Let's start with a simple question: how do you win a tournament? Ignore all the things you can't really affect, like good pairings, having the best deck/team/warband, or your opponents making glaring mistakes. You can put aside those things; they're necessary, but certainly not sufficient.
You win by being one of the best players in the room. Thus, if you want to win, your intermediate goal has to be to raise your skill level until "one of the best players in the room" describes you.
This might seem like a trivial observation, but it isn't. Most articles, and most players, look about as far as the next tournament. What's the current metagame? How should I tweak my deck/team/warband? Etc.
You don't become a substantially better player in one tournament, or by knowing common runs, or by playing the best option for that day. To really improve, you have to make deliberate decisions that may even hurt your short-term results but that lead to steady long-term improvement.
Embrace your Mistakes
We all hate to throw away games. We hate making mistakes. If we didn't make mistakes, we'd be much better players, so clearly mistakes are our enemy, right? Wrong. Your mistakes are your best friend.
Mistakes are a road map, telling you exactly how you can improve your game. But they can only do that if you embrace them.
The first step is honesty. It is so easy to blame our losses on poor luck. But, while luck certainly contributes to some wins and losses, it doesn't dominate games to nearly the extent one might think based on the descriptions we tend to give of games we lost.
During play and especially after each game, take note of any mistakes you made. Don't just keep track of the number of mistakes - at best, that can only help you tighten up. Most of us can do a lot more to improve than simply tightening up on basic blunders. Instead, look at the types of mistakes you're making, and keep track.
The bad news is that if you do this, the number of mistakes you notice probably won't go down. What will happen instead is that the type of mistakes you notice will change as your game improves. You'll stop forgetting the simples ones. Instead you'll realize that you weren't quite aggressive enough at a key point, or that you gave your opponent a chance to find a way out of a game that you could have locked up with a slightly different play. What will be clear, however, is that your game has improved.
Expand your Possibilities
There's a story I've told more than once about my development as a Magic player. I was playing against the legendary Rob Dougherty when I put him into a nearly unwinnable position.
To my surprise, Rob didn't concede. In fact, he didn't even seem that bothered by what happened. Had I missed something?
This story doesn't have a crazy ending. A turn or two later I won. The game was over. But then I asked Rob why he hadn't conceded. His response was that he still had a way to win. It was a long shot, but it could happen. The point is that Rob didn't limit himself to the conventional. He looked at all the possibilities.
Expanding your possibilities doesn't just mean thinking about alternate victory paths. It means making sure that you keep your mind open to many different strategies and possibilities during play. Is there a way that your opponent might win the game that you can cut off? Is there a way that you might win a game that is otherwise hopeless? Each turn presents us with more choices than we may consciously realize. Take the time and (more importantly) the mental effort to make those choices. Don't play on autopilot.
Take the Long View
Suppose you're trying to choose between two equally strong options for a tournament. Which should you play? Most people would answer that you should play the deck that fits your personal style. Some of us are better with controlish options, while others thrive on attacking. If you play the option that suits your style, you will probably do better at that tournament.
But what if your goal isn't really about any one tournament? What if it's to become one of the best players in the room? In that case, you have to change the metric by which you measure tournament success. It's not about winning; it's about improving. And you will usually improve your overall game the most by playing what doesn't fit your style.
There are lots of reasons for this. For one, the best way to learn how to play against something is to play it. Until you have, you won't fully understand how it works. More importantly, however, playing a wide variety of options simply broadens your understanding of the game.
If you do this, you will lose more…at first. But you will become a better player. The investment you make will pay off in future tournaments.
There are times to worry about the next tournament. I don't fault anyone who tries to maximize his or her chances at each individual event. But if you can change your mindset and emphasize long term improvement rather than worrying about short term results, you stand a much better chance of becoming the player people describe as, "one of the best in the room."
'Til next time,
> Toxic
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