Opening Day

I had the pleasure of attending my first PTQ for the Pro Tour Gatecrash qualifier season today in West Mifflin, PA. Saw lots of familiar faces. Not sure who won yet, but I do know both of the guys in the finals and another who made top 8, which was nice. The venue, New Dimensions Comics, was spacious and convenient to food. However, they seriously need some better air conditioning. This was a small event, only 89 people, and it was uncomfortably warm inside the store. Also, the store's website had the wrong directions to find it once you got to the Century III Mall (they moved to a different storefront in the same mall), so I had to wander a bit to find the place.

My pool:

WHITE 2 Angel's Mercy 1 Aven Squire 1 Battleflight Eagle 1 Captain of the Watch 1 Crusader of Odric 1 Divine Favor 1 Divine Verdict 1 Griffin Protector 2 Pillarfield Ox 1 Rain of Blades 2 Safe Passage 1 Serra Avenger 1 War Falcon 1 Warclamp Mastiff	BLUE 1 Courtly Provocateur 2 Downpour 1 Encrust 2 Faerie Invaders 1 Hydrosurge 1 Master of the Pearl Trident 1 Mind Sculpt 1 Negate 1 Scroll Thief 1 Sleep 1 Stormtide Leviathan 1 Talrand's Invocation 1 Tricks of the Trade 1 Omniscience	BLACK Bloodthrone Vampire Cower in Fear 3 Crippling Blight 1 Disentomb 3 Mind Rot 1 Public Execution 1 Ravenous Rats 1 Sign in Blood 1 Vile Rebirth 1 Zombie Goliath
RED 1 Chandra's Fury 1 Fire Elemental 1 Firewing Phoenix 2 Goblin Arsonist 1 Goblin Battle Jester 1 Krenko's Command 1 Searing Spear 1 Torch Fiend 2 Turn to Slag 1 Volcanic Geyser 1 Volcanic Strength 1 Wild Guess	GREEN 1 Acidic Slime 2 Bond Beetle 1 Bountiful Harvest 2 Deadly Recluse 1 Farseek 1 Flinthoof Boar 2 Naturalize 1 Prey Upon 1 Rancor 1 Roaring Primadox 1 Sentinel Spider 2 Timberpack Wolf 1 Yeva's Forcemage	ARTIFACTS 1 Clock of Omens 1 Elixir of Immortality 1 Phyrexian Hulk 2 Ring of Evos Isle LANDS None. Well, a shiny Swamp, but whatever.

Not a bad pool, but scattered. White and Blue are each strong but shallow, with 8-9 playables each. Red is deepest, followed by Green. Green's Farseek also lets me splash my only good Black card, Public Execution. The first thing I tried was mashing my Blue and White together, but this only got me to about 20 cards, even with some marginal inclusions. If I wanted to play Blue or White, I would have to pair them with Red or Green. I contemplated Red/Green but that left most of the best cards in my pool on the sideline. The White matched better with Red than Green, filling in the gap at 4 mana in my Red. I should probably have looked more at the Blue paired with the Green, but I'm pretty sure that would have left me with just Prey Upon and Public Execution for removal, which was not where I wanted to be in sealed.

I played:

1 Aven Squire
1 Battleflight Eagle
1 Captain of the Watch
1 Crusader of Odric
1 Divine Verdict
1 Griffin Protector
1 Pillarfield Ox
1 Safe Passage
1 Serra Avenger
1 Chandra's Fury
1 Fire Elemental
1 Firewing Phoenix
2 Goblin Arsonist
1 Krenko's Command
1 Searing Spear
1 Torch Fiend
2 Turn to Slag
1 Volcanic Geyser
1 Volcanic Strength
1 Wild Guess
1 Phyrexian Hulk
10 Mountain
7 Plains

I was fairly happy with the build. Rain of Blades came in a lot, but only because lots of 1-toughness guys kept showing up on the other side of the table.

Nothing very exciting happened in my matches. I felt a little nervous in the first two rounds but at no point during the day did I feel like my state of mind was causing me to play poorly. No tilting, managed my nerves well, and I was able to shake off my streak of picking up my second loss in the first half of the tournament.

I started out 4-1, with my loss coming in round 2 to my friend from Pittsburgh BJB. My only real blunder of the day came in round 5 against my friend Silent Steve, where I miscalculated the size of his attacker because of forgetting to add a toughness for Exalted. This meant Rain of Blades + Chandra's Fury + Block with goblin token did nothing, when in my head it killed his Zombie Goliath leaving 1 damage from Fury on his now 1/1 Crusader of Odric. I ended up winning the match, but that misplay very likely cost me that game.

Round six I got absolutely blown out of the water by a nutty UW deck with multiple Unsummons, Talrand's Invocation, and Arctic Aven. I lost 2-0 and never really got a foothold in either game, with my opponent finishing game 1 on 14 life and game 2 on 24. There was one time when I attacked with a 3/3 Griffin Protector into his Talrand's tokens when it is possible I should have attacked only with my 4/3 flyer (2/1 + Battleflight Eagle) and used the Protector to hold back his 2 tokens and 1 Welkin Tern. As it played out, I attacked with the 3/4 and the 4/3; he flashed in Faerie Invaders to block the 4/3 and traded a token for my Protector. If I don't attack with Protector, he probably takes 4 and flashes in Faerie Invaders in the End Step, and is then able to start attacking through Griffin Protector anyway. I think I needed to be a little aggressive there to get his life total down to a more manageable range, but it's possible I should be settling in for a grindy long game at that point.

