The Power of Deliberate Practice

Improving at a game is hard, eventually we reach plateaus that are difficult to breakthrough. This article outlines the basic concepts of deliberate practice. This tool when used proficiently, will help you work smarter and not harder.

If you have played competitive card games for awhile… there’s no doubt in my mind that you have heard someone utter some variation of “I just need to get more reps”. You might have even said it yourself. It can be a comfortable thought to think that the relationship between time spent and skill level is a linear one. That after a day of bad beats, all we need to do is go home and grind out more games. If only we practiced a bit more…If only it were that simple.

While it is equally important to get a sufficient number of games in, for an experienced tournament grinder- very rarely is it the number of games under your belt preventing your from winning. It takes far more than that to be a highly effective competitive player. Over practicing can even lead to harmful long term effects on not only your game play but your health.

I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. If you’re new to the hobby or entering a new game, you need to get enough repetitions in that core fundamentals sink into the deep recesses of your brain. When concepts crystallize in your brain and you start auto-piloting your game, this when you’re not longer learning and simply doing. Practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes permanent. Deliberate Practice makes perfect.

Symptoms of Poor Practice

There comes a time that simply grinding more games with little to no focus leads to significant diminishing returns. This point happens much sooner than most players realize.

You are bound to plateau, that’s a given. If you continue to mindlessly play games after reaching this initial plateau you will see little to no gains. You might even find your skill level going backwards in comparison with your peers. It’s after this initial honeymoon period of learning a new game that I often see players get disillusioned with whatever they are playing

There is a way around this though, and the good news is that it doesn’t require every waking moment of your time. You don’t have to play dozens of games each week or treat the game like a full time job to breakthrough whatever plateau you are currently going through. Deliberate Practice and Spaced Repetition are incredibly powerful tools to have in your repertoire.

Well what is Deliberate Practice?

Deliberate Practice is a term coined by Psychologist Anders Ericsson. In his research on expert performers in the medical field, he found that breaking down a skill set into smaller individual skills led to higher results and more well rounded individuals. We can take what Dr. Ericsson discovered and apply it to our own hobbies.

Dr. Anders Ericsson

Breaking down the Skill

When we apply these methods to TCG’s we can focus on fundamental skills that will help us work through difficulties. Four major skills we can focus on are reading and evaluating cards, game awareness, probability and sequencing. Each one of these, worked on individually, will bolster growth.

Reading and Evaluating Cards

Reading and evaluating cards is a life long skill in the world of TCG’s. There are several ways we can approach honing this skill. Starting early in a set release helps if your game released cards that will shift the meta. Studying sets before release and playing games like limited i.e. Draft and sealed help you see a lot of cards, faster. This drills into the brain the abilities and card art that help with pulling that information to the forefront more efficiently.

Game Awareness

To sharpen this skill it is advised to focus on certain aspects when you are grinding games. Note taking in practice matches is ideal. There are places in a typical match of Flesh and Blood where we can see these in action in particular.

• Track card advantage (how many cards you and your opponent have left in your/their decks).
• How many hard hitting or high value cards are in each persons’ graveyard
• Time left on the clock
• Pieces of equipment left on the field

Being aware of these things and learning the muscle memory to be aware of these area will help you in your decision process. These decision points will become faster and in turn make you a more efficient player. Consequently, when game awareness becomes habit, we can move on to the next skill.

Probability

Lets talk about probability. This involves a slightly different skill set and a different practice. When we are trying to quantify the probability that a certain card will make its debut we can track its movement through the deck. We can do this by focusing on one of two drills. Pitch stacking and goldfish.

• Simply put, pitch stacking allows us to track and insure a card will appear at its intended time. We pitch a card early to pay for an attack so that we can see it later in mid game. We can track its movement and calculate the probability of its return in our hands based on the cards left in the deck.
• Goldfishing is a drill played solo. You are shuffling up your deck and drawing mock hands and going through the motions playing against a mock player. This is an important one folks and can also be used for the next fundamental skill.

Sequencing

By doing drills and focusing on play lines we can become familiar with our decks. This allows us to know our decks inside and out so there are no surprises. When you have your deck construction memorized you can focus on the decision points that will affect the game. Knowing when to save cards in hand so you have a response next turn or when to block and take a turn off will greatly improve once you have figured out your deck.

Ask yourself, “can I clap back for more if I take this damage?” if the answer is no this might be a good time for an off turn. Many players across the TCG world can benefit from deliberate practice.

If you break down the skills in your game into smaller skills you can then focus your attention bit by bit in areas that need improvement. This will allow you to hone each fundamental separately and lead to better results at the table. As stated above, “Practice makes permanent, Deliberate Practice makes Perfect.”