‘Sup, guys! I’m writing this from my desk at work; so needless to say, this is by far the highlight of my day. For those of you who know me, lucky lucky! For those who don’t know me, here are my stats:
Name:
Phil Napoli
Alias:
 Pnaps / Meatball
Likes:
 Magic & Money & Catchphrase (who do you think started the craze?)
Dislikes:
General stupidity and people who won’t split the bill at dinner
Superpowers:
Sick poker read and the unique ability to make a fool of myself in any situation
Favorite TV Show Ever:
Arrested Development
Notable Magic Finishes:
Sigh… oh brother. I once got third in a Guitar Hero competition… does that count?
I hail originally from Staten Island, which for those of you who don’t know, is far and away the classiest borough of NYC (Angelina and Vinny from
Jersey Shore
— need I say more?). I tend to think of Staten Island as a make-believe world where all the girls think they’re celebrities and drive daddy’s Beemer and all the guys are momma’s boys who try their best to look/act like the cast of
Goodfellas.
Needless to say, I fit in famously. I currently live in New Jersey, a fact about which I’m still in denial.
I’m no Pro, far from it actually, so I’ve come to talk to you about what I know — the life of the PTQ grinder. I’m a grizzled veteran of the Northeast PTQ scene, and I’ve been playing Magic for
more than half my life.
Whew. It took a lot of guts to admit that. At this point, I’m an elder statesman of the game at thirty years of age, so I come equipped with years of knowledge to pass along. During my time grinding, I’ve made a bunch of PTQ Top 8s (which is the first step for any aspiring grinder), and I’ve walked away with four blue envelopes. While my PT experiences have been awesome, they’ve been far from successful, which leaves me always wanting more. I’m in no position to tell you all how to make it big once you get there, but I can certainly give you some advice on the journey.
Here we go…
Ego as the enemy Â
My first piece of advice that I’d like to give is to tell you to get over yourself, and realize that you’re terrible at Magic. I’m not joking. Once you can own your awfulness, you’ll be in the right mindset to learn and grow.
Say it with me. “I’m [author name="Phil Napoli"]Phil Napoli[/author], and I’m terrible at Magic.”
Magic players as a whole are certainly more on the arrogant side, since we’re craftier/smarter than the average bear, and I know a lot of players who refuse to learn because they think they know it all. Everyone makes mistakes, and everyone stands to learn from them. If you’re serious about competing and qualifying, you definitely want to surround yourself with a group of friends that want to learn. It’s definitely fun to rag on our friends for their heinous blunders, but it’s better as a whole to learn with them as they make mistakes and more importantly, to learn from your own.
Since I’m in a sharing mood, here are some of my favorite mistakes from my past:
1. Enchanting my Goblin Cohort with my own Blessing of Leeches and sitting idly by as I slowly killed myself. Awkward…
2. Playing with Skeletal Vampire in the sideboard of my B/R Sealed deck of Grand Prix Richmond 2006. This resulted in my highest GP finish ever (19th). Lesson: don’t be results oriented (lol).
3. Telling my teammates at PT Charleston (Team Constructed) not to play Remand in our Five-Color-Control deck, since obviously I knew better than everyone else. I went on to have my opponents Remand every Rolling Spoil I cast, draw a card, untap, and Rolling Spoil my Karoo the following turn. Such whammies.
4. Arguing with Osyp  till I was blue in the face that Paladin en-Vec was better than Watchwolf in our G/W Aggro deck at US Nationals 2006. My buddy Chad Kastel and I both went on to win a grinder with Osyp’s list, and Antonino DeRosa, my more successful Italian alter ego, Top 8ed the event with it. Â
5. Milk. Milk was a bad choice.
Hey dude… wanna battle?
Always
surround yourself with people that are better than you. I realize this has been said time and time again in advice columns, but it’s beyond true. I remember when I was a young warthog, and I first started playing at Neutral Ground. Zvi Mowshowitz was a legend, and I’d watch him play with wide-eyed wonder, absorbing as much as I could. One day out of nowhere, he asked me if he could playtest his accelerated blue deck vs. my more controlling blue build. I had playtested the match a million times with friends, and the pure control deck always prevailed.
Long story short, Zvi annihilated me ten games in a row and taught me to approach the game differently. He’d hold all his threats until he had about eight or nine mana and then bait me with mana artifacts until he could resolve three threats in one turn. It literally blew my mind. It was at that moment that I realized that you can only learn so much from people at your level. Eventually you need to jump into a bigger ocean and learn from the sharks.
Why do you think I tricked Osyp into being my friend? I wanted to win PTQs.
Never ever ever ever give up
Tilt is something we all deal with as gamers. Sometimes things don’t go our way, and we can get thrown off of playing our best. Know what’s the tiltiest tilt of all? Losing round 1 of a tournament. As angry as it makes us all, you really have to work hard to keep your head in the game in later rounds.
Later in my career, I’ve made a habit of the PTQ 0-1 X-0 to Top 8. Don’t get caught up in thinking, “Crap, now I need nine wins in a row to Top 8!” Stay focused on being mentally present in each game each round, and take them one at a time, trying to play your tightest in each individual game. Controlling your mindset is definitely key to scratching up wins in bit tournaments.
