Getting Good at Being Good

Author's note: This is going to be a piece where I complain about being good and successful at magic now, and spending most of my time playing a card game. I'll try to make it as non-obnoxious as possible, but uh, we will find out how possible that is :)

Table of Contents

• Intro

• It's Not Work Ethic

• Wait, Maybe it is Work Ethic?

• The Game is About Learning

• Strong Player Syndrome

• Do I Still Want This?

Intro

I remember the night before my first Worlds. I was bargaining with my expectations. I'd been preparing for this tournament for over half a year, trying to bring myself across the yawning chasm from "person who plays competitive Magic and is pretty good at it" to someone who could compete with the best in the world. I remember telling myself that if I won a single match, I'd have proven I belonged, and that even if I didn't, I'd forever be proud of how hard I worked to get here. When I went 9-5 and requalified, I didn't even process it as anything beyond what I'd have proven if I won a single match: that I belonged in that room.

One year later, as I submitted my deck for Worlds 2025, I told Jason "I think I'm going to win this tournament". Of course I didn't mean that literally, but I said it because I thought it was as or more true for me as it was for anyone else in that room. I had worked just as hard, if not harder this time, and more importantly I'd had a year under my belt of playing Pro Tours, learning from the best in the world and figuring out how to beat them. When I went 3-4, including an 0-3 start to constructed where I knew I wasn't playing my best Magic, I had to deal with the fact that I hadn't proven I belonged in day 2 of that tournament -- the requisite counterbalance to being proud of my accomplishments. It doesn't mean anything to succeed if you can't fail.

Before Worlds 2025, I had never submitted a bad constructed deck for a tournament. After PT Richmond, I've now submitted two. For those keeping track, that's 0-for-2 in my last two tries.

Don't worry, I still think Jeskai Aang-Shiko is a very strong deck in a form that we didn't bring to the PT, and some Sanctum gamers are going to crush with it at RC Minneapolis, after which I intend to write a guide. It just wasn't the right choice for the Pro Tour -- our team had one of the breakout decks in Temur Harmonizer, and I failed to spend enough time on it to play it.

I went 9-7 in Richmond, one win better than the record I'd have needed to qualify through all the rest of the PTs this year. But the standards for successful requalification results are lower for me now, and I know I'm a vastly better player of the actual game of Magic than I was when I was praying I'd win a single match at Worlds. I still consider every Pro Tour a sacred chance to compete to my absolute limit against the best players in the world, and every failure on that front needs to be honestly treated as a failure. So I'm frustrated with myself. I want to figure out what's going wrong, and writing this piece is my attempt.

It's Not Work Ethic

First, let's talk about what I don't think the problem is. The simplest problem to fix would be that I'm not working as hard now because I'm so confident in my abilities that I think I don't have to.

These are just random screenshots I picked out to highlight how aggressively I've been staying involved in the "work" of testing -- it's impossible to prove it here, but if anything I feel like I've gotten more active in the testing process over the most recent few tournaments. Part of this is because I've been trying to straightforwardly apply what I thought was the lesson from my previous success -- trying really, really hard to get lots of good practice will lead to good results.

All this testing has definitely strengthened my understandings of the formats I was preparing for, and continuing to get high quality games against PT level players has meant that I'm staying as sharp as I think I can be on my gameplay -- something that early on in this journey, I identified as one of my biggest weaknesses.

But what it hasn't seemed to help me with is working on the right things. I think we ended up wasting a lot of time on the Worlds team confirming that Otters was indeed good against the decks we expected at the tournament, and didn't spend enough time actually thinking about (and arguing about) the spread of decks we actually expected to show up. Similarly, for Richmond, I made the decision to lock into Jeskai relatively early on (about half a week before I got to the testing house), partially as a correction to the Worlds process, where I waffled on playing Otters until the final day and a half, and wound up sprinting to the finish line hammering out solid matchup plans. However, that decision ended up preventing me from taking this message as seriously as I should have:

So I don't think that my "work rate" is the issue here. I think this is going to be a case of working smarter -- because I'm pretty sure it's not realistically possible for me to work harder than I have been.

