Welcome back everyone to DeathJester’s Dojo! This week’s article is about one of my favorite areas of YGO called: Tight-Play. If you recall, I mentioned this concept briefly in a small paragraph in my “Secrets of the Pros REVEALED” article I posted on the 14^th of this month.

 

An absolute fact is that tight-play will win you the games you are supposed to win. When I talk about tight-play I’m not talking about not making mistakes; I’m talking about not giving your opponent the opportunity to capitalize on any mistakes that you might make. Don’t “give the game away” as I always say. “Giving the game away” is the #1 bad habit of all players who make it to the gravy train fall right off it left wanting. Even more so for those who have not made it yet.  

 

Anyways, think about the different ways a player could “give the game away” to his/her opponent. I have some right here and I will elaborate on each:

 

• Giving away information – I can wrote a whole article on this (many writers have) it’s not even funny. This is so important because YGO is a game based on imperfect information. How successful you are in a single duel relies upon how well you analyze the information given to you by the game state and your opponent. Think about it…the less information YOU give away, the less information the opponent will have to work with. Thus, they have to rely on reading the field/game state (which ANYONE can do easily). The field situation can be very misleading and you must be equally misleading in order to force mistakes from your opponent.

 

There are too many ways that any player can give away valuable information un-intentionally out of habit:

 

1.      Checking the Graveyard after drawing a card that utilizes the Graveyard

2.      Shuffling your hand after you draw something useful

3.      Looking into your opponent’s eyes during your turn (sign of weakness)

4.      Too much slouching

5.      Shuffling your hand too quickly

6.      Excessive talking

7.      Excessive silence

8.      Frustration

9.      Over-excitement

10.  Change in attitude after the draw or when the situation changes in your favor

 

You can interpret these 10 things in about a thousand different ways depending on the opponent. These are called tells in the poker world. There are many more tells you can look for. Let’s look at #6. If you are a talker and that’s your game plan; STICK TO IT! If you suddenly become silent after a situation turns out badly for you or you get a bad draw then this is an obvious sign that you are in trouble and a savvy opponent will pick up on this. One piece of advice: OBSERVE AND CORRECT YOUR BEHAVIOR in stressful situations.

 

• Second Guessing – This happens all the time to anyone. I can’t even count how many times I’ve second guessed myself and lost because of it. Can it happen to you? Of course it can. Has it happened to the pros? Yes, it happens to them too and probably not as often as your average player. Second guessing yourself can really signal to your opponent that you are in trouble or you are worried about what they have. This is especially obvious after you make the play you were thinking too hard about. Please don’t put yourself into these situations. This is why test-playing is important. Pay more attention to your gut-instinct. 90% of the time it’s right, and if it’s wrong then…you just made a less optimal play that’s all.

 

• Making Obvious Mistakes – This is an easy one and it still happens. Sometimes you can make the most obvious mistakes without even realizing it. Sometimes you might not play that Snatch Steal for the win or you may miss that Nobleman of Crossout on the monster you KNOW is a Magician of Faith and you end up passing your turn. This kind of thing happens. Everyone knows I’ve let this happen to me numerous times. How can you put a stop to this? Focus your attention on the game state and your opponent’s actions. Make the optimal play based on the information given to you. There is no such thing as great plays or good plays. Only optimal plays. In lamens terms, the play that will net you the most strategical, numerical, or psychological advantage in any given game situation. Focus on optimal plays, and you’ll see that you will be able to get yourself out of situations that would otherwise be unattainable if you tried to pull off a pre-programmed socially approved “great play”. Great plays are a myth, make the plays YOU know are right based on the information given to you.

 

Those are the most general ones. I won’t get into specifics.

 

 

Don’t give ‘em a chance to breathe

 

One part of becoming a better player is learning how to capitalize on your opponent’s mistakes. Another part is learning how to force opponents to make mistakes in the first place. Your job as a player is to turn your opponent’s perfectly laid out game plan they had constructed through months of practice into the worst game of their life every single time. I’ll give you some pointers about how to do so.

 

·        Make optimal plays not “good” plays – This is VERY important. Making optimal plays based on the information you collect from the situation will throw the opponent of his/her game. The opponent will always expect the pre-programmed response from you. In some cases you HAVE to make the pre-programmed play, in all other cases make the optimal play. Make the play that is not only advantageous for you, but also a play that they will not expect.

·        Capitalize, capitalize, and capitalize some more! – I can’t stress this enough. I’ve had many discussions with Kris Perovic on this topic in the past. If you spot a mistake, a vulnerable position, or even a slight tell; it’s to your benefit to take advantage of that and act on it. You will win the games you are supposed to win more often if you learn to look for these signs of weakness and put enough pressure on the opponent so he won’t be able to breathe. Very simple.

