Briefing:
Hey everyone! Today I am
going to cut straight to the chase...after I tell a
little story which means I should probably delete the
first half of the sentence I just wrote except I am to
lazy to move my mouse at the moment and right now I
think it would be wise to stop babbling on about nothing
:\. Anyways...I was sitting around playing a solitaire
game on apprentice since I couldn’t get a game
connection going (router = ubergay) I was play testing
to see what I could make out of my opening hands to turn
it into the best situation possible. Then it came to me,
this is what trainers should be learning. They should be
learning how to play a bad draw. They should not
practice playing good draws since that would be very
good for them to have. Playing bad draws allows you to
eliminate some of the fear of getting a horrible hand.
Learning how to play bad hands, in my opinion, will make
anyone at least a little bit better.
Intro:
So you are sitting in
states, you shuffle your deck and draw seven cards. Your
opponent wins the flip and declares that he/she wants
you to make the first move. You are playing Magma by the
way and have been play testing with it and realized you
have been, for the most part, getting a relatively good
winning percentage with it. But then, the worst happens
(no, you do not have a sudden urge to use the restroom,
however, that is a bad situation :\) you look at your
hand and see Three Fighting Energies, Three Psychic
Energies, and a Baltoy. Lady luck has just
basically backhanded you across the face and you are
not taking a liking to this situation to well.
To be perfectly honest,
this happens quite often to a lot of people. It’s not
because their deck list is bad, it’s not because they
are a bad player, it’s just because they drew a bad
hand. It is as simple as that... What determines your
likelihood of putting up a fight when your opponent gets
a god hand is your decisions in this kind of situation.
There is not much you can do if you continue to get no
draw cards but, your goal now would be to catch up to
your opponent with suffering least losses as possible.
If you manage to not give up out of frustration and keep
your focus it is only natural that you have a better
probability of coming back. I guess what I am trying to
say is that if you practice playing in bad situations,
you will become a much better player all around. It is
good practice to set up situations like this and play it
out multiple times. Instead of relying on the god hand,
expect the worst. Once you learn to play in bad
situations, you should realize, that in turn you will
become an all around better player.
Mid:
Okay, now that you are
practicing playing horrible draw hands, here are a few
tips that may help for when you actually do start
playing at those tournaments. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle,
shuffle, shuffle, etc.etc.etc. I cannot emphasize this
enough. ALWAYS SHUFFLE. With that
said lets move on to playing cards at certain times and
here is an example to fit this...
Once again, you are at a
states championship and playing Magma. It’s third round
and you so far have gone two and oh :). Not to bad, now
you are on your third round (like I just said :\) and
notice immediately its going to be a mirror match. You
know to win this you have to get set up faster. You make
it to turn two and have a decent setup going. You have
Zangoose active, a baltoy benched and a numel benched.
Your hand consist of a Darkness Energy, Copycat,
Mt.Moon, Magma Ball, and Reversal. Your opponent has
six cards in hand. It’s obvious what to do but in what
order? You will want to use magma ball to search your
deck for pokemon. It could be Groudon, Claydol,
Camerupt, or w/e you wish. You do this first to get
rid of two cards from your deck(not shuffling Magma
Ball back in and removing a pokemon from your deck)
in order to remove them from the possibility of drawing.
You pick one (Lets say Claydol). Now, it is up to
you what you want to do. If you want to try and OHKO
something for the win this turn don’t play the
Darkness (as you will want to probably be using the
Magma Energy) use the Reversal even
though your opponent has no bench so you get rid of it
and lose the possibility of drawing it and stick
Mount Moon out there for the same reason. Now use
Copycat and you will have a better chance of drawing
the cards you need for that OHKO since you got rid of
the possibility of drawing those other cards.
The lesson in this is
this, Burning cards can and cannot work. If you get what
you need and win the game its great. If you get nothing
you need, you just wasted a few cards you will probably
need later game.
