so my second last phantom sealed event, i did an April Phools thing, and 4-0'd it, much to my amazement. i /did/ get a stupid good pool full of removal, but also i noticed that /every opening hand/ i had was for-sure keepable.
my last phantom sealed event (RTR), on the other hand, i 1-2'd the event, going 0-2 the last two matches. first of those four games, i opened with 5 lands (in a 16 land deck), mulled to one land, mulled to two lands. similarly angering luck with the next three games. (to be fair, my mana base was a bit shaky, but the bad luck far outweighed anything reasonable to expect).
i got so angry! i had this disgusted ragequit expression on my face, i'm sure, as i pressed the X button on mtgo to closed the damned thing, "to hell with you, mtgo!!!".
`
so!
i'm wondering what people's strategies are for handling the annoyance to losing to the shuffler. in fairness, i have no right to complain on the luck side since i got SO lucky with mana the previous event, but even knowing that doesn't make me feel less annoyed.
- does knowing how often is normal to get mana screwed help?
- do ... do positive affirmations help?
- .. what do you all do ..??
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----------------------------
Goblins have poor impulse control. Don't click this link!!
some of my favourite flavour text:
Wayward Soul "no home no heart no hope"
—Stronghold graffito
Raging Goblin He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
You really just need to embrace the rage. I keep a small colony of hamsters next to my computer and every time I lose a match to mana screw I throw one against the wall.
You really just need to embrace the rage. I keep a small colony of hamsters next to my computer and every time I lose a match to mana screw I throw one against the wall.
This. I think most players do this.
Actually though, I just remind myself how many times I've won due to my opponent being mana screwed, which makes me feel I deserve the mana screw myself. Also, once it happens a bunch you learn to let go. It's not productive to get upset about it. This is a game that has variance and eve the best player in the world isn't going to win 100% of the time, so losing isn't a big deal.
1) Get up to speed on probability, and figure out just how bad your luck was. You'll find that things like 5-land hands are not particularly unusual. It lets you appreciate the moments that are genuine screw jobs like when you keep a nice hand and the next 10 cards off the top are land. Now that's both unlikely and un-win-able.
2) Jot down your results. You might find that you mulligan less during the times that you remember "not running well." The human mind is really bad at understanding random luck. It will trick you into thinking you got more screwed than you really did. It will also ignore the times your opponents got mana screwed. Basically the brain is going to tell you that all the bad outcomes are remarkably awful luck and all the good outcomes are the result of your awesomeness. Don't let it mess with you that way, take notes so that you can rely on actual facts.
3) Step away. Do something else. Don't join another event until you really feel like you want to. Never join an event to "get over" your bad luck -- that's tilt and it won't make you feel better. I had a bad string of luck in BTT. I also wasn't enjoying the format that much -- I didn't like the speed of it. I kept jumping into queues because I enjoyed Theros so much and generally ran better in TTT. Eventually I realized I just wasn't having fun and did other things instead. Haven't drafted in weeks and I know it was the right decision because I haven't felt any subconscious tug to get back into it. Sometimes you need a break from the game and that's a good thing.
I agree with Phyrre's number 3 a lot. I find that when I take a week or two off after a bad string, I typically come back and do just fine. As I've gotten older, I've gotten a lot better at controlling it. I remember cutting my hand up pretty bad punching my desk once. I don't do that anymore.
I do exactly what you did just now. That is, vent! Find an internet buddy who will listen to you rant to about your crappy luck.
It's the reason why you get a lot of people on MTGO who act like sore losers in the chat box when they lose; they need to vent and have no self-control over when, where, and what they say. When it's directed at someone other than your opponent, though, it's golden!
I used to get affected a lot more, then I watched a bunch of videos on CFB by LSV and CalebD (emphatically NOT PV or Conley Woods*) and on MTGOacademy by Marshall Sutcliffe. Their attitudes helped me foster a more patient one of my own. Ultimately, it's just a game... an expensive game, no doubt, but as they say in poker, don't play unless you can afford to lose.
*They're obviously fine drafters, but they are very touchy when it comes to screw/flood/luck, etc. and tend to overreact.