Wait, Maybe it is Work Ethic?

But hold on. I can't say "I'm definitely working hard enough, so my work rate isn't the issue". If my chronic pain has taught me one thing, it's that rest is important, and it's not just possible to hurt yourself by trying too hard, it's something I'm very actively prone to doing. This is a very real possibility that's worth considering.

There's a reason I wrote this into the values of this Patreon, and maybe I need to listen to it:

Look, I pride myself on working harder than the competition to prepare for Pro Tours. Part of this is considering myself a "preparation specialist" who is not as naturally gifted at quickly breaking down gamestates and matchups as lots of professional players, but who is willing to put in the hours and seek out the criticism I need to slowly correct all of my mistakes. I feel extremely proud of this. It's not something I want to see as a flaw.

But I have to be honest with myself -- It's a lot. It accumulates. Preparing for my first Worlds, I was preparing for the most important tournament of my life. For more than a month leading up to that tournament, I barely made any social plans, only took time to rest when it was necessary to manage my pain, and ate, slept, and breathed Magic.

I prepared for my first Pro Tour the same way. And my second. And my third. And for Worlds again.

For 4 tournaments over the course of my first year playing on the PT, that's almost 6 months. Almost half of the year where my life was consumed by this, where I tuned out most distractions and focused on my craft. Where there wasn't that much time for anything else.

I still made time to see my family, manage my health, and check in with friends. I also took on more leadership responsibilities on Sanctum, kept occasionally seeing coaching students, kept writing, did some consulting work, and started a freaking podcast.

But some things have had to give. Let's get honest.

I still don't know what I want to do with my career. "Professional" Magic has let me feel joy in hard work again and let me believe I'll be able to live a normal life, something I doubted for a long time during the worst of my pain. But "Professional" is still more of a dream that I'm chasing than a reality I've created. I've made enough money that I'd have been able to survive and pay my rent over the past 2 years, but I've only been able to keep my savings where they were when I started because of significant support from my aging grandparents. My ability to live the life I have during this period is a privilege very few others have. This is still a luxury hobby for me (If people didn't realize this, this is my attempt to broadcast it).

I'm also lonely. Not in a tragic, emotionally devastating way, just in the boring way most people are in their young adulthood.

I've been on one date in the past year. It was very fun and I thought we hit things off! And a week later, they let me know they weren't feeling a strong enough connection. This, of course, happens! If you're a grown-up, you move on, keep swiping, keep baking cookies for your cute neighbors.

But when you're leaving the month-and-a-half window for doing normal life stuff between major tournaments, well, you have to tell yourself that we might get another crack at it, if we're lucky, in a few months.

I want someone to share my dumb little thoughts with, to cook dinner for, to watch TV with, to read to and cuddle with before bed. And as little as the ideas of love that are sold to us want to acknowledge, finding and keeping something like that takes, time, and work, and effort. Generally, that consistent effort doesn't fit into the cycle of preparing for a major tournament every few months like it's the last professional tournament you'll ever get to play.

And despite my best efforts, I do see my non-Magic friends less now. This is kind of balanced by having so many amazing new friends I've met through the game, but I've never been the kind of person to maximize quantity over quality in my relationships. I care extremely deeply about the people I'm closest to, and the fact that so many new people have entered that equation for me in the past 2 years, while I've also been trying to compete at a world-class level in my hobby, has meant that I'm not sending, or responding to, long texts about the week-to-week dramas, struggles, and triumphs of my inner circle as much as I used to.

I know this is supposed to be a normal thing to happen in your late 20s, where everyone settles into their career lane, finds a romantic partner, and there's less need to have your friends help you navigate the ups and downs of life, but respectfully, fuck that. I've never wanted to be that person. I miss my friends, even though I still see them consistently and still get the big picture updates.

