Video from Modo - WatchDaMatch

Hi there!

I'm starting to put some drafts on my youtube channel for WatchDaMatch.

You can find them there: http://www.youtube.com/user/SeikoTheWiz#g/p
I'll add about one per week, hope to make them interesting.


They are all in French by the way. Sorry about that.

Preview of my next article in English!

This is the first draft of the next article I'm writing for WatchDaMatch, don't hesitate to tell me what you think about.
(For once it's all in English, it'll be translated in French and finalized in French).

After the last article you probably made a list of errors to correct, aspects of the game to work on, see a lot of the things you’re doing wrong. (and have plenty of time to go over them since it’s been a long time already!)

But how to work on them and what you can do is a totally different matter.

For this matter, I got no magical answer, nothing that can help you on every aspects of the game. There’s plenty of ways to get better and you probably knows some of them. But I can help you find what should be most useful for you..

First we have to be aware of the fact that we are all different, yet we are all alike.

When it comes to the way we perceive the world around us we can be put in 3 main categories. According to Temple Grandin in her TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/temple_grandin_the_world_needs_all_kinds_of_minds.html

So we have visual thinkers, pattern thinkers and verbal thinkers. Even if I think that most of the players are pattern and verbal thinkers, I know some visual thinkers also play Magic.

I’m personally a pattern thinker, when reading my article you can see that I’m far from being verbal thinker (otherwise I would be able to do articles way more enjoyable to read) and by experience I know that I’m absolutely not a visual thinker. I’m in fact completely unable to see images in my head or describe someone I just met (which always causes me a lot of mockery).

Some of you probably figured out what kind of player they were. But some other may still be confused about it.

To answer this, you have to analyse yourself and you have to remember that you are most likely a combinaison of types. None exclude another. But you always have one main type.

If you are not good at math you can already dismiss the pattern type.

If you’re all about logic, if you’re a programmer, you are probably a pattern thinker.

If you have a blog and are a prolific writer, you’re probably a verbal thinker.

If you are good at languages, philosophy and like to write and read, you are certainly a verbal thinker.

Visual is more easy to figure out. You have a good visual memory, you probably like arts, drawing and think by seeing images.

We can go on and on like this.

Let’s then see what is the most useful for each types of minds to work on.

As a pattern thinker, I need to understand everything, calculate and organize thought and plans. An article that really hooked me was from Gavin Verhey: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc/17175_Flow_of_Ideas_The_Most_Important_Word_in_Magic.html It explains that the most important word in Magic is « why » and that you have to relate everything your opponent is doing to his plan in order to understand what’s happening, what he got in hand and what to do. If he does anything, it is for a purpose, so figure it out! It really helped me changing how I plan my turns and how to play them.

It’s like when Remi Fortier told me that before I even draw my card every turn, I had to think of what exactly I wanted to do this turn, all the possibilities that I had, and might have. The pattern thinker usually work like this, we need to ordain what we will do, to have routine. We can also process theory more easily than other types, so reading article is very good for us, and especially those about the basic theories of Magic.

Visual thinker work more by experience, they can more easily remember past games, past situations and get information out of them. They need to play more to be able to use more experience. They can also get a lot from videos. We make a lot here at WatchDaMatch but you can find a lot more in English on the internet.

Verbal thinker use more social skills, more mind tricks and a bit of the other two categories. They need to train their way of getting information out of their opponent, and they need to figure out what else matter for them. They can process theory easily too, but need to learn while trying and testing it right away to be able to take out the most of it.

I wrote that I am mostly a pattern thinker, but since I like writing those articles and I am good at foreign languages (only foreign sadly) I have some traits of verbal thinkers.

After trying to figure out some of my plays, I realised that I play a lot with my opponents. This can seems to be an obvious statement, but take players like Guillaume Wafo-Tapa. They are not so much interacting with their opponent, they are much more often in deep though, analysing the game state and thinking about the next plays.

Despite beeing a pattern thinker this is not true for me. I like better talking and "helping" my badguy to make mistakes. I'm interacting a lot and I am used to do small mindtricks to support my game.

