Adrenaline, Drafting MtG, and You

The scenario: You've joined an M10 Draft Queue on MtGO and after filling up quickly it's fired. You're in the hang time between the draft starting and the first pack being opened. Suddenly it appears, you see a crap rare and an Air Elemental, and you quickly grab the Elemental, and it's onto the next pack. Wait, what else was in that pack again?

You don't know. You looked, but you didn't really see the cards.

What just happened?

Let's break it down.

Between the queue firing and the first pack opening your brain engages in a classic adrenaline-flood experience. This is an automatic response that cannot be controlled (and, incidentally, is one of the defining features of why drafting is so fun and addictive - an article for another time). As your blood pressure, blood flow and heart rate increase, your pupils dilate, and most importantly blood shifts away from the frontal lobes of your brain to your motor cortex.

This has several effects on your thought process.

(1) You can't think straight. For about the first 30 seconds or so your ability to make value judgements is gone. You will act on a combination of instinct and learnt behaviour from prior experiences.

(2) Your ability to long-term plan is impaired. The flight-or-fight instinct is nature's short term solution, you either survive or you don't. It doesn't care what's going to happen in an hour’s time.

(3) The effects of emotion on your decision-making process are increased. As it has been put, you have a need to do something, anything, immediately. Unfortunately, because of (1) and (2), your snap decision may not always be the right thing to do.

Here are some hypothetical examples of each.

(1) Your first pick was an easy choice, Captain of the Watch (letting a Blinding Mage go), and your second pick a Rhox Pikemaster (letting a Pacifism go). The third pick appears, and there's an Air Elemental, a Doom Blade, and a single white card, Stormfront Pegasus. Having had a lot of success with Air Elemental in the past you grab it, and end up with a rather clunky deck with a lot of double-coloured casting cost cards, while the person to your left drafts a fast white-weenie rush deck and the person to your left crafts a nice counter-blue skies deck.

(2) The pack opens and immediately see a crap rare, a Sierra Angel and an Air Elemental. Your experience is that Sierra Angel is the stronger flyer so you immediately pick it. However, you have ignored that the pack also has a Blinding Mage, a Pacifism, and no other blue cards. You missed the chance to send a clear signal to your neighbour, who will still likely go white, and also missed the chance to own all the blue in Pack 2. You end up drafting a White/Red deck with only one solid white card, the Sierra Angel.

(3) You open Pack Three and see a Great Sable Stag and a Tendrils of Corruption. You've drafted black so far, but that Stag is staring you in the face. You don't own any yet, and you really want a playset, and, hey, it's counter-drafting anyway, right? So you pick it. The Tendrils does not wheel, you don't end up playing the Stag, and you lose in the first game when the Tendrils could have got you there.

None of these decisions are entirely conscious, and not always the worst decision you could make, but they are judgement impaired decisions due to the adrenaline in your system and blood flowing out of your frontal lobes.

So what to do about it?

* Firstly, you can try to prevent it. Doing some sort of activity, such as light exercise, can get the initial adrenaline rush over with before the draft starts, thereby freeing your mind for when it’s needed.

* Secondly, the effect is pretty short. Depending on your “high”, the initial thought dampening will last around thirty seconds, with the total effect gone in around five minutes. You can speed this up by moving your arms and legs to get your blood flowing again.

* Thirdly, slow down, give yourself time. Do not make a first-pick within the first 30 seconds of the draft. Let your brain get over the initial flow of adrenaline and the flight-or-fight instinct wear off. Then you’ll be able to get back into rational decision-making mode.

* Lastly, talk out loud to yourself. I know that sounds weird, but it will re-engage your brain. Force yourself to reason out loud about why you are going to pick a particular card, including its advantages, disadvantages and what card in the pack is likely to wheel back to you. This forces your brain to logically step through why a card is good enough to choose, and if it sounds wrong when spoken out loud, take it as a warning sign that the pick may be wrong.

In summary, be aware of the tricks your body will pull on you, slow down, give your brain a chance to start thinking again, and then draft away.

Labels: mtgo, theory