There's also the Gender of it all. Becoming part of Sanctum and publicly competing as an Agender person has meant the world to me, and helped me figure out so many things about myself that I probably could have told you before, but wouldn't have felt as comfortable claiming and embodying.

That's all great and lovely. But what if I want to fuck around and do something about it?

Yes, it is extremely funny that I'm complaining about my fake "job" competing in one of the most trans-accepting competitive communities out there, ON the team with all the Pronoun Users*TM.... making it hard for me to prioritize Fucking Around With my Gender. But it is also true that figuring out if I want to change my presentation requires spending time shopping for clothes, trying out different things and learning what I like and don't like, updating my dating app pictures, maybe having some uncomfortable conversations with my parents, etc. And something like going on HRT would surely at least require scheduling a doctor's visit, figuring out what my insurance covers, possibly more -- idk, I haven't done that much research. The point is that these things take time, more time than it takes to fire off a post about gender before going to bed after a long day of testing. I have some "to do"s on the whiteboard in my room for many of these things, and they've been sitting there since before Worlds, which was 3 months ago now.

Why am I talking about all of this when my goal is to perform better at big Magic tournaments? Well, it turns out, I kinda actually do believe the thing I put in the description for this Patreon. We perform at our best when we're physically and mentally healthy, and no person can be either of those things without living a full life.

This is not my announcement that I'm retiring from Magic!!!! Don't worry about that. Lots of Magic players announce this and never mean it. I won't "retire from Magic" until I mean it, which means I expect I'll never retire from Magic. I still love competing at the highest levels. I'm still going to be playing a lot of Magic. But I do think there's something real going on where I've let PT prep turn into more of a job than a game, and I think it may be having real effects on how I'm choosing to spend my time. I'm more focused on checking off the "test for X hours" on my to-do list than I am on figuring out how I'm going to win this tournament -- and in a game where scrappy intuition and outside-the-box thinking are tools you can't afford to throw away, I'm thinking too much like a professional clocking in to a shift and not enough like a kid experiencing all of this for the first time.

The Game is About Learning

What am I supposed to do about this, though? It's easy to think like a kid experiencing all of this for the first time when you actually are. But that's not a mindset you can force yourself into. I have preconceived notions now about how to predict a metagame, how to pilot an archetype, how to figure out a matchup.

Magic is a game about learning, and there is always more to learn. I'm nowhere near good enough at the game to claim boredom (no one is or likely ever will be). But I think I've started to go down mental paths that I've already followed instead of plowing ahead to where I want to go. It's like I'm in a ski race, and I'm following the well-worn grooves in the snow from the last time I went down, but the conditions have changed and it's no longer the most efficient route (can you tell I've been watching a lot of the Olympics?).

It's very natural to do this. It's the way human brains are wired -- learn what works, and then do that going forward. I should be doing some of this, trying to replicate my previous methods to successfully preparing for Pro Tours. But I also have to work hard now to avoid getting trapped in the same thought patterns. Oddly, I have to be worried about being too familiar with how this all works, too "in my bag" to be earnestly engaged with what is a genuinely new problem, even if it feels like one I've solved before.

In other words, I have to feel like I'm really learning again - not just working to find information. One thing that I think may help with this is taking more actual breaks from playing Magic in the next month or two while I can. This game is so good at regrowing its "crispy shell" (another great MaRo metaphor), so all I have to do is stop constantly eating it and give it a bit of time to regenerate, and actually have the game feel new again.

Strong Player Syndrome

So I need to take a break. Maybe several. It's not that I don't still love the game, it's more that I love it too much and have done a bad job of pulling myself away from it when appropriate. But I think there's even more going on than this.

One of the things that has kept coming up in Sanctum testing this past year is that we never know how much stock to put into results from sets that Jason has been involved in. Jason is one of the best technical players in the world, and while it is a very good communicator and thinker about the game, it's often hard for others to replicate the success that it has with its favorite decks.

