Increasing your APM

If you are just beginning your quest to become a progamer for SKT1, then you probably haven't heard about such things as micro, macro, apm, multitask (that one is fairly self explanatory), or possibly even zergling rush kekeke.

Here's a little snippet explaining APM.
APM - Stands for Actions Per Minute. Believe it or not, starcraft replays record more or less every mouse click and key press you make in a game of starcraft. A while ago some awesome person created a program which analyzes these replays and gives you all sorts of information on whoever is in the replay you are looking at. Among this info is their APM.

APM is a general measure of how fast a player is in starcraft. The average progamer has an apm of anywhere from 200-400. That's right, they are pressing a key or clicking the mouse more than 3 times a second (often far more) during the course of a game. The average noob will have an APM of anywhere between 14-70, 70 being quite a rare case for someone who has just started, but I've seen it before. Please not that in order to be a very solid starcraft player, you don't actually need a ridiculously over the top apm. A decently fairly accomplished foreign player named Testie was known for having a very low Apm, although from what I've heard it was still 100-150. He is a very special case, and although he was good, he wasn't the best. Point being You'll need to at least be over 100 to play properly. Anything less and you aren't played as fast as you need to be. If for some reason you care, my apm sits from 200-240.

Increasing APM is a very commonly debated topic in the forums. Some recommend forcing yourself to play as fast as possible, even at the expense of efficiency to get your apm higher, and others recommend focusing on efficiency, with the idea that speed will come with time. Since I am writing all of this out of experience, I'll explain the way I did it, and I couldn't give half an uncleanly homeless person if you feel like refuting it.

For the most part, I used the former approach to getting a high apm, that being constantly forcing myself to play fast. I would load up games I just played into BWChart and check my apm. Over the course of a few months, I noticed that my apm was slowly increasing from a meager 40, to 70, then 90, then 110, then capped at 150 for a while, simply by forcing myself to play fast. Unfortunately it stayed around that area for a long time, and it didn't change for many months. In the end I needed to change not only my hotkey set up, but the way I use my hotkeys to get my apm up to what it is now.

When you first start trying to play with a high apm, you'll notice that you make a huge amount of pointless actions. This will be the case for a very long time, and it is also known as spamming. If you watch any of my fpvods where I'm actually playing, you get to see ample spammage. Many argue about the point of doing it, but all of the pros do it so I don't care what those many say.

One last tidbit. Fortunately when practicing mechanics, one of the best opponents ever is the computer. 75% percent of the games I've played have been against the computer practicing my mechanics, but this is mostly due to the fact that I've always felt that they aren't adequate for playing against difficult opponents. You can be the judge of when your ready. I don't recommend you try iccup until it is quite savvy, but bnet apms are usually around 50-150, so if you are in that range then jump right in.

gl hf
Rad301