The last round didn't go very well for me either. I lost a close game 1 when my opponent has Talrand's Invocation, Archeomancer, recast Invocation on the last three turns before I died with him on 4 life. Game 2 I get out to a big lead, 16-8, but then my deck stops doing anything while my opponent chains together Archeomancers (2 real, one Clone) and Essence Scatter. His clock was sped up a bit by Cathedral of War, but I end up dying to Archeomancer beats. The third rebuy of Scatter was backbreaking as I had been sandbagging Captain of the Watch, which would have probably won me the game if he had anything but another Archeomancer on his last turn before he killed me. In retrospect it's possible I could have stabilized by just running it into his second or third casting of Essence Scatter, because there was a turn where I said go with the Captain and nothing else in hand, but there was no way for me to know that at the time. Ah well.

4-1 with two rounds to go is a good position to be in, and on another day it's possible I might have been able to sneak into top 8. I don't know if round six was a win-and-in for me because my breakers weren't super good having lost in round 2, but X-1 with two rounds to go is a fine place to be. As it happened I lost the last two, but I feel better about it than if I had been dead early and rallied to 4-3. I probably won't be at a PTQ that small again for a long time, so it's kind of disappointing to miss top 8, but it was nice to see everyone.

I have a  box of Return to Ravnica preordered and I'm preregistered for 4 prerelease events. That should give me plenty of packs to practice sealed before the next PTQ on my schedule (I believe October 13th and Dream Wizards, not sure).

My goal for today was to be at the peak of my mental game. I don't know if I did that, but I do feel like I made some small progress. After my last blog post I was recommended a sports psychology book called The Inner Game of Tennis, and I think reading it helped a bit (thanks Dan!). The biggest things I took from it were (1) how to approach criticism/improvement in a nonjudgmental way that doesn't lead to self-doubt and discouragement, (2) techniques for quieting the mind when it starts to race due to nerves/worry, and (3) how to be in a frame of mind where you care about winning and have a "will to win" but maintain enough emotional detachment from the peaks and valleys of actual wins and losses that you don't tilt yourself after a bad beat or an exhilarating win. The only shortcoming I can think of in terms of application to Magic is that the book focuses on being in a good state of mind to perform procedural memory tasks (free throws, Magic on "autopilot") under pressure and not on being in a good state of mind to perform working memory tasks (doing a math problem that you don't have memorized, "tanking" in Magic) under pressure.

Using the stuff I wrote about last week as well as some of the stuff I read about in the book, I was able to mostly head off any emergent tilt and quiet the early butterflies.

Next weekend is prerelease weekend, and I am super excited, especially because I managed to trick one of my roommates into learning Magic and then into coming with me on Saturday. I'm sure I'll have more to write about then.

Until next time!

In Which Andy Murray Murders His Bruce

Ten years and three hundred fifty-two days ago, John "Friggin" Rizzo wrote an odd piece for Star City, a monograph that could really have only come from him. "Stuck In The Middle With Bruce" is one of those rare Magic articles that transcends expectations (Another is Jackie Lee's funny, insightful recent effort "A Non-Magical Guide to Soulbound," which begins "This article may well be the death knell of my writing career."). These types of articles are the ones we remember months and years later as we slog through our daily lives.

If you've forgotten about Bruce, go and read the article again real quick.

I bring up "Bruce" because I had one of the aforementioned flashes of memory recently when I was watching Andy Murray battle Novak Djokovic in the final of the Men's Singles at the U.S. Open (quoted stats are from the linked article). Heading in, Murray was 0-for-4 in Grand Slam final appearances. Murray had brought in a new coach, Ivan Lendl, who had also gone 0-for-4 before going on to win eight Grand Slam finals. The choice is telling--Murray felt his problem was not technical, but mental. He didn't bring in a coach specializing in technical minutia. He brought in a coach who knew what it felt like to lose his first four Grand Slam finals, and who had managed to, you know, stop doing that.

I played a little bit of competitive tennis in high school, so while I'm by no means an expert, I do know that the game, in addition to being demanding athletically, requires prolonged concentration. Sort of, you know, like winning a Magic tournament with eight rounds of swiss followed by three rounds of single elimination. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The first set was incredibly intense, and went to a tiebreak. The tiebreak tied at six points each, then nine points each before Murray was able to finally take the set, 87 minutes after it had begun. Murray sprung out to an early 4-0 lead in the second set and hung on to win 7-5. He was one set away from the title, but momentum had clearly shifted back to Djokovic, who had won five out of the last eight games.

