So this is going to be a really dumb post fair warning.

I'm an old boomer going on 34, played a lot of CS back since I was 16-24 (hovered around MGE). When Val came out I calibrated Silver II and truthfully was quite disheartened. Ranked as far as S3 and gave up with ranked for a while. Grinded every other game mode, watched pros, watched games, grinded aimlab to M2 and just absorbed everything for the last two years or so. Struggled with ranked anxiety and finally said last week I was just going to force myself to play at least one game a day and if I bombed out or just burdened my team I'd just accept it.

Played my 5 placements. Went 4W-1L, 18-10 w/ raze on one and went omen/kayo for the others. Always broke even k/d, except one game I went 10-15. One comeback win, last was an OT win on Pearl. Most were vs high plat to low-mid diamond players (highest were d3s). No toxicity at all.

Calibrated Plat 1. Feels good man. All EU players on London/Paris/Frankfurt, you're OGs.