1: Practice your build order and early-game macro. (priotizing and switching between resources for vills)
2: Get good at using Scouts, both for scouting and harassing.
3: Get good at using towers to gain map control
4: Evaluate the risk and consider building defensive towers at exposed resources. (such as forward gold)
5: Watch some casted games between pro players, to see how they build, react, manage and plan their strategy. There is a lot of minor things you can easily implement yourself without having to become really good at the game itself. I like watching Aussie_Drongo’s casts as he explains a lot why they are doing what they are doing + aussie accent.
It happened to me, that I had the same opponent in two consecutive days 
I’m currently around Gold I, so nothing like top 500
It’s not an issue at the end to face the same player, but was a bit strange, where I wondered how big the playerbase really is
I have the same feeling as OP… 4 out of 5 matches at least are clear who will win (either me or opponent). Last week I had an 90 minute long very tight game, after that in the chat we also discussed that this close of a match is really rare
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