Every Game Revealed - Winning the Bernie Sanders New Years Invitational

203 player signed up for the double elimination tournament, gold level/standard foil cards, best 2 out of 3. After the check-in, I was up against 116 competitors.

It lasted about 3.5 hours. It took 232 matches in total. But it was all worth it, as I won the tournament and welcomed the best New Years day ever.

• For the full bracket and results, click here

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This is a personal record of the Bernie Sanders New Years Invitational Steemmonsters tournament, the biggest one so far with 2500 steem prize. In this posting, I analyze the games I played and document my thoughts, ideas, and feelings during the tournament. I hope you will find it entertaining following my journey to the top.

Note: as the title suggests, this article is using the format of "Every Hand Revealed" by Gus Hansen. He wrote this book after winning the Aussie Millions Poker Tournament 2007, and this book is so far my favorite among poker books - I learned a lot from reading this book while enjoying the reading. In particular, it made me feeling that I am playing the tournament myself.

I always wanted to write something like that, but I didn't have a chance to win a major tournament - until yesterday. While I won several smaller size tournaments last week, I waited for "major" one and the Bernie Sanders Invitational certainly qualifies.

That being said, let's start the journey!

Before the Tournament

Conditions for the tournament were good for me.

1. Time: it started at 2am, 2019/01/01 for KST(Korean time). Because of this, several players were not able to participate - in particular, @marabara and @fenrir78, who were the finalists of the Korean tournament held on 12/31 with the same setting (gold level limit). Also, I learned from the Discord channel conversation that @jrvacation, the winner of several tournaments last week, is not going to participate due to the time zone difference.

2. Competition bracket: there are exceptional players who beat me in previous matches and I was not very confident playing against them. To name a few, @clayboyn, @ramires, @tradingideas, @toocurious, and @wombykus (alphabetical order). Thanks to the favorable bracket, I did not have to play against these player in the early stage of the tournament.

To prepare, I have participated in several tournaments to practice. I would like to thank @crystalhuman and @clayboyn for hosting/organizing most of them.

The only concern was whether I can stay/remain sober at 2am. I went to bed early and got up at 1:50 to check-in: ready to go!

Round 1 (vs @otage): "Back to Basics" rule saved me

Going into the first match is almost always nervous, and this was not an exception. Moreover, I haven't played many games with him so I didn't know his style.

Thus, I simply chose the "standard" team and didn't try to make a new setup on the spot. It worked - I got crushed at the 2nd game (melee mayhem), but won the 1st and 3rd game (Back to Basics) to advance.

• Replays: 1st, 2nd, 3rd

Round 2(vs @tashidelek): a nice walk in the park

It seemed that her cards were not leveled up enough to play in the gold level limit setting: common and rare cards were level 2-3.

After the first match, she marked me as a winner in the challonge site and went offline, instead of going for the 2nd game. I reported the situation to @aggroed and he asked me to advance. Almost free win!

• Replay: 1st

Round 3(vs @chrisroberts): guessing worked well

I've met him in previous tournaments. Even though the games were under silver league (card level), I had some info on his playing style and it certainly helped.

I made a guess that he would use naga and medusa, and it worked perfectly in this series.

• Replays: 1st, 2nd

Round 4(vs @nicholaslive): "Back to Basics" saved me again!

I didn't have info on my opponent, and it was critical. He surprised me by putting gold dragon in the first spot in 15 mana, super sneak rule and destroyed me. It was my first time in this tournament when I lost the 1st game.

I actually didn't feel good about the situation - I don't know my opponent, it seems that his playing style is pretty unique, and I have to win 2 games in a row.

When the 2nd game started, I liked it. "Back to Basics" rule usually worked well for me. When the teams were revealed, I thought that he lacked some key cards under this rule and my team certainly had advantage - and now it's 1:1.

And the 3rd game was "Back to basics" again! I thanked my luck and quickly submitted my team.

Yet, steem blockchain did not like me at that moment:

Rare error occured, and the system said I "fled". Fortunately, I had a screenshot (above pic) captured with the time stamp (right bottom corner), and @aggroed accepted my request to rematch.

Funny thing is, 3rd game rematch was again "Back to basics", which was a relief for me in this setup. Comeback complete.

