Better Lucky Than Good: Why That's A Load Of Crap

Why are the professionals luckier than the amateurs? Are they just inherently lucky? Hell no. They're lucky because they MAKE THEIR OWN LUCK.  And with practice and skill, you can be just as lucky as the pros.

Picture the following quotes. You've probably heard them, or something exactly like them, before.

"Shit! I almost had him! How the hell did he topdeck a Lightning Bolt when I was on 3?"

"I was going to kill him in ONE TURN, and he drew the Wrath!"

"Lucky bastard drew two sweepers in a row and beat me."

(Sorry for the language to easily offended folks. As you may notice, people can get this way when discussing their losses.)

Now, if you'll bear with me for a moment, I'd like to show you a game where I got galactically lucky. Did I? Yes. Kind of.

I was playing Five-Color Control, my opponent Elf Combo. It's Round 4 of FNM: and in fact, this very game is featured in this article on the site.

Here's the text.

Game 1: He starts off with Nettle Sentinel, and I lay a couple of lands. He plays double Elvish Archdruid and I'm worried about him going off, but instead he bashes me for 11. I pray, and crack a Hallowed Burial off the top. He fights some more, but he's in topdeck mode and I play a Broodmate that gets there.


Pretty lucky huh? Sort of, but I neglected to mention some information.

Here's a rough idea of how the game went down. He laid some cards (including an Archdruid), I laid lands, and laid an EOT Plumeveil. He didn't attack. I laid a Mulldrifter. He drew and Pathed the Plumeveil and started beating down. I drew Cryptic Command, and tapped his guys next turn. I then drew a blank and he bashed me for 11. I drew Hallowed Burial, and played it.

Can you see anything here?

A) I played a Plumeveil at EOT to completely stop his attack.
B) If I'd played it during combat, I couldn't take time off to evoke Mulldrifter.
C) If I hadn't evoked Mulldrifter, I wouldn't have drawn Cryptic Command.
D) If I hadn't tapped his guys with Cryptic Command, I wouldn't have drawn Hallowed Burial.

So this lucky event was in fact, caused by a chain of events: WHICH WERE COMPLETELY DELIBERATE. I knew I needed the Hallowed Burial. I knew I needed to evoke Mulldrifter to increase my chances. I knew I had to play Plumeveil when I did.

And people say 'what a lucksack' and congratulate me on my pull. Now, let's look through our new eyes, and answer the statements from the beginning of the article.

"Shit! I almost had him! How the hell did he topdeck a Lightning Bolt when I was on 3?"

Answer: He manipulated the attacks to get you to 3. Maybe if you'd kept back an extra blocker or saved that Path for a turn or two, you'd be at 5, not 3, in the position to win.

"I was going to kill him in ONE TURN, and he drew the Wrath!"

Answer: See the match above. Maybe he MADE it happen, and you should pay attention to that.

"Lucky bastard drew two sweepers in a row and beat me."

Answer: This also happened to me: because I knew, through hard experience, that I had to use Maelstrom Pulse on Honor of the Pure. Had I not done that, I'd have died with useless Jund Charms in hand.

What's the key here?

Luck is rarely just luck. The more luck you consciously strive for, the more you'll get. Have you ever wondered why the pros get their third land drop when they keep a two-land hand? There's probably a host of variables that went unconsidered by the other guy. Here are some possibilities:

A) He knew the odds of drawing the land when he had to. He was right. Other people were wrong.

B) His deck could survive on two lands for a bit with the right cards: which were in his opening hand. Risk? What risk?

C) He's running 26 lands, not 25, because he knows the extra land may make the difference.

D) He's just lucky. Not to mention stupid, because you can't count on luck. And we all know that pros actually suck at Magic. That's why they win thousands of dollars by beating the crap out of people a lot better than you or me.

Which one is more likely? Somebody CAN get lucky, but people are not inherently lucky. Someone who gets lucky once is one thing. But if someone's just continuously lucky: maybe there's something else going on there. And maybe you can be lucky too: if you strove to make your own.

To conclude, here are some tips for maximizing your luck:

A) If you need a card, take every opportunity to draw that card. Side it in, draw more cards, stall the game, bluff your opponent, whatever will buy you that 5% chance of drawing it. If you don't, you would have lost anyway. If you're going to lose if you don't get that card, nothing else matters.

B) If you win unless your opponent has a card, play around it. If your opponent might have Plumeveil, don't swing with your 2/2 utility creature, just in case.

C) Deckbuilding. If you're unlucky, maybe your deck's flawed. Tweak it to get more of the cards you need, and less of the cards you don't. Tweak the manabase for optimal efficiency.

In conclusion, you have two choices. Either insist that people keep getting lucky against you, or accept that there may be something else at work, and make that part of your skillset. When you're open to being able to do more things with Magic, you improve. When you close your mind, you stagnate. And if I want to be a better player, I know which one I'll do.

Until next time, may you smile and nod when people exclaim how lucky you are.