·        Play the mind games – The key is to keep your opponent guessing. There are a couple of ways to do this. Try switching up your play style during the course of the game. Start out conservative, then go hyper aggressive; vice-versa. Call your opponent’s plays. 90% of the time you’ll be able to do so since everyone makes the same “good” plays and the same mistakes. The minute you become predictable is the minute you have begun a downward slope towards losing the game. Flip this onto your opponent, and call them on their “good” plays. Get a reaction out of them, get them to talk or stop talking, and make sure you don’t let up on them.

 

Of course there are lines that should not be crossed when it comes to mind games. Read a couple of Julia Hedburg’s article of Metagame.com to read about the “rules” behind mind games. I say everything’s fair game so long as you’re belittling your opponent, touching their cards when you’re not supposed to, or just downright being a jerk.

·        Master yourself – To control another’s play style you have to be able to a master of your own first. You’ve got to be conscious of what mannerisms you go through during the course of your game-play. Ask yourself these:

1.      Is there a pattern to my plays?

2.      Do I act a certain way when I am in a losing position?

3.      Do I act a certain way when I am in a winning position?

4.      How do I position my body in reaction to certain situations?

5.      How do I treat my opponent’s in different situations?

6.      Do I get frustrated at my own mistakes?

7.      Do I get frustrated when my opponent capitalizes on my weakness?

 

It’s a learning process. You have to be very conscious of how you act and what you do. Once you are fully aware of your own behavior, then you’ll be able to control it so you won’t give away valuable information. A good tip is to delay your reaction to things. Remember when your mom told you to “count to 10” whenever you got mad? Well, it works folks! Think about it this way…if that luck-sacking n00blet in the 10^th round of the SJC top-decked the only card he needed to get himself out of the situation you put him in stop your thought process for a sec…count to ten in your head…and then look at the field again. You’ll find that not only are you not that upset about it at all. In fact, you’ll already have the play in mind to swing the game back into your favor!

 

·        Slap Lady Luck in the face! – It seems like the cool thing to do while playing YGO is to blame your losses on luck. “Oh I lost because he top-decked this card” or “I had total control of the game until he top-decked such and such”. Let me give it to you straight up. The actual percentage that your opponent will have the PERFECT HAND he needs to stop you from winning is about the same percentage rating that your opponent will draw all 5 pieces of Exodia opening hand! Which is probably about .000000000000001% anyway right?

 

I’ll put it bluntly…sh*tty players blame their losses on luck. And you know it’s true.

 

Here’s the mystery behind luck in card games; especially YGO. The reason the card your opponent top-decked suddenly became the best card in the world for him in whatever situation you are in is because a play, tell, or other past event created a situation in which your opponent will be able to seize the opportunity or “get lucky”. The same goes if your opponent just plain had a bad hand and something you did made it WAY better. If you don’t want your opponent to rip that Snatch Steal off the top then don’t put yourself in a situation where if in fact he DOES rip Snatch Steal off the top, it won’t even do him any good. If you do put yourself in a situation in which you dramatically increased your opponent’s chance of “getting lucky” and destroying your game plan, then guess what? You messed up!

 

You CAN control how the game flows if you pay attention to what kind of impact each little play makes on the entire game as a whole. For example: Taking that one 1600 LP hit from Banisher of the Radiance when you had Sakuretsu Armor down and Cyber Dragon in hand might end up costing you the game 8 turns later.

 

So then you might be asking yourself: “Bryan, you’re so full of sh*t, how the heck are we supposed to tell when and how my opponent will ‘get lucky’ in any given situation?”

 

My response: “That’s what test-playing is for buddy.”

 

In conclusion…

    

There’s a reason why I stress making the optimal plays rather than the “great” plays. Let everyone else BS around about whether you made a “bad” play or not. If it wins you the game, then you won the game. Pros win the games they are supposed to win. Let the losers around you criticize while you win the game with your “terrible” plays. Learn how to analyze the situation with a very critical eye in the fastest amount of time possible. YGO is a game of quick-wits and being decisive in your actions. It’s not a game for wimps who can’t handle the pressure. Here’s a tip: If I paid any attention to nay-sayers and critics about the plays I make, articles I write, or things I say then I wouldn’t be the DeathJester you know and love today. And you sure as hell won’t be reading this article right now huh? If you’ve got a goal, keep on moving towards it and let the people that don’t DO eat your dust.

 

Until next time everyone…make sure you think about your moves, play hard, and most importantly…have fun!