Better Lucky Than Good

Last Saturday Ian talked me into coming with him to a big Magic pre-release tournament in LA. I had been debating whether or not to go, but I had a blast, so I'm glad I did go. I've been an off and on, very casual player of the game ever since middle school. Prior to this weekend, the last time I played was probably about eight months ago. I expected to be kind of rusty, but I was actually fairly pleased with how well I played.

Anyway, Ian and I played in a special partners format. The two of us were one of 24 teams. It was run as a five round of Swiss-style tournament. Ian and I fought hard through the first two rounds without much difficulty. We hit round 3, and had a match that went from a good start to them coming from behind to hand us our first loss. Round 4 we won fairly easily.

Going into the fifth and final round we knew we had a good chance of getting a prize (top 4) if we could win this round. The other team got off to a quick start, and we helped them out with our only truly bone headed mistake of the night. It wasn't looking good for us, we only had a few turns left to live when I was lucky enough to draw a card that neutralized their primary threat. Still, it was an uphill battle ahead of us. We reached a point where it was a simple race to slowly kill the other team. In the end we emerged victorious thanks to several cards that we drew at the perfect time, some careful playing, and overly cautious play on the part of our opponents.

Result: 3rd place out of 24 teams (Not too shabby) and a heck of a lot of fun.

Note regarding the title: Back at Mudd some of us used the phrase "Better lucky than good" to describe games that contained both a factor of luck and skill (primarily Magic). We got a laugh out of it when one person clearly played better, but lost because of the other player's dumb luck.