One of the most agonizing things about my job as a reporter is that I’m forced sit by and silently watch as players throw away games they shouldn’t be able to lose. On the flipside, I’m quite happy to sit and watch players find their way out of huge deficits and turn games around. In my experience, most games come down to a key play or a series of key plays that turn things in favor of one person. Sometimes it’s something like a flipped Pulling the Rug on the Monarch that would have sealed a win, but sometimes it’s more subtle, like the choice of which card to discard with Confiscation. Today though, it seems like a good number of losses have occurred due to people simply forgetting things that they should have remembered. Cards they have, effects they have available to them, and even what their own cards do. Sometimes the key play in a game is the play that isn’t made or is made improperly, and this feature is all about the importance of knowing all your options before you do anything hasty.

First off, let’s begin by talking about the possibility of simply forgetting that you have a particular effect available. You can see an example of this in the round 1 feature match, when Daniel Treacy completely forgot about the Reasoning he had put into the graveyard with Destiny Hero — Diamond Dude. Forgetting about your own effects is a possibility that increases proportionally to the complexity of the deck you decide to play. Thus, all of you out there are who are looking to build your own Diamond Dude Turbo decks had better listen very closely here, lest you become discouraged like many others who have tried the deck. Marc Glass won an SJC with the deck and made it to the finals of another because he knows the deck inside and out. He knows all the effects and cards available to him at any point in time and can approximate the odds of any given outcome. He’s been on a hot streak lately with the Jinzos and whatnot, but don’t let that fool you into thinking for even a second that Jinzo is the sole reason for his success.

Forgetting about effects can also manifest itself in the form of misplaying your own cards due to unforeseen interactions with the cards you’re already using/have used. An example would be something that happened with one of Kyle Duncan’s opponent’s earlier today. Specifically, he activated Call of the Haunted on his Spirit Reaper, completely forgetting that Reaper would blow itself up when it was summoned. Finally, forgetting about effects can come in the form of completely forgetting that you even have a card. This is when the plays that don’t get made are important. For instance, look back to SJC Houston and Joey Skiles’ match, where he simply didn’t play the card that would have won him the game. A similar situation occurred at this Jump when both players were one Cyber Dragon attack away from losing, but one player had a Cyber Dragon and a set Mystical Space Typhoon to the other player’s nothing. His opponent drew and played Snatch Steal and attacked for game . . . and the player with the Typhoon didn’t do anything about it. Please, remember your cards and your effects. It sounds a bit cliched, but knowing is half the battle.