You just won a PTQ. You're going to win this Pro Tour. You spend months testing, tightening your play. You fall into some good connections. You travel across the world. You hear about the breakout deck of the tournament in time. You register your deck with a friend playing the same 75, both confident with the choice. You hear Round 1 pairings go up. You sit down, showtime.

This moment, the only moment you have been able to think about from the second your opponent offered the handshake in that PTQ final. A day hasn't gone by since without you playing magic. A night hasn't passed without seeing Tarmogoyfs in your dreams. You win the die roll, here it goes. Sick seven-card hand. Keep.

It's now 2pm. You are 0-4, and it's entirely your fault. I'm Nick Spagnolo, and this is how it happened. Twice.

I'm a player from NYC, and have been grinding the northeast PTQ circuit for the last 2.5 years. I qualified for Nationals '08, and won PTQs for Austin and Amsterdam. I top8ed 3 times this season, losing in the finals, the quarters, and then winning the last one. Losing in the finals, and then in the quarters the very next week has a certain sting to it.

When I lose a match deep in a tournament, I have a tendency to replay the game in my head over and over until I figure out where I made a mistake. I almost never blame luck for my losses, as saying you got unlucky (even just to yourself) will neither change the fact that you lost, nor will it help you improve your game. More mistakes are made outside of the individual games than people give credit for. Tons of games are won or lost based on mulligan decisions. How you sideboard between games is just as important as registering the right 60. If the event you're playing in is constructed, you could have always made a different deck choice to change the outcome of your tournament.

Prior to Amsterdam, I had tested Ad Nauseam for weeks. I was confident with the deck and I knew the in's and out's of how to play against each popular match up with it. A week before Amsterdam, I learn of the GW deck that Zvi's team played. I decided to hop off Ad Nauseam and onto the GW train. I liked how powerful the deck was, and it felt good knowing that Zvi was 2 for 2 this year on superstar decks at the Pro Tour.

I believe the GW deck was a good deck for Amsterdam, and I would have won at least 2 more of my extended rounds had I played better. However, I still think my first mistake came from when I switched decks. Even though I thought the GW deck would be a better choice, I had so much more confidence and experience with Ad Nauseam that I would definitely make less mistakes with it than I would with GW. If you've been testing a deck for a long time, it's usually right to stick with it. Thinking that GW would give me a better edge against the field, and have a good match up versus Doran was great, but once I started making in-game mistakes, I lost all that advantage I had worked hard to obtain.

One of the mistakes I made was in round 3, where I was playing against RUG junk. Game 1 I won on the back of a Baneslayer Angel that he wasn't able to answer – so game 2 I opt to play the Baneslayer instead of my Primeval Titan. On his turn, when he plays Jace and bounces my Baneslayer, I knew that I just threw the game. I was never able to catch back up on tempo, and I let Jace be a triple-time walk I let the first game influence the right play – which, with this deck, is ALWAYS play the Primeval Titan.

The next round I am playing against Faeries and have a board of Noble Hierarch, Lotus Cobra, Knight of the Reliquary, against my opponent's 3 untapped lands. I have another Knight and Primeval Titan in my hand, and am considering my options. I decide to attack with just the Lotus Cobra, as I want to fetch up a Stirring Wildwood, Mutavault, or Windbrisk Heights at the end of my opponent's next turn, and to play around Mana Leak. My opponent drops a Vendilion Clique into play before blockers and takes my Titan (I draw a land). He blocks and I decide to search out a Sejiri Steppe to keep my Cobra alive. This was a mistake because I did not re-evaluate the game state now that my Primeval Titan was gone. Suddenly, my Cobra was just a 2/1, and my Knight getting a Manland represented a threat that would stick through Damnation, which now was imperative. Of course, I didn't see this at the time, and post-combat I stop myself before playing my other Knight, just then realizing how bad Damnation would be for me. When he casts Damnation into Doom Blade over the next 2 turns I am suddenly out of this game in which I was in a great position.

A few of the mistakes I made that turn were playing around the wrong cards, not recognizing when to change my plan, and following 2 different lines of play at the same time. Many things went wrong that turn. If I just cast my Primeval Titan pre-combat, I would be a huge favorite to win if he doesn't have the Mana Leak (or other relevant counterspell), and if he does have the Mana Leak, I still have a bigger Knight of the Reliquary and can get in for 3 with my Lotus Cobra, as well as him still needing to play a Damnation (or main phase removal spell) to deal with what I already had on the board. If I let my Lotus Cobra die, and just left up Sejiri Steppe or the ability to search for a Stirring Wildwood at the end of his turn, then I would be weak to Damnation, but I would be a favored to win if he doesn't have the wrath. At the least I would have two more threats for him to deal with.

By the time I searched for that Sejiri Steppe, I had to play the second Knight post combat. At that point, I already threw away my ability to play around Damnation, seeing as if he had it, I was probably losing that game even if I still had the other Knight in my hand.

Another mistake I made that tournament was first pack first pick of the draft, where I took Squadron Hawk over Doom Blade. Turned out it worked well for me, as I ended up with 4 Squadron Hawks and 4 Infantry Veterans among other similarly aggressive cards and an amazing deck that didn't lose a game. Of course, my draft pod was the 1-4 table, so even after winning out, I couldn't make day 2. Not all mistakes end in match losses.

