You have played Risk for a long time. You think of yourself as a good player. You decide to join a new Risk game site to play Risk online. You join a game and in this game you find yourself playing against a number of players who have a fairly high overall score. You still think nothing of this. After all, you are fairly good.

During the game you start to chat with others. In return you only get very short replies. The message is simple; you are not welcome. While still in the initial stage of the game, one of the other players says, “This game sis getting boring now…”, followed by other similar remarks. They are implying that you, the new player, is ruining the game for them. They don’t respond to you text as much and tend to ignore you.

You now start to feel anxious. They don’t want you here, they are not enjoying the game and they are not very impressed with your game. You now feel intimidated. This makes you feel angry. You want to show that you can be quite dangerous in the game and they should not underestimate you. One particular player seems to be very annoying and you tend to plan your invasions around a single objective; to eliminate him.

After a few turns, you succeed in your objective. Unfortunately, by now you have become vulnerable. You have stretched yourself too far and need a turn or two to regroup and strengthen key borders. This seems to be what other players have been waiting. As if to prove what they have said earlier about weaker newbies and wanting to prove themselves right, they all start to attack you turn after turn gaining territories. Before long, you have lost your advantage and at this stage of the game the chances of getting back to it becomes remote. Even after regrouping to a corner of the map, they don’t leave you alone and continue until you are totally eliminated.

This was not what you expected. Your conclusion is that the people who play on this site are just nasty people. You feel disgusted and promise yourself not to come back to this site.

How to Improve Your Risk Game

However good you might be in the game of Risk, intimidation can always threaten your presence of mind. Unfortunately tackling intimidation is a difficult job but one that requires self-control, having an eye on the overall objective and constant persistence.

In this example, you have been simply intimidated by the selfish action of other players. The biggest problem is your conclusion. Rather than acknowledging intimidation and that you have lost control of your emotions, you have externalised the problem and have decided to blame your loss on the mannerism of others.

There is no such thing as an unfair game. If you lose, it is your fault. You need to reflect back and understand what you did that led to your loss. This is the only way that allows you to improve and become better at what you do. In this case, you simply got agitated by their remarks (which in some cases can be a lot more nasty and brutal than expressed here) and lost view of your aim which was to win the whole game. Instead, you decided to teach a lesson to one of the players and your emotions prevented you to see the cost of such a manoeuvre. Eventually however, the move cost you the game. You might have got the satisfaction of kicking out a particular nasty player, but that is nothing compared to winning the game. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is to be the last man standing, literally.

To stay unintimidated, convince yourself that other players are in the same position as you are. They have the same limitation, the save anxieties and the same vulnerabilities. See the facts behind the person, not the reputation or the myth. In your mind, think of the player as a child, someone who might have insecurities or could be indecisive in critical moments. By reducing the significance and size of the other person in your mind, you can help yourself to stay mentally well composed and ready to win no matter what the opponent throws at you.