One of the hardest things to accept in a competition is a loss. Everyone ultimately enters a competition to win and believes (at least to some degree) that he or she is capable of doing it. Losing means accepting that someone was able to come out on top of you. For me personally, losing was once one of the hardest things to accept on the Shonen Jump circuit. Whenever I make a move I believe it to be the best one available to me at the time. After all, that's why I made that move. So when my opponents were able to beat me I simply believed there was nothing that could've been done about it.
After all I had played the best I could and still lost. There's no other conclusion I could reach except that my opponent must have just drawn better than I did; that he or she got lucky. I would make a move that would ultimately cost my opponent four cards and myself three, leaving me in a much better position than that player. However it would leave me unprotected to an OTK and my opponent would drop Cyber-Stein.
The most common way people lose is something they don't even realize. What usually happens is a play they made ends up backfiring completely. Often it can be a seemingly good play based off a correct read. Take for example the Thought Ruler Archfiend vs. Phoenix Wing Wind Blast case. You are choosing which level 8 Synchro monster to play and you believe your opponent has Wind Blast face down. Let’s say your hand has a bunch of defensive cards as well. Making the correct read, you play Thought Ruler and attack for 2700 damage. You set one card to your back row, not wanting to commit too heavily to the field.
During the end phase your opponent flips Phoenix Wing Wind Blast and spins your defensive card. On that player’s turn he or she takes your Thought Ruler with that duelist’s own Goyo Guardian. You can't stop the opponent because your only defense was spun away. Next turn you're able to take care of Goyo easily, but all your defensive cards target! You can't get rid of the Thought Ruler and before long you've lost. In this case choosing Thought Ruler Archfiend because your opponent had Wind Blast actually lost you the game.
Had you chosen Colossal Fighter your opponent likely would have used the Wind Blast on it, leaving you free to set your own Wind Blast. You can break up any Synchro play your opponent tries to make and you’re drawing a fresh card next turn. That's a big deal because with a lot of defensive cards you need more monsters. Having your opponent Wind Blast something that won't force you to draw the same card again puts you a turn ahead of where you would otherwise have been.
I've used this example before to show why Stardust Dragon would be superior to Thought Ruler. Thought Ruler is easier to play around, and Stardust allows you to set all your defensive cards to protect it, because it protects the set cards in turn. Whether or not you agree that Stardust is a better move you can surely agree with me that playing Colossal Fighter into Wind Blast is not a better move than playing Thought Ruler. So really I just showed you how making the better play lost you the game, while making the worse play would have left the game still within reach.
Another example you may have already heard of is one I experienced myself in a regional match with Dale Bellido. Dale was playing his own TeleDAD deck complete with Thunder King Rai-Oh. He won the die roll (obviously) and opened with a pretty good hand. He summoned Thunder King and set a card to his back row. I wasn't very happy with my hand at first: Smashing Ground, Brain Control, Breaker the Magical Warrior and some other stuff. I played Breaker and used his effect. Dale chained Wind Blast, confused as to why I didn't try to bump heads. I set Dimensional Prison and passed, deciding to leave Thunder King on the table despite holding Smashing.
The reason I did this was because my hand was exceptionally poor for a regular TeleDAD mirror. Smashing Ground and Dimensional Prison were in my deck to help deal with Rai-Oh and because I was playing a build that relied heavily on Stardust Dragon and Necro Gardna. Drawing those together along with Brain Control and Breaker the Magical Warrior is terrible. I’m vulnerable to OTK’s, I can't deal with multiple Thought Ruler Archfiends, and I can't OTK someone myself unless that player activates Solemn Judgment and cuts his or her life points in half.
Already you can see I was relying on something to backfire on my opponent. Instead Dale happened to draw his Thunder King and thought he'd made a bunch of my cards dead. He was happy to play what appeared to be a slow-paced game where he was protecting a Thunder King that was supposedly preventing me from being able to do anything. As a result he used his cards for a means other than the OTK or big Synchro rush I needed to avoid. I was able to play around him in the end because I had both Smashing Ground and Brain Control.
The key lesson here was that had Dale not drawn Thunder King he wouldn't have been happy to play a slow-paced game. Instead he would have had to resort to a more standard set of TeleDAD tactics, which would have been much more effective against my awkward hand. Backfiring like this happens all the time in the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG. Plays that look good can actually be just as poor as plays that are in fact naturally bad. The players who are consistently at the top are the ones who have recognized which plays are safer than others and act upon those findings. The winner of a match isn't always the one who drew the better hand. Most of the time it's the one who didn't make the play that backfired.
-Matt Peddle