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Possibly the most important concept in any gaming arena is the concept of level thinking.  It’s most often associated with poker, but in reality if you aren’t employing this properly in any competitive game you are playing, then you aren’t properly gaming.  I’ll do a quick overview of what I mean:

Level 0 – No real thought of the game being played.  Players at level 0 make plays seemingly at random.  All games he plays are games of chance.

Level 1 – The level 1 player has a basic concept of strategy and will play his game proficiently and predictably.

Level 2 – The level 2 player is not only concerned with his game, but also with what sort of game his opponent is playing.  He makes decisions not based solely on his cards/resources/etc.  But he will consider how strong his opponent’s game is.  This level doesn’t usually include bluffing.  It’s more about knowing when you are outclassed or when you are outclassing your opponent.  For instance in Magic a level 2 player might hold off on a favorable attack if his opponent is likely to be holding a combat trick.

Level 3 – The level 3 player is ready for the level 2 player.  The level 3 player makes his plays based upon what he wants his opponent to think about his game.  He will ascertain what his opponent has figured out about him and choose his actions based on those assumptions.  For instance in poker a level 3 player may have read his opponent as weak.  He can recognize the weak bet and bluff the player out of the hand, even though his holding may be even weaker.

Level 4 – Level 4 is where things start to get a little crazy.  Level 4 thinkers are concerned with what their opponent thinks about what they are doing.  They can sniff out bluffs and bluff even bigger driving the level 3 player into his hole.

These levels keep moving up.  It’s an interesting phenomenon to witness in poker.  As plays become more and more advanced they begin to look as awkward and random as the level 0 thinker.  Watching the pros play on a show like High Stakes Poker players who have just learned basic strategy my find their play absurdly bad.  The reason it seems this way is players at this level are doing whatever they can to prevent their opponents from figuring out what, exactly, they are doing.

The topic I actually wanted to discuss regarding this is more of a caveat.  As players realize the existence of these levels they fall into a dangerous trap.  It’s something I like to call “over-leveling.”  Let’s go back to poker for a bit.  Let’s say you bet an innocuous flop on a bluff and get called.  Your opponent then leads out on a turn card that seems like it should have hit anyone.  This is a great place for higher level players to try to bluff you off a hand.  But there’s always the possibility that your opponent simply hit this random card and is now beating you with no intention of folding.  I’ve seen many players talk themselves into continuing their bluff because they assume their opponent is simply making a move.

If you plan on moving beyond level 1 it is critical that you learn as much as you can about your opponents.  You must be able to know with some reasonable degree of accuracy why they are making the plays they are making.

Generally the best situation to be in is to be thinking exactly 1 level higher than your opponent.  As the gap widens between your level and your opponent’s the plays become far less reliable.  If you put your opponent on thinking one thing when they are actually thinking something completely different and make a move accordingly, you are stepping into very dangerous ground.

This is why a lot of the top players have trouble playing against low level players.  Dave “Devil Fish” Ulliot once said, “sometimes the beginners are the toughest to play against. It’s hard to figure out what they are doing when they don’t even know what they are doing.”  This is a classic case of a person surrendering control of the game to random chance.  Rather than throwing your hands up and saying “I can’t figure this guy out.”  Maybe you just need to drop down to level 1 play.  Play the level 1 game as best you can and you should be able to defeat the player who has no idea what he is doing in the long run.

Many players want to believe that they can defeat anyone with high level play, but sometimes you just need to boil it down to ABC strategy.  Don’t let your ego dominate your game.  Learn the top strategies of all the various levels and choose what style you play based on the opponent you are facing at the time.

As I said in the beginning you can’t properly game without level thinking.  Each level you stop at is the ceiling you are putting on your gaming.  But it is just as important to know which level to play at as it is to know the play at each level.

Confidence, confidence, confidence. If you don’t have it, everyone tells you that you need it. If you have too much of it, everyone wants you to shut up already. That’s the thrust of what I want to talk about here. These reactions are interesting. They are gut reactions to annoying habits of others. But these gut reactions are very telling. They indicate some innate or learned knowledge within us that it’s not a good thing to be over or under confident.

What do Kenji Tsumura, Jamie Gold, Greg Raymer, and Greg Maddux all have in common? Each of these people reached the highest heights of their respective fields early in their careers, yet each is constantly striving to improve. If you take a complete victory as a culmination of everything you want and strive to be, then you will grow complacent. No matter how good you are at something there is always room for improvement. The arrogant man will accomplish his goal and be done with it proclaiming himself the best. The confident man accomplishes his goal with pride, but goes back to see how he can improve. The real problem with the arrogance is that it can put blinders on you. If you think you are the actual best it really narrows your room for improvement.

