Lionheart IndyCar Series: The Iowa "Corn Mash" 105 Race Recap

(This will be a post where I list things that I learned I need to work on in order to take advantage of my qualifying and many practice sessions)

Well what can I say. Fuel calculations you mean witch (to be PC!) I can not believe that this will be the 4th race in a row where fuel comes into play with my race. I am either having to splash and go with just a hand full of laps to go or I run out of fuel on the back straight and the car shuts off crossing the line like at Indy. And this time my mind is tell me one thing and the DashMeter Pro is telling me another.....and I listen to the stupid technology! Any way let get to what happened.

So another good qualifying session by me if I do say so myself. I qualified 3rd which I believe ties my best qualifying position so far this season. However it would be great if I could hold on to those spots. Being a very road race concentrated driver with about a season or 2 of Indy oval fixed under my belt, it makes one feel good when they out qualify people who have many more oval races under their belt. However what gives them the edge is the number of races under their belts. You can be the best qualifier in the history of any series but if you don't know how to handle traffic, draft, passing, clean driving and FUEL (HINT TO SELF!!) it doesn't mean anything. Got to first the race to have a chance at winning the race. So there I am sitting in 3rd thinking to myself. Alright given the fuel runs you have done, not in draft, you will run out of gas at 68 laps. So that is a one stop race. However the tires will last between 20 and 40 laps depending on how hard you drive and what line you take. From the practice rooms and listening to the other drivers, hugging the bottom burns up the tires quick. If you run a mid line around the track then they will last to about the 40th lap before you have to start lifting. Okay pace lap over, pace car in, leader goes and I floor it in 2nd!!! (I have to start practicing which gear is best for starting out based on which track we are at.) I hold my position with some luck but the front 2 get a jump on me probably starting in first. So again I will not give a lap by lap account of everything but the major points and what I took away from this race. Good clean racing till lap 26, the first caution of the race. Starting at about lap 20 maybe 21, Rick Music had caught up to me and we had a close battle for 4th I held him off up to lap 26 then the caution came out. However it must have come out the moment he passed me cause I got my position back. Okay Jeremy lets to math, 120 laps total minus the 26 we just ran leaves 94 laps left. I will run 67 laps then get gas. So that leaves me with 27 laps that I need fuel for after this stop. So a splash for about 7 gallons to be safe.

Alright so here is another part of work that I need to do, PIT STOPS!!  I come in sitting in 4th, fuel 4 tires I leave in 7th. And iRacing is good about simulations but all the "Pit Crews" are the same. So where am I losing time? Well after watching the replay that Tony Lurcock does for us every week on YouTube Lionheart Racing Series YouTube Channel (and sitting in 4th didn't hurt LOL) I can see that I come into the pit some what timid. I have the fear of overshooting the pit or sliding into the pit wall. Why do I have this fear.....cause I have done both multiple times. And why have I done both, cause I don't practice my pit stops as much as I should or even at all during practice sessions. And leaving the pits even with the pit limiter on I am nervous of spinning out and into said pit wall LOL. So losing .2 of a second could be 3 places easily. Also I am still getting use to the macro fuel settings you can do in the middle of a race. And after the race that I didn't take tires but didn't know that the tires were unchecked when I thought they were checked. So It is the lack of practice that causes me to lose these little seconds which add up. So out 7th....lets see what happens or I should say where my mind loses all of its smarts.

Up to full throttle again and we are going. Now all my fuel calculations this time are not taking the caution laps into consideration cause I look at those as laps in the bank. WRONG!!! Clean running, then caution 2 comes out. Okay lets run through the math again. Lap 49 plus 67 laps for a full tank run equals 116. Plus the caution laps should be enough to make it without stopping after this. I will just have to conserve my tires as best as possible to have some left near the end. I got this it is taking a chance but the math is sound (in my head). Again due to the same pit fears I come out in 11th. I lost 2 positions before the second caution. Okay starting 11th with a strategy that I feel like will give me a chance to win. Green flag waves and off we go again.. 22 laps later the 3rd and what will be the final caution comes out. Now this whole time I have been running the math for fuel in my head. This time for some unknown reason I look down at my DashMeter Pro, and it tells me that I have enough fuel to make it to the end. Lap 71 to lap 120 is 49 laps. I got this with the fuel I have left according to DashMeter Pro. So I stay out, back to 4th I know I can hold on to 4th so this is going to work. Green flag flies, heart is beating, could this be the first win for me in the series, could my fuel math finally work? HELL NO!!  I look down at my DashMeter Pro after getting up to speed and burning fuel. I look at fuel consumption and fuel remaining versus laps left = short 3 laps. But I look at fuel add (which is the fuel that DashMeter calculates I need to finish the laps remaining and it says 0). This is where the brain goes "Jeremy you have messed up 3 times with your fuel math so the DashMeter is right because it is taking caution laps into consideration.....AGAIN WRONG COME TO FIND OUT STUPID BRAIN!) And here I am for the next 45 laps watching the remaining fuel be 3 laps less than the remaining laps. Now I wonder if anyone caught the other mistake I made with the number of laps. In a race that has rolling starts according to DashMeter Pro, you complete 1 lap at the start of the race even though it is the pace laps before the green flag. So a 120 lap race is actually a 121 laps race according to DashMeter Pro. So I am thinking I am going to be 3 laps short actually I am going to be 4 laps short. So with 4 laps left I have to pit. I come into my pit stall with just .09 gallons left. Take 2 gallons and go back out. And where am I after coming back out.....2 laps down and in 14th place!!! I am so upset with myself. I watched the math on DashMeter Pro for over 40 laps and my brain explained what I was seeing was wrong and the add fuel to finish was right. I will have to try again in 2 weeks cause the next official points race will be on the iconic road course of Long Beach. FINALLY A ROAD COURSE.