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My helpy helpdesk of helpfulness.
My Decks: EDH: Sygg, River Cutthroat , Road to Scion
Grimgrin, Corpseborn Modern: Polytokes IRL: Progenitus Polymorph , Goblins
1) Get up to speed on probability, and figure out just how bad your luck was. You'll find that things like 5-land hands are not particularly unusual. It lets you appreciate the moments that are genuine screw jobs like when you keep a nice hand and the next 10 cards off the top are land. Now that's both unlikely and un-win-able.
2) Jot down your results. You might find that you mulligan less during the times that you remember "not running well." The human mind is really bad at understanding random luck. It will trick you into thinking you got more screwed than you really did. It will also ignore the times your opponents got mana screwed. Basically the brain is going to tell you that all the bad outcomes are remarkably awful luck and all the good outcomes are the result of your awesomeness. Don't let it mess with you that way, take notes so that you can rely on actual facts.
These are good habits to embrace and are examples of a more holistic outlook on dealing with mana issues or bad luck in general. Specifically, Phyrre is suggesting a couple of techniques to determine if there were any decisions you could have made differently that would have prevented or mitigated the screw/flood. Getting a feel for the probability associated with certain decisions, weighing all known factors, etc. all help you make the best decision with the information you have at hand. Magic is a game of imperfect information, after all.
If you go through this exercise and genuinely find that there were no errors in your decision making, then you know there was nothing you have done to prevent the negative outcome. If there is was nothing you could have done differently, then why be upset? You have been playing MTG for a while, I'm sure, and know it's a game with a luck involved. Embrace that. Make the best decision possible with the information available and live with the result even if it doesn't go well.
Now it's important to go back and analyze your decision making process to make sure it was solid, but at a certain point you have to accept that you made the best decision possible given what you knew at the time. Sometimes it doesn't break your way and that isn't your fault. Having this mindset has made dealing with bad luck much easier for me and could help you deal with the natural emotions when things don't break your way.
I think that the problem is that you feel 'entitled' to win some games when really, the universe doesn't owe you anything. You need to be more mature and philosophical about both your wins and your losses.
Playing a lot more games should be able to take you out the other side of the mana screw (the law of large numbers), as well as putting a small streak into perspective for you.
Sometimes life throws you lemons. At least in MtGO it's not as bad as having some life catastrophe thrown at you, although at the moment it can feel like it.
It seems as though rage builds up even higher when people think that they are much more unlucky than others, so in that case maybe just thinking ahead of time that it happens to everyone might help.
Some people play an extra land than they would otherwise, just to avoid mana screw, but mana flood is no fun either and lowering the power level of the deck overall does not seem like a worthwile strategy.
This may seem like silly advice, but: smile. Your mind takes clues from what your body is doing, not just the other way around. Adopting positive facial and body posture "tricks" your body into going into a more positive mind frame. I used this a lot when I was playing poker pretty seriously and bad luck could easily cost me way more than a draft...
1) The best thing I do is take a long view of my successes and failures in the game. It helps me understand what luck in Magic means.
I do this by keeping a spreadsheet of my games and tournaments which let's me see how I'm doing at a longer time scale than "this game" or "this match". Seeing my match win percentage over time helps me appreciate where I am as a player and makes the occasional match loss that comes down to bad luck easier to contextualize. Let me use my own recent history as a guide. Over the last 150-ish events I've averaged a 70% match win percentage. Some percentage of matches were won by skill, some by luck (my good luck or my bad luck) and that percentage has to add up to 100%. If we assume that I'm always the better player (unrealistic, but go with it), then let's put the following weight on my matches:
100% = 40% I'm better + 60% Luck
If we think that luck over the long term will break 50-50 then we get:
Win Percentage (70%) = 40% I'm better + 30% Luck.
That means I'm winning nearly a third of my matches because I'm a luck-sack.
2) The other thing I do is focus on the things I can control.
