How to Defeat the Better Player

The normal answer to this question would be: well practice, improve your skill and eventually you’ll be the better player and the problem wouldn’t exist in the first place.

Nice answer, unless…

You just realized that you as a rookie entered the top 64 of the grand prix near your local town. You proceed to the next day knowing that all those people are probably way better and that you’ve got no time to improve your skill in order to become their level. You have to agree; in some cases you’ll be the worser player (get over it).

This is a problem a lot of players face; they have no time to increase their skill. Or when they do, they realize the better player just improved his or her skill as well.

Of course at certain points you defeat him or her, some times when you draw that perfect hand. When it comes to a tight match though, you are doomed to fail.

You know that this person will have a slightly better deck, that he will statistically make better decisions…

So can you beat him or her in a tight game?

Of course, if it wasn’t so I’d be doomed to change my article’s name to “yeti’s and magic, how does it come that the traditional magic player looks like a yeti?”

So I’ll give you some tips to broaden your horizon.

Rule one; don’t show him you’re the weak prey and he is the predator. Though it can be useful to make him doze, usually the better player will then grab for his standard decisions and those will grind you to naught. (Yes, I know grinding something to naught isn’t technically possible)

How do you do this? Well all means are good, but letting your cards drop on the ground isn’t one of them (MTG baseball caps, Sleeves, T-shirts, stories about technical details in the rulebook are just a few suggestions)

This will make the better player grab for his or her better play, usually a safe calculated play.

How can you take advantage of this?

There are numerous ways, but I’ll discuss one and you’ll find others once you know the trick.

BOMB threatening: This is the art of playing the cards you do not have.

Example: edition/core set booster draft.

After drafting you end up with a reasonable red/blue deck.

The better player though, quickly noticed that green was underdrafted and he has gone for a solid mono green deck. (yes this is an example, maybe mono green isn’t too good, but it won’t make a difference anyway)