Well even if I finished in 14th it did take me from 17th in the standings to 12th. I learn some lessons (I hope) and the biggest thing was I had fun (except at the end cause of my mistake). Please check out the video of the race at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nqkk57yUMnk. And look out for next weeks race recap of Long Beach, wire frames and all LOL

CONGRATUALTIONS TO THE TOP 3 IN THE TOP SPLIT RACE:
1: Richard Behr
2: Jeff York
3: Danno Brookins

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE TOP 3 IN THE BOTTOM SPLIT RACE:
1: Chris Lanini
2: Korey Connor
3: Vincent Bluthenthal

League of Legends: My Leap into the PVP Deep End and never looking back!

My original plan was to play on CO-OP vs AI till I reached level 20 then to jump into PVP so that I would only be 10 levels away from level 30 for Ranked. However the lure of PVP got me after I hit level 12. I realized that at level 12 I got all the summoner spells that were available so why not now. Plus after watching almost every single LCS NA and EU Summer Splits and talking with my friend GeneralFoamy08, that I realized the bots in CO-OP don't play like real people. Now a lot of you would already know this or think "no kidding".  But I am writing this for people like me who don't know or are just beginning to enjoy this most addictive game that is League of Legends.

So in watching the LCS for the past month or so, you start to see how the game is played by the best in the world. Go into lane, farm farm farm, harass the other champion in your lane, jungler sets up a gank then back to farming, buy and build, then teamfight, oh did I mention farm, then win or lose ROTFLMAO. Now when you play in CO-OP vs AI this is what happens, go into lane, other champion places himself between your minions and their minions, the try and kill you every time they get a chance, you trade shots at each other, you try to farm, no ganks from the bots, then you either snowball or get snowballed. So I knew from watching and talking that I had built my play-style to match what was going on in the LCS, that gave me the confidence to go ahead and make the plunge into PVP.

I can admit that I was nervous about going into PVP for the first time. I realize that I would be playing with people that I have never or will never meet in person. With the sheer number of people playing on League of Legends, I would probably never play with them ever again. But you still don't want to be the one to cause a loss, to get yelled at or raged on. Some people play just to have fun, while others play to get better and be as competitive as possible. I am the later but I want it to be fun. I replay every match that I play in to find out where I can be better and improve my game play. I watch a ton of videos that people have put up on YouTube in order to learn any little trick or tip that will improve my play. I read build guides from Mobafire, LOLpro and others as an example. I think about new champions that I can play later on as I level up. I can say that it lets me use my mind and think about a ton of strategies that I can come up with. 

Like the title says once you go into PVP, you won't ever want to go back and play CO-OP unless if you don't get your First Win of the Day bonus ROTFLMAO. I played my first couple of games and instantly knew that all the work that I have put in (which I know is not even a tenth of what other people have put in) has helped. My last hit skill was good not great yet, but was above average. I had to fine tune my build order and ability level up order which would take time. I got to experience my first team surrender that I voted against. I experienced my first champion in my lane feeding me and I experienced at least twice a horrible match up for me in lane. I saw what would happen if I was left unchecked and I snowballed. I saw what happens when the other team snowballs. I would always look at the champions on the other side that I went up against or that had snowballed and see what spells they had and why they did what they did. 

This game is such a great way for you to be able to think on the fly, to use strategy and build hand and eye coordination. I will say that I can't wait to people up a team of 5 that we can just play together and build our own strategy and tactics. Like with any of the eSport games right now, I feel like you can take a group of people and put them on a team (regardless of age) and they would be able to compete on an upper level with the right training and tactics. The whole idea that these type of athletes have a special type of skill or some genetic ability to me is not true. I am look to see if I can prove that with in the next year or so. They will have to be dedicated to wanting to excel at improving their game-play and compete at the highest level. 

Follow along with me as I set out to get to level 30 then move into ranked play. What would the LOL world come to if they saw a 40 yr old playing on the main stage at LCS???

Lionheart IndyCar Series: Chicagoland "Deep Dish" 150 Race Recap

I added the Deep Dish part LOL!


