Another great one. Sidebar, whenever you move, if you don't have a hugely pressing need for the mattress, keep it in the background of the new set. I think it's part of the brand at this point.
Great video! This reminds me of a paradox in philosophy, often referred to as 'Buridan's Ass', which imagines a donkey that is starving but standing equally distant from two basically identical bales of hay. Since the donkey has no reason to pick one bale of hay over the other, it spends so long agonizing over the decision that it starves to death.
Interestingly, I actually have the opposite of this problem, and it comes from playing fast paced video games. In fast games, when you have a choice to make, you have to choose immediately and without hesitation, to make no choice at all is the worst possible outcome. Unfortunately in MTG this leads to me playing faster than I should, often just basing choices on heuristics rather than truly thinking thru the game state. I need to slow down and think things thru to the point where I actually do start getting anxious between two equal choices.
I know this is an old post but one thing I've found that helps with this is trying to hold the card for a few seconds when you drag it out of your hand before you drop it. Even 3 seconds can be enough to give your brain a chance to reconsider (or consider in the first place). I see good streamers do this -- they describe their play, drag the card out, then hold for a couple seconds before letting go. Sometimes they change their mind, and if they had dropped it straight away they wouldn't have been able to.
Extremely valuable advice for me personally since I do agonize about comparing two cards often. I would go out on a limb and say generally speaking, MTG players are hyper critical of their deck choices, others and themselves. I think it’s just in our nature. I love the fact that you said even if you made the “CORRECT” choice at 51% you’ll still never know if you made the right choice. Thanks PVDDR
Great point on that Finkel quote. It's smart, but something always felt slightly off about it. You're right: Don't let the "perfect" be the enemy of the "good".
Thank you, PV. And I second the notion that you should release your articles as a book. I've read a lot of your work and it would be awesome to have it all in one or two volumes. Thanks again.
I loved this video. Decision paralysis is a real thing, and for people with anxiety it's even worse. As for the quote, I couldn't agree more. Of course in Magic you can't choose not to make a decision - at the end of the day you HAVE to do something - but in real life sometimes dreaming abut the perfect plan (or moment, or circumstances) make us forget that we have to work with what we have in front of us, and what we have, most of the times, is good enough.
Gostei sobre a frase "o inimigo de um bom plano é o sonho de um plano perfeito", faz muito sentido! Obrigada por mais um vídeo top que vai ajudar muito!!✨✨✨✨✨
Paulo, this is one of the most interesting aspects of the game for me and I'm very happy that you share your knowledge with us. Over the years I read a lot of your articles and it helped me a lot. Have you ever considered compiling what you've already written, especially the theoretical part of the game, and releasing it into a book? Even if it has one or two things to update, it would be an amazing content. Grande abraço, meu caro.
Thanks! I have considered it but I feel like it would just be repeating a lot of what I wrote in articles so I don't know if there would be much interest in it :(
@@PVDDRMTG Compiling your articles into a book is a time - honoured tradition of communists. A book is a lot more useful than an internet archive of out-of-date examples.
@@PVDDRMTG IMO it will be a total success, even if you repeat most of your content, it looks very interesting to have it all together in a book, also it will allow you to have your content in different languages for more reach. I would buy it for me and as a gift to any magic friend who wants to improve. Hope you reconsider it!
Real story about you: GP Yokohama 2019 I was in line to claim my freebies of foil Lightning Bolt and the playmat. They made a logistical error of putting my name down twice and tried to give me two sets even though I only paid once. I felt uneasy because obviously it was my conscience bothering me. I look back and I see PVDD. I dont know if you knew, but you just gave an innocent "eh" shrug. I decided to be honest and give the extra package back. Of course doing the right thing mattered in this case, but man did it remind me of that moment :)
Yup, I learned this point from watching Ben Stark's draft streams. It's very valuable. The advice doesn't stop at MtG either. That said, note that it doesn't apply in any areas of life where returns are highly nonlinear (e.g. charities differ in their impact by many orders of magnitude; choosing a "good enough" one there would forfeit most of your impact). In those situations, a better approach would be a venture-capital hits-based approach, i.e. trying to make enough good bets that a few of them pay off with outsized returns.