There was an interview some time ago of eventual Magic Hall of Famer Darwin Kastle. I don’t remember the exact quote, it was to the effect of, “I’m by far the best player in my area so it’s difficult for me to find people to play against that can help me improve.” His regular playtest partners at the time included David Humphreys and Rob Dougherty. Both of these men have achieved Hall of Fame status themselves, and as most observers would likely agree, were far superior to Darwin in almost every aspect of the game. Not long after this interview, Darwin began a decline in finishes from which he would never recover. Darwin was a far cry from being the best he could be, yet he completely stagnated thanks in no small part to the belief that there was no possible way he could improve, despite having access to two of the greatest minds to ever play the game. For the record, Rob and Dave are merely at the top of the list of dozens of accomplished gamers in the Boston area that Darwin could have learned from.

Any player, and I mean ANY player who thinks they’ve reached this level of perfection is always deluding themselves. This is particularly true in Magic. Magic is a supremely hard game. Most players can’t go a single game without mistakes. Even on the Pro Tour, a top tier player will make several mistakes in a tournament. Alan Comer once said to me, “If you ask a bad player how he’s playing, he’ll tell you he’s playing near perfect Magic. If you ask a good player how he’s playing he will tell you he’s playing poorly.” Bad players are bad because they don’t see their mistakes. They stay bad because they can’t improve on them. Good players see most or all of their mistakes. This usually leads to improvement, but it has a different effect on a good player that might have a poor self image. These errors can really deal severe blows to one’s confidence. If you see a mistake and all you want to do about it is berate yourself, it’s going to be hard to learn a lesson from it. Mistakes happen, and always will happen. All you can do is learn from it and reduce your chances of it happening again in the future.

A lot of these players wind up wandering a tournament site after their round ended complaining to anyone that will listen how badly they ???ed up. This compounds the drain on confidence because the person is dwelling on it. The reactions from the people they tell may further serve to lower confidence levels.

Arrogance and confidence go together a lot of the time, but I think far more often they exist independently. I think that the arrogant person is rarely confident. I think they shout out how good they are to convince themselves and other what they fear their performance won’t properly do. I think a truly confident person is rarely arrogant because he has no reason to be. He knows what he is and doesn’t need to convince anyone.

One last small note on this topic, being arrogant or completely unconfident is really annoying to other people. Or maybe it’s just me.

I was hoping an earlier rise for me would inspire me to write, since I would have the office to myself.  It appears I was right.  I know 10am might not seem so early to most of you out there, but I assure you, I will be getting the worm today.

Remind me never to preview what I am going to write in the next blog.  The whole point of this writing venue was to give me some freedom in what I could write, and there I go confining it to a single topic (albeit a vast one).  No, I’m not going to talk about types of gamers this time.

Magic is by far the single most significant entity to enter my life.  Not to diminish the roles my parents played or certain ex girlfriends, but man, I can’t even begin to imagine what my life would be like today without Magic. Not only are nearly all of my closest friends people I’ve met through Magic, but nearly all my friends period are from there.  I’m living with a group of people I never would have met without Magic.  I find it highly unlikely that I would have found poker as a way to make a living without Magic.  Perhaps most importantly, Magic helped elevate my mind to a level of analytical thinking that has improved my thought process in nearly every avenue of my life.

So why was Magic able to leak into so many aspects of my life?  Because I wanted it to.  The people I met through Magic were the funniest and most intelligent people I had ever met in my life.  I’ve met almost all of my best friends through the game.  Joe Weber, Tim Aten, Paul Sottosanti, Joseph Crosby, Mark Zajdner, Brad Swan.  They live on all different corners of the continent, yet each is very close to me, and those are only the names you might recognize.  I have a large group up friends back in Albany who all met through the game (though few play anymore) and an even larger group here in Atlanta (most of whom still play casually, but very few who care about the PT).

I don’t mean to put down my non-Magic friends and the group I ran with before my stint on the Pro Tour, but once I was at the PT, I realized very swiftly that these were my people.  Their jokes, gaming, and approach to life were all on a higher level than I had seen in my experience in the past. Progressive thinkers abounded, and it was very rare to find a conservative in the fold.  It truly almost felt as though I was seeing humanity in a more evolved form.

I can’t believe how elitist and arrogant that sounds, but I guess that’s what blogs are for.  Telling what you honestly feel no matter how it comes out.  And it’s not that I disrespect normal people just for being them.  I just was a better fit with the PT crowd.  To this day it’s easy for me to go to a Grand Prix and find a group of people to hang out with.  The New guard is no different from the old guard.  These are still my people.