Waking up in the motor-home to the sounds of 700 HP beasts chasing each other around a 1.5 mile track, saying to myself  "I love the smell of Ethanol in the morning!! That smell, you know that E85 smell. Smelled like 1st place." Well that is what happened in my head at least when I sat down and got ready to warm-up for the race LOL. Tuesday night, I got into the practice server to get a good fuel run in order to come up with a good strategy and more than likely different that what every other person would have. I did a full tank run which let me know that the right side tires really took a beating and when they finally dropped off, they dropped off quick. So I came up with almost the same strategy that I had for Miami, which I did not post a blog about (and for that League Members I AM SORRY!!). That strategy was for this race 34 laps pit add fuel to give me just 13 gallons and 4 tires, 13 gallons would give me about 34 laps. So I was looking for a 2 stop race each time going into the pits with about .4 gallons left. Now the strategy was a gamble and that would be what I would have to do cause I didn't have the speed like I had at Michigan and Homestead. During practice myself, Anthony Lurcock and C.C.M (Chris Miller) were doing practice qualifying runs. Now definitely not to brag, but if my memory is correct I qualified ahead of C.C.M for the first 2 races. I knew from Official Series races that he was a great qualifier, so I thought I would be at least close to his Q time. Not even close. The best I could do in practice runs was .8 away. So I knew I had to come up with a strategy that would hopefully let me pit early enough so that "when" a caution comes out I could be lucky enough to be on 1 or 2 lap tires with the fuel I need. However the downside to not practicing on Monday or with a lot of people in the servers, no pack running. So with the help of Anthony Lurcock just telling me it has aero push behind another car and it can push you to the wall, I knew I would have to either lift at turn in or pop out some of the car to catch air, like in NASCAR when they are pushing the car in front of them and have to get air on the radiator.

Sitting in the car, at pit exit, I had my pitting strategy that me and my engineers came up with (okay okay the voices in my head told me it would work with cautions LOL). Qualifying was about to begin. Starting with this race, in order to over come the issues with so many people filling up one room and having to build quickly another room, the admin came up with what I think is a great idea. We would have a Top Split room and a Bottom Split room. The basis of which came down to the top 20 in points would be Top Split and the rest would be Bottom Split with the exception of a Last Chance Qualifier race that took place on Tuesday night where the top 5 would move up to the Top Split. So I had run a 24.690 in Tuesday's practice session, I said to myself "you can good enough, smart enough and you can do better slacker!" LOL. Anyway practice Q and real Q has always been different, 24.729 put me starting 12th. I was where I had never been before starting outside the top 6. So then the aero push popped up in my head. How bad was it? When did it start and when did it end? Is it faster to lift get down then wide open? Or is it better to pop out and get air on the front to bring it down? Yep my friends this is what practice is for!!

Starting 12th mid pack, I already set tires to be replaced and put in my 13 gallons already to be put in. Settling your button to these settings makes it so much easier. Push one button and BAM 4 tires and 13 gallons. Now if you get caught up in the racing and don't stay up to date with what is going on you will pit and start putting in 13 gallons ON TOP OF WHAT IS ALREADY IN THERE! I learned that last race so as we started I would remove 1 gallon at a time to do the math. Now if you remember what I said earlier, the strategy , to me, would work IF there were cautions. Yep you guessed....NOT A SINGLE ONE!!! Which made for some great quick racing but messed my plan all up. After just a couple of laps I saw someone go mow the front straight grass and I thought to myself, nice caution. NOPE!!  So then I heard Joe Hassert say "I tapped the wall" again I thought, nice caution. NOPE!!  So first stop was going to be at lap 34 under green. By the set rules, I would pull off on the back straight go on the apron of turn 3 to get to the pit. Now pitting has always been something I need work on, cause every time I have needed to pit there has been cautions. Again never ASS-U-ME there will be cautions LOL. And don't DON'T NEVER pull off half way down the back straight and slow to almost pit speed by the middle of 3, stupid move Jeremy. I had to speed up to get in the pits. However when I pitted I had 13 gallons still in the tank, so I unchecked the gas button and just took tires. In and out in no time, back up to speed and out on the track. Now like last recap I will not go lap by lap, but I will say my strategy gave me false hope. About 10 to 14 laps later all the other racers that didn't pit with me or Joe (again for the wall touch), started to pit. When I came out I was 23 2 laps down. Once the other racers pitted I was 12 on the lead lap. So I had only 16 or so laps on my tires and had burned by then over 6 gallons of the 13 I had left. Tires were fresh and I was lite, which mean I was running down people. I just kept saying to myself come on I need a caution, but that last just a couple of laps cause as I got close to having to pit again if one came out then everyone would be the same. So in the pits I go again, 12 gallons to equal a little over 13 total 4 tires and 2 laps down. I had only about 22 laps to go, now time to power it down and watch the other racers start pitting. While I was waiting for the pits to start me and Dennis had some great racing. He was a lap ahead of me but I knew I was faster just cause of newer tires. It took me about 4 laps or so to finally get around him. I mean I tried high runs, low runs, over/unders, under/overs. And finally an over/under out of 2 and staying low got me around him in 3. That is what is so good about this League and the Top Split. I was not worried about racing Dennis so hard. So on to waiting to see the leaders start pitting. Each lap as it got closer I said come on start saying "pitting in". Come on let get started, Come on pit. START PITTING DANG YOU GUYS. Nope it never happened. They went to fuel conservation mode and made it on 1 stop. If the race was about 2 laps longer it would have been an amazing strategy. Finished 17th 2 laps down. 2 laps down is exactly how many laps I went down by pitting. What a great race and NO CAUTIONS WHAT SO EVER!!!