While this is certainly not a bad thing, my type would suggest I work more on my thinking instead of my mindtricks.

Now I do so much wihout even thinking about it anymore that it wont be a problem to combine both aspects.

Visual thinkers tends to think about the game in more "experienced based" ways. They are the reason why some peoples think they need to constently remind other to not think "result oriented". But I think it is in fact good for visual thinkers provided they have enough experiences to back them up. (this could be true for everyone of course)

And of course we've seen that they should do this kind of training anyway.

So more than helping you figuring how to better train, it might help you figuring out what aspects to look at.

Now it's probably time to read your fearless inventory and look at type specifics aspects to train. And probably add new lines.

Adding to that we have people that use their intuitions. Louis Scott Vargas wrote a very interesting article about that : http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/initial-technology-playing-intuitively/

I really recommend this read. It’s really an interesting way to use intuitions to help your game. To sum-up the basic idea is that whenever you have an intuition, try to see if it’s reasonable to follow it. Sometimes, when you have a lot of choices, use your intuition to see which one seems intuitively the best, then try to understand why you are pushed toward this play. Sometimes it’ll just be that your subconscious read your opponent’s hand or plan and it’s telling you the best course of action.

I wrote something on this subject way back when StarCityGame was looking for new writers. http://draftwithseiko.blogspot.com/2011/04/use-your-subconscious.html this is probably not polished enough, but still I think it can be interesting since just knowing that you can do those kind of training is sometimes enough. I’ll explain in French (this article will be in French in It’s final form) since I only wrote it in English. Basically you can train your subconscious (or name it intuition, for us it can be the same), to use information in a way you consciously think of good. You can ask him to pay attention at your opponent and his reactions because it’s not something you usually do.

But we have to beware using to much intuition, when our brain relax and we start relying on intuitions, we stop thinking and start just pushing cards.

So we have three types of thinkers and we have using or not our intuition. This is the streamline of what you require to train yourself.

Find how you work so you can get the most out of your trainings.

3 picks of a draft

What would have you done?

First pick First pack!

Hello!
While opening some m12 boosters I kind of find an interesting pack which made me think A LOT about what should be first picked first pack in it.

So I decided to take a picture, then I simply though that I should as well take pictures of the following packs it could make a nice exercice!

So in all these packs please give the first 3 picks. That mean the first card you'll take, the one you'll take if the first one wasn't here, and the third one if both the first and second were already picked.

Pack 1:

Pack 2:

 Pack 3:

Pack 4:

Pack 5:

Pack 6:

Pack 7:

Pack 8:

Pack 9:

Pack 10:

Pack 11:

Pack 12:

Pack 13:

Pack 14:

Who's the beatdown?

Still with WatchDaMatch here's my french version of the famous Who's the beatdown? by Mike Flores :

http://www.watchdamatch.com/Articles/Magic/Standard/Whos-the-beatdown.html

WatchDaMatch

I've been working a little with WatchDaMatch!

Their website is open you can go check it there : http://www.watchdamatch.com/Articles/Magic/Standard/Quel-Deck-Jouer.html

With my article ;p

Sorry but it's all in French!

Itching to play!

I've haven't had a PTQ or anything else for 2 whole weeks!

This let me some time to analyse the metagame a little (I was focused on extended before that) and learn how to play the decks. I'm far from ready, but I do feel some confidence.

Even if I couldn't play, I was able to book my flight for GP Prague and I am soon to be playing a PTQ in Strasbourg.


Now, since I really want to do some magic related work, I will try to start and gather a bunch or articles that have been (and still are) very interesting about magic and it's theory. Something you might just want to read at any time. Something not metagame related.

Right now I'm gonna shuffle some here before organising them and to let you have some matter to read if you are interested.

http://fivewithflores.com/2009/05/how-to-cheat/

http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/in-development-whats-your-read/

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc/17175_Flow_of_Ideas_The_Most_Important_Word_in_Magic.html

http://www.curiosity-shoppe.com/magic/Articles/Beatdown.htm

http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=2754

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc/17276_Reflecting_Ruel_Triggers_for_Success.html

With just those six, you have a lot of opportunities to level up ;)

Use your subconscious

This is something I wrote some times ago for the StarCityGame searching for new talent.


