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Nice Guys Finish Below 33rd Place
May. 28th, 2007 03:06 amSaturday's $13K Spoils tournament was less than magical for me. My card pool was frustrating, and I ended up playing Gearsmith based almost entirely on the merits of One-Legged Hopping Pogo-Bear...which is good, but tricky to play, and probably not worth abandoning perfectly playable cards in Arcanist. = P However, this is hardly my greatest regret from the tournament.
Round 1 I lost due to the hated Samual Gristwalter, a character that prevents my opponent from taking further damage. Find a way to kill Sammy, or give up. Sadly, my attempts to draw into something that could kill Sammy meant I fell behind on board position and ultimately lost before I could kill him. This was disappointing, but dismissable as a fluke. Sam is a rare, and not everyone is going to have him.
Round 2 I just got mowed down. It was horrible. Round 3 I made a stupid mistake and also lost. Now I was getting truly discouraged. I mean, I have 56 STE points, and have won or placed highly in enough other tournaments to win over $700 playing this game. I don't suck. Or, at least, I didn't suck prior to this tournament.
I managed to win Rounds 4-6, and that meant that if I could manage to win Round 7 I would still get $100.75 and feel somewhat better about myself. This is a big tournament, the prize is on the line, and that means you don't let people take back their mistakes, and you play mercilessly. So, what did I do when my opponent in round 7 asked to take back a silly mistake? I let them. I didn't think about it, I just said "sure," because I'm basically a nice person, and I'd have to be a jerk to say no, right? Half a second after I said it, I realized how stupid it was. Of course you can't take that back! Aaargh! Naturally, I went on to lose that game.
The extra crappy part of this story is that when I congratulated him on probably edging by into the $100 prize bracket with his 4 win/3 loss record, he told me that he actually only had 3 wins and a draw. Great - so neither of us get anything. This would have been good to know before we filled out the results slip. There's no reason for us both to go home with nothing.
Oh, well. I'm trying not to let it bother me, but I'm also trying to make sure that I file the memory of that game away for future tournaments, so that before I tell someone they can take back their bonehead mistake in the final round of the huge tournament I will think of that game and realize that the answer is "No, you're screwed."
Round 1 I lost due to the hated Samual Gristwalter, a character that prevents my opponent from taking further damage. Find a way to kill Sammy, or give up. Sadly, my attempts to draw into something that could kill Sammy meant I fell behind on board position and ultimately lost before I could kill him. This was disappointing, but dismissable as a fluke. Sam is a rare, and not everyone is going to have him.
Round 2 I just got mowed down. It was horrible. Round 3 I made a stupid mistake and also lost. Now I was getting truly discouraged. I mean, I have 56 STE points, and have won or placed highly in enough other tournaments to win over $700 playing this game. I don't suck. Or, at least, I didn't suck prior to this tournament.
I managed to win Rounds 4-6, and that meant that if I could manage to win Round 7 I would still get $100.75 and feel somewhat better about myself. This is a big tournament, the prize is on the line, and that means you don't let people take back their mistakes, and you play mercilessly. So, what did I do when my opponent in round 7 asked to take back a silly mistake? I let them. I didn't think about it, I just said "sure," because I'm basically a nice person, and I'd have to be a jerk to say no, right? Half a second after I said it, I realized how stupid it was. Of course you can't take that back! Aaargh! Naturally, I went on to lose that game.
The extra crappy part of this story is that when I congratulated him on probably edging by into the $100 prize bracket with his 4 win/3 loss record, he told me that he actually only had 3 wins and a draw. Great - so neither of us get anything. This would have been good to know before we filled out the results slip. There's no reason for us both to go home with nothing.
Oh, well. I'm trying not to let it bother me, but I'm also trying to make sure that I file the memory of that game away for future tournaments, so that before I tell someone they can take back their bonehead mistake in the final round of the huge tournament I will think of that game and realize that the answer is "No, you're screwed."
