Runner-up Reflections: Good Habits, Handling Big Tournaments, and Trying Harder Next Time

Hey, everyone! It’s still a couple of weeks after the fact, and yet my run at the 2017 North American International Championship still feels so unreal. All the same, I want to make the most out of that experience for you guys, and so today I’ll be going over some of the biggest realizations or changes I’ve made this season over previous years. We’ll keep the topics simple, but go pretty deep into each of them: good habits at big tournaments; general approaches to big tournaments; and of course doing better for the next tournament. Finally, I’ll close with a few thoughts on what improvements I made to make this season a real comeback for me.

(Spoiler alert: I’ve had to do that last one a lot!)

Good Habits at Large Tournaments

Myself and others have talked good habits to death in past articles, but there are some which become especially important in the context of big Pokemon tournaments. I’ll admit that my experience playing other card games is limited, but I’m going to keep this as focused on the special problems I’ve found associated with the peculiarities of Pokemon only.

Even Though the Schedule is Tight, Don’t Skimp on Food or Hydration!

Most Regionals and International Championships are a real multi-day marathon. In addition to tons of games and matches, the schedules have zero dedicated time for lunch breaks. Considering how difficult it can be to finish a best-of-three match in 50 minutes, you have precious little time to dedicate to core things like eating and water.

[cardimg name=”Fresh Water Set” set=”Primal Clash” no=”129″ align=”right” c=”none”][/cardimg]

Nevertheless, you have to do it. This is probably going to be the most tiring and over-written piece of advice, but the reason you see it over and over again is because it can’t be emphasized enough. I probably refilled my water bottle no less than a 15 times throughout the weekend in between matches, and I certainly took advantage of Bee’s coffee shop right across the street from the convention center. Even if you don’t have time, or don’t expect to have time due to your deck choice (looking at you [card name=”Sableye” set=”Dark Explorers” no=”62″ c=”name”][/card] / [card name=”Garbodor” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”57″ c=”name”][/card]), then it certainly wouldn’t hurt to pack snacks you can quickly devour in between rounds. Back when I was in college and went to tournaments, I would frequently bring all sorts of funny things with me, to the point where some people thought it was a personality quirk.

There are so many things which realistically you’ll have trouble with if you see the end of a big tournament: sleep, other peoples’ hygiene, nerves. However, you certainly can control your intake of the most basic of necessities, and all you need is to be dedicated to doing it.

The Fewer Earth-shattering Changes You Make, the Better

There’s a reason why we call it a “habit”: because it’s something we know on a routine basis, and may not even have to think about.

Perhaps the most important habit we as players would benefit from is staying in our comfort zones headed into a big tournament, and the most important subset of this habit is making grounded deck choices. The way I understand a player’s performance at any given event is with a “floor” and a “ceiling” — that is, how bad or how good they can do. Of course we all want our ceilings to be first place, but ideally we also want an elevated floor record, such as something on the bubble or within Championship Point territory.

However, year after year many players confront a cold reality: that their ceiling is, in all likelihood, not first place, and whatever you had been testing — while good — is going to struggle. You then face the unenviable task of either sticking to your good-but-not-quite-good deck, resulting in a lower ceiling but higher floor; or you switch decks, resulting in a marginally higher ceiling but a floor that almost goes far beneath the Earth.

Recently, I enjoyed the chance to address my horrible Nationals showing in 2009 in which I faced this exact problem. I had been furiously testing a straight [card name=”Luxray GL LV.X” set=”Rising Rivals” no=”109″ c=”name”][/card] deck, but when I got to St. Louis the night before, was confronted with a very difficult matchup to Luxray GL / [card name=”Infernape 4 LV.X” set=”Rising Rivals” no=”108″ c=”name”][/card]. I threw away all my hard work on the Luxray deck, switched to a bad Luxray / Infernape list, and did appropriately bad that tournament! Yet the most frustrating thing for me to see was that, while Luxray / Infernape won the whole thing, the runner-up list was almost identical to the straight Luxray build I had been working on! While I certainly could have used a better Luxray / Infernape list, I would have been much better positioned to get second that year had I simply stuck to my guns.