As an example, I lost a game 2 to mana screw in my last tournament. That said in game 1 of the same match, in a very tight game I made a mistake that (potentially) cost me the game. It can be easy to focus on the game 2 result, where I mulligan-ed a land light hand into another land light hand and didn't see my third land for too many turns. It could be very easy to say "I lost to land screw" when in reality I could have earned a game 3 if I had played tighter in game 1.
As you improve and take stock of your game you'll notice that you lose more matches because of your mistakes rather than the whims of the shuffler. Conversely, if you are getting mad at "mana screw" you are not paying enough attention to the decisions you made that got you into the situation in the first place. Why are you even in a situation where mana screw can lose you a match? Magic is a game where you have to work to earn every win, because letting a single game slip away can open you up to being one bad hand away from losing a match.
3) Smile
cferejohn is very right, and I think it's worth repeating his advice.
Whatever you do, don't go into the chat and cry about the shuffler. You make yourself look like an idiot. It works, it's not broken, you got unlucky. This is particularly true if you're bad at mulliganing. If you keep a 7 with only 1 land, no one has sympathy for you if you miss land drops. Cricket's number 2 is pretty good, too. Unless you get screwed twice in the same match, you still have yourself to blame for your loss, too. Don't try to deflect your failures onto a fully-functional, "fair" RNG. It'd be like a football team blaming the kicker for missing a 50/50 FG to win the game when they should be blaming themselves for needing a last minute FG to potentially win in the first place.
I will say, though, that if your opponent is clearly getting unlucky, you need to not pretend like you earned your win. I've seen people comment on their own bad luck, without saying anything negative to the opponent, and be met with things like "lol you're just bad. Learn to build a deck" so many times in games or in the chat room. There's no reason to kick a guy when he's down, especially if you're the one getting free wins you may not deserve because of it.
Whatever you do, don't go into the chat and cry about the shuffler. You make yourself look like an idiot. It works, it's not broken, you got unlucky. This is particularly true if you're bad at mulliganing. If you keep a 7 with only 1 land, no one has sympathy for you if you miss land drops. Cricket's number 2 is pretty good, too. Unless you get screwed twice in the same match, you still have yourself to blame for your loss, too. Don't try to deflect your failures onto a fully-functional, "fair" RNG. It'd be like a football team blaming the kicker for missing a 50/50 FG to win the game when they should be blaming themselves for needing a last minute FG to potentially win in the first place.
I will say, though, that if your opponent is clearly getting unlucky, you need to not pretend like you earned your win. I've seen people comment on their own bad luck, without saying anything negative to the opponent, and be met with things like "lol you're just bad. Learn to build a deck" so many times in games or in the chat room. There's no reason to kick a guy when he's down, especially if you're the one getting free wins you may not deserve because of it.
I had an opponent IRL keep a 1 land 7 card hand in M14 sealed who lost (obviously) and then whined for 10 minutes about how he hates magic because he always gets mana screwed. And he was a father there with his son.
Everybody has won due to luck and lost due to luck, and there's really no reason to get angry when there's nothing that could have been done to change the outcome. I get MUCH angrier when I make play mistakes that cost me the game than when I lose to drawing 8 lands in a row.
It's not bad luck or play mistakes that get me the most, it's misclicks. You can make play mistakes and get flooded/screwed in paper, but misclicks? Ouch. I've given people games I'd have won when they obviously, undeniably misclicked. The worst was losing to a terrible player in a cube draft (he misplayed like crazy, but kept nut drawing with things like turn four Eureka on a green splash putting in Progenitus) because I accidentally clicked through blockers against Blightsteel Colossus when I could have chumped to survive another turn or two. He was at 3 seconds left on the clock. That's rough.
I have a tendency to misclick, too. I have lag issues, and it's just so baloney when I click to attack with a creature, and then it doesn't respond, and I dunno if it's because of lag or because it didn't register or what. So I click the creature again and it taps - click to pass priority and it lags out, then untaps my guy and forces me to skip my attack. This has happened to me so many times.
The hamster idea is a good one. I'll have to keep it in mind.
I just realized I wanted to stop raging the moment I understood how much of a tool I was being typing up passive-agressive remarks to my opponent. Nobody owes me anything just because I feel I drafted an objectively better deck or even played better, so why should I consider saying "No way I lose if I don't mull to five" in chat a moral victory? It is utterly unproductive to complain about variance in this game, and even more so when I force others to listen to my drivel.