I guess I think it's a little too bad to let it go to waste. I'm skipping a little of the introduction and let go to the subject of using and training your subconscious.

While I've only been playing seriously for about one year now, I've put a lot of effort into understanding magic and people playing it.

Grinding PTQ since the last Extend season was really fun, and top8ing some of them was even more pleasant!

While striving to be the best, I’ve learned a lot and I wanted to share some with everyone one. I’t will be also a very good way to get a lot of feedback for those ideas. Well, today’s mostly about scientific facts.

So, I wanted to write a little something about being good at magic and while I certainly don’t have the level to teach most of you about card advantage or tempo, I have knowledge in other domains that helps me growing in Magic. That’s a point you might want to remember, you can learn a LOT about magic by studying completely different worlds.

Be it close activities like poker or chess, or strange things like for this article dreams study.

Did any of you witnessed a new player seeming very good and beating many other more experienced players? The one which has, like we french people say : "the beginner's luck". Often this guys don't know much about magic, he just play the way he feels and make nearly no conscious choice. You can ask him about his play he won't have real explanations. We all been to this point where we weren't thinking much just feeling the flow of the game.

This is because he’s unconsciously good at some aspects of Magic. We all have aspects of the game where we actually do the right choices without thinking. It can be called talent by some players too.
The point of my article is to actually use those parts by being able to develop them, create new and exploit them consciously.

But before that, we first have to develop our conscious skills.

This means thinking about your game and making the best choices. This is already a long road, but you don’t need to already be the best to continue to the next level.
By being able to play more consciously the first benefit will be being able to reflect more easily, more effectively and more often than you are able to right now. But of course you’ll use more time thinking, since you’ll try to rely on your unconscious no more. Again this is a good thing to be better in Magic, even if you don’t want to go all the way with unconscious and all, this won’t hurt anyone!

So how will I be able to do all of this? Well the first part will be simple yet long. You will have to learn and know all your magic theories. In Magic it’s interesting and fun! Tempo, game state, type of strategies, templating etc... you need to learn more about them, you can’t build something on half assed knowledge right?

There’s many ways to do this, from the most basic knowledge to more advanced, you can find everything on StarCity Games. There’s old Dojo articles, many articles about people trying to defines and explain each aspects of Magic. You won’t fall short if you dig a little, but you’ll need diging if no one points you to those.

You might also be friend with a lot of better/pro players and they’ll be able to teach you much about theories.

It's just about learning... at first! But rapidly it will be about applying. Some will try to apply it on the go and it's a good thing, just don’t start before you got the basics. You will start asking yourself more questions during each game, and if you don't, start forcing yourself to do so. Focus on asking questions, not solving game state. Find what seems to be the best questions for you, the one which will trigger the best answers. It’s not an easy task since it’s not as funny as just playing. A method I developed is the following :

Make a group training session of three people. You need 2 players and 1 trainer. At some point in the game, the trainer stops the game and give papers and pen to both players. He ask them to put down on paper all questions they’re asking themselves at this moment.
For example stops the game at “going to attack step” there’s so much you can ask at those moment, then after the players wrote down the questions (and the answer when they can) ask them to follow to the next step of combat then start again with the questions.
After the combat phase ends, show everyone every materials and then start answering questions. Explain why questions were good or not and look to see if written answers were right, and if the actions were taken accordingly to the answers the players made.
So it’s a really long exercises but should really bring the game of all three players to a whole new level.
Every step of the game should be questioned this way.

Don't fear to ask stupid questions, especially around people. Our brain makes connections between ideas to put everything in order. Asking seemingly stupid questions helps you triggering your brain on some parts of the game. Around people it might help you get better answers and find the cause of possible misunderstanding. It might also help you understanding how the other put their thought in order. And if they are better players this will also help you a lot.

