by Jonathan Smithers
The winner of GP Toronto returns with another article for Mana Deprived as he gets ready to fly to Chiba for Worlds. In this article, he talks about how consistent (and boring) his life is and how consistency may be your key to success in the Magic world.
I am an unbearably boring person.
Nothing about me is particularly exciting, adventurous, comical, or spontaneous. Now, that doesn’t mean I’m a depressing or moody person… but in terms of who I am and what I’ve done, there is nothing in my life that inspires anything creative or different. I am, like many among us, a creature of habit.
There are obviously extremes to both ends of this spectrum.
On one end, the OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) person lives life with an extremely rigid, templated life schedule. This person may wake up, shower, eat breakfast, board the bus, punch in for work, read the newspaper, have a coffee, get home, grab the mail, shit, watch television, and go to sleep at the EXACT same time of day, five days a week. This person requires a perfectly consistent lifestyle to maintain a sense of stability and comfort he/she needs to stay grounded.
On the other end, you have guys like Steve Irwin (still too soon?) and gals like Lady Gaga who thrive on spontaneity and shock value. For these people, they’d lose their minds having an office desk job, or performing a repetitive task like filing mail, or processing accounting. To feel alive, this person needs to constantly shake things up and do something new – to stand out and be noticed somehow. With respect to Maslowe’s Hierarchy Of Needs, their self-actualization comes purely from being a unique individual in our world of trillions.
With that context in mind, where to do you place yourself on a scale from OCD (1) to Gaga (10)?
Again in that same context, where do you place yourself on that scale with respect only to all things Magic?
In everyday life, personally I’m around a 2, maybe a 3 at best. Allow me a moment of self-indulgence:
I’ve driven the same car for 7 years
I’ve dated the same girl for 5 years (and with the prospect of decades more)
I still play the same video games (Counterstrike 1.6, Warcraft 3, etc) for 5+ years
I still work at the only “real” (non-retail) job that I’ve ever been hired for
I’ve played Magic for 12 years
I’m at the point now where I’m afraid of anything that changes. Next year, I might end up going to Australia for a year to finish off my Bachelor’s in Finance, and this terrifies me. I should be excited, but I’m more consumed by the fear of losing my happy, subsistence lifestyle where everything’s lollipops and gumdrops, so despite the fact my girlfriend and I could spend a year living together on the beach in a tropical environment, I don’t want to lose my home, car, friends, job, and Magic Entourage that I’ve carefully developed over the past many years.
In Magic, I am even closer to OCD. I’d say I’m a 1.5 on my average tournament day. Not only do I have an absurd amount of Magic-related superstitions (like a nerdish pro athlete), heavens forbid if I find success doing something one particular way, I’ll just continue to add to my already long list of mindless things that in no way affect my play skill. I have this unwavering need to maintain the same gaming environment that I’ve experienced success with in previous matches. Some of my crazier ones:
I have to keep a large bottle of water on the right-hand side of my chair while I play tournament matches. I never drink from it during a match, but always before and always after.
Ever since I won two straight local drafts using clear Ultra-Pro plastic sleeves (not the penny sleeves) I’ve sworn to exclusively use them for limited events (and no, I don’t use Revised lands or anything that could be considered marking cards or otherwise cheating). This was further cemented into truth by means of me using clear sleeves all the way through my GGs at GP:Toronto.
I use the same pen and pad of paper for life-keeping for the whole duration of a tournament. At GP:Washington, I started 6-0, needing only 1 match win from the next 3 to secure day 2, I lost my pen after that round, and proceeded to lose 0-3 and miss the cut.
I used a playmat once. I lost. I don’t use playmats now.
I can never bring myself to just play the netdecked “best deck” in a format. Every time I’ve tried to Jund or Fae my way through a PTQ, it’s been a dismal failure. While most likely due to my inexperience with them, and definitely not being a correct decision with regards to proper deck choice, I don’t feel comfortable doing it.
“Jon, you said it right in the first paragraph, you truly are intolerably boring. I am getting nothing at all from all this personal bullshit you’re writing and you sound a bit crazy. You should get some help, bro. My cousin is a psych student and…”
I beg to differ, sirs.
THE ACTUALLY RELEVANT PART OF MY ARTICLE IS DOWN HERE
Magic is a fantastic game that requires an immense amount of focus and careful thinking if your goal is to play well and to win when the pressure’s on… the finals of a PTQ, a feature match at a Grand Prix, or encountering your first top-8 draft pod. Every time you “level up” it comes with a sizable side serving of stress. You’re pressured into making hundreds of seemingly small decisions that you know could have a monumental affect on the total outcome of your tournament. STRESS.
The problem here is that stress breeds anxiety, anxiety breeds lack of confidence, and lack of confidence breeds failure.
We would serve ourselves well to heed the wisdom of the omniscient Happy Gilmore, and go to our “Happy Place”. In this familiar place, you feel at ease. The good news is this, my friends! You can make your Happy Place sitting at Table #47, in the 0-1 bracket, next to an obnoxiously loud and smelly guy who keeps farting, while playing against an opponent who pile shuffles and counts your deck as you present it to him! You may start to tilt, but you realize none of this matters to you, because you’ve been in this exact same scenario hundreds of times before. It’s just another match of Magic.
Consistency breeds comfort, comfort breeds clarity of thought, and clarity of thought breeds success.
Try not to burden yourself with pointless barriers along the way, like “If I win next round, I might be able to double draw in to top-8”. You set yourself up for a big letdown if you lose that round, which could affect your mind-state for the next few rounds, where you still have a very realistic shot at a top-8 berth. If you came to the tournament with every intention of winning, you should not be thinking about anything but winning. There are no semi-goals at a PTQ. There is only one winner, and that’s you. Relax, play Magic, and don’t get worked up about things you cannot control. If you made a mistake, identify it, discover why you made the mistake, and make note to think more thoroughly next time.
To sum it all up:
Do everything you can to maintain a focused and positive state of mind throughout the entirety of the tournament. If you’re on a roll, remind yourself of all the things you’re doing right, and keep doing them!
All little things that you do, the superstitions, etc… they aren’t dumb. They are actively helping you subconsciously find a comfortable environment that you can focus in. Find a method that works for you.
Keep your mind in the game at hand. Zac Hill, now a Wizards employee but once a Pro Tour mainstay, famously wrote “FOWYDRN” (Focus On What You’re Doing Right Now) on his hand to remind himself not to be distracted by the tournament happenings, and to concentrate entirely on winning each game of Magic he played. (He Top8-ed that PT)
Just picture it…
Your water bottle is at your side, your pen resting over your right ear, you roll your lucky pink D20 (winning the roll, obv) and you lay down your opening seven the same way you always do.
“I’ll play”
Kar Yung Tom (KYT) is the Digital Content Manager for Face to Face Games. He oversees the F2FTour.com and Magic F2F websites. He is also the lead host of the First Strike podcast.