Alright let's see. I think pretty much everything up through 8 is pretty accurate, and there doesn't seem to be much controversy around them. It's the 9-10 category that is being discussed mostly, well because it's where the best players lay in.
If I had to GUESS I would say there are only 20-30 10s in the world and about 50-60 9s. There's also lows and highs of each category but it's not even worth it to go into them. Bolt ranked himself a 9, I would call him a high 9 and myself a low 10. We're very similar in skill and deckbuilding, but I feel I'm just a litttleee better than you Joe
Anyway, let's rip these apart:
Pretty true. You are a top tier player now, one of the Top 100 or so. People should be afraid to play you, but most decent players (6-8) won't just fold to you or anything. You'll have to prove that you're a 9.
Whole-heartedly disagree. The difference between 9s and 10s is so minute, for the most part, that a 9 could beat a 10 on any given day, provided that the cards fall slightly in their favor. One example: T16 at Nationals last year, I played Jason (Ness) in Gardy mirror. Jason is obviously a better player than me. I would consider him a very high 10 with me a very low 10 back then, so he was almost a full point ahead of me. He starts with Holon's Castform. I play the match great and so does he, but that little thing was enough to push me over the top. Game 2 never finished because I played the matchup correctly.
Again, going to disagree. Going by logic, if there are only ~100 9s and 10s in the world, it's only logical that these 9s and 10s are going to win the majority of the tournaments-and there aren't many of them. 10s can't win every tournament, it's not going to happen. 9s win a LOT of tournament, maybe even moreso than 10s, especially the smaller ones. And you better be top cutting more than half the time. I would say top cutting 75% of the time is a pretty good benchmark to be considered a 9.
Yes, a real solid player. Addressed the first part up there.
Correct. Your decks NEED to be yours. You can understand where you're playstyles are, but you'll never be a 10 if that's all you stick to. If you refuse to play Stage 2 decks because they never work for you, you didn't win a tournament last year did you? Know your strengths, but more importantly, know your weaknesses, and improve them.
That's fine! Archertypes are archertypes for a reason: they're the best decks. As good old Alex Brosseau once said (god I hope it was him): the only person that consistently can win with rogue is Jimmy Ballard.
A pro doesn't always win, but yes there is something missing in your game. Just fine tuning things, you just need to make 1 or 2 less minor misplays a game and you'll be there. Joining a team or at least finding solid players to test with is a MUST at this stage. If you don't have people of around equal skill to play with, you will never get better. Tossing ideas around between people is the best way to fine tune your lists as well as create new decks.
Starting off good, very true.
Eh, I wish this were true lol. No one ALWAYS makes top cut/finals. Stuff happens. Sure people are surprised when you don't-but it's expected. And it's not only other pros that beat you, you'll lose to plenty of mediocre players due to bad hands or a bad matchup or whatever. No one EVER scoops to you lol. And a lot of the times it may seem like you have all the cards, but that's part of luck too. I wouldn't put that in the outline.
Again I wish lol. A deck can only be so consistent. There is an optimal point of consistency where going beyond that wouldn't change much. Most 10s lists have that-optimal consistency. That doesn't mean that their decks won't crap out on them sometimes, because they will. It just happens less often than other player's.
Building on this, you know the reason why good players seem to have the most sour grapes? It's becasue 90% of the games you lose when you're a 9 or a 10 are because of bad hands or a god hand by the opponent of being T1ed or something lame like that.
That's actually very well put. 100% agree.
Ah, so true. One single deck can have so many different strategies depending on what it's playing against-and you need to know every single one. As soon as the basics are flipped over (possibly even before!) you should know what you're going for and what you're approach to winning is going to be. It may be very different from your core strategy. For example, Regigigas vs Machamp. You almost never want to go for the Regigigas, you want to Uxie swarm the poop out of them.
True, but not 100%. Addressed this earlier.
Correct. However, you can do a LOT in theory. I don't have anyone to play with in real life for 100 miles, so besides Apprentice I don't play. Therefore I do a LOT of playing games in my head. How they should play out, etc. To fix the finer details, though, you need to actually play the game.
So true. Knowing your deck is not enough, you have to know your opponent's just as well. Run as many different decks as you can to get a feel for them. When a top player plays a mediocre player, they can often run the opponent's deck better than they can without even seeing their hand lol.
And I can not stress ENOUGH the importance of knowing every single card in your deck. If you can't recite your entire list off, you're so done. It's something that I make my brothers do before every tournament lol.
Hmm, not sure if I agree with this. Your ideal start varies a lot with what you're playing against. But yeah, you can have a general ideal set up I guess.
Yeah that's pretty standard I think. Even really good players can't expect crazy stuff though like playing vs a Kingdra and they law down Regice, drop 2 Water, Felicity drop 2 Water and lay down 4 Pluspowers and hit you for the 130 they need to KO you.
I actually think I said most of what I wanted to up there. If I think of anything else I'll be sure to edit it in. Hope that helps everyone!
