Occasional lapses in good judgment happen only as often as you let them. Still, we all have tendencies that cause us to show a lack of good judgment in a variety of situations. Today I’ll give you some personal and recent examples of my own misjudgment in the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG.

I Hate Repeating the Same Mistakes . . .

Sometimes we tend to repeat very common mistakes because we don’t remind ourselves of the last time it occurred and the devastation it caused. For example, sometimes you’ll summon another monster instead of Cyber Dragon and lose your special summon for that turn and subsequent turns . . . thus losing the game.

Boy, that is a painful one.

Often we’ll suffer from too much optimism and lose sight of reality and time-tested, tried-and-true techniques that always work to our benefit. I recently fell prey to that myself.

As much as I would rather not admit to this, I feel it’s instructional . . . and a good laugh to share with your friends (and me if you see me at an event). The story goes as such:

I was talking to a friend of mine who recommended that I look at the Top 8 of the September 8th Regional Qualifier in Toronto for ideas on what metagame to expect at the upcoming Regional Qualifier in Orlando on the 15th. I looked at these lists on the 10th of September. They were well-built decks and I saw a few famous names in there, as well as an innovative build for The Six Samurai that I had personally never seen before.

It just so happened that I was testing a Six Samurai build prior to this Regional Qualifier. (Can you smell the trap I’m getting into here?) I had a reasonable amount of confidence in my current Samurai build, which I had only played in about fifteen games, but then I saw this build and said, “Wow, Reasoning is awesome! What a great idea!” It doesn’t take a genius to predict what happened next.

Lo and behold, I went and “stole” this build and made some cosmetic changes to it (and to be clear, I gave credit where it was due). I then proclaimed this personally untested build to be far superior to my own (tested) build because it made the Top 8 at a Regional. I was eager to practice with it before the event, and smart enough to know that you shouldn’t go to an event with a deck you have never played. So I set up a little testing time with my buddy one evening. Unfortunately the system we were using caused a lot of problems and never seemed to work properly. This caused me some frustration, and after a few hours, it was clear that the system had become impossible to fix.

I had no one else to test with at that time of night, so I was determined to practice on the day of the Regional (Misjudgment #1). I had enough smarts at the time to say to myself, “You might as well not go to the event. You have a deck that’s untested and you have other decks that probably won’t stand up to the competition. You are just behind. You’re not up-to-date. Don’t waste your time.”

At this point, a sane person would have done just that. But being the optimist that I am, I justified my foolish decision with the following words: “Well, you have to go because all your friends from around the state will be there. Don’t worry, you can practice at the event. You’ll have plenty of time.” (Misjudgment #2). Yes, I wanted to see my friends, but that did not mean I had to play.

So I said, “Well, it’ll be boring if you don’t play. Why don’t you just practice at the event? With your skills, you should be fine.” (Misjudgment #3).

So what did good ol’ Bryan do next?

Well, I went to the event of course. What else would I do after inflicting such delusion upon myself? As you can imagine, I could only get about three duels in before the event, I performed horribly, my decisions were awful, and I lost to the very matchups my deck was tailored to conquer.  (I did see my friends at least and had a ton of fun, so the day wasn’t all bad.)

What You Can Learn From My Misjudgments

After embarrassing myself with a good deck coupled with next-to-zero practice, I drove home amazed at the power of my own bad judgment. I got what I so rightfully deserved: bad results. To have expected anything different would have ignored reality, which admittedly, I did. I could’ve gotten very upset . . . or gritted my teeth, sat back, and thought about what just happened. I did the latter.

You may ask, “Why so harsh on yourself Bryan? It happens.” Yes, it does happen. However, when these mistakes are repeated over and over again, then there is a problem. That’s been my problem. As one of my friends said to me at the event when I made some critical mistakes during a game, “Don’t get in your own way.” Wise words on his part.

It’s very easy to get in your own way. It’s important to spot these behaviors and lapses in judgment before you get caught in that vacuum. As I mentioned, three easy-to-ignore misjudgments ultimately led to the calamity of my Regional experience. To combat these types of things, you have to first be aware of them. That’s the hard part. Second, you have to muster up the courage to relive it and examine your bad experiences, even if it’s just for a moment. Third, come up with your own “rules” and “steps” to help you avoid these mishaps in the future. I came up with a few of my own after this ordeal. Some were in place before this event, but they help much more when you actually follow them. Here they are:

1) Have your deck selected at least a week in advance of the tournament.

2) You are not “familiar” with your chosen deck build unless you’ve played at least 25-30 duels with it prior to the event.

3) Resist the urge to play a deck from a new Top 8 prior to an event unless you’ve passed Rule #2. Even then, move forward carefully.

4) Stay up-to-date. Read the latest information and prepare accordingly.

5) Be mindful of who you test with and measure your testing results.

Some of these may seem out there for you. That’s OK. These are just my personal rules for tournament play. When I’ve adhered to them, I’ve done well. You don’t have to do things the same way . . . though I do advocate Rule #2 at least. In my opinion, you are not familiar with a deck unless you’ve played 25-30 duels with it against different decks (that’s the equivalent of the number of games you would normally play in an 8-round Regional).

Final Thoughts  

When I look back at my ordeal with the untested deck, it’s pretty funny. It’s the little things that get you sometimes. You have two choices when stuff like this happens:

1) Get mad and don’t learn from what you did.

2) Get mad, learn from what you did, and create mental rules to make your dueling life easier.  

I like #2 best. It’s not fun to lose. It’s good to learn how to lose so you won’t be a sore loser, but it’s okay to be bothered by it too. I really hate not doing well, and I think that some players just don’t hate not doing well enough to really go through the trouble of creating some mental rules for themselves. It makes your dueling days much easier, in my opinion, and you’ll save a boatload of time, money, and grief.

—Bryan Camareno