Murray lost the next two sets 2-6, 3-6. Djokovic would serve first in the deciding set. Murray looked like a man who had gotten off at the wrong subway stop and had gotten three blocks away before realizing he had no idea where he was. He was all awkwardness and dread, torpor and bewilderment, each stroke belabored. Going up two sets and losing is almost unheard of--but if you had to bet on someone to do it, it would have to be Andy "can't win the big one" Murray. Everything pointed to a grueling fifth set, ending, one suspected, in heartbreak for Murray and history for Djokovic.

Or not.

As near as I can tell, Andy Murray became some kind of tennis-playing android between the end of the fourth set and the beginning of the fifth. It was as though he decided not to lose the last set, and his body went out and did as it was told while his brain clocked out and went home to an early dinner and a nap. He didn't just pull back ahead--he rolled. Murray broke serve in the first game, held serve, and then broke Djokovic again, putting Djokovic in the unenviable position of having to break back twice just to pull even. Djokovic was finally able to catch his footing, but by then his margin for error was too small for it to matter. The remarkable thing was that after four hours of punch and counterpunch, agony, angst, and anger, the last set was so seemingly pedestrian. When Djokovic's groundstroke went long for match point, it seemed as though Murray was ready to pick up the ball and play the next point, either unable to believe that he had managed to win, or so much within himself and in the moment that anything on the outside--including and especially the enormity of the moment--had faded into the background.

In my memory of this match--the narrative I retain even as the details of the match proper get blurry--Murray is playing not against Novak Djokovic but against Bruce. For four sets, Murray and Bruce are in the tennis equivalent of a drunken street fight. After coming out strong, Murray starts fading, like he has so many times before. His Bruce is relentless--and seems to be impervious to whatever Murray can throw at him. At the end of set four, Murray is bruised, bloodied, and fed up. But then his eyes go cold. In one smooth motion, Murray walks up to Bruce, kicks him in the back of the knees, grabs him by the hair, draws a pistol, and calmly puts a bullet through Bruce's temple. This wasn't a tennis match. It was a Public Execution.

Murray def. Djokovic, 7-6 (10) 7-5, 2-6, 3-6, 6-2. Murray def. Bruce, 7-6 (10) 7-5, 2-6, 3-6, 0-0 ret.

I've played in five M13 limited events since the last PTQ, not counting the side events that day. My combined record is 15-2-1 in those matches. 3-0, 3-0-1, 2-2, 4-0, 3-0. I feel good about my handle on the format, with the one exception that I have no idea how to play/draft/build Green in this format (as far as I can remember, all of my M13 match losses have come with Green cards in my deck). Maybe it's just my Bruce that can't play Green at this point. Hard to say.

Whatever the case, I'm going to a PTQ in West Mifflin on Saturday. The format is M13 limited. I don't know that my technical play needs to improve to win the PTQ. I don't know that my high-level strategic decisions need to get better either. There's clearly room for improvement, there, but I think the single biggest factor holding me back right now is my mindset. I had watched the 100th episode of Day[9]'s Starcraft webcast when Cedric Phillips linked to it in his article on the relative shortcomings of Magic: the Gathering live coverage, and it touches on some of these issues. That made me think there might be more good stuff around. LSV's advice about tilting, "lose until it doesn't bother you," is good, but it isn't actionable mid-tilt. I was looking for some things I could do to help regain my composure if I found myself getting nerves, or tilting, or letting my emotions (or my Bruce!) dictate my gameplay decisions. Luckily enough for me, I found some stuff.

• If you have Star City premium, I recommend taking a peek at Brad Nelson and Gerry Thompson's excellent video "Mental Missteps." 
• This article breaks down how to stay clutch in situations where you need to perform a task involving juggling lots of stuff in your short term memory (like rushing to meet a deadline at work or when you need to tank in a game of Magic). Short version: if you slow your thought process down, you'll make quicker, better decisions.
• This article breaks down how to stay clutch in situations where you need to perform a task that requires you to repeat an action you've done many times (like shooting a free throw or playing through the ebb and flow of a Magic game and using the basket of heuristics [shortcuts] you've developed over the years)--think "muscle memory."   Short version: distract yourself, trust your instincts, don't change your pace of play (and especially don't slow down).
• While we're linking things, here's Day[9] Daily #100 - My Life of Starcraft. Short version (substitute in whatever emotion):

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

I distilled all of this down to a notecard which reads as follows.

Tilting: Focus on the emotion and process it; don't focus on the situation that caused the emotion.

Nerves: Talk through your plan for the turn in your head (i.e. subvocate), then execute.

Bruce. Andy Murray.  |  Brain chemicals! Litany against fear!

 I brought that with me from Arlington when I drove to Pittsburgh today. Might bring it to the event site but the point was less to make a talisman and more to do the mental work of summarizing and compacting what I've learned.

My goal for the PTQ is to put in a personal best mental performance. I will do my best to remain even-tempered and mentally composed for the duration of the event. To do this, I will try to purge my emotions after every match, win or lose. If I notice my subjective perception of time speeding up and my toes tapping (or similar signs), I will use the subvocation trick. I haven't had a problem with overthinking things under pressure yet, but if I do, I will sing a song to myself in my head while I play. Probably Gangnam Style.