Fast-forward to 2017 Internationals, where I encountered a similar problem yet took a different path. Although [card name=”Decidueye-GX” set=”Sun and Moon” no=”12″ c=”name”][/card] / [card name=”Vileplume” set=”Ancient Origins” no=”3″ c=”name”][/card] certainly had first place as its ceiling this tournament, it’s arguable that [card name=”Garbodor” set=”Guardians Rising” no=”51″ c=”name”][/card] and [card name=”Zoroark” set=”BREAKthrough” no=”91″ c=”name”][/card] had a greater probability of winning going into the event. For that reason, it’s a similar situation wherein I had a solid chance of going deep, yet a risk of getting undone by Garbodor. While that is indeed what happened, I still tore through many Garbodor decks throughout the weekend, including a card-for-card copy of the champion’s winning list.

In so many words, I avoided unnecessary changes, and it worked out. I didn’t freak out and make a weird list, alter the formula, or anything — I went with old faithful, and it paid off. No weird techs, no awkward [card name=”Mallow” set=”Guardians Rising” no=”127″ c=”name”][/card] engines. Just good, old-fashioned, obnoxious Item-lock.

But there are also lots of other changes you should avoid aside from deck changes. For comfort’s sake, don’t start using new things like new play mats, dice, bags, and so on. If you’ve never slept on the floor in a 10-person room to save some money, then an International Championship is probably not the best time to start doing it! It’s a long weekend, so don’t start stressing yourself out with a bunch of wild, new choices — especially if you’re not a very change-friendly person in the first place.

Handling Big Tournaments

Big tournaments are their own animals: mistakes are magnified; your games get put on YouTube for all eternity; a ruling can surprise you. While several of us are informed enough to report on the struggles of big tournaments, their structure and design have forced me to improve my game dramatically over the past few months, so the experiences of good and bad choices are all fresh in my mind.

Recovering from Misplays

As is the case in any level of play, but perhaps no more important than in a high-pressure event, you need to get over your mistakes, and don’t let them jade your whole tournament. In this season alone I’ve played against multiple top tier players who made game-losing mistakes against me. However, these players ignore the criticism, the haters, and the Monday morning quarterbacks, and are the name players you recognize today because they have a healthy way of approaching their imperfections. I’m doing my best to follow this example, and can think of an instance at Internationals when it paid off:

In the second game of round 13, I made a devastating gameplay error: I illegally filled up my Bench to five Pokemon against a [card name=”Sudowoodo” set=”Guardians Rising” no=”66″ c=”name”][/card], and neither my opponent nor I caught the mistake until the judges brought it to our attention. It was a tense few minutes as the judges conferred on what would be the best penalty to issue, but rather than beat myself up, I spent the time gathering myself. In my head I:

• Determined the most likely penalty (Prize loss, effectively a game loss since my opponent had a single Prize card left)
• Internally addressed my feelings and tried to wind them back

The penalty determination was important because I could already start thinking ahead to what was needed to win the third game: an above-average speed of play for me plus zero room for error. Likewise, it was important for me to address how I felt so I could be in the healthiest mindset possible to achieve that game three goal. I felt anxious and frustrated, but rather than let that anxiety and frustration bleed over into the third game, I calmed myself down while waiting on the final penalty (I was right — it was a Prize loss), and executed the third game almost flawlessly. Had I freaked out, I might not have made Top 8 or finals, but instead I sucked it up and carried on.

Of course you can’t be bullheaded and ignore your misplays; otherwise, you risk making excuses for them. This sort of mindset is toxic, and is one of the easiest ways to lose respect in the competitive community. But there is a time and place for post-game analysis, and it’s usually in the comfort of your own home, away from the noise and fanfare of a competitive event.

