So, everybody who writes for the first time feels obligated to tell the Magic community about themselves. Some also feel it necessary to name drop at completely unnecessary points in the article in order to bolster their credibility. I, being a complete attention whore, will continue to uphold this grand tradition. However, if you really want to know who I am, I'll hit you with that info later on, kind of like a reward for putting World of Warcraft on hiatus for the next few minutes.

Most of us are bad at this game. I know I am. I play with people on a regular basis that make me look bad, and not because of anything they're actually doing. They just sit there and watch me make a buffoon out of myself. The other day I was playing in a draft, and my team had almost locked up the win. I was up 1-0 on my opponent, had a bunch of fliers, and thought I had the game well in hand. His next two plays were Venerable Kumo and Matsu-Tribe Sniper, and just like that the game had stalemated. Eventually I had to make a decision between making my opponent discard his last 3 cards with Three Tragedies, or trying to protect my fliers with Soratami Rainshaper. As soon as I just said "Go", I knew I had misplayed. He went on to win that game with the three removal spells he was holding after offing my Rainshaper.

Lesson learned? Probably not, but everything is cumulative. This scenario will probably never play out the same way for me again, but the bits and pieces that have accumulated in my brain piece over the years have actually made me a better player. In testing for GP: Boston and the upcoming (now almost finished) Extended season, John Fiorillo and I came to the conclusion that certain decks presented monumental hurdles for our weapon of choice; U/W Mind's Desire. We kept running into road blocks, not being able to find the answers, and resigning ourselves to leave the bad matchups to chance. When we got to Boston, we got some new insight from Osyp, who (after pretending to imitate me DJing and making fun of my Mustang) simply said "Maximize your chances of winning". Derf, thanks Osyp, cause ya know I really was playing to minimize my chances of winning before.

...

Wait, that actually makes sense.

I, in particular, was playing the deck too conservatively. This doesn't mean that I would wait until I had 15 cards in hand and 8 lands on the table, but overall I was unwilling to burn a Snap on an early beater, fire off a Desire for 5, or even play aggro and swing with a pair of Cloud of Faeries when necessary. I was not thinking outside the box. I was not maximizing my chances of winning because I was not seeing my alternate paths to victory. This is a syndrome that affects most players at one point or another. This does not necessarily mean that you are playing incorrectly, you are probably just looking for The Way Out, rather than seeking one of those paths.

The Way Out can be very tempting. How many times have you been involved in a match and said to yourself, "How am I gonna get out of this one?" Everybody loses at Magic, so the answer is undoubtedly lots. If your name is Allen Jackson, who I manage to savagely manascrew every time we play, the answer is more likely, "F$*% off, BStroh". Looking for The Way Out isn't necessarily wrong. Occasionally, it buys you the time you need to peel that Myojin of White Goodness and just win, but more often, it just delays the inevitable. Kyle Boddy wrote an interesting article recently (which I'm sure the omnipotent Knut will link to above) that discussed inevitability. He was talking more in terms of Constructed, but the same principle applies in Limited. Given enough time, if player A's board position is poop and he is playing like it, he will lose. The difference in the mental game of better players is they try to find a way to win those games, rather than resigning themselves to play defense until they just lose (which is, in fact, the exact opposite of "just win", and is, in technical terms, ass).

I myself began to notice that my mental game changed just about the time I started having some success at the pro level. It's really impossible to underestimate the importance of having a strong mental game, but since this topic has seemingly been poured over numerous times since I planned on writing this article, I won't bore you all with the details. I will say though, that knowing when to use your resources is paramount. Life is a resource, know when not to block. Lands are resources, know when to tap out. Creatures are resources, know when to attack with that 1/1 that would never block, even if it seems like it doesn't matter. You're sitting in that chair to win, not to "not lose". The reason that Platinum Angel has two separate clauses on it is because there are two separate concepts to ending the game. Your job as a superior mental player is to merge the two, forging a more complete picture of any given match and giving you a leg up no matter what the circumstances.

Playing to win will let you reap the benefits of your opponents' mistakes, rather than being unable to capitalize on them. An astute player will seize every opportunity and exploit every weakness. I have heard more than one player describe Magic as a "Game of Inches". I feel that this is a tremendous understatement. As time passes and rules are updated and added to, there becomes more opportunity for missteps and falters. As a general rule, players' overall skill level also increases. These two factors combined mean that if you are not seeing all the angles, inevitably you will be beaten by someone who does. Ignoring luck and given identical decks, the better player will win 100% of the time. This may seem obvious, yet the basic philosophy behind it describes why Magic is more than a game of inches. How much better does player A have to be than player B in order to win a real world match with similar decks? Not very. As time approaches infinity, certainly, winning percentages of each player would agree with that statement.

I do not wish to mislead you that having intimate knowledge of the comprehensive rules will allow you to outplay your opponent. You also must be "In the Game", and know what your best option is not only this turn, but three or even five turns from now. Every game has a certain predictable flow once it gets past the first few turns, and you have to know how to ride the flow and shape it as you see fit. As Gerard Fabiano says to me almost every time I am not playing to my potential, "Get In The Game Stroh!" And then he invariably will take my visor as a rally cap, or threaten to douse me in water, both of which have proven only marginally effective. Distractions happen, but when you're playing your best, nothing should really be able to shake your focus.

I want to wrap up with an example of what not to do. I was playing in day 2 of GP: Anaheim last year. It was pre-bannings, so there was this okay deck called Tinker floating around - maybe you heard of it. Anyway, I was playing a version of 3-color Tog that was performing well against the field, and had several answers to the Tinker deck. I was playing against said deck in one of the later rounds, and the board was my lone Tog staring down his massive amount of mana, Damping Matrix, super blocker extraordinaire Metalworker, and 2 Chalice of the Void, one on 2 and one on 3. I was basically locked out of the game, with the only spell in my deck that I could cast being Fact or Fiction. However, my opponent was at 1 life, and had no way to kill me, since he had sided out his big threats (I don't know why he did that, but that's besides the point). We were both playing draw-go, when one turn he decided to Upheaval. Well, what could I do? It resolved, and then he was able to replay his entire hand and win on the next turn after I just laid an Island.

It was then that I looked at my hand and saw 2 Fire/Ice staring back at me. Had I been paying even the slightest bit of attention to the game, I would have realized that I could have floated R1 and Fired him in response to his first spell after the 'Heave. That was game 3 by the way. I went on to draw and lose my last 2 rounds. Had I won any of them, I would have made money, and if I had won the Tinker match, I could have Top 8'd. Not only did I feel like a complete moron, I also missed out on some cash. I was so mentally out of the game, it didn't matter what happened because I already had chalked up the game as a loss. Trust me when I say that the most important aspect of improving one's mental game is to pay attention to the game state, because anything can happen.

Alright, you've made it. Here's the info you so desperately wanted. I am a New York-based player who's had a decent past year and half. I was at 3 out of the 6 Pro Tours last year including Worlds, and I made money in 3 or 4 GPs, including a Top 8 miss (on tiebreaks) in Columbus. Although I've been playing for a while, I only started traveling to events starting with GP: Atlanta, where I Top 32ed. And yeah, I DJ, so send requests for mix CDs to yeahright@nowayunlessyoupayme.com.

BStroh
Celiracer on AIM
Topdeckr at optonline.net