I have been playing Magic for 17 years. Far from being a professional, every once in a while I take part in official tournaments.
I have collected here four considerations that you may find handy to keep in mind also in everyday life.
1. Do not have expectations for the single tournament
Magic is a game where a combination of skill and luck decides the final result. This means that the outcome of a game or even of a tournament does not mean much.
Learning to play one slowly improves his odds of winning, still aware that success will never be certain.
Better playing chess then? In that case one should rather learn to get destroyed by the Beth Harmon of the moment, without appeal nor justification.
Or maybe it is just better to keep on playing Magic and appreciate how on the long run that hard hearned 2% of edge in the odds makes things better.
2. You play the hand you keep
At the beginning of a Magic game one shuffles his deck and draws seven cards. If the starting hand is not a good one it is possible to take a mulligan. This means drawing a new hand but keeping one card less.
There is a psychological barrier behind such a decision as one would be offering an advantage to the opponent before the actual start of the game.
A voice inside me wants always to convince me that I should not mulligan and that next draws will fix the good stars that disaligned in such an unfair way.
The truth is that Magic is not fair and math says that good luck does not follow bad luck.
Playing good Magic means making honest use of the mulligan (even if this means one card less) and more generally doing the best with the tools one is given.
3. Mana screw and mana flood, the zen way
In a Magic game one pays cards by spending mana, which is usually generated by other cards called lands.
If one does not draw enough lands a so called mana screw happens and the game is most likely lost.
On the other hand, lands are useless by themeselves and drawing too many of them produces a mana flood and, guess what, makes you lose.
Mana screw and mana flood are the nightmares of Magic players: they are very frustrating moments in which one feels chased by bad luck.
Precisely because they are critical situations, screw’s and flood’s are good occasions for playing a zen metagame. This game is about making use of all the available grace and trying to be even kinder with the opponent.
When it succeeds, it generates a great sense of calm and control.
4. Commit as much as you decided to commit
The tournaments that made me go back home with an unpleasant feeling were not those where I got badly wiped. The worst was when I had decided to play focused and I instead ended up making sloppy mistakes.
Before taking part in a tournament I learned to stop and evaluate what are my odds and then decide how much energy I want to invest.
Sometimes I play Magic in a concentrated killer mood, other times I bring a beer along and follow my heart.
Obviously everybody appreciates success but the awareness of having given what I had planned is always a certain source of satisfaction.
Conclusions
Playing Magic and more in general playing board games is amazing for so many strictly ludic reasons but it also offers occasions in which we can challange our intellectual honesty and the ability to see things from a broader perspective.
What about you? What did you learn by playing board games?
Featured image by Ryan Quintal/Unsplash