What to take away from this race. THE ADMIN DID IT!! All bugs were worked out, the rooms worked great and it was great fun exciting racing. AND I KEPT MY SPOT IN THE TOP SPLIT FOR AT LEAST ONE MORE WEEK. Next up for me is the Indy 500 Friday night with my Teammate Jon Carrigan then get ready for Monday and Tuesday practice for Indy 250 with the Lionheart IndyCar Series on Wednesday night!!!

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE TOP THREE IN THE TOP SPLIT:
1. RICHARD BEHR
2. ANTHONY LURCOCK
3. JEFF YORK

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE TOP THREE IN THE BOTTOM SPLIT:
1.ZACHARY TRULL
2. BRIAN SULLIVAN
3. JORGE ANZALDO

GREAT RACE AND JOB GUYS!!!

League of Legends: it a heck of a drug!/LOLesports.com

I think this should just be the start of every post I do about League. Cause that is the only way I can describe the hold this games get over you if you are a competitive person and always strive to be in the top tier of everything you do. I have had some really good runs with both Ryze and Kayle. Now I have been concentrating more on Ryze just cause you see more Kayle bans than you do Ryze. However you are starting to see Ryze bans on the LOL pro level but hat is more for a certain player on the opposite team that plays Ryze and plays him well ie VoyBoy, Balls, and Pobelter. Also again after hours and hours of YouTube videos and watching competition play on LOLesports.com, I have been able to increase my play drastically. Now again as I have said many times before, Yes it is still CO-op vs AI. But it is up to you to play the game the way you want to do better. Most people play AI to either get their First Win of the Day bonus or to just go HAM and feel better about their play. I however have been playing it with the way that I plan on playing in PvP. Yes I know the bots don't ward and they will not play the way a human will, however they will react to your movement faster than any human and also it really is for me to tune movements. Plus and this has helped my hugely has been that since I stream my matches on Twitch.tv, I go back and look at how I did whether it was a win or lost and see mistakes that I made and take notes. One of the biggest mistake that I did was to click Attack click move instead of right click chasing a enemy champion toward their tower. As soon as I get past the minions then press Attack Click Move, I would spin around and attack the closest minion instead of continuing to run after the champion that always needed just one more hit to kill it. Plus I found many other things that I needed to work on, so before logging in and starting to game, I go over the 2 sided piece of paper where I wrote down everything that I needed to improve on so that it is in my head. Another thing that I saw a lot of the pros do is, hang around in the lane building up gold instead of running back every time you got enough to buy what you needed to start a recipe for an item. What I use to do is, if I was building lets say Guardian Angel, as soon as I got enough money to buy just 1 piece of the recipe I would run back without any regard to what was going on in my lane. Now I stay in till I push up to their first tower or kill the bot in lane or I die, then get what I need and more. Now this works best for early game, but mid to late game I will go back earlier time cause what you build later in the match the items that make up what you are trying to build has more of an impact on your strength in the match. There are a ton of other things that I did wrong that I am currently working on and I think I will post a blog as what I have learned so far and what I have done to help me with advancing my skill (but I am no way ready or the best at all)

So because of my hectic stressful last week getting ready for the Miami Homestead 150 race with Lionheart Indycar series and getting ready for the ATC 40k Tournament, I didn't get hardly any play in. However the last game I played I went 6/0/9 on bot. I had read or saw a video about how with this game being so muscle memory and tactical, that you should really try not to go more than a full day between playing. So I was a little worried that it had been days since I got on last, when I got on last night. In a video that I watch regarding CDR (cooldown reduction), I found out that you can only have a CDR of 40% and I wondered how much I was using. So we I go to the Rift with just my Masteries, I am at 5% CDR. So I added to my item set last night to bring in more CDR and added The Spirit of the Ancient Golem and Ionian Boots of Lucidity. So game 1, I get an invite from a friend of mine to get in a game. And the weirdest thing happens, I can see the Platform but no one else, no gold..nothing. So I tried everything I could think of till I finally had to exit game then reconnect. And it worked, however everyone was at least level 8, while I was level 1. So this was going to be fun. But I slowly and cautiously I fought my way up to level 13 before we got the Nexus. One thing that I had to work on what my Last Hit timing, and let me tell you by joining the game finally so many levels down compared to everyone else, you make sure you get every last hit you can so you can level up quickly. I think I finished 2/3/9 the first game and the 3 deaths came from just being at a 7 level deficit starting out. Then the second match I did to me real well. That is the match I went 8/0/6 mid against Annie. I stayed in lane, farmed like crazy, poked and harassed, waited to get multiple items instead of running all the time, constantly moved instead of just attacking standing in one place. I also did another item build order which included Spirit Visage and Spirit of the Ancient Golem as the new adds to my list. Now I know it is bots, but I was the first to level 18 had 13.5k gold (which is the highest I have ever gotten) finished with 179 minion kills and I was taking damage and the HP was barely if at all moving. So even if it was bots, I know that my play is getting better just by I increased all of these stats. 179 minions and the 13.5k Gold means my late hit has improved. The more Gold means building better items quicker which means dealing our damage and taking damage. After watching Scarra play Ryze, I paid very close attention to his ability order which I tried to copy. I just need to focus on knowing by feel when the cooldown is over.

