Tunnel Vision

[FreonIceMan]

Do you suffer from Tunnel Vision?

What do I mean by tunnel vision? Tunnel vision to me is having your mind set on winning the game you are playing by one way and one way only. By doing this you blind yourself to other win conditions that are in front of you. To prevent yourself from doing this you must stop, sit back look at the board and what is available to you in your hand, also getting enough sleep prior to a tournament is very key. A lack of sleep will cause you to do make bad choices while you are playing. My best example of tunnel vision is what happened to me this past weekend at the Rochester SCG P9 tournament.

I had just won game two and while we were shuffling for game three time was announced and we started game three in turns.  My opening hand was:
Swamp
Oxidize
Yawgmoth’s Bargain
Tendrils of Agony
Culling the Weak
Crookshank Kobolds
Elvish Spirit Guide

The match went like this:

Turn One:
He plays tundra, Chalice of the Void for zero

Turn Two:
I play Bayou and Oxidize his Chalice of the Void

Turn Three:
He draws, plays nothing.

Turn Four:
I draw Glimpse of Nature. I play a swamp, I pitch Elvish Spirit Guide for green mana, then I play Glimpse of Nature, next I play the Crookshank Kobolds and draw a card from Glimpse of Nature, and I draw a Tendrils of Agony.

Turn Five:
   He ends the game in a draw.

What did I do wrong in that match? I was focused on playing the Glimpse of Nature to start drawing cards by playing the Kobolds. What should I have done? On turn four I should have played the swamp, then played the Crookshank Kobolds, then played Culling the Weak sacrificing the Crookshank Kobolds to have four black mana floating, then pitched the Elvish Spirit Guide for one green mana, then tapped the bayou for black, and then cast the Yawgmoth’s Bargain. Once I had done that I could draw to what I needed to cast a Tendrils of Agony for storm count of 10 or more.

[EnialisLiadon]

I tend to do the same thing with tutors.  'Vampiric Tutor...that can grab Yawgmoth's Will!  Whoohoo!'  Sometimes, I don't really need Will, or whatever cool spell I want to fetch.  It can take time and effort to realize all the possibilities a situation offers, but it's often well worth it.

[Outlaw]

This is just a player error without properly thinking things out clearly, it happens to the best of us but with experiance we learn to eliminate and reduce those to a lower % chance of happening.  We've governed ourselves that doing the "cool" thing isn't the right play, but in that case it was.  Just play things out more slowly man.

[Rancor1]

This classic Dojo article pretty much talks about your problem.

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/3689.html

[BigMac]

I am not sure how other players see this but pretty much when i play combo and i start with my bargain in my first hand i start thinking how to get bargain down as bargain down pretty much means win the game then and there.

If you would have looked carefully you would have realised you have 5 mana in turn 1 and only needed to get another manasource to get 6 mana in your turn 2. As your only land in your openinghand was a swamp and you played a bayou you pretty much had that mana right away. Drawing the glimpse should not have made any difference as you allready had 6 mana to play the bargain and win. I know you see that now, but to make you understand:

As soon as you have bargain in hand, try to play it in your mind. If you do not have enough mana then try and think of ways to get that extra mana as bargain equals win in most games.