While competitive Magic can be looked at in terms of who has the best deck and who has the slight edge in play skill, a huge part of the competitive Magic scene that people overlook is demeanor and something that we like to call “tilt.” Going into a tournament, during a tournament, and after a tournament, you are going to have a range of emotions that are going to vary from excitement to stress to disappointment. Each of these emotions is going to tie into how you play Magic and how focused you are on the game, and it takes years of training to be able to shut those emotions out of your playing.

Going to a PTQ

Pro Tour Qualifiers are something different from nearly any other Magic tournament out there in that there is only one real winner out of the entire room. Some people may make the entrance fee back in packs, and some may win a pin, but at the end of the day, only one person gets the invitation and the plane ticket. So, if you are going to play in this tournament, you have to have the confidence to win and not let that confidence waver. If you are going to the tournament and don’t expect to win, you might as well not go at all.

STORY TIME!

I was playing Friday Night Magic at my local store and I had one of the semicompetitive players come up to me and ask me what changes I would make to his deck for the following day’s PTQ. He lays out his Boros deck; he has a nearly optimal deck, besides a few sideboard cards that I tell him are needed for a few matchups. His response is, “I really don’t want to spend to money to buy those cards for my sideboard.” My response may have seemed blunt and rude, but I instantly told him not to go to the tournament.

While my intentions were not to come off as mean, going to a PTQ is a big decision for a semicompetitive player to make, and with only one winner at the tournament, if you do not have every card in your seventy-five exactly how you want it or how it should be, that disadvantage is going to ensure that you cannot get into that top slot.

Moral of the story: You need total confidence going into a PTQ if you expect to see results; don’t let a loss or draw make you any less confident. Magic is a game of variance, and at the end of the day, the better player is going to win. If you truly believe you are the best player in the room, you have a chance of winning the tournament; anything less will make you fall short of your target.

Star City Games Opens

These events have shown us a whole new side of Magic, which I prefer to call more of a marathon than a tournament. With their attendance being around 500 for Standard and 300 for Legacy, showing up to a Star City Games event means that you will be playing around nineteen rounds of Swiss in a thirty-six-hour period. This is going to leave you mentally, physically, and emotionally drained, and breaks are needed throughout the weekend. The ups and downs of these tournaments are huge, as being 5–0 might seem good, but gaining your first loss in Round 6 can easily send you into a downhill spiral and gain you another loss shortly after. These tournaments are where tilt plays a huge role and can make a good or decent weekend into a nightmare one.

What Is Tilt?

Tilt is a more commonly used term in the poker world; it means allowing yourself to be affected by an unfortunate event or series of events, and allowing those events to alter the way you play in a negative way. In poker, it would be losing a hand like aces down to kings, but in Magic, it would be more like losing in a tournament at all.

Why Is Tilt Bad?

Being upset during a Magic match can affect your decision-making skills, which are the most important weapon that any Magic player has in his or her arsenal. Making a suboptimal play based on a previous loss will more often than not end with you gaining another loss and ending your chances of winning that specific tournament.

How Can I Prevent Tilt?

This is a question that is very complex and takes practice to learn a skill that I like to refer as “roboting.” This means that you shut down all emotions during a tournament and become more like a robot. While this might seem a bit less fun at a tournament, it is going to prevent stupid mistakes and losses caused by being upset. The logic behind this technique based on the views of most competitive Magic players: They expect to win every round, therefore taking the joy out of victory but giving a huge feeling of defeat after a loss. Adding emotions to Magic can only result in feeling bad and therefore can only hurt you throughout a day.

Going into a Magic tournament well-fed, well-rested, and with a good attitude is going to help any competitive Magic player gain that slight edge that he or she might need to do well in the tournament, because players have to learn not just how to go undefeated, but also to be able to still do well after picking up a loss, regaining confidence in themselves and their abilities.

Until next week, when I will be writing from Indy and GenCon, good luck to everybody playing in Nationals, and remember to stay confident.

Harrison Greenberg