I'm a humble Jack, and that's ok

Warning; This blog is very self-centered. There's no metagame tips or strategy or any of that good stuff in here this time. But it's about being a gamer, about being competitive, about winning some games while losing others, and about coming to terms with all of that and finding an emotional balance point. I've been playing games competitively for nearly 30 years now and over that time I think I've found tools to give myself that essential emotional balance, but as my trip to the X-Wing World Championships in March approaches it's brought the struggle back to mind with a renewed focus. 

I wanted to share the journey through which I achieved that balance because, who knows, maybe it'll resonate with somebody else out there.

I'm a humble* Jack...

I'm a Jack.

What do I mean by that?  Well, if you took out a deck of cards and had to place yourself somewhere in that deck based on how good you are at X-Wing, I'm pretty sure I'd be a Jack.  A Jack is pretty good, it's one of the 'face' cards and it's better than a lot of other cards.  Indeed, if you're playing Aces High (and this is X-Wing so aces have to be high) then there's 9 cards worse than a Jack and only 3 cards that are better.  But, importantly, there are 3 cards that are definitely better.

So the experience of being a Jack is that you'll win a lot more games than you lose, and I do.  I can only think of a handful of times when my win record at a tournament was 50-50 or worse, and I take for granted that I'll pretty much always be on the winning end of the scoring.

But the experience of being a Jack is also that when it comes to sharp end there's always goimg to be something better than you, because plenty of things *are* better than you.  To get to the final and pick up the big prize you're going to have to face a Queen, or a King, or even an Ace, and you're probably going to lose that game.  Like the England football team I've got "Quarter-Final Knockout Heartbreak" written all over me before I even start round one.

And this isn't just an X-Wing thing, by the way.  25 years ago when I was spending pretty much every waking moment thinking about Magic: The Gathering I was a Jack at that too.  Then I was a Jack at the World of Warcraft TCG, and Netrunner too.  Hell, I'm a Jack at video games too: Apex Legends, Mariokart, FIFA, Rocket League, Marvel Snap and probably countless others... Jacks all across the board.  Playing football in real life?  Jack.  Writing?  Jack.  Excel skills?  Jack.  This list could go on much longer but I daren't ask my wife to contribute anything... maybe I'm the Jack of Hearts.

I think there's some aspects of the game - and of games in general - that I'm a lot better than a Jack at.  Deckbuilding/squadbuilding was always my key strength and I was easily a King in that sphere.  I've often had the 'proud father' experience of watching better players than me taking lists I'd made much further and higher than I ever could have taken it myself.  And enough companies have paid me ridiculously well for my insight over the decades for me to believe that I'm probably a King in terms of high level strategic insight and seeing trends and truths that others who are more detail-oriented than me would miss.  But when it comes to actually playing those lists and executing those strategies on the table it's probably exactly that lack of detail-oriented mindset that holds me back and makes me a Jack. 

I've often thought of it as like being in a racing team.  I could design a fast car and fit it with a powerful engine.  I could look at the circuit we were going to race on and make strategic decisions about gear ratios and wing settings and tyre strategy.  I was good at all that stuff.  But none of that stuff happens on the track and there was a lot of people who were much better drivers than me, who could make this split-second decisions better than I could, nail the apex better than I could.  I had a role to play, and that role was usually pit crew, or being the second driver in the team and not the team lead.  I've been part of a lot of teams over the years where I was simply proud to have played my part in getting success for the ace driver by adding that kind of planning and support.

It's not all doom & gloom as a Jack, though.  There will be times when the style of list I'm playing is particurly well-aligned to the zeitgeist of the metagame and I get to outperform my level for a while, and maybe pick up wins more like a Queen would.  And maybe there's even some days when I'm playing particularly well and I can feel what it's like to be a King for the day.  But I know I'll never be an Ace, even for one game let alone a whole day - I've been close enough to Aces to know that there's an X-factor involved that I simply don't have - so if I'm in a room with an Ace then at some point the pairings are going to put us onto the same table and I'm going to lose.  And time and again that has been my experience in big X-Wing events, where I very reliably go deep enough to lose to somebody clearly better than me.  

Even the times when I was having a good day and got within touching distance of a something important, like qualifiying for Worlds, there would always be a King or an Ace standing between me and the big prize, like a Jack Mooney, Stuart Blucke or Tom Reed.  Because they're better than me.

Sometimes it's quarter-final heartbreak.  Sometimes it's semi-final heartbreak. Sometimes, if I'm really lucky, it'll be final heartbreak.  But it's always likely to be heartbreak.