Even though none of my closest friends play seriously anymore, it’s still very common for major traveling to take place just to hang out.  And I thank heaven for that as I’d hate to go too long without seeing these people.  In 2006 alone I’ve traveled to Toronto, Arizona, Maryland, San Diego, San Jose, and Ohio just to see people.  I also have had friends come here to visit.  Mark Zajdner is arriving on Saturday and Andrew Pacifico might just drive up from Florida for the festivities.  Tim came down not too long ago for an extended visit and is also planning on coming down with Rich Hoaen before the GP in Daytona Beach.

I have to wonder if our parents did this kind of travel just for some good hang outs.  It seems unlikely since they would be less likely to have friends scattered all over the country.  The internet has made the world increasingly smaller.  It’s very simple to keep in touch with these people, even on a daily basis.

Yes sir, there’s no doubt my life is better in just about every conceivable way because of the game Magic: the Gathering.  It’s truly amazing how much a game can change a life.

I just got back from a vacation.  A friend of mine pointed out that with my lifestyle everyday is sort of a vacation.  I suppose it’s sorta true.  It’s nice not working on anyone’s schedule but my own.  I more or less come and go as I please.  But as any professional poker player who hasn’t broken through will tell you, poker is hard work.  Some of you may have gone to the local card room or casino and seen players so bad your head spun around in a complete circle only to have them still be there when you returned to normal neck alignment.  The players in casinos are unreal bad, but that’s simply not the case online.  Players are bad, but it’s rare you’ll get so many grouped together like you do at the casino, so the work itself is difficult.  In addition to a more difficult field online there’s the ever-present enemy of variance.  I suppose it’s not fair to call this an enemy as it should be incredibly nice to you as often as it’s incredibly mean, but it’s a fickle mistress to say the least.
 
I quit my cushy state job to come down here and work to become a professional poker player.  I was bankrolled by a friend of mine, and as yet I haven’t seen the windfall payoff I had hoped for.  Don’t let the money on TV fool you, this is no easy life.  Even if you do manage to break through for that big win, you need to dodge the allure of playing stakes that are too big, blowing it all on sports betting, or sinking into the world of hard drugs.  I’ve heard about tons of top players who lost all their money in these ways.  Each one of those pitfalls is feeding an addiction that robs them of every cent they’ve earned.
 
No sir, the life of a professional gamer is not an easy one.  But it does allow a level of freedom unmatched by any “normal” job.  There are casinos all over the country and if you have a laptop you can play online anywhere.  This means you can take a vacation without losing any valuable work hours.  In addition to as many working vacations as you can afford, you get to schedule your own pure vacations.  You answer to no one but yourself.  It’s a great lifestyle.
 
The thing about mainstream jobs is you can’t leave the workday with less money than you came with.  With poker you will often finish your work day with significantly less money than you started with.  It’s all part of the job though.  And the key is removing emotions.  I’m convinced that’s why the Swedes are so successful in poker.  If you watch them play on TV they show no emotion at all.  Every beat and every huge win produce the same stoic reaction.  The money in poker comes from playing well.  Having big wins is nice, but if you aren’t continually playing your best you won’t win in the long run.
 
A big reason this blog is being finished tonight is because I cut my evening session short as I knew I wasn’t playing my best.  I can’t tell you exactly what was off, but I know something was.  I escaped my cash games with a slight gain, but busted in all my tournaments within the first hour.  Even though I was a slight winner in the cash games I knew full well I wasn’t playing my best.  That’s another critical part of this job.  You must be honest with yourself.  Too much rationalization and denial will spell the end of your bankroll all too quickly.
 
As you may have noticed with all my vague speak, this lifestyle can apply to any gaming profession.  Poker, Magic, Trading, these lessons apply to all these.  Emotion is your worst enemy in any sort of gaming.  The problem faced over and over again by professional gamers is that most often its emotion that brings them into the game.  Whether it’s the distaste for “normal” work or the rush of a big win, these are emotional reactions.  Most gamers are intelligent enough to make money doing anything, they chose gaming for emotional reasons.
 
So what the heck is my point?  The point is this may seem like a leisurely lifestyle, but the fact is you need to constantly be aware of yourself and as many aspects of each decision as time will allow.  I had a nice job with a good steady paycheck, but if I told you I needed to constantly be at my best and aware, I’d be lying through my teeth.  Not that it wasn’t good and important work, it just wasn’t remotely as close to as mentally and emotionally challenging as my current work.  In fact the free lifestyle can be it’s own worst enemy as the allure to slack off and just hope you run well is always present.
 
So before you walk this path, keep these things in mind.  I need to improve my mental fortitude and I hope to bring you some glimpse into the things I am trying as this blog continues.
 
I’m going to cover all sorts of topics in this blog, so please ask me anything about anything and I am sure I can include it in a future posting.  No rush though, I have plenty of material.  I have lots of opinions on lots of topics with very few outlets for it.  That’s why I’m here.  Next time I am going to talk a little bit about the mindsets of different gamers and how to react to them.  I am a big believer that most of gaming is psychological and you should do your best to learn to read people and interpret exactly what those reads mean, in games and in life.
 