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Streamed Matches

[cardimg name=”TV Reporter” set=”EX Dragon Frontiers” no=”82″ align=”right” c=”none”][/cardimg]

This season I’ve gained a lot of experience playing on stream. Between the PokeBeach Invitational, two Regionals, and the International Championship, I’ve been on stream this season over a dozen times — more than my previous 13 years of competitive playing put together. While stream approach is certainly a niche topic, I think it’s essential to be prepared for if you want even a chance of competing with players like Ross Cawthon, Igor Costa, and Shintaro Ito.

• Before you get up on stream, mentally prepare yourself to own it. By that, I merely mean that you should not let the stream psyche you out, but instead embrace what’s honestly a great privilege. Of course, everyone is on heightened alert since no one wants an embarrassing mistake to live on for eternity, but as strange as it sounds, you get over that over time.
• The first streamed match of a tournament always feels the weirdest. It doesn’t matter if it’s your first time ever being recorded or you’re a professional news guy — there’s just something hard about getting used to the new tables, the new equipment, new people, and so on.
• Be prepared to get annoyed a bit. It’s a necessary evil, but streams are, first and foremost, promotional productions. This in turn means that when cameramen are pursuing their main goal, they may briefly interrupt you for little things: pushing dice out of the view, adjusting a GX counter, placing your deck in an uncomfortable position, and so on. There’s also a break in the normal flow of Prize placement, since you are asked at times to wait for your opponent to put out Prizes before you do so that the camera can see them.

While the best advice I can give you is simply to exercise a little bit of patience, the next best thing I can tell you is to make it a part of your daily routine to play your field as it would be on an official play mat or stream. This means putting your deck on your right side (even if you’re left handed like me), adjusting your deck in a North-South alignment, placing your discard pile below the deck, and always placing your Prizes in three rows and two columns.

Know and Apply the Floor Rules and Rulings in Your Best Interest

Generally, Internationals and Worlds judges know the tournament rules front to back; otherwise they wouldn’t be invited. Also generally, these judges are put on the same page with each other thanks to a judge meeting they do yearly. This means that you’ve got, generally, a judging staff that’s both good and consistent, despite their regional differences. So then why is it important for you to know and apply the floor rules and rulings, when the judging staff probably knows it perfectly?

Essentially, you have to be your own best self-advocate at times in individual competitive play. While CEOs have agents and injured accident survivors have lawyers, and sports teams have coaches to argue with the ref, the only person anyone has in a one-on-one game of cards is themselves. And while you may have several friends in the judging staff, the heart of their duties is less focused on any specific person, and more focused on overall event integrity. That means occasionally a person can slip through the cracks as judges do their best to monitor the whole mass of humanity, and a raised hand may go for half a minute or longer without being answered.

Now then, what’s a good example of applying your knowledge of the rules and resources? Perhaps the most practical one is being aware of what will or will not get a time extension. Generally, a ruling that takes less than three minutes won’t be given a time extension — that’s treated like wear-and-tear in the game. Only rulings of significant complexity (greater than three minutes) and pace-of-play issues will get time extensions. Also, just because you get a time extension doesn’t guarantee it will cover the full time it took the judges to decide on the ruling. Although, in my best experiences, judges allotted full extensions for any game play issues. At any rate, you’ll be better equipped to adjust your pace in the next game, or in the current game if this is the last in the match.

