Oh man! Such Lovely places!
Right on time coz' I've got GOOD
NEWS for you! I'm actually giving you an all-expense-paid trip to one of
these beautiful places for free!
It's gonna be the best thing to happen to you this year! It's awesome and I'm pretty sure you're gonna like it! Who wouldn't?!
Here are just some insights to the things you must do in this event:
- the day before the event, you must meet with other chosen peps like you and play practice-mind-games until midnight.
- you must not have enough
sleep (because you have to pretend that you're just too damn excited.
2-3 hours of sleep is just right).
- you shouldn't have eaten breakfast.
- you must take a bus going to the airport but before that you have to solve a meticulous picture puzzle.
- plane travel would be around 7-8 hours or so.
- inside the plane, you can't eat
anything not even biscuits or candies. But you can drink water (though
it's just limited to 1 liter).
- You will be given 7 rounds of
excruciating mind games (that einstein invented) aboard the plane and
you must finish at least 6 of them. You'll be given 45mins for each
round though. Say good-bye if you fail to do so.
This sucks, right?! Of course it does! I wouldn't even think twice to turn down this offer.
But you know what? Whether we
like it or not, this sometimes happens to us when we play tournaments.
How? Let me illustrate a good example:
It's a busy saturday dawn at work
and my supervisor reprimanded me because I was sluggish. I said "oh
yeah? hey, that's not true!" But everyone had already noticed my
eye-bags. And what can I still say? Man, how I wish that I didn't get
tired from a night-long wakefulness. Sometimes, it really pays to have a good self-discipline, huh?
But that's not where the misfortune ends.
After
work, I rushed to Alpha Land Mall for the 3rd World Cup
qualifiers. I came with an overflowing confidence because I'll use a
formidable deck that has been mopping others in the meta and not to
mention that I also made it at 20th out of more than
200 players during the 2nd World Cup.
Shockingly, I flanked! It's the worst pro game in my magic life. It was such a mess! Geee...!
Huge misplays, critical
misjudgments, missed opprtunities! Would you believe that I erroneously
switched my opponent's life with mine which caused me a game loss?! I
even lost to a blue-based deck when it's a fact that the deck I had was
an auto-win
against such decks!
But why? I mean how did this happen? Let me answer this by my motto:
"If you FAIL to PLAN, you PLAN to
FAIL."
Playtesting
and having the best posible deck assembled before the tournament helps a
lot but they are not the only ingredients for winning.
Winning is like a pie, you must have all the pieces for you to be successful.
Don't Stay up late
Self-discipline
plays a major part in winning. You're headed in a tournament and NOT
in a TV soap-opera or Movie galore. If you stay up late, you'd end up
using more energy staying awake than
thinking. Sluggishness
can be a huge factor
in critical decisive thinking. Have you heard that court judges abroad
are required to have at least 8 hours of sleep in a day(including naps)?
Why do you think so? Judges make more serious decisions than we do.
People's life is at stake and could be in jeopardy.
One mistake can cause a life sentence even if it's just for community
service. Don't make an exemption for your self! We might just be playing
cards, but it still involves deep thinking. We're not Einstein. Get
enough sleep. And don't take drugs, peace! hihihi
Eat Right, Fit Right!
Food
= Energy = Right Actions. No more, no less. Do you know why our
goverment pushes school kids to have breakfast before going to school?
It's scientifically proven that the less food intake you have, the
harder it is for your brain
to transmit signals within it making it harder for you to think. Food
has these huge blocks of stored energy like sugar(carbohydrates). Our
tummy digests it into smaller parts(glucose,fructose,sucrose) that would
fit in our body. Moreover, Food contains things
that our brain utilizes for its daily activity. Things like
salt(sodium) and potassium are very important for our brain and body.
Without it, you'd be paralized. Ok, that's so scientific. But why not
just try NOT to eat before and during a long tournament
of 7 rounds? 1 round is approximately 50mins. Multiply it to 7, that's
5.83 hours plus 10mins each round for organizers and judges to update
player stats and matches. That's a gruesome 7 hours! I do remember
during the World Cup Qualifiers, one player said
he felt so exhausted after battling out with a co-control player for a
whole 1hr(with extension) w/c just sadly ended up in a draw.
Have
a heavy breakfast before going out. If energy depletes during tournys,
replenish it. If you feel tired, take a rest. Drink water or juice or
better yet, coffee. Eat something that is rich in carbohydrates like
bread and rice. Veggies are also
fine. Candies aren't suffice. Eat every 3 rounds. Don't worry of
getting more body fats. All the food you'd take would eventually be used
during the tournament. And it's just for one day, come on!
Do your homework
Would
you engage in a battle empty handed? Well, silly people would hehe Come
on, you should have
known what the current meta is? Before the tourny,
think of how you would play against certain decks. Study the Side boards
other people use. If you know
that your decks weakness against another one, anticipate what you
should do and tune your deck and SB.
I'm
a junk reanimator, and I really hate Bant Hexproof/Auras. As always, my
game 1 is always at loss with this type of deck. It's fast super aggro
and you could get killed in it's 3rd turn. I can't target most of its
creatures. I feel pathetic everytime
I have to deal with Auras. But I didn't let it drag me down without any
good fight at all. I studied the deck itself. I made a proxy-aura deck.
Playtested it and analized how it really works. Then I was able to
figure out its weakness - anti-enchantments.
I got my deck redefined. And I began to like auras more.
Also,
think about certain intances that you might encounter at each deck you
might face and formulate a solution to it. So that if ever it happens,
you won't consume too much energy trying to figure out how to get out of
such scenarios. Play test a
lot but don't do it just the day before the tourny. Rome was not built
in a day. You can't realistically accomplish all in just one day. You
must be consistent in fine tunning your deck and your skills on a
regular basis. Play as often as you can. Study.
Magic is a strategic mind game with roughly 90% effort and skills, and a 10% luck.
That's why even if I had the best meta deck then, I still didn't win.
Just
like money or any job, Winning is aquired the hard way. You have to
work hard if you want to be a champion. Winners are made, they aren't
born. The short-cut in winning any game is to know all the things you
need to accomplish and aquire. You
must learn to adjust yourself in the environment you are in and it
shouldn't be the other way around. The things I've mention may just be
the tip of the iceberg. I know there are still other things you have to
discover. Grab it. Use it to your advantage.
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