Doing it Right: How to Get Better

Posted on Tuesday, December 8, 2009

There are a lot of misconceptions about Yu-gi-oh competitive play, and most of these misconceptions are not only false, but said by people who say they get the game but in all honesty do not really understand the fundamental mechanics of how getting better at something works. But enough about bad players, the fundamental misconception about Yu-gi-oh is that it is a completely luck based game. Yu-gi-oh is a card game so luck plays a portion, but I can say with certainty that Yu-gi-oh is more skill based than luck based.

I’m hoping that makes everyone feel better. Personally, the idea that Yu-gi-oh is a skilled game is better than it being a luck based game. The main reason is because my skills in the game are controllable, where as luck is not. I think that a person controlling the outcome of his or her game is also the main reason that people want Yu-gi-oh to be a luck based game. By doing this a player can blame whatever losses they have to luck. Some losses are luck, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that a majority of games lost are due to skill differences between the two players more so than luck.

With that said, I feel like the first way to get better at the game is to just completely remove luck from a player vocabulary. Doing this will do a couple of things for a person. First of all it makes every single loss the losing players fault. It also opens up a more critical analysis of your own game, if something is your own fault then you can better analyze it and make sure you do not do it again.

The next step to this would be analyzing your game. As a player I know it is almost impossible to remember every play you do, but it is still possible to pay attention to the critical plays you have to make throughout the game. A player has to be able to recognize when a play could lead to his own defeat, or when a play is critical to the tempo and flow of the game.

A player should also be paying attention to some of the minor misplays that he makes, sometimes the minor misplays can effect the outcome of the game just as much as the big misplays. Minor misplays are also a lot more common than bigger misplays so it is important just as important to pay attention to those.

The next thing is to never assume that you have played a perfect game, even if you win. Assuming that you have played a perfect game can stunt growth as player and leave an analysis looking like it was completely blown off. If the immediate answer to the question “Did I misplay?” is no, then the player is probably doing something wrong with analyzing and should be more critical of their loss.

Winning does not mean you have played a perfect game either, and that is something people need to understand. Just because a player won does not mean that they made the right plays, and someone who is striving to get better needs to be just as critical of their wins as their losses. This is one of the most important things that players need to recognize. Winning does not mean you have played the perfect game and I cannot stress this enough.

In one of my earlier posts on this blog I commented on how everyone sucks. This is true and everyone needs to realize it. What I mean by that is that there are always ways to improve your game and that a crucial part of analysis is realizing that there are always ways to get better. So yeah, everyone sucks at this game.

The final important thing I would like to talk about is in game analysis. This is harder to do than out of game analysis because there is unknown information presented at the time. The best thing to do is to analyze the outcomes of the plays you are able to make, and then pick the play that has the most best possible outcomes. This is hard to do on the fly though and may take some extra attention, but eventually it is possible that it just becomes a subconscious process.

These are what I believe a player has to do to improve his or her game. I may have missed some things and will probably do a follow up article if necessary.

~E.P.B.