If you missed them, here are Part 2 and Part 3 of this series

The Amsterdam PTQ season has come to a close, and a few hundred people around the world have won themselves a plane ticket and a chance to be a part of the big game. They are looking at new Extended, and planning out their travel itineraries.

If you are not one of those people, but you want to be, then you are probably thinking about the next PTQ season. We don't know where we'll be playing for in the fall, but we know that it's going to be Scars limited. As we don't have any of the cards yet, I'm going to instead focus on larger issues. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to talk about what it takes to get to the Pro Tour. Hint – the old joke about Carnegie Hall is true.

Are you good enough to get to a Pro Tour?

The first question you have to ask yourself – are you good enough to get to a Pro Tour?

The chances are, yes. If you really attempt to make a run at playing on the Tour, you either are good enough, or will be soon. Being a master helps you win PTQs, but it isn't required. I'm fairly good at Magic. I make my fair share of mistakes. I have punted games at every level of Magic imaginable. I have a lot of holes in my game, and even though I'm constantly trying to get better, I need a lot of work. Despite all of that, I've still played in seven Pro Tours. I only got there because I've played in around a hundred PTQs and twelve Grand Prixs. There are times that I was one of the best players in the room, but those weren't the only times I won the PTQ. Sometimes I was just the guy with half a clue that got a exactly the right number of lucky breaks.

At most PTQs, there are about four different levels of players. At the top end you have the ringers, players who are generally known by name and have played on multiple Pro Tours. On the low end, you have the no-shots and the mostly hopeless. The no-shots generally are newer to tournament play and don't know the rules well, and have incredibly sub-par decks, or make 51 card limited decks. The mostly hopeless tend to know most of the ‘tricks' to a tournament, but lack either the experience or skill to win through anything but raw power of draws or deck. Everyone else is a good-enough. This may not sound like much, but this is a hard level to get to. These people read articles, have tier-1 or at least tier-2 decks that they know how to play, and understand the game at an above-average level. If you're taking the time to read this article, there is a good shot you are in this bunch. All you need is the right deck and a good day to win a tournament.

Now, you have two options - You can float around in the water and wait for a wave of variance to come at you the right way and ride it to shore, or you can paddle around to find your own. This is one of the things that separates the ringers from the good-enoughs - they make their own luck. They don't want around for the right day, they do everything in their power to make today the day they get a few good breaks. They can't magically draw their answer every time, but they can generally either take a losing game an extra turn or two through making the right plays, or speed the winning game up a turn or two. If this doesn't seem like a lot, then you have a lot to learn. How many times have you lost, only to find the game winning card on top of your deck? Or been about to win when our opponent drew their only out? Imagine if even a few of these games, that didn't happen. Even if they only can truly outplay their opponent in three or four games during a tournament, one match win is the difference between 6-2 and 7-1 and top8.

Ringers bring good decks, or build their sealed pools well, and they have the intuition and forethought to find their way out of bad situations. They know when they are playing a losing game, and how to turn it around. Sometimes it means making a hail-mary play that requires their opponent to do two things wrong, and they still need to top deck a card.

You don't need to be a ringer to win a PTQ, but it helps. You need to constantly be working on improving your game so that you can get up to that level, but winning a PTQ isn't hopeless if you are not. Ringers are not perfect. If they were, they would be level 8 pros. They still punt games, but they do it less frequently, and often in ways their opponents don't see. They gain a few percentage points in any match they play, but taking a 50/50 to 58/42 isn't unstoppable.

If you are good enough to 6-2 a few PTQs, you are good enough to win one. It's just going to take a while. The more you play, the more experience you get, the closer you will make it to the blue envelope. You just need to give yourself enough opportunities to get lucky, and maybe learn how to push the luck in your favor.

Do you have the time?

The second question you have to ask yourself is this - Do you have the time?

As I said earlier, it takes work to even get into the level of a good-enough. If you really want to qualify, then its going to take time. A lot of it. Hours of playtestng, hours of driving, and hours grinding it out in events. It's going to require that you read a lot of articles, and think a lot about the game. There isn't any way around that.

You also need to give yourself a lot of opportunities. If you want to qualify, you have to play in a lot of PTQs. Even the level four pros who are playing for plane tickets aren't generally even money to top 8, let alone take it down. Magic Online PTQs have given people in even the most remote regions the ability to play in at least once a week, but their schedules will probably keep most people to only a few a season. Keep these in mind, especially as the next season is limited, and you don't need to put together a few hundred dollar deck.

I'm fortunate in that I live in Columbus, Ohio. It is, at least geographically, one of the best places in the country to play Magic. Almost every weekend during a PTQ season, I can find a PTQ within three and a half hours. In fact, other than the in-town ones, they are all about three and a half hours away. Detroit, Indianapolis, Louisville, Lexington, Pittsburg, plus the occasional Cincinnati PTQ. If I'm really grinding it, I can even hit Chicago, Buffalo, and Nashville in about six hours. The Northeast is the only other region that comes close to the number of opportunities with reasonable travel times. Grinding it out in the west with a series of six hour plus drives takes a whole different kind of animal.

My general rule of thumb if you really want to qualify, is to focusing on the format of the PTQ for two hours for every hour you plan on spending in the car. So, for a four-hour PTQ, that means a good sixteen hours of playtesting, reading up on tech, or even just goldfishing a few hands. But mostly playing real games. Over the course of a PTQ season with eight PTQs with similar drive times, that would be 128 hours of testing per season. Add in eight hours of Magic per PTQ, and you end up wih 192 hours of focusing on Magic. That's the equivalent of 24 workdays of Magic. By the time you get deep into a PTQ season, you are going to be about as knowledgeable of the format as anyone else there, and you will find that you are playing a lot better than even a few months before.

Not everyone can put in that kind of time, though. There's a reason why the majority of successful Magic players are of college age. It's a lot easier to dedicate that kind of time when you don't have a full-time job, a wife and kids, and other various requirements. You can still qualify without that kind of time commitment, but it will probably take you a lot longer to do so.

If you're willing to ask yourself these two questions – if you are willing to get better, and to put in the time – and willing to answer ‘yes' to both, then you are on your way to getting to the tour. Once you've made the decision to make this step, you are ready to get started on the real work. Next week, I'm going to talk about the logistics of making a run at PTQs and how to best spend the time you do have on getting prepared.

If you missed them, here are Part 2 and Part 3 of this series