Pokemon Card Tips: How to Become a Great Player

There’s definitely a good amount of info in here for new players. I thought it was pretty funny when the dog showed up and when you rambled at the end till the camera stopped :P.

Here’s a couple things I think a great player needs as well:

-A great player has got to know the rules on the back of their hand. Everybody makes misplays, but by knowing all of the rules and situations you can be in you can really minimize the mistakes you make. I’ve forgotten to lay my prize cards out before the game started on two separate occasions– one game I actually came back from but the other I lost by one turn. Chris Wood tried mesprit dropping after I had dropped a mesprit the last turn. Mat Alvis tried attaching an energy gain after I used dialgia G’s first attack, not knowing tools were still trainers. I didn’t know about the “uxie psychic restore to the bottom to not have to deal with fainting spell” rule at one point and it lost me a game. Keep up to date on metaruling and just the gamestate in general.

-A great player also knows the CARDS on the back of their hand. The strangest and most unexpected cards are often the ones that win decks games. If you don’t know about these sudden surprise cards or don’t even know what they do, your opponent can gain an instant edge. For a new player, this can be daunting, but even experienced players find cards they’ve never researched before! “What does jolteon star do? What does gyrados SF do? Why is Pooka running a MT Ninetails?” having a great grasp on the obscure cards secures you an edge above the rest.

-And lastly, in my opinion, a great player also has to be a great deckbuilder. I’ve never (except maybe sometime in the GardyGallade area) take a “cookie cutter” deck into a top spot at a really large tournament. This year we saw silvesro’s luxray beedrill combo, last year Ness still had the unique touch of jolteon star in his GG which helped him make it to the final table, this year’s nationals we had pooka’s deck filled with techs and darrel’s deck of luxray manetric being almost entirely unique. You can be a great player by adding your everyday techs into your deck, like dusknoir DP and such, but the best of the best players find techs noone would ever think of and use them to their advantage to make something legendary.

That’s my 2 cents!

The best players simply don’t make many mistakes or “misplays,” and apart from the deck-building and such, that’s what you have to focus on. You really have to know the matchups and the deck you’re playing well to do all the right moves each game, and that kind of confidence and ability can easily win games you would otherwise lose, especially when the opponent has the lesser of experience. Play well.

Nice video guys, but I’d suggest you be more concise in the next one. Although unscripted moments are fun, why spend nine minutes talking when you can spend five…And convey the exact same thing?

That’s my constructive criticism (even if it doesn’t sound like it, lol).

Lol, nice vid. The weather seemed great.

@J-Witts: Awesome tips man!! Yea those are def some other things a great player needs to know and be able to do. There are a ton of intricacies that contribute to making a great player, but everyone out there just need to take it one step at a time.

@quakizo: I think misplays are inevitable, even great players will make misplays from time to time. I like to think of it as having the ability to make really great plays than to not make misplays. You can force your opponent into misplays.

@kettler: Thanks for the advice man. We really didn’t know what we were gonna do for the vid so that’s why we kinda went on for a while. Ian just showed up at my house and we didn’t even have a topic in mind, so we kinda winged it. I think the video is at least somewhat entertaining.

@Kyle: yeah man it was beautiful last weekend, a stark contrast to the last few days. :(

I was talking to this judge from my state that I saw at Nationals and was telling him about how I lost R2 due to a major misplay (I could’ve burned that Premier Ball to avoid Poltergeist! ARGH!), and he said something about the format currently:

“This season, matchups are irrelevant. The winner of Nationals will be the one who makes the least amount of misplays.”

…and that made so much sense to me.

There are SO many different decks right now, it seems like there is no BDIF. Just stop making mistakes. Play all the time, play every day. Just from playing any deck versus any other deck, you get a little smarter in the game.

That sounds like the ideal format – the player who plays best wins!

We’ll see if that hold true this season…it could very well turn out to be the case. There are really a ton of decks out there right now.

Hmm Sharapova lost :O it was epic :P

yeah Great Video/Great Dog! and Car! lol

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