Hello folks! Do you remember learning the last time you won? What did you take away from it?

There are a number of cognitive biases that we as people have been known to demonstrate that emerge when rational thinking would lead us to think one thing, but instead, our bias encourages us to make a different decision that is not really rational. Examples include proximity (we often ascribe a higher value to recent things rather than trends), positivity (we often give more credit to people we know or family) or confirmation (we seek out evidence and interpret it in a way that underscores our beliefs). These biases often impact the way we think, relate to others, how we vote, what laws we look to, and more.

Now, they are just a bias. They do not dictate a certain set of actions. No one out there is forcing someone to act this way, and in any given situation there will be actors who are not demonstrating that bias. These are cognitive tendencies only. We can overcome them, especially when aware of them.

One of cognitive biases that we have is the self-serving bias, and that’s what I want to drill down into for Magic.

This bias is simple enough:

I’m sure you can already see where I am going with this key point.

The Dangers of Winning are serious. I won my Magic game tonight! All right! Look how awesome I am!

And this danger is in every game of Magic we play. I have walked away from a multiplayer night of Commander where I won every game and didn’t learn anything because I thought afterward about how great my deck-building skills or board play were. I have walked away from a prelease sealed or 4-3-1-1 draft online and not really stopped to truly think about where I screwed up and what I can take away, because I won. I’ll walk away from a Standard or Modern win at a Friday Night Magic event and I might breathe easily after a tense win, but I’m not learning anything.

That’s the Danger of Winning. There is a temptation to chalk it up to your skill in multiplayer politics, Jedi Mind tricks, deck-building, game play, or sideboarding. I won because of how great I was at those things! I am a good player. I deserved that win. But it’s not easy to really sit and note where we misplayed. Where I put the wrong sideboard card into the deck. Where I didn’t use the right mode on a card. When I jumped and played something too early, or waited too long. I still won the game, right? I still won the game!

Sure! I still won the game! But . . .  if I am not learning from my victory, and growing, then I will allow others to get better when I am standing still. I will miss an opportunity to improve my skills. No match is perfect. You can learn from any victory what you could have done better. Improve for later in the tournament.

Where are you winning and then not learning anything? What formats are you playing that you aren’t still learning as you win? I’m sure you can see the Dangers of Winning.

But there is also a Danger of Losing as well.

It’s easy to blame the poor cards you opened in your Sealed pool. It’s easy to blame mana screw or mana flood. It’s easy to blame the fact you had a poor matchup. It’s easy to blame someone else for giving you bad advice on your deck. It’s easy to line up a litany of excuses as to why we lost that have nothing to do with ourselves.

But once we do, it’s hard to learn from losing. When I blame my loss on mana screw, then what I am learning from it? When I blame my loss on the super powerful cards my foes cracked for Sealed, what am I taking away from it?

There is a real Danger of Losing, too.

I suspect that many of us may have more dangers from one of these than from the other. For me, I am much more motivated from a loss to learn from my mistakes than I am from a win. After all, it was a loss. I don’t want to lose. I don’t play a game so I can lose it. I feel like I am much more reflective and open to learning from where I screwed up when I lose.

But I know a lot of folks that aren’t. I can roll call dozens of people who haven’t even learned basic multiplayer strategy after losing week after week in six months of playing Commander. I know people who haven’t gotten better from a really bad defeat, because they are too easily demoralized, but they do learn if it was a closer matchup, as they are more motived.

For me, I have the Dangers of Winning. After all, there are two important words and concepts there. I. Won. I won! I’m good. And then I get messed up and bad stuff results. That’s my issue. For me, the Dangers of Winning are more manifest than the Dangers of Losing.

What about you?

Let me give you two examples of this in action for me.

I had the better deck, but Jeroen has a huge reputation, because, you know, he won a Pro Tour. This is arguably the biggest Magic match I’ve ever played. So we play the first game, and as was expected, I win. I don’t recall making any mistakes, and in regards to my questionable call to take out a Jitte with Icefall rather than a land, both Remie and I agreed that was the right play. Then Jeroen sideboards out the Jittes, as they aren’t that good against me for more aggro, trying to read my sideboards. He wins a game fast and it’s all tied up. Game 3 he draws and plays all four Skreds in his deck, which is hard to deal with. And he out sideboards me. Every game he reads what I did the previous one, and keeps up the pressure from the sideboard. I had the better deck, and again, I don’t recall making a dumb mistake that gave away the game in any given match. But Jeroen won the match 3-1.

Now what is my takeaway from that? I could just curse my luck and move on. My foe drew FOUR SKREDS in one game! My foe had a playset of the most powerful card in the format and clearly not playing with the idea of a budget build! My foe had sided in Stone Rains and plays LD! I’m a FNM player at best playing against Jeroen freakin’ Remie! I got a bad draw! In game four I draw five straight mana sources when I had momentum and lost! Yadda yadda.

I could have chalked it up to external factors and moved on.

Want another example from the other side?

I was playing in a Modern Masters 17 Draft on the release weekend, and this is no little 8 person pod, it’s a big release day group of almost 30 people, with a strong Spike-heavy presence of players in the Mobile, AL area. It’s my first MM17 draft, and a few others had started on Friday. Get ready for the crazy . . . 

So, I began with a Domri Rade booster pack, all ready to go. The packs had been shuffled and randomly distributed, and our draft on Release Day was ready to go. And then I cracked my pack and saw it. Ms. Veil was looking right back at me. So, I took her, no questions asked. How do I best play her? When you crack a bomb that early, you can build around her. I felt Rakdos might be the best shell in theory, and looked to potentially move that way. But I was passed Moroii for the second pick. Moroii is a 4/4 flyer for 4 mana in Blue and Black that pings you on your upkeep in classic Juzam Djinn style. It’s like a flying Juzam that’s a 4/4 instead of 5/5. Anyways, Moroii seemed like the best choice in the pack for multiple reasons, such as power level, and I could get behind a color that would slow stuff down, and get me time and card draw to find my bomb. So Dimir it was.