Be Aware of the Penalty Guidelines

So we talked about the normal rules; now let’s talk about the penalty guidelines. I’m a lawyer, so I find the phrase “rules lawyering” to be funny and loaded. But since it’s actually a listed, punishable offense under the penalty guidelines, it’ll be helpful to contrast it to the more noble pursuit we call self-advocacy:

• Rules lawyering — Attempting to exploit the rules or guidelines in an unfair or inappropriate manner (example: Louis Rules Lawyer)
• Self-advocacy — Representing your own best interests (example: Anne the Self-Advocate)

What are the differences between the two? Essentially, one is unacceptable, unsportsmanlike conduct, while the other is 100% acceptable. For example, let’s say Louis needs his Worlds invite off of a League Challenge, and is exploiting the guidelines by taking the maximum amount of time on all actions (15 seconds to make a move, 15-30 seconds a search, etc.). However, Louis — like so many real-world cheaters — is being silly because the penalty guidelines explicitly state that what he’s doing is almost certainly stalling! Now let’s look at Anne Advocate. Ever the voracious reader of Rules and Resources, Anne alerts the judge to this issue, who has been at the table this whole time. Anne says, “The guidelines clearly state you’re not allowed to abuse the guidelines!” At this point Anne should be careful for what she pushes for, because as we discussed, it is not Anne’s place to apply the penalty guidelines. Whereas a rules lawyer may vigorously demand for a particular penalty and even act on his own accord to satisfy that request, the advocate knows that ultimately the right penalty is what the judge and head judge determine.

With that said, you have every right to question the logic behind a judge’s decision, as well as to appeal bad decisions to the head judge.

Living to Fight Another Day: Doing Better Next Time

Perhaps the most important turning point in any competitive pursuit is when you take a hard loss, or maybe even do really well but came just short of that elusive title. Well, don’t fret too much, because this is actually the ideal time to reflect and grow!

Readjust Your Goals

Now that we have begun a new season, this is the perfect time to tell you one soul-crushing flaw I’ve picked up on:

I see players — great ones, even — dig themselves into a hole year after year, and it’s all because they don’t have the right goals. Pokemon’s inclusive invitational structure certainly doesn’t help with that, because it’s actually really freaking easy to rest on the laurels of a single good tournament showing, to pile up a bunch of points doing mediocre at eight Regionals, or just to slaughter League Cups! This sort of complacency is awful because it essentially means talented players don’t give the proper amount of respect they should to events like Internationals, which have some pretty serious prizes and glory on the line these days.

Worlds is an incredibly cool thing to be a part of, and day two is even cooler if you qualified. But as many of you head into that 2017-2018 season right around the corner, I would encourage you to aim higher than a mere Worlds invite. The obvious conclusion you may get from that is “do well at Worlds,” but you can actually make incredible accomplishments throughout the whole year now. Between the serious prestige and cash prizes associated with Regional Championships and International Championships, the world’s best players are now coming to you no matter where your next big event may be. It’s an exciting time to play, but most certainly the time you’d benefit most to think of your season in terms that you’re setting for yourself.

You may also benefit from self-imposed goals that conform to what sort of a season you want to play. Want to get the most bang for your buck? Try to get the best Championship-Point-to-Play-Point ratio you can! Plan to travel all over the world? Challenge yourself to make as many Top 8s as possible! The sky’s the limit on this one, but complacency kills, so keep being competitive with yourself.

What about my goals? Well, my immediate goal is of course to win Worlds 2017; however, one goal I already have set for myself in 2017-2018 is to win an event outside of the United States.

Analyze Your Recorded Matches, If Any

There’s a reason why pro sports teams watch their own replays, and it’s simple: to improve the quality of their game. Thanks to the stream, I caught a subtle misread I made against Tord Reklev in game one of the championship match — a minor mistake where I didn’t read enough into his Righteous Edge at the end to deduce he had [card name=”Lysandre” set=”Ancient Origins” no=”78″ c=”name”][/card] in hand, but one that could in the future make the difference between winning and losing Worlds next month. And thanks to my matches being recorded, I also made a sobering discovery about my feelings in the Top 4 and finals: I was nervous, and I could only realize it by seeing how much I flipped cards in my hand. It was a bit disconcerting to see myself exercising a habit I almost never do out of sheer nervousness, but now that I’m confronted with this fact, my future streamed games will be played with an even greater clarity of mind, and less anxiousness.

