longer.blue

Daily thoughts #24 I have a long layover at JFK = reflection time. Obviously things didn't go well at the PT. So what happened? Let's start with the things that went well. I was scared of draft going in, but I think I had a solid understanding of the format. Big thanks to @Amaz and @lordtupperware for coaching me. They're both amazing, and I can't recommend their coaching enough. I went 2-1, and I regret missing day two mostly because I wanted to draft again. The streaming things was fun, and I think it has been helpful to people. I streamed for 112 hours (made whopping $101), and most importantly enjoyed almost every minute of it. Tons of folks approached me at the PT to thank me personally, and that was much appreciated.❤️ I want to be clear that I eventually plan to monetize my content creation somehow. It's still unclear to me what that will look like, but my wife and I are planning to start a family soonish, and making a living only out of tournament winning seems impossible (RIP MPL). My content goal is to focus on competitive Magic (Standard mostly), and helping people improve at the game. But first I have to improve myself - so let's talk about the things I could have done better. The first one is obvious - the deck choice. Honestly, I am not sure how I could have avoided that disaster. This PT was kinda weird that all the established decks got crushed, and only brews did well. Personally, I don't enjoy brewing, and therefore I'm bad at it. Brewing is also a time consuming process, which is much harder to do when you don't have big team that you can rely on if your brewing fails. Brewing wasn't the way to go for me, and established decks were bad. One thing I am noticing is lacking a certain amount of format knowledge. There are people who have played Standard continously for the last 3-4 years, so they have better frame of reference. For example, when I first played Bant, I had no idea how the combo worked, and lost bunch of precious time trying to figure it out. This will improve with time. Second, I am still struggling with real life Magic. Since I decided to start taking Magic seriously again, I played 4 events. Arena Championship, RC Antwerp, Spotlight Lyon and the PT. Arena was nice, and I finished 2nd. At the IRL tournaments my combined record is 22-23. I think I am running little cold, but that's still quite embarassing. I catch myself missing a trigger here and there, and I just feel way less comfortable than when I'm in front of my computer. This is also one of the things that will improve with time, but I'll try to make a bigger effort at attending more IRL events. Before the Turin RC, I will try to go to Italy earlier and play some paper Magic with @PiemontiAndrea. Third, I need to get better at Magic. After my PTQ top 8 match, I spoke to a player I respect, and they highligted a potential mistake I have overlooked. Even now I am not totally sure it was an error, but the more important thing is that I haven't even considered the line they were proposing. So how do you fix that? How do you improve so much that lines previously unseen will open to you? This one is much harder to do. Streaming doesn't lead to improving as you're usually too distracted by chat. I believe the best way is to play like 3-4 matches a day with full focus, record them and then go over them in great detail with someone to see if you're missing something.This someone should be quite good at Magic, and have willingness to improve at the game. If this sounds interesting to you and you think you could be this person, my DMs are always open. I believe this will be mutually benfitial for both of us. 🤝 Finally, I should have flown in to Richmond earlier. While, I enjoyed going to bed at 9pm and waking up at 4am, my travel day was kinda rough, and I needed extra sleep on the following day that I simply couldn't get. I knew this would be tricky going in, but I wanted to stream as much as possible before leaving to US. However, I am not as young as I once used to be and I need my rest. This was a mistake, and one that is very easy to fix. What's next? Stream back on Thursday (maybe Friday). We have the Arena Championship Qualifier. Will need to qualify on Friday, so I'll stream that. Saturday, I'll stream with a delay. Probably won't have much time to prepare, so I am most likely going to stick with Lessons. I think it's solid versus the breakout decks from the PT, and there's too many of them to figure out which one's the best. 🤣 This was longer than usual, thanks for reading my rambling. 🙏