But you might not become better right away. Our unconscious has access to way more information than we have. This forms into feelings like : "I think he has no mass removal" or maybe "he seems hungry or nervous". This is our unconscious processing data and saying us what he fount. But it's not really you who thought about this, you don't control the data used and the thinking behind the conclusion. That way you can't put as much trust on those intuitions, especially when you're a man. This is where trying to consciously think about some things helps. You control everything so you know why you are choosing a line of play.

Sometimes you make a decision after a lot of thinking while you had another feeling at first. Sometimes it was the right call, but sometimes it was in fact a mistake. Depending on the subject and if your unconscious is good at the thing to start with, it might take time to beat your unconscious. I am for example working on understanding my role better in a game. I was unconsciously good at it, but I'm pretty bad consciously. That had me lost some important games lately. But I learned from it!

Trying to beatdown with a more control sealed was bad! I knew it, I just couldn't see that I was the control, even though I felt it.

After a while start watching other people playing, and ask questions. When you're not in the game, you sometimes see things differently. You think more on a higher level since there's nothing at stake, not even your pride.

Then ask questions, lot of them if you can. Be precise when replacing the question in the game context so that you will both be speaking about the same thing.

So now you think more about more aspects, you ask yourself the good questions, you do less mistakes. It's about time to let your unconscious work again.

Since he's faster and have access to more information, he'll be of great help. But this seems to be contrary to what we were trying to achieve right?

Well it depends. Was your goal being stronger? Then it's not.
You're brain is very clever! When you teach him how to do something and prove him it's important for you, he just do it. So while you were over thinking and choosing the right parameters to work with, you in fact also trained your brain to respond to your needs. Now he can more effectively choose the parameters to process while trying to figure out your opponent's hand for example. That's because you worked for it, you explained him and you showed him why.

I learnt it while studying ways to remember dreams. You have to tell yourself you’ll remember the dream, and after the best way is to keep a diary of your dreams to tell your unconscious it’s important to remember them because you use them afterward.

So it's time to let him work again and to play at a more reasonable pace once again. Of course don't forget to stop and think when you need to, and even more often to keep remembering your brain that it's important.

Hope that helped.

In the French magasin Lotus Noir

Why do I always lose round 1?

I've just qualified for the French nationals by playing in the Regnional championships of Paris. (We are still old style, we might a NQ like everyone else starting next year)

It has been an observation for a while, and I never took the time to analyse it, so I'm doing it right now : Why the hell do I always lose round 1?

Let's search on my total rating page and search for numbers :

Regionals France 2011 Ile de France: 2011-04-03 : lost round 1
PTQ Nagoya 11 Paris-2apr.11-2 slots: 2011-04-02 : lost round 1
PTQ Nagoya 11 Le Mans-20mar.11-1 slot: 2011-03-20 : lost round 1
PTQ Nagoya 11 Rouen-13mar.11-1 slot: 2011-03-13 : lost round 1
PTQ Nagoya 2011 - 1 slot: 2011-03-05 : bye, then lost round 2
Grand Prix Paris 2011: 2011-02-12 - 2011-02-13 : first loss round 5
Prerelease Mirrodin Besieged: 2011-01-29 : lost round 1
PTQ Nagoya 11 Poitiers-9jan.11-1 slot: 2011-01-09 : lost round 1
PTQ Paris 11 Reims-19dec.10-1 slot: 2010-12-19 : lost round 1
EU PTQ Paris: 2010-11-28 : draw round 1
PTQ Paris 11 Rouen-14nov.10-1 slot: 2010-11-14 : lost round 1
PTQ Paris 11 Lille-14nov.10-1 slot: 2010-11-11 : lost round 2
Grand Prix Bochum 2010: 2010-10-30 - 2010-10-31 : lost round 1
PTQ Paris 11 Paris-17oct.10-2 slots: 2010-10-17 - 2010-10-18 : first loss round 7


So in those last 14 tournaments, I lost round one 10 times, drew 1 time, and won 3 times (but lost round 2 once).
I made 1 top 8, three 9th-10th place at 7-1-1 and qualified for the French nationals.




I got some really nice good story to tell. But I really think this can't be by chance.


