The derank I've been worrying about finally happened, knocking me back down to Expert 3. I'm annoyed and frustrated, but it's going to happen, right? Losing the rank isn't nearly as irritating as losing the "master" badge and access to the Jade rooms.
Obviously the reason as to why I deranked isn't a mystery. Look at that stretch, not a single win, and that's not even showing an earlier rough patch. My deal-in rate isn't atrocious (it's 15.14%, which isn't good, but has been pretty consistent over the last couple ranks), but I think I'm consistently making poor discard decisions early in the game, which is slowing my hands down and losing me points in the long run.
So! Time to crack open the books, get back to playing, and hopefully I can reverse this dogshit trend and get back to winning. I'm consistently cleaning up in sanma, so I'm confident in my foundations. As I said when I made it up to master the first time: I guess I just have to stop being pretend good and start being actual good.
If anything, hopefully this will divorce me from worrying about rank so much. Not stressing about it will mean less stressful games, which inevitably mean a clearer mind and more fun.
I ran through my logs to just see how I'd been faring, since the "trends" chart only shows your last ten games.
In 4-player, ranked South games my last 1st place win was July 27. Since then I've had seven 2nd place finishes, four 3rd, and thirteen 4th.
So that's fucking dire, and if it tells me anything it's that I'm actually a far worse player than I imagined. You don't lose twenty four games straight, over half of them in dead last, because of a bit of bad luck and a little weakness.
Ugh. Fuck.
