My one friend was always good at optimization, he grasped the internal systems of the game quickly and then ruthlessly exploited them. He was very good at turn-based strategy games with a slow start, since it was hard to derail him once he had gotten going.

My other friend was always excellent at seeing unorthodox applications of in-game concepts. He never really excelled at any particular genre, and usually lost, but would have sudden and unexpected victories over the rest of us when he would exploit some interaction in a way no one had considered. It would last for 1-2 games, and then we’d all adjust/incorporate his innovation and he’d go back to losing a bunch.

Another was good at weaponizing aggression; he would figure out how to optimize early aggression, get aggressive right away and maintain that level of aggression throughout the game forcing everyone else to respond to his dictation of when/where/how the game would play out. I think he was probably as good at optimization as the first guy, but he couldn’t stand playing his own game without interfering with the other players. It was like the first guy didn’t consider the other players part of the system, but this guy did. He was great at RTS.