Keeping your concentration during a board

[RonnyDeWinter]

Whenever I play expert on minesweeper, this is what almost always happens dozens of times:
- I start solving a nice board at a nice speed that should be fast enough to break my current records regularly
- This goes well till about half way (or up to 80%) and then suddenly the 'thoughts' kick in.

I start analysing my progess. I think about a possible record, whether it could be a good/bad time, 3BV, 3BVs, about trying to stay focussed, about trying not to analyse and not making mistakes, etc.e tc.

Almost everytime that this 'thinking' starts I just know that in 99% of the cases I'm going to make a mistake within 10 seconds and I really can't seem to help it. I often don't even recognize the most common patterns anymore, my field of vision collapses to about 3x3 squares and sometimes I even black-out completely and just click on a mine for no reason.

However, I know that in same cases I actually manage to increase my focuss during an expected record or in contrary I had boards that I don't analyse or seem to think at all untill suddenly a pop-up appears.

Anyone else recognizes this? Did you find a way to get this state of mind more often in which you don't analyse, but just stay focussed?

[EWQMinesweeper]

i don't know but i developed the ability to afford 2-3 looks at the timer during a solve quite early...in those very rare cases when i get nervous it usually happens very early, right when i notice how easy a board is.

i noticed as well that i play fastest when i don't think about my solve and just 'feel' how i have to solve the patterns...

what helps me a lot to stay focussed during sweeping is listening to music. depending on my general mood it varies from eclectro to rap-rock and from grunge to latin/trash metal

aaand: about every 20min i need a small distraction from sweeping (like writing such a post )

[KamilSaper]

after 3 years playing Ive noticed that:
- High 3bv boards are when mines are placed evenly
- Low 3bv boards are when there r a lot of mines in one place, so there is always difficult part of a board
"This goes well till about half way (or up to 80%) and then suddenly the 'thoughts' kick in." - it happens to everybody, as long as u dont blast in the beginning, u usually will blast on difficult part

[RonnyDeWinter]

More things that totally fuck up my concentration:

Solving ' 6's and 7's in a board : They make me think "wow this could a very low 3bv board"..........blast
Forced guesses in a board : Even if I guess right, they make me over confident, so if I spot an unforced guess a few clicks later....blast.
Having solved a difficult part very fast : they make me think "wow, that went well"......blast

I suck

[EWQMinesweeper]

i think playing those extremely large boards helped me a lot to stay concentrated all the way through my exp solves...

though on those large boards one can't play as fast as ona normal exp board, trying not to hit a mine for about 10 minutes makes exp boards seems small and easy

[RonnyDeWinter]

I tried playing with music today.......not really my cup of tea. Instead of blasting due to nerves, I just wasn't focussed enough in general. I've solved just 1 board after more than a hour of playing with music on. Time/speed wasn't great either.

While studying I never listened to music while studying either, because I could concentrate best when was silent.

[RonnyDeWinter]

i think playing those extremely large boards helped me a lot to stay concentrated all the way through my exp solves...

though on those large boards one can't play as fast as ona normal exp board, trying not to hit a mine for about 10 minutes makes exp boards seems small and easy

I'm not gonna bother trying that. Solving a board like that without mistakes would be like asking me to read a book out loud for 10 minutes without making a mistake......I just can't, no matter how slow I do it. Maybe I'm just dyslectic with minepatterns, causing me to blast boards on simple patterns.

[EWQMinesweeper]

ronny, the goal of playing those large boards is not to win them...it is more or less a way to practice avoiding blasts. even if you still blast on it after 200 mines it is already 2 exp boards without a blast

[Mucleus]

I'm aware that a lot of people have got records whilst not 'concentrating' e.g. on the phone, but I always play trying to get my timerecord, and evaluating my playing style (even mid-board). For example on my 40 after the last big opening I thought, 'okay, this has felt fast and is still looking good, so I will perhaps overflag this slightly to ensure a finish'. So perhaps it could have been a sub40 if I'd carried on at starting speed, or it could have been a blast . Same with large openings in general actually, because there's likely to be a high mine density somewhere (as Kamil mentioned), so heavier flagging is likely to bear rewards. Also if I notice that e.g. I'm misclicking a lot of squares I might play Int for a while to get accuracy back up. Anyway, so thinking in general is a good thing, and eventually the nerves will go

[EWQMinesweeper]

lately i get most of my good scores whilst paying full attention...and i figured that enough sleep at night make it sometimes easier to stay concentrated

[Tjips]

I recently blasted a sub50 near the end because I noticed (on the timer) that it was a good time, so I turned the damn timer off . Not that I'm saying you should turn off your timer, but it worked for me. I'm blessed/cursed with a ridiculously bad sense of whether or not it's going to be a fast time. I sometimes get all excited and nervous, only to see a 72 on the timer . I also seem to be quite a rare breed, because I actually watch movies/series/documentaries on my pc while playing minesweeper. In fact I don't play if I'm not watching something. Granted that I don't get records as often as Kamil or [name removed], but I still enjoy just completing a fun board.

What I do when I realize that I'm rocketing and start to panic, is to immediately focus on something other than the board (usually my breathing) so as to allow my mind to sweep without me in the way. Seems to work .

BTW, this happened like 4 sec from the end in my current record, and it actually seems to have sped me up a bit.

[Tim]

Ever since I installed clone, I'm like, "SHIT I'M HESITATING" then I get even more flustered and make shitty clicks haha.