And I never moved into Red, it was closed down hard on both sides of me. Now my Dimir options weren’t amazing. The best cards I got were support cards like Augur of Bolas and Soul Manipulation. Then at the top of pack 2, I opened more serious money: a foil Verdant Catacombs. I’m in the money. I get passed Evil Twin, which I take and solidifies my control and then I am passed a 3rd pick Abrupt Decay. Why is Abrupt Decay here? Because the person who was passing to me in pack 2 had taken Inquisition of Kozilek instead, and the other wanted someone for her deck. Fair enough, financially. So I took it and, with the Catacombs I already had, I began to move to splash Green a bit. I took a pair of Shimmering Grottos, and even a Mystic Genesis, in addition to a few cards here and there . . . 

Then pack 3 happened, and I opened a Tarmogoyf. Yes, a Tarmogoyf. So, the four money cards I opened or picked where all in Green and Black! Pretty crazy, right?¹

I go undefeated heading into the final round, not even dropping a game. And then I lose one game after mulliganing the first hand down to 4.

So here’s a picture of my deck!

And here’s the decklist

Modern Master 2017 Draft ? Limited | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (14)
• 1 Dinrova Horror
• 1 Evil Twin
• 1 Falkenrath Noble
• 1 Mist Raven
• 1 Spire Monitor
• 1 Tandem Lookout
• 1 Tarmogoyf
• 1 Vampire Aristocrat
• 2 Augur of Bolas
• 2 Moroii
• 2 Ogre Jailbreaker

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Liliana of the Veil

• Instants (7)
• 1 Abrupt Decay
• 1 Grisly Spectacle
• 1 Mystic Genesis
• 1 Rewind
• 2 Soul Manipulation
• 1 Recover

• Artifacts (1)
• 1 Dimir Signet

• Lands (17)
• 2 Forest
• 4 Swamp
• 5 Island
• 1 Crumbling Necropolis
• 1 Dimir Guildgate
• 1 Simic Guildgate
• 1 Verdant Catacombs
• 2 Shimmering Grotto

Buy This Deck

And of course, I didn’t drop any games. I tried to be subtle. I was not that person at the table who whoops and hollers at the cards I open and brag about their value. That way I won’t cause a ruckus. But pretty quickly the guy with the Tarmogoyf/Liliana of the Veil makes the rounds. And I noticed something very interesting. It’s no surprise I won the tournament, right? I mean, I have Liliana of the Veil! I have Tarmogoyf! But take another look at my deck. Other than Liliana, is there anything in there that’s not beatable in a normal MM17 draft? No. Moroii is fine as a beater, Evil Twin is a decent clone effect, and other cards like Ogre Jailbreaker and Vampire Aristocrat are okay, but none are these are game-smashing effects. This isn’t an overly synergetic deck. Any draft deck has bombs, and Tarmogoyf is just a 2-drop vanilla creature without the support to really make it work. And let me tell you a secret. I did not have the best deck in the tournament, some had more synergy and some better bombs. So why did I win? Removal? Dropping and protecting Liliana? In part, sure. There are some solid cards in there. But not for the most part.

One of the reasons I won was the reputation of my deck and the cards I opened. At least twice I had wins I should not have had, but my foes sort of dialed out and played on autopilot. Both Game 2s, where they could have taken the lessons from the first game to heart. They were dazzled by the Liliana of the Veil and the other value. I didn’t always deserve to win the tournament based on amazing boardplay or on the power of my draft, but instead did so on my deck’s reputation. Many of my foes had already created a narrative where they lost because of the nuts cards that I opened in my three packs. So, they didn’t learn, especially not after the first game when they lost. I looked at the drafted cards of most of my foes and saw good cards that they could have sideboarded in to improve their chance at beating me. For example, one person had grabbed Delirium Skeins late because it was on color. Well, mass discard like that can be an equalizer. If I have Liliana of the Veil in my hand with three or fewer cards, then I would be forced to discard her. It get you a bullet in your gun. Sure, you get hit as well, but you control the effect and you know when to time it.

And there were many other examples. We’ve all opened a Sealed slate of cards and just looked at it dumbly. How am I supposed to win a big tournament with that?!?! And then . . .  we do! We place in the prize support. I once had a Sealed pool I called the Bombless Wonder at Kaladesh prerelease because It had no major bombs. I’m not even sure I was running a rare. I still got 4th or 5th or something and was collecting prizes at the end of a large prerelease tournament. How often has that happened to you?

The external sources we want to blame are everywhere, and excusing away our losses by associating every element of that loss with an external element might make us feel better, but makes it harder to own and learn from our mistakes. Even worse, crediting your awesome play for winning and not looking hard and learning from your play mistakes or deck-building errors is also an issue.

Where have you allowed the Dangers of Winning and the Dangers of Losing to prevent learning from the results of a game, match, or tournament?

¹ Now get ready for the real crazy. In the packs I got for prize support I opened a Misty Rainforest and Blood Moon. Those six cards by themselves, without adding in anything else, were: $5, $80, $90, $70, $30, $35.

For a total retail value of $310 at the time of the draft. Crazy! I’ve never seen that sort of a haul from a draft before of any sort from anyone I was playing with, let alone from me. The best I had ever done was that foil Thundermaw Hellkite and then Ajani, Caller of the Pride in a FNM draft back when that was more than $100.

But this? It just blows the roof off! The three cards I opened, and did not pass or crack in my prize support were $240. That’s . . .  boggling of my senses.