To stop raging, just focus on whether or not you could have done something to improve your odds of winning instead of wasting energy cursing your perfectly curved two lander-hand that refused to materialize. If you're a compulsive nutcase like me and need the feeble gratification you get from defiling your opponents victory, do what I did and attach a post-it note to my computer. Then, whenever you lose and don't rage in chat, you check an invisible box. Although I'd still be annoyed by mana screw, this time I was at least actually experiencing a moral victory whenever I resisted the urge to yell at my opponent! Eventually the feeling of anger dissipated completely and now I'm just mad at myself when I make small (read: glaring) mistakes that costs me the match. But hey, at least that can be turned into a desire to improve...
do you play this game to get mad? no? then be excited about everything that happens...something is only good or bad because you expect a certain result. if you keep your mind open, you'll see more opportunities for your success and realize sometimes the opponent just has your number that day. and if you don't understand what it means to just be excited to play or be happy, find something that does so you can understand that feeling and not let it go. anger is just the frustration from helplessness. don't be helpless, you can always do something to improve your situation, and sometimes the downswings make things more dynamic and interesting.
I have a friend that's been hovering around 2k MTGO rating for years. He rages incessantly in chat when he loses. His justification is that when his opponents rage at him, the schadenfreude is the best part of his day, so the least he can do is return the favour and make his opponent's day better.
As said in other threads, I keep it to myself when the game messes me up, and have for years. I found that when I was young and angry the best cure was to note down whenever you are seriously screwed/flooded, and do the same for your opponent (skipped 3rd or hit 8th land drop was my measure). Over time you find that they're about the same and you can shrug off individual instances as variance.
"It is utterly unproductive to complain about variance in this game, and even more so when I force others to listen to my drivel." -Kaii
I like that.
When I experience frustration at losing, I don't try to curb my emotions but there is no reason to chat about it to my opponent. It doesn't help me feel better and would only make me seem like a whiny baby -- and why on earth would I want that? I can be a whiny baby in the privacy of my own home without revealing that to anyone else.
My strategy to cope with "losing to the shuffler" is to rage at people who complain (welll not really rage, more roll eyes) about "losing to the shuffler" because "the shuffler" isn't screwing you. Random chance and probability is. Many seem to think the MTGO shuffler is bad. This is crazy talk since most modern pseudo-random number generators are pretty good. Many claim they get worse luck online than in person, therefore there's a problem with the online shuffler, but really its probably a lack of randomization in person when shuffling
In a nutshell, don't be a baby. Get a grip of your emotions and be an adult.
I had a terrible streak of mana-screw a few weeks ago. I lost six games in five straight matches due to mana screw. I would keep two lands on the draw and then never draw a third land until turn 7, or keep a three lander of one color and never draw the other color until turn 7. I used to think my opponents ALWAYS curved out 2-3-4 on me. But then I realized that wasn't always the case. There were times when my opponents didn't play a spell until turn 4. This draft format just punishes mana/color screw pretty hard, especially when your opponent gets the nuts Voltron opening.
Nowadays, I take notes about the hands I keep/mulligan, and ask myself why I made the decision I did.
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Focused on limited for now. Occasionally play some standard/modern as well.
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my last phantom sealed event (RTR), on the other hand, i 1-2'd the event, going 0-2 the last two matches. first of those four games, i opened with 5 lands (in a 16 land deck), mulled to one land, mulled to two lands. similarly angering luck with the next three games. (to be fair, my mana base was a bit shaky, but the bad luck far outweighed anything reasonable to expect).
i got so angry! i had this disgusted ragequit expression on my face, i'm sure, as i pressed the X button on mtgo to closed the damned thing, "to hell with you, mtgo!!!".
`
so!
i'm wondering what people's strategies are for handling the annoyance to losing to the shuffler. in fairness, i have no right to complain on the luck side since i got SO lucky with mana the previous event, but even knowing that doesn't make me feel less annoyed.