PLEASE CHECK OUT AND FOLLOW MY TWITCH.TV/BCUTLER2003. Just stop in see what is going on. I will be setting up more about it here in the future including overlays,voice and graphics.

Thank you again for taking the time out of your day and reading this.

My slackness last week blogging was EPIC but to me understandable.

So last week was what I would call a huge stressful week to where I had to prioritize certain things in order to accomplish what was first, second and third in my life. I was planning on taking a week break from training every 3 months so to give my body a chance to fully recuperate and rebuild. Last week I got to the gym on Monday had a 5 minute warmup as usual on the bike then did 60 minutes on the light green to green zone cause I did really push it last week. I thought to myself that I would take it easy and just concentrate on time in the seat not pushing the cadence at all. So 60 minutes at 80 rpm was to me a good idea. The only thing that I noticed was as soon as I got to the gym my heart rate was elevate and already pushing mid to upper blue zone or Zone 1. Now the week of stress had started for me the night before. I had started to practice for the iRacing Indy 500 that they rescheduled for this weekend. So me and my teammate Jon had put up a practice server to go ahead and get a fill for the up coming track. Get some telemetry data so that Jon can work up a good but quick setup for us during the race. We had a 2 hour practice session that I feel let us gather some great data and I am excited  to see what the setup guru Jon has come up with.

I realized with practice, race on Wednesday plus getting ready for the ATC Tounament that was in Tennesse this past weekend that I was going to have to just go ahead and use the rest of the week to take a break and give my "body" a rest from trainning. And that was the hardest thing for me to do was not to train for the rest of the week. I was surprised how hard that was for me to handle. Which is an amazing thing to feel! It made me realize what a huge infrluence training has taken over in my life. How missing one day has such an impact over my mood and just my well being. So I would be missing 2 workouts. Now cause of the workout on Monday and how my pulse was already so elevated before even getting started I know it was the best decision to make for this week. And I was right.

Tuesday night I got in a practice race, practice then another practice race for the iRacing Lionheart Series Miami Homestead 150. The practice went as well as I could hope for it to. When I jumped on to what I thought was going to be a practice session, however the practice session and qualify was already over. When I joined in it was grid time for the practice session ROTFL. So I will recap what happened with that and the race on the next blog. Which I know is very late but again I had to prioritize this past week. And Wednesday was the race, so far this whole week up to Wednesday I was getting in bed at 2. So again I was happy in a way that I did take the whole rest of the week off from training.

Thursday night was what I call, Painting night with League of Legends chromecast to the big TV. 16 men to paint and get ready for a 2 day tournament to Tennesse. The second largest one in the US. So 4 hours of LOL playing on the tv and 16 men completely done later and 2:30 am getting to bed. Friday night headed out to Tennesse. 48 painful, brutal and unhappy hours later and I got back home last night so very happy to be back in my bed.

Well that is it for right now. Please be on the look out for a recap of the Miami Homestead 150, thoughts on LOL, and training this week. Thank you again for taking the time out of your bust day and reading this blog. Can never say enough how grateful I am that you do.

League of Legends: First experience of AFKers and first loss!

Help me! Help me! It is always on my mind the more and more I get into it! Now to the subject of the title. So if you read my last post regarding LOL, you would know that I am playing CO-OP vs AI Beginner till I reach level 10 then going to Intermediate till level 15 from then it will be PVP to level 30 then Ranked from there on out. Now with everything I do when it comes to getting better by learning, I take every scenario as if it is the real thing. So before I get people saying to me I am spending too much time in AI battles, I am looking at these as ways that I can approve. And I have heard the horror stories of people playing in PVP games or Ranked games and there teammates either sitting at platform or just disconnecting. I never thought I would experience both of these things in a Bot match. Oh how wrong was I! I have been streaming every game that I can (if it doesn't mess up like it did last night for 1 game). And here is the recording address http://www.twitch.tv/bcutler2003/b/545522459. Please if you want to look at it and see what happened feel free to do it. Plus if you have any advice, also let me know. I have started writing down what happens in the game and I just went back and looked at a Kayle match and a Ryze Match of mine and took notes of what I did wrong. The most common thing which I knew as soon as I did it in the match what I did wrong. Is when chasing down a champion that I can take out with one more hit, DO NOT HIT ATTACK CLICK MOVE!!! 5 times in 2 games, I hit that button (which I have as A) and my champion turned around from from the champion and attacked a minion instead. 5 Fricking Times!! There was more than half of a page each side of notes so I have lots to work on. As in this game, we had 1 guy that kept disconnecting and another 2 that just did nothing at all until half way in. I had to run sacrifice on our base once they got into to it. Why would people do that in a Bot game? It makes no sense to me to go through the process of picking a champion and waiting for it to load just to not play. My 7 winning streak broken cause of nothing that I could do myself. I am not going to give up and surrender just do what I can. So needless to say from that game I took away don't give up. I have absolutely embraced this game and hope to make it to Challenger Tier. And for the first time I had 3 players honor me and 2 added to my friend list. So I am growing. Yes I know that I should probably be in PVP right away but this is how I am doing it. If you want please follow me on twitch.tv @ www.twitch.tv/bcutler2003.

