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Bill Stark of TCGPlayer.com wrote an article that he called Win More Magic Guaranteed. When I first read the title, I was sure it was going to be something parodic or sensational, but I was wrong. That article is by far the most useful of all the Magic articles I’ve read in the last three months. However, I don’t think it goes far enough. Zvi called players’ outside-the-game habits like the ones that Bill talkes about their standard operating procedure, and in my experience the quality of a player’s standard operating procedures is a very strong indicator of how well they will perform in tournaments. We’ll think about why this is the case, and what we can do about it.
Oddly enough, Win More Magic Guaranteed has nothing to do with Magic strategy, but that is why it is so great. Bill challenges the reader to improve his outside-the-game habits, which is far easier than getting better at playing; it only requires a change in routine. Bill’s list of things to do is:
- Write Down Sources of Damage
- Know the Rules
- Take More Notes
- Mark the Top of your Deck (for stuff like Pacts and upkeep costs, not to cheat!)
- Write Down Your Opponent’s Name
These are all good things to do, and reading Bill’s article is a good idea if you don’t understand why you might do some of these things. However, I think his list only scratches the surface of what is a much deeper and more subtle topic. Zvi calls everything you do in tournament Magic that is outside the game “standard operating procedure”. Your sleeves, life pad, deck box, dice, tokens, and the physical cards you play all fall under this category. Let’s think about why this might matter.
Picture this: it is the first round of Friday Night Magic at a store you’ve never played at before, and you don’t know anyone there. Player A, one of the players in the match next to you has new, shiny sleeves on his deck, a metal deck box, and a life pad and pen. He shuffles smoothly and piles a few times during his shuffling routine. His opponent, Plaeyr B, has sleeves that look a few months old, was storing his deck in one of those long white cardboard boxes with the deck held together by a rubber band, and is keeping track of his life with dice. His shuffling is awkward, and he just does some half-hearted overhand shuffles and then presents.
As an observer, who do you think is going to win? My money is on Player A. I have no idea if he is better player or has a better deck, but if he’s doing everything outside the game right, I have to assume that he is going to do everything better inside the game.
Imagine being player A here. You probably feel like you deserve to win. Your opponent doesn’t even have a life pad or a deck box, and he can barely shuffle! Now imagine being player B. Your opponent has it all together, and you don’t. You might even think to yourself, I guess it’s okay if I lose this one, since my opponent is probably good.
Suddenly, these two players have entirely different mental attitudes. Player A believes that he is not supposed to lose, and he will be very unhappy if he does. Player B, on the other hand, is setting himself up to accept losing even before the game begins. Player A is going to work very hard to win the match, becuase he is supposed to win; he’s going to make all the right plays, and he won’t let his opponent get away with anything. Player B is not going to work as hard, since it doesn’t matter if he wins or not. He probably won’t play well, and this isn’t becuase he can’t- it’s because he’s not supposed to win, so why try? I would go so far as to say that Player B will actively try to lose. He won’t be aware of the fact that he’s trying to lose, but he’ll subconsiously know that he’s supposed to, and he’ll look for ways to make it happen.
You want to be player A. Good standard operating procedure subconsciously reinforces to you and your opponents that you deserve to win. After all, why would you show up with nice sleeves, a nice deckbox, dice, and so on if you weren’t good? Good players do that.
Even if you aren’t a great player and you know it, you can still trick everyone by doing everything right outside the game. Have nice sleeves. Buy a nice deckbox. Get a life pad and a pen. Have a few dice handy, but not too many. Bring something that you like for tokens, if you think you’ll need them. You might feel unnatural at first, but then you’ll start feeling like you deserve to win, or at least you’ll feel like you have to win to maintain your new good player image. Sooner or later, you’ll have tricked yourself into getting better. Alternatively, I might argue that having good standard operating procedure is a sign of self-respect. If you respect yourself enough as a player to equip yourself with a nice set of sleeves, deckbox, and maybe even some foreign cards to show off, you’re telling the rest of the world that it should respect you too. That self-respect will cause you to work harder to get what you feel you now deserve inside the game; you won’t miss subtle plays, you won’t miss judge calls, and you’ll win more.
In the real world, no truly good player is going to be impressed by your new shiny deckbox, fresh sleeves, or cool japanese cards. All of this stuff really is for your own benefit only once you get to high levels of competition; you’ll play better because you came prepared and you want to win. At something like an FNM, though, you’ll encounter an awful lot of Player B’s, and if you appear prepared and competent those people are going to unknowingly let you win if you don’t convince them not to. I’ve never lost a match that began with my opponent asking me to keep track of their life on my pad while they put away their dice. You probably shouldn’t either.
After all, you deserve to beat that guy, right?
It appears to me that not very many people know why they play Magic. I have found that this impedes their ability to both win and have fun. If you think you play for a different reason than you actually do, you won’t have as much fun as you could; unless you play for one particular reason that I’ll talk about, you won’t win as much as you could. There’s nothing wrong with winning less than you could, and I want you to have fun. If you really want to win, though, you get lots of mileage out of not needing to get anything else from your Magic playing.