I know from experience that the tournament scene can be a little tough. You’ll have your rough spots when you won’t win a thing and everything you build seems to pale in comparison to the latest netdeck. The last thing you want to do is copy everyone else. How else would you differentiate? Sometimes, even that inner fire for doing it all on your own can chew you up and spit you out. Then it’s easy to forget where you came from and why you started to play in the first place. Trust me, I’ve been there. I know exactly how that feels.

Have you ever been in a spot where you just couldn’t help but not want to play anymore? You say, "Why bother . . . this game is all luck anyway, right?" I’m sure you’ve all been there and if you haven’t, then it’s best to know how to deal with it in advance. Playing this game competitively can be tough, and if you want to win and make yourself known, then you need to know how to deal with the tough times

Why Do You Play?
The first thing I would do is figure out why I started playing this game in the first place. What drove you to play the game originally? Was it the competition? Your friends? Your drive to win tournaments? The creative aspect? The intellectual challenge? A little introspection goes a long way.

Often when we’re in the middle of everything, we forget what our original intentions were. Sometimes your goals for the game change and you get discouraged. You may even be dissatisfied with the game. It’s possible that your inner motivations have changed. It’s also possible that you’ve strayed too far from your original intentions and you’re just becoming aware of it. Think about it. What if your original plan was to play with your friends and have a good time? These days, you may find yourself practicing till the early hours of the morning for the next tournament and tend to feel a strange sense of dissatisfaction. It’s a weird feeling—almost as if you’re fed up with what you’re doing but don’t know how to stop. You couldn’t possibly imagine what would be fun for you to do. That’s a sign that you’ve lost sight of your original motivation. You may not hang out with your friends as much, and you may just practice all day online instead. Maybe your friends aren’t as good at the game as you are and you’re more likely to talk to duelists who share your level of skill.

That happens all the time. You originally intended to hang out with your friends and over time you’ve turned into a tournament champion. What do you do now? And vice-versa. You may have been the all-out "I only want to win" kind of guy or gal, and now find yourself enjoying the other aspects of the game a lot more. It’s almost as if you’ve retired from competitive play but can’t quite admit it to yourself yet. It’s entirely possible that the purpose driving you has changed.

Reconciling Inner Duality
There’s nothing wrong with changing the reasons for why you play. The problem is more often a failure to reconcile the feeling of being torn apart by two opposing forces: your drive to win and your nostalgia for the good old days when winning didn’t matter. It’s important to ask yourself about your intentions. If what you’re doing now is what you really want, then you need to come to terms with that and move on. If you’re doing something and feel that’s not "you," then you need to go back to what is more like "you." It’s one thing to have aspirations to greatness, but it’s a different story when you’re trying to be something that you’re clearly not.

There are plenty of other routes to pursue in the game that don’t involve major tournament competition. Don’t get me wrong: I enjoy a good competition, but it’s not for everybody. It’s hard to live two lives: the tournament champion and the "I don’t care about winning" type. Don’t kid yourself. Be who you are. If who you are is a tournament champion who only wants to win and be the greatest, then do it. Own up to it and don’t be ashamed of it. You don’t have to stop because your buddies can’t match you.

The same happens to a lot of teams. There are teams which formed to have fun and play as a group. Yes, your squad likes to go to tournaments for the variety and doesn’t mind the occasional win. But you’re not there for that. You’re there to play and that’s it, because you enjoy the game in that way. Other teams are formed with the intention of being tournament-conquering giants. They have only the best players and are ruthless to boot. They have strict rules about new members and they get rid of members who don’t perform well. Then there are teams which act as a sort of hybrid. Their non-tournament members are the "support staff" for the tournament-focused members.

In each and every case, the main cause of a team "break-up" is a failure to remember the true purpose of the group. From personal experience, I know what it’s like to be on a team that starts as "just a group of guys playing the game" and later falls apart due to inner turmoil. What was the cause? The more ambitious players couldn’t stand to be in a non-performing team and decided that they would be better off somewhere else. However, instead of leaving while they could, they basically lied to themselves and their friends and stuck around in quiet frustration. Over time, they began to criticize their fellow teammates over their mistakes in the game. They wanted to motivate their teammates to