- does knowing how often is normal to get mana screwed help?
- do ... do positive affirmations help?
- .. what do you all do ..??
Goblins have poor impulse control. Don't click this link!!
some of my favourite flavour text:
Wayward Soul
"no home no heart no hope"
—Stronghold graffito
Raging Goblin
He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
poor little guys.
anyone have a less violent [and less expensive] system...?
Goblins have poor impulse control. Don't click this link!!
some of my favourite flavour text:
Wayward Soul
"no home no heart no hope"
—Stronghold graffito
Raging Goblin
He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
This. I think most players do this.
Actually though, I just remind myself how many times I've won due to my opponent being mana screwed, which makes me feel I deserve the mana screw myself. Also, once it happens a bunch you learn to let go. It's not productive to get upset about it. This is a game that has variance and eve the best player in the world isn't going to win 100% of the time, so losing isn't a big deal.
1) Get up to speed on probability, and figure out just how bad your luck was. You'll find that things like 5-land hands are not particularly unusual. It lets you appreciate the moments that are genuine screw jobs like when you keep a nice hand and the next 10 cards off the top are land. Now that's both unlikely and un-win-able.
2) Jot down your results. You might find that you mulligan less during the times that you remember "not running well." The human mind is really bad at understanding random luck. It will trick you into thinking you got more screwed than you really did. It will also ignore the times your opponents got mana screwed. Basically the brain is going to tell you that all the bad outcomes are remarkably awful luck and all the good outcomes are the result of your awesomeness. Don't let it mess with you that way, take notes so that you can rely on actual facts.
3) Step away. Do something else. Don't join another event until you really feel like you want to. Never join an event to "get over" your bad luck -- that's tilt and it won't make you feel better. I had a bad string of luck in BTT. I also wasn't enjoying the format that much -- I didn't like the speed of it. I kept jumping into queues because I enjoyed Theros so much and generally ran better in TTT. Eventually I realized I just wasn't having fun and did other things instead. Haven't drafted in weeks and I know it was the right decision because I haven't felt any subconscious tug to get back into it. Sometimes you need a break from the game and that's a good thing.
It's the reason why you get a lot of people on MTGO who act like sore losers in the chat box when they lose; they need to vent and have no self-control over when, where, and what they say. When it's directed at someone other than your opponent, though, it's golden!
*They're obviously fine drafters, but they are very touchy when it comes to screw/flood/luck, etc. and tend to overreact.
My Decks:
EDH: Sygg, River Cutthroat , Road to Scion
Grimgrin, Corpseborn
Modern: Polytokes
IRL: Progenitus Polymorph , Goblins
Just a friendly reminder that I will drive this car off a bridge
These are good habits to embrace and are examples of a more holistic outlook on dealing with mana issues or bad luck in general. Specifically, Phyrre is suggesting a couple of techniques to determine if there were any decisions you could have made differently that would have prevented or mitigated the screw/flood. Getting a feel for the probability associated with certain decisions, weighing all known factors, etc. all help you make the best decision with the information you have at hand. Magic is a game of imperfect information, after all.
If you go through this exercise and genuinely find that there were no errors in your decision making, then you know there was nothing you have done to prevent the negative outcome. If there is was nothing you could have done differently, then why be upset? You have been playing MTG for a while, I'm sure, and know it's a game with a luck involved. Embrace that. Make the best decision possible with the information available and live with the result even if it doesn't go well.
Now it's important to go back and analyze your decision making process to make sure it was solid, but at a certain point you have to accept that you made the best decision possible given what you knew at the time. Sometimes it doesn't break your way and that isn't your fault. Having this mindset has made dealing with bad luck much easier for me and could help you deal with the natural emotions when things don't break your way.
Playing a lot more games should be able to take you out the other side of the mana screw (the law of large numbers), as well as putting a small streak into perspective for you.
It seems as though rage builds up even higher when people think that they are much more unlucky than others, so in that case maybe just thinking ahead of time that it happens to everyone might help.
Some people play an extra land than they would otherwise, just to avoid mana screw, but mana flood is no fun either and lowering the power level of the deck overall does not seem like a worthwile strategy.