 =================

Looking back over the mists of time to when I played Magic it's completely clear that I was a Jack all along.  My best friend, Neil, was always better at the game than I was, he just saw the web of interacting factors and subtle queues in a way that I never did and never will. 

Because I played literally thousands of hours of Magic with Neil I was under no illusions that he had something I didn't. When games hit a tipping point of complexity Neil would always make it more complex, knowing that he could solve the complex board state better than most opponents, while at the same tipping point I would always seek to simplify the board state and avoid hitting thte point that the mental maths in my head would break down and simply go "ah fuck it, attack with everything and see what happens".  But even Neil was only a Queen - on his best day with a good deck he *could* be an Ace, he could (and did) face down the best players in the world and turn them inside out, which I could never have done.  But on the few occasions that I did run deep into major Magic events or got to attend Pro Tours it was very clear there was probably another two tiers of players even above Neil.

PVDDR, definitely an Ace

There was the Aces, he guys who were winning all the big events.  Then there was the Kings, the guys who weren't actually winning Pro Tours but were happily chugging away on the gravy train doing well enough to get invited to basically every major event and pick up their appearance money.  There was guys like Neil, who was good enough to semi-regularly make it to the big events and occasionally run deep enough to win a nice pot of cash.  Then there was me, and thousands of other people at my level.

 =================

What The Deuce?

So, why am I telling you this?  And why now?

Well, to make it all a bit more relevant to current events: almost three years ago (THREE YEARS!!!) this Jack found himself playing in a World Championship Qualifier side event on the Sunday of the Milton Keynes System Open.  And this Jack had been beavering away on Excel spreadsheets and had cornered the market on generic efficiency and was playing a good list, so he was performing like a Queen.  And this Jack was also having one of his occasional good days when he was really on top of it and playing very well, so in that room at that event he was a King.  And it so happened that this was a side event and most of the other Kings and Aces were still playing in the cut of the System Open.  ,

So for the first time this Jack wound up being the top trump in the deck and winning a ticket to the 2020 X-Wing World Championships.

That was February 2020.  Shortly afterwards a load of stuff happened.

Then more stuff happened.

Then EVEN MORE stuff happened after that.

And in around 80 day's time this Jack is going to be getting on a plane to fly to NOT the 2020 World Championships in NOT Minnesota, organised by NOT Fantasy Flight Games and using NOT the rules that he won his ticket with.

And this Jack is going to be walking into a room almost exclusively filled with Queens, Kings and Aces.  When you have an event that non-face cards aren't invited to then Jacks become the new Deuces.

This Jack is very nervous about this proposition.  I'm not used to being a Deuce.  I don't think I'm going to like it very much.

So... if this was a film this would be the perfect time to cut to a training montage. I'd hit the X-Wing gym hardcore style, download TTS and there'd be shots of me playing TTS at home, at my desk, on the train, in the corner of a house party ignoring everyone else, just playing playing playing.  Trudging through waist-high snow with a pair of Decimators held high above my head, sweating and grunting through calculating dice math and memorising trigger interactions.  Maybe practising my 3-bank template placement while balancing on a log hammered into the sea as the sun sets behind me, Karate Kid style... "SLOOP THE LEG!".

Yeah, in a movie I'd be stepping off the plane in Chicago in two months time as a secret King or Ace, ready to take down the world.  They're never going to see me coming.

Practice, study, raise your game, be the best that you can be.  This is the ideal opportunity, seize it and prove yourself.  There's no shortage of performance coaching theories and slogans to support this sort of thinking.

Ironically, it was too much effort for whoever made this to run it through spellcheck

And if it was anyone else going through this situation instead of me then that's exactly what I'd be saying to them:

"You've gor two months, pick a list and get loads of practice with it, play as much as you can, watch what's happening in the metagame, build a gauntlet of top lists and practise against them relentlessly, seek out other players who are going to Worlds and see if you can team up and be stronger together.  You've earned the ticket so you're obviously good enough, now focus and give yourself the best chance at being proud of what you do at Worlds.  Don't accept being a Jack, you can be a King if you put the effort in!".

There's a problem with all that, though: I *like* being a Jack.  I like it because it's an important defense mechanism for my mental health.

I'm a humble Jack... and that's ok!

