Improvement + Analyzing ft Zane. (+ Special bonus).

5 Simple steps to improve in the game of Yu-Gi-Oh & Analyzing your opponent/an argument :

You've noticed duelist(s) at a certain level ahead of yours and you've sometimes thought; what would it be like to challenge their competitive prowess or at least get to their level. We've all been there at some point either in Yu-Gi-Oh or outside of it.  

1) Carefully watch the best duelist(s) around you and learn from them : Why?: Great observation leads to great understanding and chemistry with card usage. If you're watching an advanced duel, and the game play + combinations are flowing, you'll mentally be drawn to certain aspects of card usage that is during the game play, which will insight curiosity.
Game, Set, and Match. (And because it's easier to receive specific advice of the deck you're interested in if your friend was using it if not an easy net deck).  

2) Make the dedication easy for yourself : Why?: Learning a couple of tricks to save time and energy can create an even more accurate time scale for you to efficiently improve. How?: There's a couple ways to do it plus you wont exhaust yourself and get bored of the format(Which causes a lot of duelists to hinder themselves, very important.) After forming an ideology of what deck(s) you want to competitively use try sticking to singles as they are faster and tend to not drag on as matches do. Mentally take notes of the duel to remind yourself afterwards of what plays you could have done to either change or improve the outcome. Next time, while wanting to improve don't go throwing yourself at the best duelist you can find as you wont really improve you'll just get used to losing fast, so do it randomly. Challenge various people who you know or do unranked in singles and take it slow. Best example would be in boxing, we don't go rushing to take on professionals more used to the sport than we are, we take it slow by doing amateur bouts to get used to the fight elevation. (So main points of this sentence. Don't be afraid to duel weaker opponents then work your way up slowly and efficiently + Stick to singles.)

3) Find a group + Yu-Gi-Oh articles :   Why?: Simple, finding a group of duelist's wanting to improve in their craft you'll pick up right habits along the way, smart duelists are vigilant about doing all the right things, by surrounding yourself in this scenario your interest towards dueling with a multitude of decks will become more manageable and fun to experience. It's a looping effect for motivation when inspired duelists all push each other, you do not want to keep people who are cocky and irrational in your specific group. If you cannot use the academy for your integration into a group then use discord. Articles?: Articles are a very underestimated valuable tool for a duelist's improvement on a short term scale. You can use articles to view and read upcoming cards, collections, RULINGS, stories of duelists facing improvement, tips and many many more. Deciphering the relevant information from a large text is easier if you pay close attention to the relevant sentences that are speaking about the specific topic itself. https://yugiohblog.konami.com/articles/

4) Stay rational and be patient + losing your ego : Why?: During these 5 steps of improvement you'll come across moments when you think you're not improving fast enough or improving at all. Those thoughts are purely in the heat of the moment that has resulted in unconfident comparisons mentally created in your head either consciously or subconsciously, simply compare yourself to yourself rather than comparing yourself to a duelist you've mentally taken note of during this process, simplicity at it's best is key. An ego works for many or crumbles all, you can either be a servant of improvement or a hostage to your own ego in the sense if you confined yourself in a one sided way of thinking you will never pass those barriers that are confiding you in this game or in life and by losing or loosening your mental restraint known as your ego to become more open minded then each of these steps will be easier for you.

The Unbearably difficult, Exposing your flaws + completing your improvement scale: Why: How else can you truly improve if you do not work on your exposed flaws? now to find these flaws you need to look deep in the way you've maintained the last 4 steps, what have you struggled with? what can you do better? why can't you get used to this? why are you constantly losing to this person? what is stopping you? all these questions can be answered if you follow each step correctly, if you bond and build a brother hood with a group your teammates will notice your flaws, you will notice your flaws as you experience new decks and new styles of dueling. And to improve on your flaws you challenge yourself, you dedicate yourself to the specific flaw. It becomes the most important key factor that is you and eventually that exposed flaw can become your strongest benefit. Completing the scale is difficult, it's like DNA. Completely different but specific to only you on the way you complete it, some take a few weeks. I personally took 3 months and during that time scale I went from using a 60 card anime cyber dragon deck with no extra to undefeated 100-1(1DC) competitively. https://imgur.com/K2iVDUE The scale can take as long as you need it to be, however try to avoid wasting time. Taking longer is not the key to improvement but embracing the time passed on improving is.

How to Analyze situations and duelists/arguments :

Definition of Analyzing : To examine in detail in order to discover meaning, essential features and outcomes, etc. Analyzing a situation is simple, understand the benefits of this situation and compare it to the hindrances, examine each feature you notice and focus on valuable points to motivate you to continue this can either be at the start of a duel, during the duel or at the "wall" a term used for when both players are perfectly even in field presence and recovery presence. To analyze a person/duelist(s) you need to examine not just them but how they are in general, you compare their specific traits you've learned by observing them over a brief amount of time to the majority of factors they can be placed in, traits such as how they handle pressure, how they duel(Do they missplay/waste potential plays, adapt well to situations, show versatility or even rise to the occasion during pressured moments) or how they deal with other duelists. Examine and discover what their comfortable with and uncomfortable with then exploit that to your advantage, (Example would be you dueling a one dimensional duelist after carefully examining him you notice he is programmed to use decks of the same nature, like back row decks or spam decks and from that point you know how he plays when he is out of his element and dragged into deep water during the duel.) How to Analyze arguements : Why?: During an argument or debate you want to examine the facts and fictions that are being exploited throughout, factual documented evidence will always out prove simple fiction, somebody who tends to stretch the truth will always alter their argument or keep it painfully repetitive with nothing other than fueled biased opinion. Examine the facts from fiction, keep relevant information continuously looped until explained and answered, decipher and dissect the sentences, statements then analyse the outcome of their sentences before comparing it to yours.

Finally a quick announcement that the GXDA Champion court will be facing Erebus and NOT me for her championship, the contract will be made by me and signed by both duelists.

Finally, the special bonus is a simple method to find any song you have forgotten, all it requires is a knowledge of the lyrics as an example would be these lyrics "Breathe your life into me" "I can feel you I'm falling faster" If you type these exact copied lyrics into the google generator it will find the exact song for you. If you do that now it'll find the song by RED- Breathe into me. This method works with every song most of the time, 90% of the time(Obviously it wont work for Dubstep).

Thank you and enjoy.

- Zane

*yawns*

you need this dead.