League of Legends: You Addictive SOB!!!

So I suggest that on the League of Legends website there should be a disclaimer;"This game is addictive and it will consume your every waking hour!" ROTFL! When you take a game that  incorporates a steep learning curve with a game that can be played a million different ways and you want to be very good at it, it consumes every minute of the day. At least for me it does. This is a game that is so much fun but also so easy to make mistakes. I would ask anyone playing the game if they feel like they have learned everything that can be learned. To me, I feel like there is no way to learn everything there is to learn because the items that can be built and the spells that can be used and the combination of these plus the number of different champions, throw in with that playing solo with a group of people the game joined you with or getting to a point where you start playing with friends and then team tactics come into play. You can tell how complex the game is just by the long run on sentence I just typed ROTFL. When I started playing I had no idea how to play the champion that I picked Ryze. I would go down a lane, run into the minions, skip over them and try and kill the other champion from the other team. Oh wait the other champion is running away chase after them, killed by turret. Okay the turrets will kill you quickly, so back in the lane, chase down the champion, oh he is running at the turret, stop and kill some of the minions just for fun. Oh wait I just leveled up by killing the minions. Okay so I will just kill the minions. Wait a minute how come my teammate is leveling up and getting gold by hitting the same minions I am attacking. Etc., Etc., Etc., ROTHFL. So I could write a novel as to all the things I learned in just my first game or so I thought. So as my typical way of learning games rather it be how I improved my COD: Ghost, Black Ops 2 or Titanfall game, I go to good old reliable YouTube. So have you ever typed in League of Legends on Youtube?? 1,400,000 videos that have League of Legends in the tag words. So where to begin? I found LOLesports.com on Twitter. So like I did with Ghost and watching the pros on MLG or Twitch (in the case of Evil Geniuses), I watch almost every game that was going on in the EU League Championship Series and the NA League Championship Series (LCS for short). As first it was like the commentators were speaking a different language and when all of the champions got into a huge fight I had no idea who was were and what was going on. But I saw how they started out the game at least. I saw what the minions were actually there for. I saw how they "farmed" then made a "poke attack" or "ganked" the other team. So I was starting to get an idea of how the dynamics of the game is played. I started to understand what the Dragon was for and the Baron was for. Then I found www.mobafire.com and subscribed to the websites. Found a Ryze build and a Kayle build. These were the two champions that I decided to use. The funny thing was I had Ryze for the whole first week I started playing. And the whole time he had an exclamation mark on his icon which I had no idea what that was for. So last night I wanted to play Ryze instead of Kayle (which has a mark on his icon now), but he was gone!! So the first game I played with someone that picked him so I thought that was it. Then the next game he was still gone. I had no idea that I had to buy him and that the mark meant he was free ROTFL. So I got him and built him up using a guide from www.mobafire.com. I also have a Kayle build up that I got from that website as well. Now the question is which item to build first. That is what I am dealing with right now. So I am using a notebook to keep track with my KDA, what my item build order is, what mistakes I do or what I do that works. And it is so fricking addictive. I am now thinking about what items to build and in what order. I don't know the exact recipes of the items that I decide to use so my item set is huge ROTHFL. I like the builds I have right now. I am either going even with a huge assist or I am going positive so I feel like I am progressing in the game. From reading I am staying in the CO-OP vs AI beginner till about level 10 then doing CO-OP vs AI till level 15 on Intermediate. I want to have all of the Summoner spells available to me before I go into PVP then on to ranked games after hitting level 30 of course. I am so competitive that I hope I will be finding people to play with on a regular basis to form a team and rank up. You can check out my Twitch feed at www.twitch.tv/bcutler2003 to see my climb up the levels into PVP and then Ranked.

See you on the LOL Addictive Anonymous ROTFL Rift!!

League of Legends: The most fun frustrating game ever/Learn the League

I don't even know where to start or even what to say. I have never wanted to be more invested and never have wanted to research so I can learn as much as I can before for a game till now. I also have never wanted to throw, shoot, destroy or burn my computer as much as I wanted to last night playing LOL for only the 3rd Co-op vs AI game in my life.

The starts out by giving you the oppurtunity to learn in the Basic Tutorial then the Battle Tutorial. In the Basic Tutorial, it teaches how to move and how to attack.....sort of. Left click attacks and right click moves to where the cursor is. Pretty simple right? BUT THAT IS ONLY THE SMALLEST PART OF ATTACK AND MOVEMENT!! Once you get into CO-op vs AI, left click doesn't really work well. Attack is really right click on someone but also move is right click on the ground. So if you miss clicking on the target, you will move to that spot. Also if you click on an Ability then click on the target, you will follow that target unless you click somewhere after you fire your Ability. Which means if you don't pay attention you will be behind all the minions and right in the middle of the enemy champions getting your butt handed to you. What they don't teach you is the different move functions that you can really do. Move toward your target firing everytime you are in range and stopping to fire when you do. You can stop and hold your champion while moving. Or you can click one movement toward or away from your target and shoot and run away at the same time with only one click or move forward and attack with one click instead of clicking away from what is chasing you then clicking on the target chasing you then clicking away. Even typing that out takes more time and doesn't make clear sense than just clicking one movement that allows you to walk and fire at the same time.