One other tidbit on mindset. We all have different goals based on where we’re at in our Magic careers. When we first start playing PTQs, we want to win prize. Then you start to wonder: can I ever Top 8 one of these? It seems impossible. Eventually you pull it off, celebrate with cake, and wonder if you’ll ever win one. You can generally gauge where you are in your career based on an honest assessment of your goal at the start of the event. Eventually you’ll come to realize that Top 8ing without a win isn’t really all it’s cracked up to be. Stop obsessing over pointless things like Top 8s and rating and worry about playing to the best of your abilities, winning the tournament, and getting qualified. If your eye is not on the true prize, you’re probably on the road to midday money drafting.
Luck be a lady
Please, for all of our sakes stop blaming luck. Yes, there’s luck in Magic. There are topdecks. It’s undeniable. All you can do as someone aspiring to get better is to make the best play that you’re capable of making and consistently put yourself in the best position to win. If you constantly think you’re losing due to bad luck, I
guarantee you
that you’ve made tons of play errors that led you to the game state in which you feel you got unlucky. In reality, you’re probably not even aware of many of these mistakes you’ve made. As a rule of thumb, first blame yourself, then ask someone better than you if they think you played correctly, and if they give you an A+, then, as a last resort, blame it on the rain. Â
Choose wisely my son
While this tidbit only applies to Constructed events, it’s super important to tournament success. You need to play the right deck for you. As you gain experience, you’ll start to learn which types of decks best suit your style.
Some general advice:
1. If you choose to play a combo deck, make sure you test post-board, and experience people bringing hate in against you. Building a false sense of confidence around G1 goldfishing won’t do you any good.
2. Don’t play control unless you’re intimately familiar with the rest of the decks in the format. If you haven’t tested enough to play each of the other decks competently, there’s no way you can play a control deck correctly against them.
3. Don’t shy away from the best deck if it’s not your style. Put in some time and learn it. I hated Faeries with a passion, but in Lorwyn Block Constructed, it was the stone-cold nuts and clearly the best deck. I took the time to learn to navigate the mirror, perfected my sideboard against Kithkin, and came away with one of my PTQ victories playing a deck that’s well outside my normal wheelhouse.
4. If you’re a master of a certain archetype, always play to your strength, since you’ll probably max your EV for any given tournament (see: Patrick Sullivan + Mountain).
The biggest mistake I see people make is to dump the deck they’ve tested extensively for a deck posted online the Friday before a PTQ. Trust me — we’re not all Jon Finkel, who can pick up any deck and play it to near perfection. You’ll lose tournament EV based solely on the volume of errors you’ll make playing a deck in the dark. It’s always best to play a deck with which you can minimize your own errors, and more often than not, that is the deck with which you’ve had the most practice. Speaking of which…
How do you make it to Carnegie Hall?
Practice, practice, practice. It hardly seems worth repeating, but this is another unavoidable truth. My greatest tournament success has come in formats where I’ve put in the most work. While natural talent is key to success in Magic, repetition, practice, and experiencing game situations goes a long way as well. Osyp and I can only test for so long before one throws the other one out or decides to stop to take a nap; so in recent seasons, I’ve started dabbling in playing Constructed on MODO.
I’ve owned a total of two Constructed decks on MODO. One was a U/W Control deck designed by Brad Nelson that Jacob Van Lunen used in a local PTQ, losing in the finals. I practiced non-stop for a week and lost in the finals the following week. Realizing I was onto something, I bought U/W Control online at the start of the recent PT Amsterdam qualifying season. I grinded Constructed queues, worked to tweak my list, and won the first PTQ of the season in NYC. The sample space is small, but I’ve practiced extensively on MODO twice and put up two good live results. Take the hint.
I hope some of you aspiring PTQ grinders (future PT champs?) out there have at least taken away something that will help you to perform better in upcoming tournaments. Hopefully you didn’t learn too much, because I really enjoy free flights to foreign countries. I’ll be attending a few big tourneys in the coming months, so hopefully I’ll have some awesome stories / results to talk about. Till then, good luck trying to qualify for Paris. I’ll see you in Toronto or Nashville!
Extra!!!!
Pnaps Origins: There are many stories I could tell that will help you to get to know me better. Each week I’ll leave you with one embarrassing anecdote that defines who I am.
This week’s story: Where’d he go?
I’ve been friends with Osyp for quite some time, and over the years, he’s gotten to know some of my non-Magic friends. Osyp, my friend Drew, and I planned an Atlantic City trip for a big tourney at the Borgata. Keep in mind that at this point Osyp and Drew barely knew each other. We get to the Borgata, and I have about $1K on me. I buy in to the tourney, and Osyp and Drew sit down separately to play 1-2NL.
About one hour in, I lose set over set, and I’m fuming! I storm out of the poker room, and go on a vicious gambling tear where the slots eat the rest of my money. Now I’m really on tilt. What should I do? Well, screw the two of them; I’m going to Harrah’s back to our room. In
the meantime, Osyp and Drew bump into each other: “Where’s Phil?” Now they didn’t know each other, but they each knew me
very
well. “Uh oh.”
Flash forward: Osyp and Drew arrive back at Harrah’s. They go up to the room, turn the key, and find me lying on my gut in my boxers with a fudge brownie sundae all over my face, watching Disney’s
Over the Hedge.
Hysterical laughter ensues.
Flashback: A few hours before when I arrived back in Harrah’s, I took a marker for another $1K and lost it all in the high limit slot room before even making it out of the cage. On full-blown tilt, I bought myself a sundae, went up stairs, rented a movie, and sobbed while stuffing my face. Lucky for them, they got to see the end result.
Lesson: Slots are bad.
Pnaps