I play a lot of games, and I do pretty well in bracket and on the leaderboards; I'm at the top of the leaderboard for a number of games on Fightcade in a lot of genres, but particularly puzzle games. However, I often chafe at being called a strong player or having commentary or spectators expect me to do well by virtue of showing up.
Usually those conversations begin and end with the amount that I play or the breadth of titles I've played, which frustrates me because I actually don't have that much time invested in a lot of them, and many of them I've picked up in the past yearish. I'm also missing a lot of legacy skills that players with much more invested tend to have, like piece finesse (Specifically DASing to a wall and setting up rotations that way)
So I thought I'd share the specific thoughts and techniques I use to improve: