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Dylan Baker
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Washington, DC
Feb 2001
time: 05:12
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Any accounting of the traits and experiences that have shaped Robbie Tiger must start with his mental gifts, his exceptional parents and his early start in Civ II under a series of devoted coaches. He has become, over time, eerily calm under pressure and an obsessive student of the game who reviews saves of old tournaments for clues about how to play each turn. He works hard at building his "Civ tolerance", or the ability to play 36 hours of Civ uninterrupted. But what is most remarkable about Robbie is his restless drive for what the Japanese call kaizen, or continuous improvement. Toyota engineers will push a perfectly good assembly line until it breaks down. Then they'll find and fix the flaw and push the system again. That's kaizen. That's Robbie. It's also Robbie's buddy Darflex, who works as hard on defense as offense and in his later years added a deadly diplomatic penchant to his arsenal. No matter how good they say you are, Darflex tells Robbie, "always keep working on your game."
Like basketball's Michael Jordan, Robbie not only dominates his sport but is changing the way it is played--and the way it will be played by the next generation. "It's cool now to play Civ," Robbie says, and if his Robbie Tiger Foundation succeeds in making the game available to more underprivileged kids, the game will "attract the better natural Civers"--including the brighter and more determined kids, many of them black and Hispanic and Asian. "Just imagine," Robbie muses, his eyes alight, "if Michael Jordan, with his size and strength and hand-eye coordination, had started playing basketball early?"
Any would-be Robbies will, in fact, have to start early. Robbie's dad, a Green Beret lieutenant colonel in Vietnam, took up Civ in his 30s, a few years before Robbie did. And though he became a first rate player, his struggles convinced him that kids should be taught the game as soon as they're capable of handling the heartarche of not having a life that the game involves. For his son, that was at 10 months. Robbie took a strong interest in the game, which, by all accounts, his parents managed to encourage without pushing and while keeping things fun.
His father taught the basics, but Robbie had trouble mastering the nuances of the game. Unable to comprehend the skills of trade and diplomacy, Robbie learned to compete through vicious sniper-esque military campaigns. His first instructor, Rudy Duran, recalls that at age five "Robbie had the skill and imagination to conduct very intricately designed campaigns on several fronts." Darflex, in contrast, feels he never developed a first-rate offense, particularly under pressure, because he didn't start playing Civ seriously until age 22, when he was already in college and determined to win through "peace at all costs."
What Robbie shares with other Civ greats is a first-rate mental game, a vital weapon in a game in which league pressure can crush even great players. Robbie has "the ability to stay in the present during a league game and focus on playing one turn at a time," Duran says. Robbie's profane outbursts, once common, are now rare. He has learned to laugh at himself more often, which he did even when he failed to notice a crucial Civil Disorder turn in a wonder race against Kuja.
Can Robbie Tiger be the greatest player of all time? Well, by the standard measure, he has to win and hold the the ladder's top rung for at least a year to pass the current record. Robbie and Darflex say they feel a bond, and the older man has been generous with compliments and advice--for example, counseling Robbie against playing so many games that he burns out. But Darflex is proud of his own acheivements and coy in some of his comments. For one: "Robbie is much like any other player who is at the top of his game." Translation: many players have a lucky run of starts for a few months and then cool off. It's often a matter not of game mechanics but of the vagaries of combining many subtle arts, where the eye and the touch can abandon even feared veteran players.
Robbie has put many Civ players on a different training regimen, forcing them to head for the computer. He is in peak physical condition, as well. He's added 10 lbs. of pizza weight to his 5-ft. 9-in. frame since his first tournament, and has developed an almost sickeningly strong "mouse-muscle," allowing many clicks per minute over the norm. In response, tribesmate Alexander has transformed himself by adapting a strict, tolerance development and tennis ball squeezing training program. Even Dylan Baker, a rail-thin, chain-smoking player, has been driven to a special Civ training program in Raleigh. Robbie has also prompted competitors to go easy on working or studying. At a dinner in Florida to honor former champions, Robbie recalled, EyesofNight and other players talked about the days when they would "take a few days off Civing and concentrate on job and family obligations ." Sober-faced, Robbie observed, "That doesn't work anymore."
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22-05-2001 16:53
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