For most of us, it really sucks. I've said it in the past, but I hate losing. I despise it, and every time I lose a match (especially one I should not have), it puts a very foul taste in my mouth. I'm normally a really easygoing guy, but losing is one of the few things in the world that can upset me, often irrationally so. I used to become a very not fun person upon losing, but with age has come a bit more self-restraint.

I read something a few months ago that inspired me to reconsider some of my personal beliefs on losing. I couldn't find the original quote sadly, so I'll paraphrase: expecting to lose is a destructive mindset. We all know that we are going to lose matches, but walking into any situation with an expectation of losing is tantamount to conceding an edge. If you are willing to lose and your opponent is not, who do you think is going to claw tooth and nail for victory?

Question the fashions in which you are willing to lose. Do you get mad if you lose a bad matchup? If you draw no quests, will it bug you to lose the game? How about if your opponent rips the nuts? What if it's in the semifinals of the World Championships: would you be upset to lose there? If you answered “No, I would be fine with that” to any of those questions, then maybe you don't want to win enough. None of those are on my list of moments where it is “acceptable” to lose. Each and every one of the listed situations would upset me, at least for a moment, and send me wondering what I could have done differently. How I could have compensated. My list of acceptable losses is in fact very small.

1. Losing here will increase my overall success.

The two examples of this that come to mind are team splits and Top 8 manipulations. At the Sunday iPod Draft in Seattle, I managed to scrape and claw my way to the semifinals with a quite poopy deck. I was quite satisfied with that because it put me in the bracket to send my teammate, with a far superior deck, into the finals. If it weren't for the German coverage on the match, I'd have signed that slip when we sat down. Chris winning the finals was a lot more likely than me, so the loss increased our mutual expected prize payout. Win-win.

Top 8 manipulation is when an undefeated or perhaps very well-positioned X-1 player concedes in the last round in an attempt to create a better bracket for himself or to increase a friend's chance at Top 8. This is tricky to predict, but it can be effective and it is generally easy to figure out when there is any risk. There are probably other scenarios that incorporate this principle; these were just the first two I thought about.

2. I am physically incapable of playing.

This is rarer, but it has happened to me before. At one tournament I took Vicodin for an excessive headache (No judgment! No other pills available) but accidentally took too many as a result of these pills being more concentrated than stuff I'd had in the past. I went from drugged to unconscious over four rounds where I lost my first match before waking up to play the elimination rounds. I was not too upset about that one.

In a relatively high stakes poker tournament a waitress served me an incorrect order (I have a severe allergy to a specific set of nuts), and in addition to nearly dying, I was eliminated via blinds in absentia. Excessive fatigue or disease can also be inescapable problems; this is one aspect of fate I give up control of. Sometimes you don't have it in you.

And that's pretty much it. Those are the few situations in which I walk away satisfied with a loss.

Some people in Seattle congratulated me on tenth, and others were a bit shocked when I expressed how disappointed I was. It's simple: I did not expect to take tenth! If I expected to take tenth, I probably wouldn't have flown across the continental United States to play WoW. I expected to first make Top 8, and then expected to play my hardest and earn a match in the finals, which I would win. It doesn't matter where the tournament actually is: why would I enter if I didn't expect victory? Trips are fun, so I have reasons to make those. But if I'm working on a format and handing in an entry fee, I want first place.

Returning to the Seattle iPod Draft for a moment... Naturally, if I thought my deck was capable of winning the finals, I would have wanted that opportunity. But because pack 2 was much stronger for the Alliance to my left than packs 1 and 3 combined had been for me, I knew Chris and Kim's decks were better than mine and that David had sandwiched himself into Horde perfectly. I had the worst deck in the Top 4 and I was pragmatic enough to know it. Don't mistake high expectations for delusions of grandeur: expecting a miracle doesn't make it any more likely. Realism takes precedence. I truly believed I was capable of winning DMF Seattle, and that sort of belief is empowering.

My focus on victory is admittedly single-minded, but it can also be a double-edged sword. I walk away from a fair few tournaments disappointed: the Sunday iPod Draft was the only event I played in all weekend that was mildly satisfying, and even that was a bit maddening due to how weird the final draft was.

Because I don't allow myself situations in which losing is an acceptable outcome, there is naturally only one place to turn the blame: myself. I think a key part of being good at anything is knowing exactly how bad you are at it, and in that respect you must be willing to account for your losses. Not just the big, obvious ones, but the niche ones where you made a tight decision that came out the wrong way.

In my world, as soon as I ask “was ____ my fault?” I already know the answer. I once read that the key to improving was to approach each game as an opportunity to get better: if that is the case, then when you enter each game you are not good enough yet. It doesn't matter if you win the game or lose it (fine, it matters a little). Could you have won it better? Faster? Did you give something away with a tell? Even if an opponent doesn't catch it, that's the sort of stuff you can't afford to be doing with the money on the line against someone who may see it.

The most important time to study why we lose is when losing matters the most: the final round. I can boast some experience with this, as I used to be the worst clutch player I knew. When I started drafting for money I always tried for fast, aggressive decks because if the score got close and it was all on my shoulders, I would tend to punt. To some extent I've beaten that problem, but it is fresh in my mind that three of the four total matches I lost on my Seattle weekend were the last rounds I would get to play in those tournaments.

Why do we lose in the final round? Pressure is the most obvious answer often given, and it's valid. The more a player stands to win or lose, the more anxiety they will experience, which in turn can affect their play negatively. Some players shine under this sort of influence, some don't, but the big trick of it is that practicing play under these conditions is difficult. How often do you get to play DMF bubble rounds?

The best solution I found, as I alluded to above, is actually working a little gambling into your local games with friends. My attempts to avoid bearing the responsibility of winning were hardly helping to improve my ability! When you've got a twenty or a dinner check riding on a match, in addition to the obvious bragging rights you can simulate the experience of playing important matches under a crowd's eyes. And beating that experience simply requires you to play that match as well as you would play any other. Each match is nothing more than a chance to play your best. You can't think about the fact that a misplay might be worth a grand. Just think about what play will win you the game: nothing more, nothing less.

So after all this, it goes without saying that you can't stop losing. No one will ever just become an unbeatable phantom. But losing less often, that is very possible! The big enemy is complacency: too many people are comfortable with their level of play. How is being comfortable helpful? I make at least one mistake per game, and often more. As a coverage writer and as a player I've yet to see anyone ever play an entire game perfectly. I've seen some of the world's best players win a match, then immediately turn around and tell their friends about the misplay they made three turns ago. That's the correct focus! Celebrating a win is fun, but it's not useful. Minimizing imperfections is the path to minimizing losses.

I might be proud of making only one mistake in a game, especially if that mistake is something minor. Like staring at my opponent when I attempt a bluff, or reaching for my pen before I should: small stuff. But I won't be satisfied by it!

-Glenn Jones
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