Sometimes what's better than an optimized deck or a timely sideboard is just a good night's sleep. The biggest decision you can make in a tournament is being able to show up mentally ready to play.
Yeah for sure, mostly I meant other decisions and possible outcomes that are giving me anxiety. The mindset you’re talking about really helps me with that. Thanks for all the great content,!
"If it made a difference, you would know about it." If this statement is true, there would be no bad magic players and no bad decisions. If one cards is clearly superior to another in a certain context is not often not obvious. It often takes lots of experience and thorough consideration to make a good decision. Still getting your point though! When I'm in this situation, where neither choice is better than another, I take this as an opportunity to tune my deck according to my taste. This gives us some freedom to choose art that fits the spirit of the deck better or to choose the card that is more fun to play, without compromising the power of our decks.
For PV's examples, in the dark, I'd take: (1) The more generically-useful card - with Negate vs Test of Talents, I'd take Negate. (2) The higher-rarity card - common vs uncommon at around the same power level, I'd take the uncommon. (The uncommon probably has some occasional upside that matters compared to the common.)
Good advice, for far more than just MtG or other games. I think it's also good (both for MtG and real life) to also remember that this applies to bad choices too. If you only have bad choices and can't decide which is worse....then it doesn't matter with respect to your information.
Parabéns PV, seu vídeo é de um ensinamento a meu ver universal, pode se aplicar a qualquer ciência humana. Na minha área isso ocorre muitas vezes e é impressionante como tanto os profissionais quanto os leigos não lidam ou aceitam esse conceito de que dois tratamentos diferentes podem ser iguais, ou, como vc disse, não iguais, mas tão parecidos que na nossa insignificância somos incapazes de descobrir o ideal por mais que testemos. Boa sorte e bons torneios p vc.
On those cases, I definitely go with what's better on the mirror. My reasoning is that if I believe X is the better deck for the event, then the better players will possibly figure it out too. (Unless I haven't properly prepared or have reason to believe other deck will be the majority.)
Salve, PV! Parabéns pelo vídeo. Gostei muito! O que eu reparei no vídeo é que, para chegar ao ponto do "it doesn't matter", é necessário algo prévio: preparação. Todos os exemplos que você deu foram de situações nas quais você testou exaustivamente os decks, passou horas/semanas escolhendo cartas, até chegar no momento da decisão. Nesse momento, você identifica as jogadas ruins, descarta e fica com as boas o sufuciente. Só dá pra perceber isso tudo com muito treino, preparação, conhecer meta/matchups, estudar mesmo o formato. Você concorda?
Seus vídeos são incríveis! Obrigado por compartilhar parte do seu conhecimento e da sua visão do jogo. Ajuda muitos jogadores a melhorarem e curtirem ainda mais o Magic
When I draft if I'm in doubt between two options, I default to which card is stronger on its own. Even if we as players while building a draft deck, normally gravitate towards a particular archtype or to synergies between some cards, often I've found that those plans don't come to fruition or achieve their full potential as the game unfolds and you're forced to react to whatever the opponent is doing. If the opponent interacts with a piece of a planned synnergy, the whole thing could crumble to dust, whereas something that's strong in a vacuum is more likely, IMO, to force the opponent into making horrible trade-offs in order to deal with it.
Muito bom o vídeo, PV. Creio que a mesma lógica possa ser aplicada ao longo de uma partida, onde vc tem 2 alternativas e, mtas vezes, ambas são tão equivalentes em termos de pros e contras, que nao vale a pena se abalar se a decisão adotada acaba nao dando certo. Abs e se cuide!