1) The best thing I do is take a long view of my successes and failures in the game. It helps me understand what luck in Magic means.
I do this by keeping a spreadsheet of my games and tournaments which let's me see how I'm doing at a longer time scale than "this game" or "this match". Seeing my match win percentage over time helps me appreciate where I am as a player and makes the occasional match loss that comes down to bad luck easier to contextualize. Let me use my own recent history as a guide. Over the last 150-ish events I've averaged a 70% match win percentage. Some percentage of matches were won by skill, some by luck (my good luck or my bad luck) and that percentage has to add up to 100%. If we assume that I'm always the better player (unrealistic, but go with it), then let's put the following weight on my matches:
100% = 40% I'm better + 60% Luck
If we think that luck over the long term will break 50-50 then we get:
Win Percentage (70%) = 40% I'm better + 30% Luck.
That means I'm winning nearly a third of my matches because I'm a luck-sack.
2) The other thing I do is focus on the things I can control.
As an example, I lost a game 2 to mana screw in my last tournament. That said in game 1 of the same match, in a very tight game I made a mistake that (potentially) cost me the game. It can be easy to focus on the game 2 result, where I mulligan-ed a land light hand into another land light hand and didn't see my third land for too many turns. It could be very easy to say "I lost to land screw" when in reality I could have earned a game 3 if I had played tighter in game 1.
As you improve and take stock of your game you'll notice that you lose more matches because of your mistakes rather than the whims of the shuffler. Conversely, if you are getting mad at "mana screw" you are not paying enough attention to the decisions you made that got you into the situation in the first place. Why are you even in a situation where mana screw can lose you a match? Magic is a game where you have to work to earn every win, because letting a single game slip away can open you up to being one bad hand away from losing a match.
3) Smile
cferejohn is very right, and I think it's worth repeating his advice.
I will say, though, that if your opponent is clearly getting unlucky, you need to not pretend like you earned your win. I've seen people comment on their own bad luck, without saying anything negative to the opponent, and be met with things like "lol you're just bad. Learn to build a deck" so many times in games or in the chat room. There's no reason to kick a guy when he's down, especially if you're the one getting free wins you may not deserve because of it.
I had an opponent IRL keep a 1 land 7 card hand in M14 sealed who lost (obviously) and then whined for 10 minutes about how he hates magic because he always gets mana screwed. And he was a father there with his son.
Everybody has won due to luck and lost due to luck, and there's really no reason to get angry when there's nothing that could have been done to change the outcome. I get MUCH angrier when I make play mistakes that cost me the game than when I lose to drawing 8 lands in a row.
The hamster idea is a good one. I'll have to keep it in mind.
To stop raging, just focus on whether or not you could have done something to improve your odds of winning instead of wasting energy cursing your perfectly curved two lander-hand that refused to materialize. If you're a compulsive nutcase like me and need the feeble gratification you get from defiling your opponents victory, do what I did and attach a post-it note to my computer. Then, whenever you lose and don't rage in chat, you check an invisible box. Although I'd still be annoyed by mana screw, this time I was at least actually experiencing a moral victory whenever I resisted the urge to yell at my opponent! Eventually the feeling of anger dissipated completely and now I'm just mad at myself when I make small (read: glaring) mistakes that costs me the match. But hey, at least that can be turned into a desire to improve...
As said in other threads, I keep it to myself when the game messes me up, and have for years. I found that when I was young and angry the best cure was to note down whenever you are seriously screwed/flooded, and do the same for your opponent (skipped 3rd or hit 8th land drop was my measure). Over time you find that they're about the same and you can shrug off individual instances as variance.
I like that.
When I experience frustration at losing, I don't try to curb my emotions but there is no reason to chat about it to my opponent. It doesn't help me feel better and would only make me seem like a whiny baby -- and why on earth would I want that? I can be a whiny baby in the privacy of my own home without revealing that to anyone else.
In a nutshell, don't be a baby. Get a grip of your emotions and be an adult.
Nowadays, I take notes about the hands I keep/mulligan, and ask myself why I made the decision I did.