I made sure to do what I thought would be the best thing to learn and also not to hinder my human teammates when playing in CO-op. I did the Basic Tutorial, the Battle Tutorial then started the CO-op. NO!! I feel like now that I have read that there is all these other movement and attack controls that you have to stay in Battle Tutorial to try them out. Also I went from using Ryze to using Kayla. It takes time to learn a new champion. I did okay in my opinion with Ryze, but when I used Kayla in my 3rd game I got slaughtered! The learning curve on this is so high it make one want to flip over there computer desk.....which I almost did lol.

After a Google Search, I came across the website http://learntheleague.com. I read a some of the website and some of the comments about the e-book Learn the League 13th edition. So being someone that needs to have whatever I can find to help I purchased it and started reading it last night. I am going to read it all the way through first then go back and apply one thing at a time to help my gaming. So if you are starting out playing LOL or are an advance player, this e-book is very helpful to me. So thanks to Patrick O'Callahan (@ciderhelm) for taking the time out and making and updating this guide for lost players like me.

Check out my Twitch Channel www.Twitch.tv/bcutler2003 if you want a good laugh right now watching someone getting dominated in LOL....ie ME ROTFL.  Again thank you for reading this and look for many more to come.

Lionheart Series: And this is why we practice races first/www.twitch.tv/zachttrull23

Almost everyone who has decided to take iRacing seriously has thought to themselves, Hey I wish they had this kind of series so I will just run one myself. Before the Road Warrior series I was going to run a League series myself that would mimic at the time ALMS, WEC and Grand Am series. I researched tracks so that I would have the same track that was begin raced in real life, running that weekend in the series on iRacing. I started working on sponsors, points system, rules, qualifying setup, everything you can imagine to make it as fun and exciting. Over 40 people said on the forums that they were going to race. Even going as far as picking their own numbers. I was so excited! This is going to become the most popular league series in iRacing. Now come the day of the first practice race to test out the setup of the hosted session, the qualifying session and race. I was already to just look at 40 people in 3 different classes ready to take on the first ever Endurance iRacing Series. 5 yes I didn't make a mistake 5 people showed up. I was devastated! I even went as far as purchase a domain name and setup up a crude website just to get something up then would work on it before the first race from GoDaddy.com. And that was just me by myself. So I can definitely understand what the group of admins for the Verizon iRacing Lionheart Series are going thru right now.

When you have a series with so many different people at different levels of experience of racing, you can not make everyone happy. But it is up to the individual to understand that there is many different factors that the admins have to take into account. I have been looking at the profiles of many if not all of the racers from last nights dual practice, qualify and single race. It was such a wide range of experience of drivers. Now I am using just iRating as a standard to base this part of off. And trust you me that iRating isn't always nor is Safety Rating a telltale sign of a persons driving ability, however it gives you an idea. (Trust me after lasts nights race, my SR would have taken a beating and like in my other post I will take responsibility for any accident but last night not one of the accidents that I was involved in was my fault). In the series, you have one person that raced last night that is in the 4000 IR and someone who was 900 IR. From a Safety Rating of 4.99 to right at 2.00. Then there is me right in the middle LOL. With such a diverse group of members in the League, how do you appease everyone. The easy answer is you don't. You will have the racers with the high IR that builds their own setups that will want to either be able to build their setups or have a fixed setup that is very loose. Which if you decide to do that then what you will have is the same as the official Open Series. Which means you will have 3 to 4 people fighting for the win and everyone else seconds off of them fighting for the also ran positions. Which will kill the series after just a couple of races cause there won't be a chance of anyone from 5th on back fighting to win the series. On the flip side, you have make a setup that is fixed for the lower IR racers (which is the safest but has it's drawbacks which I will get into) which means you make it with a ton of down force, you have kind of where we are now. And here is where it gets tricky, safe and stable is always going to be the best for the majority of the racers on iRacing. It will drive away the high IR racers cause they will say, "the car has to much down force, it is boring, you can't pass" etc. Now that is a minority of the racers on iRacing. What it will do is it will get the word out to the mid to lower IR racers that there is a series where you can race, fight for a win and get some great seat time. Now the drawback which is where I feel like is where we are right now.  The setup is so stable and safe that you can run it anywhere you want which is what most racers you want but they also want to be close to the edge. So last night I realized very quickly, that if you go to the bottom of the track which is the shortest way around the track, you ALMOST can not be passed. Some people can pass on the outside but it takes the perfect scenario. And the admins can't spend all their time building a setup so you have to be understanding and just use what they give you to the best ability.