First one Good Story : 
My first extended PTQ this season, I've just seen an interesting jund deck which made top 8 on MTGO and I switch a little before the tournament for Jund instead of whatever I was planning to play. I make some changes making the deck more explosive, but, in fact, worse.


Round 1 I got to play a 5c control deck. I win the first one, loose the second one on a double Cruel Ultimatum and we are playing game 3. He's a 3. I thoughsized him and discarded him a baneslayer last turn, he drew land and played it. I play and attack with a demi god to force him to sacrifice his UW manland.
On my board, 2 man lands and other lands, in my hand 2 demi gods of revenge.


My oponent draws, plays preordain, one top, one bottom, plays spreading sea, draw, play spreading sea, draw, play spreading see, draw and pass the turn.
I draw blank.
He draw, play cruel ultimatum, get back a kitchen finks and I got myself 0 cards in hands.


Of course he won this game.




As much as this story seems to be bad luck (or good luck for my opponent) I learned one things : My deck could have been better and if it had been, I wouldn't have lost this game since he would have been long dead before beeing able to make 4 top decks.


This is one of the reason I lose round 1, I am not always playing a strong enough deck. Like playing Bant lately in a fairly well prepared fea field. (and playing fea with to few preparation)


The second reason is probably concentration.
I've always have been someone who has a lot of difficulties to concentrate, so this could make sense. Not sure I'm doing more mistakes round 1 though.

The third one, for limited event is probably not knowing my deck enough. When I play in Limited it takes me some time to understand my deck fully and use most of it's ressources.

I've been trying to strenghten those points, but I really still only lose round 1. So there should be other reason lying around.
Couldn't find them yet, do anybody have an idea?

Seiko's Fearless magical Inventory

I'm gonna translate my french one right here, right now (echo), to twitt it so that everyone can see it!

I discussed the subject a little with friend and Jeremie Lagarde advised me to categorised it a lot more so it might be more helpful to look at, and think at.

Before the game (opponent's deck, shuffling, mulliganing, sideboarding)
1) I should level up my way of shuffling. It took me an afternoon of testing different methods, but I could go even further.
2) I'm far too kind with my opponents. (this tends to get better!)
3) If I win the first game, I can keep bad hands the second game.

Managing environment (Time, opponents, public, fans, judges, girlfriend)
1) I'm pretty bad with managing time, or I only think about it, when it's too late. Should play more control decks in extended.
2) I tend to over-estimate my opponents. Sometimes I could have made a better play figuring my opponent wouldn't understand why I did it.
3) I read my opponents pretty well, but forget to use the information I got.
4) I can't play seriously when many friends are around me and watching me.
5) I can't play with someone, I go in autofollow mode way too easily.

Managing myself (Stress, tiredness, personality, mindset)
1) I have a lot of trouble to stay focused and in the right mindset all day long.
2) I still let my bad plays control my next games.
3) I pity my opponents when they are in colordeath and such. Sometimes letting them come back.
4) I'm usually over excited before an event, preventing me to sleep as much as I'd need to.
5) I'm so underconfident in myself and my skills.

Relations, Image (even outside events)
1) I measure my skills only with my performences. (I'mstarting to feel better :D)
2) I always want to play, but don't like playing too much with noobs anymore.
3) I want to show off my skills more than I want to get better.

Game analysis (board, game)
General :
1) I sometimes forget to put free damages
2) I tend to miss-evaluate my role in the game when it's often changing.
3) I sometimes think of a lot of different plays, but don't think far enough to really make the best one.
4) I go into auto-pilot mode, far too easily.
5) I play too fast.
6) I should watch my opponent more, to read them more efficiently.
7) When testing, I don't play serisouly enough

Limited :
1) I don't remember enough the cards I give my opponents when I pick a card.
2) I often switch colors too late when I should switch.
3) I don't know the archetypes well, I draft the best cards before anything else.
4) I tend to overvalue somes cards/bombs.
5) I sometimes try to hard for my curve, sometimes not hard enough.

Constructed :
1) I don't have correct side plan, or sometimes change them when I shouldn't
2) I know all the decks, but never enough to play well.