The Expectation Analysis Experiment - Introduction

You create a deck, try it out a couple of times, bring it to a tournament and then you don't win or even enter the finals. What do you do?

1. You analyse your mistakes in play, deck building and social interaction and take mental notes on how to be able to succeed next time with the same or a different deck.
2. You blames bad seating, poorly skilled cross-table buddies, unfortunate card flow or the weather and hope for better luck next time. Maybe you even want some really hurtful cards to be banned?

I guess most people would say a mix of the two leaning towards 1 but I beg to differ. I know that I want to go for 1 but way to often I am simply a number 2 (insert emoticon of choice). Far worse is I suspect that even when thinking I am being critical and analysing I'm in some sort of denial. What to do about that?

The thing I want to do here is to force myself to be constructive and not blame anything on anyone else than myself. This Saturday I will play a tournament in Gothenburg and before that I will write a post for this blog discussing the deck I'm going to play. I will try to explain its supposed weaknesses and strengths and how I expect to win said tournament with it. I will reason a bit about why I have included certain cards and the numbers of them. After the tournament I will publish that post, a tournament report and a yet another post discussing my mistakes and why I failed to reach my objective. The Expectation Analysis Experiment is born.

I am 100% sure I will learn something from this and hopefully some of you also find this experiment interesting. At least there is quite a chance you will have a good laugh at my feeble attempt and my stupid mistakes.