Now here are some things that I just observed. There is no malice toward anyone or the series just my observation of certain things that I saw. Somethings I say people could say I am sensitive others I think would agree with me. If you sign up for a series and it says "single file restarts" Don't bitch and complain about the single file restarts!! You signed up for the series already knowing there would be there. Which means that lapped cars could be mixed in with lead lap cars. Also lapped cars that are faster than the leaders are NOT going to slow down for the leader. They are fighting to get there lap back and since now the lucky dog is gone even more so. Also it is fun to talk about the race and small talk during the caution laps, but no one really wants to here if you have some much towing time, how much damage or if you are going to go away from the keyboard because of  you tow time left or damage or anything like that. As you race with the same people over and over, you start getting an idea of how people race. Now that can be a good thing or a bad thing. What I have noticed is who is safe to race around or who I have to be worried about. And I have started seeing the same people cause the same wrecks over and over. Some give a sorry, some don't say anything at all. But they are the same ones that can't hold their line, still can't understand the draft or try and put the car into a spot that they shouldn't be trying to. Now I am not saying I am a perfect drivers, I make mistakes and will cause an accident from time to time, however I will tell you that even to a fault I will get out of the gas so I don't slam into anyone, I will give up a position to someone who is faster than me non draft. I would rather finish 4th than cause a wreck to finish 2nd. I have seen some people that are high up in the league come down so quick that if I didn't lift they would have just slammed into me. Hey that is racing and you have to be on the ball. However most people are not like that! They will try and pass under the white line, on the grass, bump you, intimidated you by acting like they are coming down on you to make you lift. Again that is racing but it isn't skilled racing to me. But many people have expressed that they can't wait till the season start so that the quality of racing improves as people don't have unlimited rests.

Last nights race was a little hard to stomach to me. I want to say I was in the wrong place at the wrong time but I think it is more like people where racing in the wrong place given their skill level. I have witnessed the same person cause 3 wrecks and not get a bit of damage and not say a word. I have seen another person cause 4 wrecks but each time say sorry, which doesn't really overcome that they are a cause of the wrecks. You see this in any racing in iRacing however you might race with that person once a week in the series but in a league race you know you will always see the same person every week in a very small group of people.

Again these are just observation that I have seen. I am not unhappy with the league, the admin or the series. It is a new car that we are learning right now. I have felt very welcome from almost every admin and member in the league. You will always have some people who just don't take a new person coming into their world of friends which you have to understand and just be yourself.

I hope you take a look at this great League with some great people running it. I can't wait till the season starts on July 2nd. Also the race will be streamed live each race by Zach Trull his twitch channel is www.twitch.tv/zachttrull23! Also look out for a race streaming site doing reports Sportcenter style in the future.

League of Legends has sucked me in ROTFL!

Yes I have to admit I have finally decided to play League of Legends or from now on known as LOL in this post. I was watching the MLG Anaheim this past weekend. Watching my boys from Evil Geniuses dominate again in a tournament that actually means something to the gaming world not a shiny gold medal and no money ROTFL! And started watching the StarCraft II competition and just decided "Okay lets go ahead and see what this LOL is all about". It doesn't hurt that right now the prize purse for LOL is at $9.9 million dollars as of July 18th.

I have never downloaded LOL before so I had to download the game and all available updates. 1 hour and 30 minutes later, which on Sunday put it at midnight Monday morning I was ready to give it a go. Now I have a 3 monitor setup for iRacing and that is just not good for LOL. So after about 3 minutes I had to deactivate my Infinity setup with AMD so that I could see it. I am running the AMD Gaming Evolve and that lets you live stream on www.Twitch.com/bcutler2003 without any FPS hit. Decided to give this a try too! That worked great as far as I could tell. It doesn't work yet with iRacing so I am waiting for that.

I decided to pick the very first character that they offer you our of the 3 that are available. Ashe is a Archer so I just thought to myself "okay stay away and just shoot shoot shoot". Now I am not going to go into detail about the different aspects of the game, however as I give up to date details of my journey to level 30 I will fill in on more and more about the game. There are 3 different lanes in which to go and destroy the other teams Nexus. So I start in the Battle Training mode to get started and learn the controls. In the Battle mode as with other modes, you have what are called Minions or Cannon Fodder ROTFL. So as soon as I leave my Fountain (or my Base) the minions form and start down the different lanes. Well I started at about 12:30, I am just going to fast forward 2 hours and 10 deaths later, I still hadn't come close to destroying the other teams Nexus. It was late as hell and I had to get up for work the next day so I quit in the middle (which mean nothing saved) and said I will try again tomorrow.

The next day I realize that it is actually a good thing that it didn't save. This time I decide to go with what I love from World of Warcraft and that is a Mage. So Ryze it is!! Finally felt at home with this character. In WOW I always played as a Warlock. Lets just say 25 minutes later, going down mid land instead of top lane I HAD CONQUERED THE NEXUS OF THE ENEMY!! And it was fun but I can see how it would be very detailed and a lot of research that can go into it.

After this I look at the Level of Ryze once I got done with the Battle Training and he is at Level 12. I thought to myself "this is great! Only 18 levels to go!!" NOPE! My level not my Champions level is Level 2 ROTFL! I have 28 levels to go not 12! The next step that I am going to do is Co-op vs AI! Now some people just jump straight into PvP, but reading what a lot of people post about this. I will learn and get more experience from the Co-op before jumping in and going with PvP. I won't get out of Co-op until I hit Level 30.

Stay tuned for more post about each battle that I have in....LEAGUE OF LEGENDS!!  Also subscribe to my Twitch channel so you can get good laughs at me getting destroyed.