A similar problem happened during Pro Tour Edge of Eternities testing with Paul Green, another one of the strongest technical Magic players in existence (he'll hate that this is the dedicated Paul section of this article, hi Paul!!). Paul crushed lots of our pilots with Boros Energy for about a day and a half in the house, before registering Amulet Titan and piloting it to an extremely solid showing. But the damage had been done -- Multiple teammates pivoted to Boros last minute, and ended up playing the deck with a huge target on its back and one of the weakest showings of the tournament. It can be dangerous to trust testing results from one of these players without making sure you can replicate what they're doing first.

I don't think I'm nearly at the level of Jason and Paul yet, but I'm certainly a much stronger technical player than I was a year ago. Before, I would lose and lose and lose throughout the testing process. It didn't matter if it was internal sets, MTGO leagues, or Arena ladder, I would try everything and mostly lose until I found a deck, any deck, that I could win with consistently. That proved to be a very strong signal for which decks were good, or at least, the right choice for the tournament for me!

I can't rely as much on this signal anymore. I'm not winning every testing set against my extremely strong Sanctum teammates by any means, but I'm pretty consistently winning my fair share with most decks I pick up, even the ones I'm villaining and playing for the first time. When I play on ladder, I win a lot with most decks I pick.

This is obviously not a strictly bad thing. I've improved a LOT as a technical player, and that improvement is needed and valuable. I'm going to need to keep getting better if I want to become the best player in the world (and I do). But paradoxically, in a game about learning, winning in testing can make it harder, not easier, to win at the tournament. When I go 9-1 with a deck on Arena ladder these days, it might mean something about that deck's strength, but it might not. If I go 5-5 in a testing session, before that meant I'd found something I was good at. Now, it just means we collected some data.

What should I do about this? Lose more, duh. Well, not really. Put myself in positions to lose more, maybe. Keep playing decks that are out of my comfort zone, and keep being comfortable doing things I'm bad at if they seem like the right thing to be doing for learning purposes. But that alone won't make this problem go away, because there are simply fewer opportunities to put myself in positions where I'm in over my head and have to quickly learn how to swim in the deep end anymore.

I'll be honest, I'm not confident I know how to solve this problem. Again, it's a problem I'm glad to have, because it means I'm a better player now and have a higher ceiling to my performance. But as to how to actually reach for that ceiling in a better way, I'm genuinely not sure. Which is exciting!

To some extent, I can try to have a higher bar for my own results with a deck. Instead of being satisfied with 65% winrates on ladder, I can try to work until I find a deck that I can achieve 80% with. But I think this is not going to always be an available strategy. Winning doesn't increase linearly with stronger play, it tangentially approaches a deck's limit, and many decks that are great choices for events have something like a 70% winrate cap.

My real best guess for what might help here is that it's going to be paying more attention to the environment and what others are winning with. This was always a good idea, and one that I should have applied when lots of our first-time PT players were locking harmonizer because they felt so good about it. I also think I maybe need to start paying more attention to the world outside Sanctum, as my philosophy has gotten a little inbred, especially as I've tried to learn so much from Jason over the past year, who biases towards complex decks with lots of gameplay moves and some form of inevitability. Combo/prison control, basically. These decks have lots of good properties because they can be shaped to be reasonably strong into any metagame, and are nearly unassailable when they're the top deck because of how hard they are to exploit. But they can also be finnicky and easy to overestimate, because they rarely have extremely good matchups, just good ones, and can be very punishing to pilot mistakes.

Basically, I need to find new inspiration and fresh perspectives. There are a lot of very good Magic players out there, and while I've learned so much from following the example of Sanctum's GOATs, Jason especially, I think I need to start branching out more when looking for guidance. Notably, the two breakout decks of the last big professional tournaments, Lessons and Spellementals, were being talked about in the general ecosystem before those tournaments, but we dismissed them while focusing on decks we thought were abstractly stronger internally.

I may not even have to look beyond Sanctum! One of our best deckbuilders, Hannah, had been succeeding with Lessons online leading up to Worlds, and brought a prototype version of Spellementals to the RC a week before the PT. I maybe just have to be more willing to pay attention to the brewing that's happening internally already.

