like an algorithm to me.
Edit: One other thing regarding practice: We occasionally talk about 10,000 hours and so on, but a key part of that is 10,000 hours of “deliberate practice”, which is distinguished from just screwing around as being the sort of practice that lets you generate explicit algorithms.