@@PVDDRMTG i don't know if you're being sarcastic - I'm the tilting guy who hate Rogues, I posted a comment long ago saying that was a braindead deck. u hard punished me for that and I learned a lot - and that's the rivalry, but I mean it in a friendly way. I'd love to hear why Rock / Jund decks can't catch up nowadays, and how much of this situation is caused by Bonecrusher Giants, which imho it's an immense design error. maybe across formats would be even better, playing Jund it's almost a clickbait, "let's see this fool trying to win with a curve and not with cascade and built-in 2-for-1 tempo plays"
To be honest I like playing with tournament decks in non-tournament settings. The mistakes I make are often based on the automation in my mind causing play mistakes that wouldn't be play mistakes in a casual game. For example, I down ticked my small teferi and began thinking about other stuff, only to notice that my opponent hadn't bounced the only creature on his board while I did the draw. In my mind when I down tick my teferi and my opponent only has one inland permanent on the board, he ought to be doing the work to bounce that permanent while I do the other ability.
To be fair, if you arent in a tournament setting its not fair to assume your opponent knows what you want them to do if you arent verbally communicating your triggers and targets.
In my opinion, a better way to change that saying is to: "There are only 2 kinds of plays, great plays and bad plays". Once you get decisions down to two great plays, I think you should, first, re-examine the situation as a whole (ever tanked for 2-3 minutes, only to eventually make a play you had disregarded as terrible within the first 10 seconds?), and after that go with your gut. Re-examining the situation as a whole is often quite important
in chess the saying is "long think, wrong think." You can spend an hour agonizing over which of your rooks to move to the open file (with no pawns blocking it), and then just like you said 9/10 times both moves work. And then the times it does matter it's always the other one anyway :p
Nesses casos de dúvida, como vc usou o exemplo do negate e test of talents, se eu usaria 3 slots do side para uma dessas cartas, é errado colocar 2 cópias de negate e 1 cópia de test, ou vice versa? Acha isso válido, não faz tanta diferença ou não é correto?
I think Finkel is right in that there is in fact a statistically best play every time based on stock lists, but that math is impossible for most players most of the time
"The enemy of the good plan is the dream of a perfect plan"
I didn't know this one
It applies to so much more than MTG
Excellent video, as always!
Thanks, glad you liked it!
That line is one of the best things I’ve ever heard
Remember seeing it when playing Empire Total War. Quote is from Prussian General Karl von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, 1832
“Perfect is the enemy of good” is another way it’s said.
"If you can't choose which card in a draft is better, it's probably not a huge difference"
No, it's just because I'm terrible at draft!
I feel you
My draft decks : Pauper
My opponent's deck: Opening hand 4 rares
I feel attacked!
That's the beginning of 1-3 draft haha
Lol I guess that can be another cause of the symptom yes ;P
Another great one. Sidebar, whenever you move, if you don't have a hugely pressing need for the mattress, keep it in the background of the new set. I think it's part of the brand at this point.
Lol I will definitely have a pressing need for it :)
Great video! This reminds me of a paradox in philosophy, often referred to as 'Buridan's Ass', which imagines a donkey that is starving but standing equally distant from two basically identical bales of hay. Since the donkey has no reason to pick one bale of hay over the other, it spends so long agonizing over the decision that it starves to death.
“It just doesn’t matter”, wise words to live by.
Interestingly, I actually have the opposite of this problem, and it comes from playing fast paced video games. In fast games, when you have a choice to make, you have to choose immediately and without hesitation, to make no choice at all is the worst possible outcome. Unfortunately in MTG this leads to me playing faster than I should, often just basing choices on heuristics rather than truly thinking thru the game state. I need to slow down and think things thru to the point where I actually do start getting anxious between two equal choices.
I know this is an old post but one thing I've found that helps with this is trying to hold the card for a few seconds when you drag it out of your hand before you drop it. Even 3 seconds can be enough to give your brain a chance to reconsider (or consider in the first place).
I see good streamers do this -- they describe their play, drag the card out, then hold for a couple seconds before letting go. Sometimes they change their mind, and if they had dropped it straight away they wouldn't have been able to.
