Advice for Competitive Playing

[zeus-online]

If skill is not a factor at all, then there is no "best players" there's only "lucky players" and "unlucky players".

Untrue.  Winning is a function of both probability of t8 AND frequency of attendance.  There's a cute argument that the most frequent tournament attendees in a skill-free world will put up the most wins...explaining the higher win *counts* of the "best players."

That still does not make them "better" since they only put up more results by playing in more tournaments....Sort of like...Me getting "heads" with a coin more times then you by simply flipping 10 times as many coins as you.

Anyway, i do not believe that there is a skill-less format, and the only skill-less deck i can think of in all of magic is burn. (Although there might even be a bit of skill involved in making the optimal burn list...)

[Shean]

Considering that the name of this topic is, "Advice for Competitive Playing," I think we should be talking about becoming a better tournament player, rather than arguing about the semantics of skill vs. luck.

[AmbivalentDuck]

1. Attend lots of tourneys
2. Don't play meta decks until you've racked up 300+ posts
3. Buy beta power and practice with it every night...with real opponents...and talk about your mistakes after each match.
4. Don't graduate from law school, it will significantly harm your tourney performance.
5. Pull off one of your toenails with pliers every time you're inclined to blame luck for losses instead of play errors.

[honestabe]

The hardest thing to do in Vintage is realize when you have made a mistake.  Many times, there are so many "insane plays" you can become overwhelmed and not realize the correct play.  Once you realize your misplays, you will improve, but until then, be prepared to lose, but try to figure out why, and what you could have done to stop your los from happening.