The week before Amsterdam I knew I needed a lot of practice with GW, and there was a standard TCGplayer $75k qualifier in my area. Figuring 7 rounds with Knight of the Reliquary + Primeval Titan in any format couldn't hurt, I played with a direct standard port of Zvi's deck, which turned out to be incredible. I lost in the semifinals, and would definitely play the deck in the next standard event I enter. Here's the list:

[cardlist]

[Creatures]

4 Noble Hierarch

4 Birds of Paradise

4 Lotus Cobra

4 Nest Invader

4 Knight of the Reliquary

4 Baneslayer Angel

4 Primeval Titan

4 Summoning Trap

2 Sun Titan

[/Creatures]

[Lands]

4 Misty Rainforest

3 Verdant Catacombs

6 Forest

1 Island

2 Plains

1 Marsh Flats

1 Stirring Wildwood

1 Kabira Crossroads

2 Celestial Colonnade

1 Seaside Citadel

1 Tectonic Edge

1 Sejiri Steppe

2 Sunpetal Grove

[/Lands]

[Sideboard]

3 Lodestone Golem

2 Relic of Progenitus

3 Linvala, Keeper of Silence

3 Jace, The Mind Sculptor

4 Obstinate Baloth

[/Sideboard]

[/cardlist]

The deck was extremely powerful, almost always playing turn 3 Titan or Baneslayer Angel. This was the first time I ever played a deck like this, and it helped me learn a very important lesson about mulliganing. Playing a deck like this (such as mythic), you need to mulligan very aggressively. Your draws are so explosive, that when you keep a hand without a 1 drop, or without a threat, you are severely decreasing your chances of winning the game. If you are going to play this deck, I would highly recommend playing some games with it first, to see what kind of draws you can keep and what you can't.

In the $75k qualifier, I swept through the swiss on the back of a turn 3 Primeval Titan nearly every game. I mulled an average of twice per match, and won 4 or 5 games on a mull to 5. In game 2 of the semis, I was against Pyromancer Ascension, and had a 5 card hand of Sunpetal Grove, Nest Invader, Knight of the Reliquary, Baneslayer Angel, Primeval Titan. I tanked for a while and decided to mull it, figuring that even if I drew the lands I needed (4 in a row), that hand wasn't good enough to win against any decent Pyromancer draw. My 4 card hand had both Lodestone Golem and Jace, and I nearly won off a mull to 4. If you aren't comfortable with mulliganing a lot, don't play this deck.

I love this deck's sideboard, the game plan is always the same. A big mistake I've seen a lot of mythic/bant players make this season has been boarding into too much of a reactive deck. Have you been in these games, where your opponent plays a Noble Hierarch and Birds of Paradise, then casts Mana Leak, Negate, and Flashfreeze, while never presenting a threat? It has happened to me a lot this standard season, and I've almost invariably won those games. With this deck, you're just boarding into different threats, having the specific best card to ramp into after you see what you're up against.

Sometimes, the mistakes you make don't even have anything to do with magic cards. I have 4 unintentional draws in my career, all of which were Day 1 of a Grand Prix. Each of those times, I ended my Day 1 at X-2-1. At GP:LA I dropped at 5-2-1, later kicking myself as I went and saw that some 6-3's Day2d, meaning 6-2-1 was a lock. Another mistake there was not calling a judge on one of my opponents for slow play, potentially avoiding my draw altogether.

At GP:DC, I was 2-0 and played the Superfriends mirror. After 3 long games with both of us playing at a quick pace, time was called. I had 3 Planeswalkers in play to my opponent's empty board and hand. Turn 5 I had a full grip, with Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Ajani Vengeant ready to ultimate, but my opponent wouldn't concede and I couldn't kill him in time. I felt like I shouldn't concede because I was 100% to win – but this was a mistake as well. I had no major technology for the mirror, and I should have realized that none of my best matchups would be in the draw bracket. So instead of scooping, I let us draw, and played the mirror for the next 6 rounds. Ending the Day at 6-2-1 felt bad because I "should have" won that draw, but I was in control of my own fate to go X-1 in a different bracket.

In another light, I could have chosen different decks entirely for those events. I played Gifts Rock, Superfriends, and Landstill. Not exactly the fastest decks around, and if I was worried about getting draws, I could have played decks with faster win conditions.

Some mistakes we make are outside the realm of our knowledge. Have you ever misunderstood how certain cards interacted with each other? Before you say no – think about Figure of Destiny, Mirrorweave, and Snakeform all being legal in the same block constructed format. Have you ever been playing pretty well just to get blown out by a card you didn't even know existed?

It's hard to say definitively what we learned when we talk about our experiences in Magic. The mistakes we make aren't always simple enough to say "don't do that again". I can't say that I will never switch decks before a tournament again, or that I will always call a judge to watch for slow play at the start of every round in a Grand Prix. Some of them seem so obvious, such as "don't drop yourself while you can still make day 2" or "don't board out all of your win conditions", but they happen.

In one way or another, I learned from all these mistakes of mine – I hope by sharing them I was able to help you.