Extremely valuable advice for me personally since I do agonize about comparing two cards often.
I would go out on a limb and say generally speaking, MTG players are hyper critical of their deck choices, others and themselves. I think it’s just in our nature.
I love the fact that you said even if you made the “CORRECT” choice at 51% you’ll still never know if you made the right choice.
Thanks PVDDR
Great point on that Finkel quote. It's smart, but something always felt slightly off about it. You're right: Don't let the "perfect" be the enemy of the "good".
Thanks!
Thank you, PV. And I second the notion that you should release your articles as a book. I've read a lot of your work and it would be awesome to have it all in one or two volumes. Thanks again.
I've thought about it but I honestly dont know if there would be enough interest to justify it :/
@@PVDDRMTG claro que vai ter! Publique em ebook na amazon! Eu compro.
I loved this video. Decision paralysis is a real thing, and for people with anxiety it's even worse. As for the quote, I couldn't agree more. Of course in Magic you can't choose not to make a decision - at the end of the day you HAVE to do something - but in real life sometimes dreaming abut the perfect plan (or moment, or circumstances) make us forget that we have to work with what we have in front of us, and what we have, most of the times, is good enough.
Gostei sobre a frase "o inimigo de um bom plano é o sonho de um plano perfeito", faz muito sentido! Obrigada por mais um vídeo top que vai ajudar muito!!✨✨✨✨✨
vlw o/
Paulo, this is one of the most interesting aspects of the game for me and I'm very happy that you share your knowledge with us. Over the years I read a lot of your articles and it helped me a lot. Have you ever considered compiling what you've already written, especially the theoretical part of the game, and releasing it into a book? Even if it has one or two things to update, it would be an amazing content. Grande abraço, meu caro.
Thanks! I have considered it but I feel like it would just be repeating a lot of what I wrote in articles so I don't know if there would be much interest in it :(
@@PVDDRMTG I know I’d personally love to buy it, having everything centralized in a paper copy book would be great.
@@PVDDRMTG Compiling your articles into a book is a time - honoured tradition of communists. A book is a lot more useful than an internet archive of out-of-date examples.
@@PVDDRMTG IMO it will be a total success, even if you repeat most of your content, it looks very interesting to have it all together in a book, also it will allow you to have your content in different languages for more reach. I would buy it for me and as a gift to any magic friend who wants to improve. Hope you reconsider it!
@@PVDDRMTG Start a kickstarter? I would sign up. Also I am the type that is too lazy to read seperate articles but would totally own a book.
I have never thought about this and it makes complete sense. You're the best!
Thanks, glad you liked it!
Real story about you: GP Yokohama 2019 I was in line to claim my freebies of foil Lightning Bolt and the playmat. They made a logistical error of putting my name down twice and tried to give me two sets even though I only paid once. I felt uneasy because obviously it was my conscience bothering me. I look back and I see PVDD. I dont know if you knew, but you just gave an innocent "eh" shrug. I decided to be honest and give the extra package back. Of course doing the right thing mattered in this case, but man did it remind me of that moment :)
Simple yet powerful advice.. thanks PVD!
This was incredibly subtle but equally one of the most powerful things I've encountered re: strategy.
Yup, I learned this point from watching Ben Stark's draft streams. It's very valuable. The advice doesn't stop at MtG either. That said, note that it doesn't apply in any areas of life where returns are highly nonlinear (e.g. charities differ in their impact by many orders of magnitude; choosing a "good enough" one there would forfeit most of your impact). In those situations, a better approach would be a venture-capital hits-based approach, i.e. trying to make enough good bets that a few of them pay off with outsized returns.
Yeah it's definitely not something that applies to literally everything
Paulo! You should post more frequently! You are the best
Sometimes what's better than an optimized deck or a timely sideboard is just a good night's sleep. The biggest decision you can make in a tournament is being able to show up mentally ready to play.
This is such an excellent advice, it really helped me ! Wish you all the best in your future career
Reminds me of the line from tools song lateralus (overthinking overanalyzing sperates the body from the mind).