KK

Well I'm all signed up here and ready to start blogging.  I've been told I can write anything I want here which is all I've ever really wanted from a writing gig.

 So this weekend was Grand Prix San Francisco, located right in the heart of San Jose.  I'm not sure why they didn't just call it GP San Jose.  It's a real city.  I've heard of it.  I can sort of understand why if there is a Pro Tour in Rye why they would call it Pro Tour New York, but why not just call GP San Jose, GP San Jose.  Tons of people wasted time and money flying to San Fran and had to cab it all the way to San Jose which is a good 45 minutes away.

 It's sorta funny.  I don't think I have ever liked a block for both limited and constructed.  I have fond memories of Tempest Block, but I was such a new player to the pro scene that I think I just loved the competitive feel of structured formats.  I'm sure if I sat down and tried to dissect Tempest Block Constructed I'd find more holes than in an average gamer's t-shirt.  This format was no exception.  I really dislike the draft, but Block is incredibly cool.  The decks are interesting, the mana is flexible, and there is a ton of play in the actual games.  No deck can sit down across from any other deck and be a huge underdog.  That means a lot to me.  I can't stand losing matches before I even shuffle.  In man constructed formats this is the way it works.  Counter Phoenix vs. Suicide Black, Trix vs.Red Aggro, Affinity vs. Anything Else.  These matchups were all complete domination.  There was barely a reason to play them out.

In my experience, matchups such as these don’t exist in Time Spiral Block Constructed.  That means that usually the person who plays better in a given match is going to win.

*quick aside*

I’ve stopped using the expression “the better player is going to win.”  The fact is that the better player doesn’t always win even in extremely skill-intensive matches.  Variance is one reason for this, but another is that sometimes the worse player plays better than the better player in that particular match.

Anyway, this format is awesome.  It’s hard to find any matchup that has a clear cut favorite and in each game I watched, the player who played better won the match.  Sadly, for the competitive player, this format is dead.  The only way to relive old block constructed formats in a competitive environment is to get invited to the invitational, and even that is hit or miss.  The Block Party and Build Your Own Block formats are occasionally run there.

I heard a rumor a while back that either the DCI or modo was going to sanction Block Party or Build Your Own Block.  Either or both of these would be completely awesome.  For those of you that don’t know, Block Party is a format where any legal Block Constructed deck can be played.  Build Your Own Block is probably even cooler.  The cards in your deck have to be all from 1 first set in a block, one 2nd set in a block and one 3rd set in a block (e.g. Tempest, Guildpact, Scourge or Urza’s Saga, Urza’s Legacy, Prophecy).  My guess is that Homelands is no longer legal in either format with Coldsnap replacing it in both, but to my knowledge there’s no official word on that.  I’m sure Coldsnap is legal, but I’m not sure if they would still count Homelands as a third set or not.  I’m sure people would be tragically disappointed if they had to take Joven’s Ferrets out of their decks.

My biggest problem with the format is the Pacts.  I know they need that drawback in order to make the mechanic function, but good lord.  Losing an entire game because you forgot an upkeep effect is incredibly brutal.  Ervin Tormos tried to defend it as a “donk catcher” i.e. a mechanic that will separate the good players from the bad.  Like much of what Ervin says I think this is absurd.  This is the type of mistake good players and bad players will make in relatively equal amounts.  The plays that separate the good players from the bad players are strategic decisions.  Everyone knows they would rather pay X mana than lose the game.  That’s not a strategy decision.  The best players and the worst players understand that it’s a good strategy to not lose the game.  Forgetting the upkeep is merely a slip (see my article on Star City Games about errors for a breakdown of types of errors).  Kyle Goodman knows fist hand the brutality of this ruling as he forgot to pay for a pact when he was 7-0-1 and had game 3 locked up.  He still pulled off an impressive top 16, but he would have had an easier road to the top 8 with the win.  I think it’s great that they are allowing reminders, e.g. putting a die on top of your deck so you can’t draw without seeing the reminder, but getting a game loss for something that you would NEVER choose not to do is truly brutal.  I’m not sure if there’s a good solution, unfortunately.  I think at the very least they should let you fo back if it doesn’t matter which lands you tap.  Like if you are mono-black and have all swamps in play, they should let you go back and pay for a Slaughter Pact.  Basically if it’s obvious how it would be paid for, who cares if they let you go back, it changes nothing.

That’s about all I got for now.  I have no idea how often I’ll be writing, but I’ll try to keep it fresh.  It won’t always be about Magic, but it’ll always be a good read.  If nothing else you’ll get to see how my consciousness streams.

KK on modo and in life