I'm going to blow your mind:

"People make mistakes."

They make all kinds of mistakes in everyday life; and quite often, they make a dizzying number of mistakes when playing Magic: The Gathering. Even really good players!

Magic is hard; and playing Magic optimally (which, by definition is "mistake-free") is almost impossible. Mike Turian, a Pro Tour Champion and Hall of Famer, once told me he had never played a perfect game of Magic. There was always something - even if it was a little something - that he could have done better.

Jon Finkel, arguably the greatest player to ever tap for mana, defines a mistake as anything that isn't the optimal play. He's long argued that this mindset was one of the things that allowed him to distinguish his game from all others, so early on.

What's an example?

Imagine you pass with two mana open: An Island and a Raffine's Tower.

Your opponent taps out on his turn for Liliana of the Veil; a card you don't want to resolve. You tap the Raffine's Tower to Spell Pierce the Liliana of the Veil and the turn ends.

Given just the facts at hand, you made a mistake.

It wasn't a big mistake, and it probably won't affect the outcome of the imaginary game we described... But it's still a mistake.

Your opponent taps out and won't make another play. You tap exactly one mana and use the same card you would have if you had made the opposite tap. Where's the mistake?

I already said it wasn't a big one and probably wouldn't affect the outcome of this game. But what about future games?

Lazy mana tapping is an easy way to leak value by forming bad habits. Who's to say you wouldn't tap incorrectly at some future juncture that it did matter? Better to get in the habit of playing optimally when it's actually under your control.

Imagine the same fact patter, but instead of a Raffine's Tower you had an Adarkar Wastes as your second land. Can you imagine tapping that instead of the Island in the same spot? Almost no one would make that mistake because it's so egregious; but it's really not that far distant from the Raffine's Tower error. Also, no one would argue - especially once they've been stung for one point - that they didn't make a mistake [I'm sure some of you did with the Raffine's Tower example].

Now that we know what a mistake is... Dare we ask ourselves how frequently we make them? We already know Mike Turian, who is many times better than even the average Pro Tour Champion, makes at least one per game. Jonny Magic once argued that I - a multi-time Pro Tour competitor at least - make about one per turn. Per turn!

Most people fail to identify mistakes of the Raffine's Tower variety; but would not fail to see the Adarkar Wastes tap. The insidious thing about Magic, and I think to a lesser degree "the Gathering," is that we can see mistakes in other players' play far more readily than our own.

Have you ever rail birdied a friend at the LGS, and noted when they miss an open for damage, or a clear opportunity to draw an extra card? Some stuff is egregious, like not making a Treasure before popping a Roadside Reliquary... But you might not see it until someone points it out. Other examples are just brain farts (you miss a card or resolve a spell wrong). We all do it!

Playing for Day Two of a Pro Tour my opponent once cast Farseek and got this:

"I am guessing that is literally the only land in your deck that you can't get with Farseek," I told him. We had a laugh and he just resolved the spell correctly.

A few turns later I cast this:

More on the ball, he cast Lightning Helix on it, with the Bats triggers on the stack.

"Okay," I said; before sacrificing the Blind Hunter that I had played two turns earlier.

"That's a Bat!?!"

RTFC am I right?

I went on to make Day Two.

The Blind Hunter mistake is clearly a mistake, except in one case. It's possible that he can't beat Skeletal Vampire (so obviously has to try to kill it before its own Bats make it nigh indestructible)... But he thinks I don't know that Blind Hunter is a Bat. I mean I was playing a Bat theme deck and hadn't lost a match that day, but if he really can't beat Skeletal Vampire he has to play to his out: That I just screw up.

That's not a mistake.

That he didn't know Blind Hunter was a Bat and he lost a Lightning Helix that might have had some value later in the game probably indicates that it was, in fact, the mistake that it looks like.

But how about this one?

You're playing a mirror about a dozen years ago; during the Golden Age of Standard. Caw-Blade is by far the best, and most popular, deck.

Your opponent, a little stalled and with only one card in hand draws for turn. He looks at his card, kind of scowls, but nevertheless commits two mana for it:

You let the 1/1 resolve and he goes and gets two more:

... Before passing the turn.

Assuming the coast clear you tap out for a Jace, the Mind Sculptor that you plan to use to grind out the game.

He Mana Leaks you with his actual last card and proceeds to take over, despite the early sluggishness.

Imagine you were looking over the shoulder of a friend at LGS and he just missed a fully optimized trigger... One of those "Sacrifice Roadside Reliquary to draw instead of draw two" moments. I'm sure you've seen a friend do that. Resolving Squadron Hawk and just missing the third Hawk is a mistake of the same order, right?

The example as stated is based on - for my money - the most masterful play ever executed by Pro Tour and World Champion Paulo Vitor Damo Da Rosa. By searching up only two Squadron Hawks, PV strongly implied that his one card in hand was, in fact, the fourth Squadron Hawk.