That's an awesome song / album / band! :D
I can apply this to sooo many things in my life not just magic
Yeah, I wouldn't apply it to everything but I guess it can be applied to a lot of other stuff
Yeah for sure, mostly I meant other decisions and possible outcomes that are giving me anxiety. The mindset you’re talking about really helps me with that. Thanks for all the great content,!
"If it made a difference, you would know about it."
If this statement is true, there would be no bad magic players and no bad decisions.
If one cards is clearly superior to another in a certain context is not often not obvious. It often takes lots of experience and thorough consideration to make a good decision.
Still getting your point though! When I'm in this situation, where neither choice is better than another, I take this as an opportunity to tune my deck according to my taste. This gives us some freedom to choose art that fits the spirit of the deck better or to choose the card that is more fun to play, without compromising the power of our decks.
For PV's examples, in the dark, I'd take:
(1) The more generically-useful card - with Negate vs Test of Talents, I'd take Negate.
(2) The higher-rarity card - common vs uncommon at around the same power level, I'd take the uncommon. (The uncommon probably has some occasional upside that matters compared to the common.)
Absolutely brilliant, and it applies to WAY more than MTG.
Yeah, I wouldn't apply it to everything but I guess it can be applied to a lot of other stuff
Thanks for the video Paulo! This is very helpful. Also in non-magic things.
Good advice, for far more than just MtG or other games.
I think it's also good (both for MtG and real life) to also remember that this applies to bad choices too. If you only have bad choices and can't decide which is worse....then it doesn't matter with respect to your information.
Parabéns PV, seu vídeo é de um ensinamento a meu ver universal, pode se aplicar a qualquer ciência humana. Na minha área isso ocorre muitas vezes e é impressionante como tanto os profissionais quanto os leigos não lidam ou aceitam esse conceito de que dois tratamentos diferentes podem ser iguais, ou, como vc disse, não iguais, mas tão parecidos que na nossa insignificância somos incapazes de descobrir o ideal por mais que testemos. Boa sorte e bons torneios p vc.
Vlw :)
On those cases, I definitely go with what's better on the mirror. My reasoning is that if I believe X is the better deck for the event, then the better players will possibly figure it out too.
(Unless I haven't properly prepared or have reason to believe other deck will be the majority.)
Salve, PV! Parabéns pelo vídeo. Gostei muito!
O que eu reparei no vídeo é que, para chegar ao ponto do "it doesn't matter", é necessário algo prévio: preparação. Todos os exemplos que você deu foram de situações nas quais você testou exaustivamente os decks, passou horas/semanas escolhendo cartas, até chegar no momento da decisão. Nesse momento, você identifica as jogadas ruins, descarta e fica com as boas o sufuciente. Só dá pra perceber isso tudo com muito treino, preparação, conhecer meta/matchups, estudar mesmo o formato. Você concorda?
Seus vídeos são incríveis! Obrigado por compartilhar parte do seu conhecimento e da sua visão do jogo. Ajuda muitos jogadores a melhorarem e curtirem ainda mais o Magic
Vlw!
Godspeed in the Championship this weekend!
Paolo: It doesn't mattress
God: It does
this video also helps in real life:)
Outro ótimo vídeo. Muito obrigado PV !!!!
amazing insights, eliminate enough bad plays and you might just get good lol
PV seu lindo, orgulho da nação
:D
Gosh
That's' really helpful actually, thanks a lot PV!
When I draft if I'm in doubt between two options, I default to which card is stronger on its own. Even if we as players while building a draft deck, normally gravitate towards a particular archtype or to synergies between some cards, often I've found that those plans don't come to fruition or achieve their full potential as the game unfolds and you're forced to react to whatever the opponent is doing. If the opponent interacts with a piece of a planned synnergy, the whole thing could crumble to dust, whereas something that's strong in a vacuum is more likely, IMO, to force the opponent into making horrible trade-offs in order to deal with it.
