How to prepare for any tournament you compete in

Last week, I wrote about the importance of time management. You don’t have to take it as seriously as I do, but your performance will likely improve as you find more time to work on your game. This week, I’ll be talking about the importance of planning and preparation. It works for everything in general, but today I’ll condense these concepts into good old Yu-Gi-Oh! wisdom.

How to Be Average

There seems to be this idea that proper preparation for Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG tournaments involves staying awake all night practicing for the next day, and playing without much rest. Apparently this is supposed to enhance your concentration. From personal experience I’ll say this: it doesn’t work. All you get is average performance, which leads to average results.

Planning and preparation aren’t complicated tasks. There is no secret formula or complex philosophy you have to understand. All it takes are simple, easy steps you don’t even have to do in one sitting. Tying it all up with last week’s discussion, it’s actually very time effective and it doesn’t disrupt your day-to-day life.

How to Prepare for a Tournament

In the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG, tournament preparation is simply a game of patience and diligence. You have to stick with your planning and preparations, or you will get the same results you’ve been getting before. Anything is better than not making progress. We all know how frustrating that is.

Here’s the simple 6-step process I use:

1)     Decide to Prepare

2)     Info-Overload

3)     Explore the Facts

4)     Make Decks

5)     Test the Decks

6)     Draw Conclusions

All you have to do is use this process . . . then rinse and repeat it over again.

Step One: Decide to Prepare

Making the decision to prepare is the one step you cannot take lightly. Simply doing this because I say you should is not reason enough to do it. Here are a few questions to answer:

1)     What’s in it for me?

2)     Why should I spend my time doing this?

3)     What does winning a tournament mean to me?

4)     What do I want to learn by using this process?

5)     Am I willing to pay the price?

If you don’t go through this step first, it’ll be difficult for you to make any progress. In a sense, you’ll “snap back” to what you’ve always been doing and get more of the same results.

Give these questions some thought. It’s easy to say, “I want to win a tournament.” I’ve found that it is more difficult to explain why you want to win a tournament. It adds more meaning to the goal when you come up with an answer.

Step Two: Info-Overload

For me, this is the most enjoyable step: the painstaking and excruciating time spent hunting for information . . .

I’m just kidding. This part takes about an hour. It may take more or less time depending on your sources of information.

Here’s what you do: find every possible resource you can on the current metagame. Some questions to ask to help you start with the search:

1)     Which cards are being played the most?

2)     Which decks are the most popular?

3)     Which players are winning the most?

4)     What are the major deck trends from the last three events?

5)     What are the counters to these card/deck/player trends?

In this part, you are focusing on the what, not the why. You need to know what is being played before you devise a way to counter or improve upon it. Your job here is to take notes. Good ones.

Again, use every resource you can find. There are many online articles about trends, cards, and decks. Another great resource to go to is, of course, Metagame.com. Forums are a good place, too. I have my reservations about some of them, but they are good if you know how to use them. Key tip: acquire the info, but don’t join the drama.

Other players are a critical resource as well. You might be the type of person who likes to talk to other people face-to-face about things you want to know. Word of mouth is powerful after all. Besides, not everyone writes their hidden info in articles and forum posts. Talking to other players is extremely valuable.

Step Three: Explore the Facts

At this step, your aim is to determine the why behind it all. You don’t have to be dead-on here. This is where you make assumptions. In the next steps, you will be testing those assumptions.

Get all the data together and start to organize it into patterns, groups, flow charts, brainstorming maps, etc. Organize it in a way that will help you understand the information you’ve gathered about the current state of the metagame you are going to compete in.

Again, look for commonalities and trends. Look for the current counters to those trends. Ask yourself why those counters work. Are there better ones? You have to determine all this from your data gathering.

Always remember: ask questions!

Step Four: Make Decks

It’s really as cut-and-dried as it sounds, my friends. Make some decks. Come up with decklists. It doesn’t matter how bad you think they look. Just make them. You can also re-use the decklists displayed on different websites, even from the coverage on this one. I don’t advocate carbon-copying someone’s decklist and playing it as if it is your own. However, for testing purposes, I say:

• Build them.
• Pick them apart.
• Make them better.

This step is where you come up with a stock of interesting concept decklists that you are going to build based on what you’ve found. It helps to build the decks while keeping in mind the current trends. Build decks using those trends and decks that counter those trends.

Step Five: Test the Decks

At this point, your task is to test all of your assumptions and refine all of the decklists you devised in the last step. You are now proving or disproving assumptions you have about the current metagame.

This is when you figure out what works for you and what doesn’t. Ask yourself the following questions:

1)     Does this deck flow in a way that suits me?

2)     Does this deck do a good job of countering the current trends?

3)     How can I make improvements to this deck?

4)     What are the weaknesses of the decks I am testing?

5)     What are the strengths of the decks I am testing?

6)     What are the win percentages with this deck (number of victories in ten games)?

This is the most productive step of the process. You’ll learn a lot during the time you are testing. You will lose a lot of games in the beginning as you refine the decks you will ultimately use. You won’t use all of them. Try to narrow down your list of decks to two or three that you would like to try at a particular event.

Step Six: Draw Conclusions

By now, you should already know what you are going to play and which decks you find suitable to your tastes as a player. This step is another crucial point in this process: the time where you reflect on what you’ve learned. Reflecting is important to do after you learn something so that it sticks in your memory.

Write down the answers to these questions on a piece of paper:

1)     What lessons did you learn in particular?

2)     What was the most difficult step for you in this process? Why?

3)     Why do the decks that you ultimately chose work for you?

4)     What kind of side deck can you make to complement each of these decks?

5)     Do you feel you are prepared for the metagame at the tournament you are preparing for? Why or why not?

Answering these basic questions will force you to go back and remember what you learned and how you applied it. You can gain some critical insights on the metagame by reflecting in this manner.

Putting It All Together

Now that you’ve read about this process, the next and final step is to go out and do it! It’s that simple. If you feel confused or a bit overwhelmed, start with step one. Getting started is the most important thing you can do to better prepare for any tournament you plan to compete in. You’ll start to feel like a better player as a result of your preparatory efforts. You’ll feel less fear going into a tournament because you’ll know so much more about your competition. Common wisdom says that becoming educated about a subject removes the fear of it. Ultimately, learning how to prepare in an effective way will turn you into a better player.