Also, one last note on this sub-point before moving on: should the day ever come where you make a disastrous, game-breaking error on stream, confronting the footage may be the best way to prevent such a mistake from ever happening again. I hope it doesn’t happen to you, and I hope it doesn’t happen to myself, but things like accidental double attachments, drawing extra cards, and so on are simply unacceptable no matter who you are, and are especially unacceptable when you’re representing the game. Should you do something like this by mistake, I’d advise you to turn the footage of such a game into your temporary religion. That way, you can identify the exact moment you had a brain fart, and be absolutely sure you never make a mistake like that ever again.

Comeback Da Kid’ueye; or How a Washed-up Scrub Found His Footing, and Had the Season of a Lifetime

In one of Pokemon’s most intense seasons ever, I was somehow able to make some of my biggest personal achievements as a player. While I’ll do what I must to keep this incredible season going all the way through Sunday afternoon at Worlds, now’s a perfect time to reflect on some of the things that distinguished this season for me over others, especially since 2012:

[cardimg name=”Decidueye-GX” set=”Sun and Moon” no=”12″ align=”right” c=”none”][/cardimg]

• I settled on a really good deck and never looked back. Any player worth their salt can play a host of decks well, but what deck can you play the best? What deck has enough good matchups that you could reasonably expect it to stay good from January until August? It’s not always easy to find something like this, but [card name=”Decidueye-GX” set=”Sun and Moon” no=”12″ c=”name”][/card] — for all its clunkiness, bad Prizes, and inconsistencies — was the perfect deck for me. I bet the same applied for many Night March players last season, so there’s something to be said about maximizing your experience level with a deck. And given I was in a big field like the North American International Championship, nobody could counter me specifically even if they wanted.
• I exponentially increased my intellectual curiosity in this game. PokeBeach articles are not only resources I strive to make great for you — they’ve also made me a much better player. Even at age 28, I have so much to learn, but engaging myself with the content of the day, the metagame thoughts of the time, and whatever new set is out is incredibly rewarding. While I’m not sure how easy it is to find writing opportunities or to make them for yourself, there are always other venues to do the same thing — YouTube and Twitch streams being particularly good because you’re incentivized not to misplay! All the same, start making your game more of an interactive dialogue, and I’m sure you’ll do better.
• I’ve spent the whole season tirelessly learning from other people. The anonymous first half of my season was carried with an Yveltal list I mixed and matched between Azul Griego’s winning Florida list, Michael Pramawat’s winning International List, and a few of my own ideas. The second half of my season, defined by [card name=”Decidueye-GX” set=”Sun and Moon” no=”12″ c=”name”][/card], was still influenced by changes to the formula made by other people, and so my own construction became even better as a result. Contrast this to previous seasons, where I might have hung on to a deck a little too long, or where I might have felt too cocky to let in other peoples’ obviously good improvements.
• My long history in the game coupled with my recent experiences have resulted in a lot of miscellaneous growth. I’ve won a Regional Championship that went to 4:00 AM, so I know a thing or two about endurance; I’ve misplayed my way out of a Nationals win in 2012, so I know how to collect my thoughts; and I’ve now been on stream so many times, I can start picking up on subtle cues of nervousness. Combine all that with a general calmness that’s come with advancing into my late 20s, and it seems like all the obnoxious garbage that made this game so stressful for me in the past is just gone. That calm and experience have made me confident, to the point where I can capitalize on my best moments and minimize my worst in a healthy way. I still have a lot of great rivals to compete with if I want to be the best this season, but perhaps I’m more positioned now than ever before to be able to do that, and I have a long track record coupled with lots of streamed matches and high-pressure situations to thank for that.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading, and thanks to anyone who cheered me on at the NAIC this year! I have made a lot of memories this season, and am gonna try my hardest to claim a Worlds win with the momentum behind me. Looking forward to buckling down and making the most out of the Burning Shadows expansion!

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