Decisions and Improvement

Introduction:

I have been mulling over what I wanted to talk about for my first post of the New Year. I’ve had suggestions to just keep sticking with talking about picks in draft, and K. suggested to discuss decision making, and though processes when it comes to the mulligan, and the issues we run into as human’s when it comes to making these decisions. I think that is a great idea, but before I can discuss that I think I need to discuss my approach when it comes to improving, and decision making in general. 

How to improve in Magic:

Last week Limited Resources (lrcast.com) devoted their weekly podcast to answering email, and I really think Brian (@brian_LR) and Marhsall (@Marshall_LR) hit the nail on the head when it comes to the three important steps in improving. Paraphrasing them, the steps are experience, reflection, and studying. Experience is playing the games, drafting, and generally just putting the time in to play MtG. Reflection is taking a look at your play, your decisions, and evaluating them to improve. Studying is consuming other MtG content, whether it is draft videos, podcasts, blogs, or articles. I try and do all three of these things, and I don’t try and have a specific breakdown of how much I do each of these, but I try and do them each week.

My Experience comes from MtGO. I try and play at least 1 draft a week, and I want to up that, especially to reach my goal of 200 tournaments by the end of the year. Honestly this goal may have been a bit ambitious, but it seemed like what I need to do to really see improvement.  I normally Reflect in between rounds, and after an event on what my plays were, and I am happy if I can discuss draft picks, or deck building with someone, but right now I don’t have a community or group I discuss things with. I hope this blog can open up those doors in some small way. Studying is my main improvement method, I read an article or so every day, and listen to podcasts, and watch streams when I have a chance. Podcasts are great for me because I can usually listen to them multiple times, and be doing other things while I listen to them. My main podcasts are Limited Resources, Monday Night Magic, Top8Magic, and Judgecast. I listen to other podcasts for entertainment, but generally they give me the news and material I want to be thinking about.

Evaluation and Decision Making:

I don’t think people reflect enough on their magic play, and honestly it’s difficult to do. As humans we have a lot of things that get in the way of remembering what we saw and what we were thinking or what we were feeling in a certain situation, especially if we are under time pressure. In MtG you are always in a time crunch, we only have short time to make very complex decisions, and then have to try and evaluate that decision against new information. Here I want to talk about what constitutes the “best decision” for me, and how I “want” to make choices, realizing I don’t always do it.

The best decision for our purposes in MtG is going to be the play that maximizes our chances of winning, given the information we have available. I could get into a long discussion of forward vs backward thinking rational choice and how it applies here, but I will boil it down to this. We want to both think back through our experiences and think ahead to how things will play out to come to this decision. This also means we want to focus on evaluating the decision given what we knew at the time, not what happens, not what is top decked, just on what information we have at the time. Generally, we are probably taking less time to make important decisions than we need to, or when we are taking time we are wasting energy on just one aspect of a decision. Part of this is how we evaluate our decisions.

Have you ever had a stalled game state and get this idea your opponent has X card, and if he has X card it is going to blow you out, and as you try and think about other situations you can’t get the thought out of your head? So you end up just avoiding that card all together. How about a situation where you can’t even think of what your opponent could have in a situation?  You sit there and can’t think of anything they could have, and can’t come up with what you need, and it just snowballs to where you are frozen. Then you just say well screw it I’m going to make this play. Both of these situations are crippling, and I know I’ve had them happen. And honestly no matter how those situations turned out, you made the wrong decision. Not because of what you did but why you did it.

In MtG I see people get so stuck on what decision they made, and how it worked out, and less on why they made it. Many times we make plays without thinking why, and due to the complexity of magic we can’t always spend our time doing it. I don’t need to think about why in my mono green deck I played a forest and passed when I had nothing to do on turn 1. If I try and think about that play I will drive myself crazy, and waste a lot of time. However, if I’m playing GR devotion and have a mountain, forrest, ash zealot, and Burning Tree emissary, maybe I want to play that mountain first, so if I hit another mountain I can play my RR costing card.

Let’s go back to the two paralyzing situations for a second, if I can’t get a certain card they have out of my head, I take a deep breath close my eyes, count to three and then ask why I think they have it. Most of the times it’s something irrational like “because if they do it will blow me out” not “Because I saw 4 in game 1, and they have six cards in their hand on turn 8, and I haven’t seen one yet”. Make sure why you think they have it makes sense, and it will help you get it out of your head. Look at the board quick and see if you can still play around the card and win the game. If you can and you think there is a high probability of them having it, play around it. If you can’t play around it and still win, then the best decision is to just ignore they might have it. Why? Because there is no way to win if they do have it. Let’s go to the situation where you can’t think of anything the could have, and you are stalled. Again, close your eyes, take a deep breath, count to three, and evaluate what the board looks like. These situations generally happen to me when I am unfamiliar with the format, and so I generally try and think of what they would “need” to blow me out(usually a removal spell or combat trick), and what would happen if they have a land, creature, or removal spell next turn. Generally that gives me the idea of how I can attack, and how they can block. I then have my why, and can jot down a couple notes to see if I missed something later.  Generally, taking a quick moment to collect your thoughts, clear your mind, and ask why is going to help you make better decisions, and be able to better evaluate those decisions later.

Conclusion:

I hope this helps to orient anyone to my general way of approaching MtG, improvement, and decision making. I also hope the idea of taking a moment to clear your head will help you when it comes to important decisions, and that anyone reading this blog starts to ask “Why” more often. Feel free to message me or comment on the post, and I will try my best to get back to you.

Until next time, may the variance be with you.

------D.