Do I Still Want This?

There is one last question I think is very important to ask. It's been the background assumption of this piece so far, but I think it would be a mistake to not take it seriously.

I've already proven what I wanted to prove so desperately the night before my first Worlds -- that I belong at the top tables of this game, fighting in the arena with the best players in the world. I got what I wanted. I made it. I'll forever be proud of that.

Some great artists say the key to happiness is wanting what you've got. But I have to decide what it is that I've got.

Do I have an established place in the competitive scene of a game that I love, and the luxury to coast on that skill and reputation while returning to some of the things that I've left behind in the rest of my life?

Or do I have more opportunities to push myself further than I've been, continue to learn and improve, never being satisfied until... something? I become the best Magic player in the world? I top 8 a PT? I find some kind of foothold in the content space and am actually making a living doing this?

I'm greedy. I want both.

I know I need to make sure my life doesn't become consumed by this, that I don't continue chasing the dream at the expense of my future. Almost no one becomes the best Magic player in the world, even for a day, and lots of people chase that dream without regard for its impacts on their health and wellbeing. It's okay to try, really really hard, and come up short. I can't invest my ego and my self-worth into that kind of a goal, and I know it's foolish and shortsighted to continue sacrificing anything that isn't essential in my life to accomplish it.

I also know I need to make sure I'm still enjoying this game, and I don't think the way to do that is by coasting. I love Magic because it pushes me to improve myself, not because it gives me satisfaction that I'm already better than others. That kind of self-worth is hollow, zero-sum, and insidious. It comes from a place of insecurity. I enjoy Magic the most when I'm working together with friends to figure out how wrong we both were and how much there is still left for this game to teach us.

The bad news is that these two things are not entirely compatible with each other, at least over shorter timescales. I can't continue to spend most of my time playing Magic, trying to improve my game and finding new opportunities for growth as a player while also putting more intentional care and effort into the rest of my life, because that's not how time works, and not how my capacity works.

I also can't get what I want out of Magic, continued improvement without any setbacks or failures, if I intentionally spend less time working as hard as I can to get better. Competing at the highest levels is just too hard. I know that if I put in less effort for any given Pro Tour, I very well may perform worse - and that's something that's really hard to sit with because of how much I pride myself on my work ethic and competitive drive.

I have to be fundamentally okay with the fact that I want both things, and I can't have them both in full measure right now. I haven't felt okay with that recently. I need to let myself be.

The good news is that in the long run, balanced strategies tend to work out. If I spend more time on my normal life, catching up with friends outside of Magic, putting more effort into dating, and thinking about how I might actually want to find stable work, I will be pushing myself out of my current comfort zone, which is playing a bunch of Magic all the time and dealing with life stuff as it comes, but rarely more than that. I'll meet new people, and mess up, and feel like I'm in over my head, and I'll learn and change.

And yeah, to really do this, to actually learn and grow and become a different person, I might need to be less of an insane person when it comes to preparing for the next few Pro Tours. But maybe it will end up being a good thing, figuring out how to not push myself so hard and still shooting for performances that I can be proud of.

I've been thinking a lot over the past week about Alysa Liu's inspiring Olympics story. It's easy to feel good about that story when it ends with a redemptive gold medal. I'd obviously instantly take a years-long break from Magic if it guaranteed that when I returned, I'd eventually win a Pro Tour. But that's not a decision I get to make -- I only get to make what seems like the best choice for myself right now, and I have to make that choice without knowing if it will actually be the best thing for my Magic career.

It's a little silly to think of it this way, because it still frames the ultimate goal as becoming the best Magic player I can be. Is that framing really necessary to do things like "spend some time prioritizing the rest of my life"?

My brain works in weird ways. But I think that's a big part of growing up -- realizing the weird ways your brain works and figuring out ways to trick yourself into doing the right thing.

I'm definitely a weirdo, but I love this game, and I love the person it's continuing to shape me into. None of this stuff is easy, but god, how boring would it be if it were?