Card Game Fundamentals: How badly do you want to win?

Everybody wants to win.

It's more fun. You win better prizes. People respect you more. What's not to like?

But at the end of the day, there can only be one winner and one loser. It's a zero-sum game.

If life were fair, everyone would win and lose equally. But in reality, there's a clear and visible difference between the people who win a lot and those who don't. The question is, which one are you?

This article explores the primary distinction between the two.

Yeah, didn't expect a Blue Lock meme, did you? Unironically, though, there's a certain wisdom in this statement. If you had to put your life on the line for anything, how much harder would you try to make sure you succeed?

There's a big difference between a loss where you don't care about winning or losing... And one where your life depends on it.

This applies to every facet of life. Perhaps it refers to exams. Maybe that job interview for your dream company? Winning against Yoichi Isagi in soccer?

Regardless of which key life event you thought of, think about how much harder you worked to achieve it. If it's something you want, then it's something you should work hard for.

If you don't work very hard for it, why do you deserve to have it?

Natural Talent vs Hard Work

Natural talent does exist. But so does the value of hard work.

My view is that natural talent reduces the amount of work you need to put in to achieve the same outcome as someone who has less natural talent.

This means that lazy geniuses will always lose in the long run, and fortunately, most of these people with natural talent have poor work ethic! So, it doesn't matter how much natural talent you have, as long as you're willing to work hard.

That said, if a person with natural talent puts in a lot of hard work, then damn. Fortunately, in card games, you can always win against someone better than you with superior luck!

The availability and usage of resources

Two of the key resources that most people have limited amounts of are time and money.

Life is a lot about making choices. In reality, someone choosing not to spend time and money on improving their skills at card games is not due to laziness; it's due to how they've prioritised different aspects of their life, whether they consciously do so or not.

For example, certain aspects of your life are challenging to deprioritise: Earning a living. Eating. Sleeping. Depending on your circumstances, there may be other aspects of your life that you are unwilling to compromise on, such as your relationships with friends and family.

There are no wrong choices, as it were. However, you should be able to justify the choices that you've made, and, more specifically, the consequences of those choices.

The previous points mostly related to time. Let's discuss the second key resource: money.

Once again, money is a limited resource, and one that motivates almost the entirety of the human race to varying degrees. In card games, money ensures that you can buy the cards you need when you want them. It allows you to travel to events domestically and abroad. It also allows you to purchase coaching, access paywalled content (like this Patreon, hehe), and subsidise your time.

For example, if I grind a specific deck for 30 hours, I'm going to know the ins and outs of that deck. But what if I don't have 30 hours to grind? I could pay a highly skilled player around $ 50-100 for a few hours of coaching. Within those few hours, they will be able to provide me with the key insights that I would have otherwise needed to spend 30 hours gathering. The same applies to deck guides and similar resources.

But at the same time, money is a limited resource. You can use it to get better at card games, or you can use it for other key priorities within your life. The choice is yours.

Tying it back to the Blue Lock meme.

One of the main things you'll have noticed throughout this article is that I refer to everything as a choice.

• Whether you spend money on getting better at TCGs, or if you spend it on other things that are more important to you.

• Whether you spend your time getting better at TCGs, or if you spend it on other things that are more important to you.

I don't criticise people, regardless of the choice they make. You have to make decisions that are authentic to yourself. What I do is not what you should do, or vice versa.

However, if your life truly were on the line. If winning a specific tournament was more important to you than almost everything else in your life, then there are no choices. The only correct option in such a scenario is to spend all your spare time on getting better at the game. It would be strictly wrong to save your money and avoid coaching just to save some money.

I've played numerous card games over the years, and I've heard it all. People tell me all the time how badly they want to win specific tournaments, be they regionals, nationals, or even the world championships. But at the end of the day, how badly you want to win something is not dependent on what you say; it's about what you do. And let me tell you, so many people say one thing, but their actions don't reflect their words.

So the next time you think about how badly you want to win something, circle back to the concepts discussed in this article. What steps are you taking to accomplishing the goals you've set for yourself?

Final thoughts

The reality is that most top card game players make numerous sacrifices to achieve the results they do. A lot of time, effort, and/or money is expended for them to stay at the top. It's the key difference that separates players with multiple achievements from those who do not.

Once again, I'm not criticising anyone for deciding their time and resources are better spent elsewhere. However, if you're someone who truly desires better results in TCGs, then it's definitely worthwhile to consider how many resources you're willing to invest to achieve them.