This gave the opponent what appeared to be a clear signal that his bomb spell would be good; when in fact it was anything but.

The beauty of this play was not only that it worked out... It's that it cost so very little. What's the downside of the play? Unless Paulo's very next draw it the fourth Squadron Hawk he loses basically nothing (he can just get it by casting a Hawk he would probably cast anyway).

Did PV's opponent make a mistake?

It's hard to say he didn't when PV was stalled and had only one card in hand.

A lot of players would argue that he didn't, though.

I'd say he made multiple mistakes, starting with the assumption that the first/last card in hand was Squadron Hawk rather than the Mana Leak it really was. Once you make that assumption, playing Jace makes sense; but waltzing Jace into a conditional Counterspell is a separate mistake than the mis-read.

As we said from the top: Magic is hard and even identifying when we make a mistake is also hard.

What should we focus on?

I'd argue something obvious: Results.

This flies in the face of every amateur poker player's favorite Magic adage transplant: "Don't be so results focused."

... Why not?

I'm actually convinced that at some point in the 1990s a mediocre but popular Magic player overheard a poker player say "Don't be so results focused" and just ran with it. I would also assume that they proceed with a very "poker" sort of lens toward Magic, all math and probabilities.

I don't disagree in principle.

But as much as being good at probabilities in Magic will reward your win rate; Magic isn't poker and the cards do different things.

A powerful skill that players who are good at both Magic and poker have is to race; and to narrow the outs the opponent might have when ahead.

In poker, cards all do the same thing. If you have an ace in hand and you stay in and an ace shows up on the river, you're always going to have a pair of aces and hopefully that wins the hand for you if that's what you were going for.

In Magic you can force the opponent into a similarly narrow spot and they might not use the card correctly even if they draw it.

An example someone recently used was to attack in such a way that the opponent only had one out.

"If they draw it, they draw it, but even if they do it doesn't change whether the attack was correct."

On its face this statement is true; except contextually it's anything but.

A Magic one-outer is different than a poker one-outer. It's not binary. It's not only "they have to draw this one card" but also what might happen if you slow played but left up defense. Does the one outer no longer win the game? Do they get different outs? What if you leave back more or fewer guys? How does that change a race? Likely the relevant cards the opponent can topdeck change.

One of the most productive things I've been doing recently has been around play-testing with Roman Fusco.

Previously we were playing each other, but we've switched to streaming games to each other and both playing. One of us plays a few matches, then the other does. Nominally, it's me or Roman, but ultimately it's both of us.

I had a game last night that was one of the most dominating games I'd ever played. The Red Deck mirror can disproportionately favor being on the play, but our opponent didn't have Kumano Faces Kakkazan // Etching of Kumano; we did.

We followed it up with Monastery Swiftspear and even Counterspelled a Lightning Strike with a spell of our own. The opponent cast Lightning Strike on our base 2/3 Swiftspear at end of turn, and we zinged him for two and grew her out of kill toughness. It was awesome!

We could have gone a different way on turn three; but the combination of a fourth land and a Thundering Raiju kind of dictated how we were going to play, proactively. We attacked with a lethal Lightning Strike in hand.

Now the opponent - bereft of anything else - had just played a Raiju of his own, and attacked for four; but with no additional damage trigger. We felt confident racing, especially with a Raiju of our own to answer.

So, of course, on turn five, the opponent's last card was Raiju #2. Exactsies. Dead.

Did we make a mistake?

I literally felt like I was dominating the opponent in the first few turns. That we didn't win, especially given multiple creatures and a fourth turn Raiju, seems to indicate that we did.

I argued with Roman that we didn't.

We would have had to read him for four lands and two Raiju a turn before he played the fourth land or the first Raiju. We could have left open the Lightning Strike to pre-empt Raiju #1; which probably would have gotten us the race. Certainly we wouldn't have lost on turn five to a Raiju that never swung.

But fourth land AND two Raiju? That's a tough read to make absent any indication of either.

Maybe it's a mistake, but an acceptable one; tapping the Raffine's Tower... Only it got us this time. Acceptable not because it was small; but because so few would be able to make the correct read. Not so far, maybe, from getting caught with the Mana Leak.

How to get better?

In addition to identifying (and ideally snuffing out) mistakes you're not even aware of now; I'd recommend observing results over time. Really focus on results. What is the cause and effect between your choices and your outcomes? When you lose, would you make the same choices again?

Often, the answer is that you should. Especially if you didn't err!

But a surprising amount of the time you should think about what you did, and maybe the assumptions you made that got you killed. I know in my Raiju game I just dismissed the idea that he might have a second Spirit before making my final, ultimately unsuccessful decision. Not just "this attack puts him dead to my Lighting Strike next turn" but also "Given the fact that I can stop a Thundering Raiju, should I play like I can?"

LOVE

MIKE