So you're thinking about your local tournament, you say that this will be a really easy tournament because of the people in there. You're equipped with one of the most competitive decks in the game, and your match up against everyone is really solid. You're probably going to go undefeated in the tournament right? Let me tell you that you're going to be very wrong! You are going to know why you're probably going to get eliminated early in the tournament compared to where you thought you were going to place.
The Casual Player: Most of the people that go to your locals are casual players. They don't go to Regionals or any other premiere event to play YGO. This is either because they don't have the time or funds to go to them, or they just simply don't want to. These players aren't afraid to experiment with really off-the-wall decks, and chances are they know about as much about the game as you do. If they don't play a tier 2 deck that nobody plays, then they're teching some really wacky cards in their tier 1 deck, giving them a significant advantage because you weren't expecting it, and you ultimately end up losing to it.
For example, we have a casual player at our locals that plays X-Sabers. He played Garsem and Ragigura. These 2 tech cards are NOT normally played in the deck, but the way I saw him play it, it won him every single match, and he ended up going 8-0 in the tournament (including playoffs!) This is an example of the combination of playing a tier 2 deck, and the fact that he's teching cards that nobody typically plays in that tier 2 deck! If they're not teching anything special, then they're probably playing more than one of a card that only one copy of that card is typically played. A fine example of this is a player playing 2 Gladiator Beast Murmillo in a deck to wipe out a complete round of Gorz the Emissary of Darkness after attacking with Gyzarus!
Casual players aren't scared to do anything in this game, and as a result it pays off for them! There will be times where these players do very bad in tournaments because not everything works out the way they want it to, but when they top, they're the absolute best players in the game! If you really want to top big events, you have to do what the casual players do. You have to play cards that aren't typically played in a standard version of that deck! Remember! If you play cards that nobody would think of in a deck and you top the premiere event, you just might have created the next "standard" for that deck!
They're Very Lucky: As much as I hate to say it, the bad player will get better luck than the good player. The good player, feeling really confident about his win and already thinking he's about to be 2-0 in a tournament because of his terrible playing, can turn into a huge disaster! You could have a Stardust Dragon on the field and you're about to win next turn. Your opponent has no field and no cards in his hand, and it looks like you're about to get it. Your opponent happens to topdeck into Elemental HERO Bubbleman, draws 2, gets RotA and Miracle Fusion out of it, and all of a sudden, because he's so bad and lucky, he now has a Heroic Champion - Excalibur, and a Shining on the field, waiting to beat you for the match!
Of course, with their luck, they're also pretty bad! Too many times when I set 5 back row, they don't have Heavy Storm, and they just randomly MST one of them, hitting the one card I didn't want them to hit. Of course, on Dueling Network, you can't set all of your back row at the same time, making it easy most of the time to randomly MST the good card. However, in the real world, you can set them all at once, and your opponent won't know a thing! Even though that happens, the bad player will still MST and win big from it. I've even seen people MST a Starlight Road, THEN proceed to play Heavy Storm. That's just so dumb of a play! You waste 2 cards to attempt to destroy all back row, when you can just save the MST for the road so that he can't bring out Stardust! You do this by MSTing your own Heavy Storm, thus Road not destroying Storm but MST doing that.
The absolute worst about bad players is that they'll try to play something to gain an advantage via cheating, and you tell them they can't until next turn. You draw the card that you know they're going to stop or you lose the game, and if you'd have just let them get away with it, you'd win. I've had this happen to me once, and I REFUSED to shake my opponent's hand and tell him good game, because it just simply wasn't a good game. He tried to cheat, didn't cheat, then played it correctly at the absolute perfect time! To avoid this, if their way to cheat favors you, you should just let them do it, then tell him what happened later, telling him you had JUST realized it, and it'll be okay from there, giving you a win.
Conclusion: If you're going to think that the tournament will be easy, slap yourself in the face and actually bring out the "A" game in you! Every bad player is going to have their moment, and because of your cocky attitude, they're going to have that moment! The way karma works, the more expectant your are to winning a tournament, the less of a chance you have of doing so! Not only does this happen in YGO, but in every competitive game/sport there is! If you're the best player at your locals by a long shot, you should be prepared to lose a key game because you have a huge target on your back, and it's really easy to hit!
No matter how bad the players are at your locals, they're going to beat you at some point whether it's luck, or they're just simply bad, but happen to make the right play at the right time. The fact of matter is that it's locals. You go there every week, and as bad players try again and again, they're going to eventually top at least once in their careers there! Sometimes a player will go undefeated one week, then 0-3 drop the next week! All you have to do is give your tournaments EVERYTHING you got, and you should be able to wipe out bad players 9 out of 10 times!
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