Mike Flores’ article last week on Star City about how to win a PTQ (It’s premium (which you should already have!)) was absolutely spectacular. You should go read it. He riffed off the same Tim Aten quote that I riffed off of here, but his take on it was a little different than mine.
One of the things that he obviously felt the strongest about was that to win a PTQ, you had to feel like nothing in the world could possibly stop you. If you don’t believe that the tournament is yours before it starts, you won’t do as well. I initially disagreed with that, because there are always things that are not under your control. I thought it was more accurate and reasonable to think that there wasn’t anyone in the room that you could imagine yourself losing to. However, I remembered something that made me reconsider what the most useful thing to believe actually is.
The last PTQ I played in was in Cleveland, Ohio during the same weekend as US Nationals. When I sat down for the player meeting, I looked around at all the other players in the room and decided that there was no one there I could possibly imagine losing to. I wanted to do something to express that externally, so I changed the deck name on my deck list to “Shotgun” and showed it to a friend, who was seated next to me. He was a bit miffed, saying that that was arrogant. I asked him to look around the room and tell me who I should be worried about, and then told him that I was winning the tournament.
Everything went smoothly during the swiss, and I was paired against Eric Taylor in the quarterfinals. Before we started the match, we chatted about life, Magic, and eventually winning PTQs. Eric told me that his view was that you just have to make a lot of top eights and then eventually get lucky. I immediately thought to myself “you’re dead wrong. The right person usually wins the PTQ top eight too, and that is why I’m about to crush you.” Of course, I didn’t say that- I think I said something like “I’d have to think about that for a while.” However, I didn’t want him to think about it any more; I was quite happy to have him thinking that he needed to get lucky.
I was playing Teachings control, while Eric was playing blue-green pickles. We split games one and two. On the pivotal turn of game three, he attacked me with a Mystic Snake and a Riftwing Cloudskate to put me to eight. I had two lands in my hand and six lands in play, and a single Mystical Teachings in my graveyard. Eric had two cards in hand, and after a long think played them both- a morph and another Riftwing Cloudskate. This meant that I had to topdeck or I was dead. Happily, I drew the Damnation, he didn’t draw threats for a while, and I had time to dig for gas with Mystical Teachings for Careful Consideration, so I eventually won.
Who was right during the before-match discussion? From Eric’s perspective, he was right. If I don’t draw the Damnation, I die and he moves on. If I do, he is left with nothing. There’s nothing he can do about that, so for him this was just one of the top eights he wasn’t destined to win.
However, I think Eric should not have played out the two extra creatures. If he plays nothing, he still has me on a two turn clock, and I still have to topdeck to win. I could flash back the Teachings to get a Slaughter Pact to kill one of his two guys, but then half of my mana is locked down next turn and he can just play more guys after that before I have to pay the upkeep. If he plays one additional creature immediately, then I’m on a two turn clock still, but it’s harder for me to topdeck my way out other than a Damnation. If he had held his two creatures, he would have won that game. It took me three turns after the Damnation to find more action, but I had enough time for that because he didn’t have any threats. Therefore, from my end, it looks like I was right- Eric misplayed, so I won.
In the end, we were both right, but only for ourselves. One might guess that Eric’s fatalistic view about what it takes to win the top eight was what led him to settle for playing out his extra creatures. If he had to get lucky to win, that was just about as good a situation to roll the dice as any that ever happens in a game. I had three Damnations left in about forty cards, so he wins most of the time. However, were roles reversed, my perspective would have encouraged me to figure out how to leave as little to chance as possible. Because of that, I’m certain that I would not have played the two creatures; I think he wins nearly all the time if he keeps them in reserve.
I did in fact end up winning the tournament. After all, that’s how shotgunning works, right?
The point here isn’t really that Eric or I are fundamentally correct; we were both right for ourselves. The important thing is that it is more useful to convince yourself that nothing can stop you from winning. People who believe that it is their divine right to win a tournament will work a lot harder to make it happen, and that makes it happen more often. Even if that’s never the case, any edge you can get is worth taking. Believe that you are indestructible; you’ll be wrong, but you’ll be more motivated to do what it takes to win.
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