• Replays: 1st, 2nd, 3rd

Round 5(vs @tailcock): overcome previous defeats

I reached Round 5 which was quarterfinal for the winners bracket: good thing is that I am in top 15 and will get at least 100 Steem, and bad thing is that now I am going to face tough opponents for sure.

And my nightmare opponent showed up. @tailcock, who finished last season near top 10, crushed me in a recent Korean tournament and league games - I lost 5 games in a row once.

The 1st game rule was "target practice". I knew that magic blast cards are very popular under this rule and I myself got countered by @clayboyn who utilized "Lord Arianthus". I followed what @clayboyn did and it worked out well - yes!

Feeling much better, I decided to use "standard" teams for the rest of the match. I knew that @tailcock is a solid player who are not likely to try new stuff when he's behind, and having 50-50 game is not bad given that I am ahead. As anticipated, we had similar teams but having selenia sky as a summoner brought me the 2nd win.

• Replays: 1st, 2nd

Semifinal(vs @vaansteam): going "standard" worked again

I am pretty sure who reads this article up till this part knows who @vaansteam is: the previous season top 3, the current season leader.

I didn't really plan to do anything special. I thought it was 50-50 at best, and at this point I should aim to avoid mistakes, not to make up something fantastic on the spot.

My standard 2 snipe deck was chosen for the game 1, and these 2 snipes killed his crustacean king ("lobster") instantly. With its death, its armor buff was gone immediately and that basically settled the game.

Game 2 was "Aim true". As @jarvie did some statistical check on my previous season ladder games using peakmonsters' battlechain feature, this rule is one of my favorites. I placed shin-lo at the end to take 2 attacks and protect my key cards for one more turn, and it worked.

• Replays: 1st, 2nd

Final(vs @bji1203): "Aim True" sealed the series again

I've played with @bji1203 several times at various settings, including Korean tournament games. My understanding was that he was good at reading what others would do and counter it. And the 1st game was another example of "reading the opponent" from him. He went 3 magics with water summoner, which was a nice counter to my "standard" 2 snipe team.

The game 2 was under "weak magic". I expected him to use life splinter to get +1 armor and defender of truth to another +2 armor. This time my counter worked. It was a quite risky move, but given that I already reached the winners bracket final and secured at least 3rd place, I thought I could take a chance. And if I play against opponents at this level, I don't want to take 50-50 chance games when I am behind.

And the game 3 was ... "Aim true". I recently won under this rule when I played against @vaansteam, so why would I change my team and try something different? I basically used the same team, and it worked again!

• Replays: 1st, 2nd, 3rd

Grand Final(vs @bji1203): turn the tide with Kobold miner

I waited for a while waiting for the loser's bracket to finish. I hoped to avoid @wombykus, @toocurious, @clayboyn, and @ramires - and turned out to be a rematch between @bji1203 and I when he did beat @wombykus 2-0 at the loser's final.

For the game 1, "oops I did it again." I used my standard deck without much thought and it was countered. Basically this is what happened to the game 1 of the winners final! I certainly didn't take important lesson then.

Game 2 was super sneak with mana 17. Optimal choice was quite limited, and we ended up having the exactly same team. @aggroed advised us that it is draw and we should play game 2 again, as with the same team winner is simply decided by RNG luck.

Game 2 rematch was the critical point. When the game reached at this point(below screenshot), I thought I lost and skipped to results. Later I found that Kobold miner hit Haunted spirit at the end of round 3, and it did hit first (50-50 chance) at the round 4 to secure the win!

After that lucky win, I felt a lot more confident, feeling that the luck was on my side. In fact, I did ride the lucky wave - my Haunted spirit countered his water magic team in game 3.

And game 4 was "Back to Basics" - which delivered me 100% winning rate today and which is my opponent's weak point also. My team held up and it was all over!

• Replays: 1st, 2nd - "draw", 2nd, 3rd, 4th

• List of all games:
  
  
  

Epilogue

First of all, I would like to thank the sponser(@berniesanders) and the organizer(@aggroed) for hosting this amazing tournament. Also, it was really fun playing with worthy opponents!

In retrospect, the crucial part was the round 4 where I played against @nicholaslive and had a technical issue. After the match, he told me (a joke) that "if you win first place, I deserve half :p". Well, it actually turned out to be the case.

Since I plan to donate/sponser most of my winning (500 steem), I could not share him half of 500 - instead, I offered him 20 steem!

Hope to see you again at the next tournament - may the odds be ever in your favor!

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