Muito bom o vídeo, PV. Creio que a mesma lógica possa ser aplicada ao longo de uma partida, onde vc tem 2 alternativas e, mtas vezes, ambas são tão equivalentes em termos de pros e contras, que nao vale a pena se abalar se a decisão adotada acaba nao dando certo. Abs e se cuide!
Sim, eu inclusivo falo sobre isso no video quando dou o exemplo do Akroan War! Que o importante eh eliminar as ruins e nao focar na perfeita
more of this! great video. our rivalry continues :-*
Thanks! Which rivalry? :P
@@PVDDRMTG i don't know if you're being sarcastic - I'm the tilting guy who hate Rogues, I posted a comment long ago saying that was a braindead deck. u hard punished me for that and I learned a lot - and that's the rivalry, but I mean it in a friendly way. I'd love to hear why Rock / Jund decks can't catch up nowadays, and how much of this situation is caused by Bonecrusher Giants, which imho it's an immense design error. maybe across formats would be even better, playing Jund it's almost a clickbait, "let's see this fool trying to win with a curve and not with cascade and built-in 2-for-1 tempo plays"
To be honest I like playing with tournament decks in non-tournament settings. The mistakes I make are often based on the automation in my mind causing play mistakes that wouldn't be play mistakes in a casual game. For example, I down ticked my small teferi and began thinking about other stuff, only to notice that my opponent hadn't bounced the only creature on his board while I did the draw. In my mind when I down tick my teferi and my opponent only has one inland permanent on the board, he ought to be doing the work to bounce that permanent while I do the other ability.
To be fair, if you arent in a tournament setting its not fair to assume your opponent knows what you want them to do if you arent verbally communicating your triggers and targets.
thanks PV!
Really helpful and insightful. Obrigado 👍
In my opinion, a better way to change that saying is to: "There are only 2 kinds of plays, great plays and bad plays". Once you get decisions down to two great plays, I think you should, first, re-examine the situation as a whole (ever tanked for 2-3 minutes, only to eventually make a play you had disregarded as terrible within the first 10 seconds?), and after that go with your gut. Re-examining the situation as a whole is often quite important
in chess the saying is "long think, wrong think." You can spend an hour agonizing over which of your rooks to move to the open file (with no pawns blocking it), and then just like you said 9/10 times both moves work.
And then the times it does matter it's always the other one anyway :p
Nesses casos de dúvida, como vc usou o exemplo do negate e test of talents, se eu usaria 3 slots do side para uma dessas cartas, é errado colocar 2 cópias de negate e 1 cópia de test, ou vice versa? Acha isso válido, não faz tanta diferença ou não é correto?
Magic = life
Well that clears it up, Negate is better. Thanks God!
Maybe the diffrence between Finkel and us is that Finkel actually finds the small diffrence between 2 extremly similar plays.
TIL God plays Magic
I think Finkel is right in that there is in fact a statistically best play every time based on stock lists, but that math is impossible for most players most of the time
4:18 Agonizing Remorse? Eheh
This is vídeo is PVDDR telling us: You know nothing, just play.
I knew PVDDR was a robot; created by WotC to dominate Magic! Hear him talking about how humans play???
Hah! Just kiddin'. Thanks for the video
What happened to you, PV? Hope you’re doing alright.
TLDR: Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
BR PLZ!
I'm not sure whether to take this advice or not
Why?
top
God would just say: play red
Summary: When in doubt, just flip a coin. Because at the end, this is just a card game.
Porque é que naquele canal Um Motivo só você fala em português e aqui você só fala em inglês?
Aviso: O comentário acima foi uma brincadeira a respeito da semelhança entre os dois. Pela atenção, obrigado.
Nice advice. Just please improve a little your background.
One important thing about mental games: Use emotes during the game 😈
Another important thing about mental games: Their pet does a cute animation when you mute them
@@lucarr1041 why muting? 🤣 Be corageous
Put a mattress on the wall.
First!