The Top 5 Mistakes Solid Players Make and How to Fix Them

As you may or may not know, I’ve been doing personalized Magic: The Gathering coaching for a couple of years now. People come to me with all sorts of skill levels and goals, but some mistakes remain relatively constant across the board.

In this article, I will write about the five most common mistakes I see while coaching people and what you can do to fix them.

Mistake #1: Not Thinking in the Right Spots

Delver of Secrets Art by Matt Stewart

Let me start with an anecdote. A long time ago, I was playing a Bridge tournament and a world-class player sat behind me to watch me play. I made a relatively high number of mistakes, and after the match (which we lost), the world-class player said he was impressed about how I had played. I told him that couldn’t be true since I had made so many mistakes. He replied something like this:

That’s true, you did, but I noticed that you were thinking in all the right spots. Whenever you paused to think about a play, I was also thinking about the same play. Our conclusions in the end weren’t always the same, but the most important part w...