I've been here before.  In 1998 I was playing Magic: The Gathering 40-50 hours a week after dropping out of university (because I was going to fail because I was playing Magic 40-50 hours a week) and for a little while this Jack cornered the market on a great deck nobody else had seen, and had some good days, and he had a run of playing at a King level.  I won some Pro Tour Qualifiers, played in a Pro Tour, won some money at a Grand Prix, saw his friends winning big events... leaving 1998 and heading into 1999 I was doing really well and ready to kick on towards proving that I was an Ace.

And then I reverted to the mean.  I wasn't a King or an Ace I was a Jack who had been getting on a hot streak, and now I started playing like a Jack again.

I did not deal with this very well.  Looking back I liken it to Smeagol turning into Gollum, a gradual and indidious poisoning of my mind and my outlook on the game and on life.  I *had* to win.  I *had* to prove I was something that I now know I wasn't.  Every Quarter-Final knockout darkened my mood, but what was worse (I realise in hindsight) was that every victory darkened it even more because it doubled down that I had to win the next event as well to prove that this win wasn't a fluke.  Down and down and down I went, more and more bitter and with more and more unrealistic goals to turn it around... like the gambler who doubles down to win his money back, only I was gambling with my mental health.

It's not great when you finally run out of that particular line of credit.

I crashed out of Magic altogether.  I've got a great story about how close I was in my final Magic tournament - UK Nats 2001 - to finally achieving my goal and becoming National Champion and everyone recognising my greatness.  It's a tale of how I was so powerful an so far ahead in my game that I made a simple error and then was wronged by a bad judge call that robbed me of glory.  I tell it now and then but I'm genuinely not sure how true any of it actually is, or how much I've invented to keep my inner Gollum happy. 

In the twenty (20!) years since then I've seen other players fall into the same trap, and a lot of them get eaten up the same way.  In my time away I gained a lot of perspective on what had happened to me, and I've learned how to live with my inner Gollum.  You see, once you grow a Gollum it never goes away.  It might sleep, it might be kept distracted and away from bothering you, but it will always be there.  And I know he's there because failing to keep him under control is why I had to quit other games in the past, like the WoWTCG and Netrunner.  

When I got a bit of a taste of success in those games and decided that this was a small enough pond that I could try to be a big fish... Gollum would appear on my shoulder, demanding success and poisoning my attitude.  I can tell you how my last WoWTCG and Netrunner tournaments ended, because one of Gollum's hallmarks is dwelling on how we were cruelly and unfairly denied what was rightfully ours.

The way I learned to live with my Gollum was to never actually *try* to win.  Not properly, not llike I was doing when  I lived and breathed Magic.  It's important that I always have an excuse for why I lost a game - I'm not taking it seriously, I'm playing a squad I've never played before, I've not practised, I'm playing a game where the prizes don't matter and aren't important to me.  It's important that I've tied one hand behind my back somehow in preparing to play because then I can keep the Gollum off my back: "I lost because I wasn't really trying to win, go back to sleep, Gollum".  

I can't really tell you about any X-Wing events I've played where I remember how I lost, and that's deliberate on my part.  As much as I get a kick out of anaysing X-Wing, thinking about how the game works, looking for the best ships, upgrades, pilots and lists... I don't really care about winning or losing a game of X-Wing.  Or I try not to, at least.  

I don't always succeed and Gollum may get a hand on the wheel for a monent here or there, but after leaving WoWTCG and Netrunner inside 24 months I'm pleased that I've been in X-Wing for over 6 years.  It's a testament to how succesfully I've maintained that balance and kept him away this time.

For all those reasons a ticket to Worlds is an incredible achievement that I'm rightly proud of, but it's also a problem.  A room full of Queens and Kings and Aces is a problem because it's disturbing a balance of wins and losses that I'm happy with and which keeps Gollum away.

I can't go into that room as a Jack so I need to put at least some effort into upping my game and getting prepared for the biggest day of X-Wing of my life, so that I don't get dunked on.  But there's a delicate balance I need to strike because Gollum is going to be watching developments very closely.

Practice a bit more.

Try a bit harder.

Care a bit more.

But not too much more.  Although I'm not sure quite where the line is between 'a bit more' and 'too much more'.  Hopefully I'll recognise it as I cross it, instead of a decade later like I did for Magic.

I'm a Jack.  I know I can't be an Ace, or even a King.  And I know that trying to be an Ace will be very bad for me.  But maybe Gollum will let me put in enough effort that I can at least be a Queen.  Just for a day.  Or if top cut is on Sunday, then maybe for a couple of days?

* If you think calling myself a Jack, or anythting else in this blog, comes off as anything but humble then I'm only throwing humble in as a reference to Monty Python!  Once I see the potential for a good line I can't leave it out.