As the Pokémon TCG continues to gain in popularity and the average age of the player base grows older, I am hearing more accounts of how individual players are achieving their success. Their stories tend to go something like this: they exercise regularly, eat nutritiously, sleep peacefully, work/study/playtest adamantly, reflect meaningfully, engage authentically, worship faithfully and love sincerely. They have been able to find a harmonious balance in their personal, professional and Pokémon lives. If they weren’t able to reach this balance or if their personal or professional identities were lacking in some significant way, then they wouldn’t be able to succeed in the increasingly competitive Pokémon TCG. This narrative also suggests that winning in one area of a player’s life can beget more winning in another area of that player’s life.
These success stories can lead the listener to conclude that all top players have found this balance in their lives. It could also lead the listener to think they are lacking balance in their personal or professional life - and that this poor balance is what is leading to their dissatisfactory tournament performance. OR, going in the other direction...that their excellent tournament performance should be accompanied by success in every other part of their life.
I would like to offer a different perspective to this narrative by highlighting a well known mechanic in the Pokémon TCG, as well as sharing an honest telling of my 2007-2008 tournament season (in a Part 2 to this piece). I have been thinking about writing something like this for several years, but the ideas never felt fully formed in my mind. The final thread I needed to weave it all together was to admit to myself that I can’t figure out how to engage in the Pokémon TCG in a competitive way anymore. I don't have the will to compete the way that I did over a decade ago. This admission produced a clarity about how this “achieve balance in life to succeed in the Pokémon TCG” narrative is not the only narrative. I have found comfort in this and I hope you might too.
The standard player will be familiar with the effect of Counter Catcher, which shares the effect of the Poké-Power belonging to the crown jewel of the deck I piloted to land in the Top 4 of the 2008 U.S. National Championships: Torterra LV. X’s Forest Murmurs. Cards like these offer an advantage to the player in a disadvantaged position. These cards allow the player to overcompensate for falling behind in their game. Through this overcompensation, the player can gain ground and pull ahead. Given the popularity of Counter Catcher (and its predecessors), we should of course conclude that its effect can help the player pull ahead to victory.
One of the greatest gifts the Pokémon TCG can offer to a player is the opening of their mind to the metaphor of playing a game as akin to living a life. We can take lessons we learn in the game into the other parts of our lives. I think the reverse is true too - what we experience in life can influence our experience in the game. In applying this mind metaphor in either direction, we should give some more consideration to the overcompensation concept from Counter Catcher and Forest Murmurs. What if this overcompensation can manifest across our identities? The way in which I think about myself - and I have heard similar accounts from others - is generally organized around my professional identity (i.e. work, academics, etc.), my personal identity (i.e. intimate partner, family, etc.) and my Pokémon identity (i.e. Pokémon friends/games, the competitive structures, etc.). The question I am asking is this - what if falling behind in one’s professional or personal life (or a lack of flourishing in these identities) can lead to success in the Pokémon TCG?
I would argue that my experience during the 2007-2008 tournament season offers some evidence that this overcompensation narrative can be true. I also think this perspective may offer some richness to a prevailing insight that younger players tend to outperform older players in the Pokémon TCG. Most people attribute this phenomenon to the differences in time constraints that generally exist between younger and older players (i.e. young people often have more discretionary time to playtest, consume Pokémon TCG content, etc.). The overcompensation narrative hints that other forces might be at play. Perhaps younger players have a more difficult time achieving elevated social status and earning social honors compared to their older counterparts? Perhaps bullying or bad grades or poverty or a string of bad romances can give them the will to succeed in the Pokémon TCG? It seems to me that there is more to the story and I hope you will come back for mine in Part 2.
Colin