Bluffing, DN and IRL

Taking DN as the representative of virtual games, tag force, world championship (DS), YVD, YGO Pro, they're all pretty much the same, as long as your opponent is a real player and not a CPU.

The image says all about this technique

Bluffing, one of my favourite techniques in this game, how to use it (for newbies) and how to act against it (for pros and wannabe pros).
Bluffing is a techinque took from poker, that has been used in pretty much all the game cards, doubt could be a good example (for those who don't know, or call it with another name, the player discard a cards facedown, and says it is a 6, for example, another discards a card that should be a 7, but you can doubt of it, if the card isn't a 7, the one who discarded it will take all the cards discarded, if it is, the player who doubt-ed will take all the cards, instead).
In YGO, we'd use this technique to stop some opponent's moves, if he isn't a careless player, or we make him believe we have a poker hand (aka. awesome hand), limiting his moves. Let's say you have a mirror force set on the field, while the opponent has two stardusts and you have 2 cards in hand (random card and MST) and 4700 LPs.
Seeing it from the opponent's point of view, attacking shouldn't be a bad idea, in the worst of cases he'll drop a D-Prison or a Fader, but he can't go into gorz, since he still have a card on the field. If you were the player b that has double stardust, what would you do? You'd attack with the first, player A chains mirror force, and you negate with one of the stardusts, then you attack with the second for damages. At this point you won't think of nothing in his hand, it's a mind game, you won't think that he has gorz after he used mirror force, since gorz is limited at 1 it is less-probable for player A to draw into it. BUT, what if player A, during his turn, uses typhoon on his own mirror force? Wouldn't player B think that player A has a gorz in hand? Because if it isn't that move would be pointless, and since gorz here could have been game, too, you don't want that to happen, and you wait for something to respond to gorz.
That's one of extreme bluff, risking everything, since you would have gained only a turn activating that mirror force, surely that wouldn't have been enough (not surely, probably, depends from the other card you have in hand), while making your opponent think you have gorz, will have you gain tons and tons of turns, except if the opponent is lucky, lol.

However, extreme bluff is one of the rarest ones, everyday life consists mainly of ordinary bluff, such as "Player A sets a Dark Hole when the opponent has stardust on the field, making player B thinking he has D-Prison, instead." or "sets gold sarcophagus and D-Prison, if the player B MSTs one of the twos he'll always fall in player A's trap: MST on sarcophagus, he'll think both are bluffs, so he'll attack freely and get hit by prison; MST on prison, he'll think the other one is another protection trap and thus won't attack". Profit.
Bluff on DN usually consists of setting some of the less important cards first, since some tend to hit cards on the center with MST, or setting more and more cards when you have a bad hand to make him think you have a powerful backrow ready to exterminate everything.
The difference from IRL to DN bluffs are, mainly, that IRL you can help yourself with your body, some smiles, for example, can make your opponent think you drew what you needed. Bad situation, opponent has full field, you're at top deck, draw gold sarcophagus, smile as you're limitating yourself from laughing hard, set gs and end turn. What would you think if you were the opponent? Of course, player B (the one with full field) could be careless or having an MST/Heavy Storm, but doesn't matter, you have a chance of winning like this.

When you're in one of this situations, where you see the opponent doing something like what we saw up here (setting GS, but thinking it is mirror force), what could be the best response? Put some monsters in defense is, usually, the best thing to do, and then attack. Even if it'll need two turns to kill the opponent, three if he uses that mirror force (that is a gs, so that won't ever happen, but you don't know that) on the second turn of attacks, but with that few draws he has, they won't be enough, except for DH, lol.
Against the two set cards, I'd play it differently, I'd set my MST and end turn, killing only one of the two cards isn't enough, so I'd prefer waiting for the second MST or heavy, and use this mst as mst bait (maybe one of the two set card is mst itsellf) or using it to negate some power plays with Dragon Ravine/DW Gate/Necrovalley+big beater/call of the haunted, etc...
Against Gorz, no way, continue attacking freely, if he MSTs his mirror force. See it from the opponent's point of view, if he really had gorz, what would be the point into MSTing his own mirror force? He could simply have used mirror force on one attack and drop gorz on the second one, mantaining that MST for future uses.

Sorry for the kinda fast post, hope it was useful, however, but on this argument there weren't lots of things to talk about. I did this because I fell in love with that image mainly, lol.
Well, See Ya.

Tips for Pro Playing #3

Rule n.9, "Prepare yourself to anything"
Don't overextend if it isn't needed, don't summon/set everything if you don't have something to block an opponent Dark Hole/Heavy Storm. Knowing opponent's deck helps in here too.
You have a beautiful hand, you could deal million of tons of damages with that hand, but you need to deal only 2000, don't summon everything, opponent could have something to stop you and you're fucked-up.  Your opponent could Mirror Force you or use battle fader and then Dark Hole. So, Be Prepared.

Rule n.10, "Concentrate"
Wondering why I forgot this...
Well, let's say it now, it works however, doesn't it? Basically, concentrate on your own duel, not anyone else's, your and your opponent's one.
Since this rule was short, I merged this with another rule, "Don't Stress". There are tons of people around you while you're playing? Well, how does that affect you? You just need to don't even consider them. You're on the final of a tournament. All of the peoples that are watching you are people that like yugioh and went there to see a game, or people that didn't reach the final but stayed looking. First ones aren't a problem, they are simply watching. Don't misplay because you're under pressure because of the second ones, they didn't even reach that point of the game, they don't have any right to criticize you.

Rule n.11, "Pride is nothing"
Don't misunderstand the title. Let's say you misplayed, but that misplay didn't cost you the game, don't do like you haven't had that card in hand and play it some turns after, just play it when needed. Okay, this rule may seem unuseful, but some friends of mine did this and lost the game because of that.

Rule n.12, "Expressions"
You need mirror force/battle fader to stop your opponent's incoming OTK, you draw into that, you jump for happiness, you scream "YEAAHHH", WRONG.
Don't do that, you draw, see that card, think for a bit of time as you're thinking what you need to do and then either pass if you draw fader or set a card (mirror force) and then pass. Your opponent will think that you drew into nothing and you're bluffing setting a card. Opponent's summon all for the otk, and you mirror force him, your opponent face will probably be like poker face, LOL.
Of course you need facial expression even when bluffing, but without exaggerating. Let's say you want to bluff, you draw, giggle a bit (only bit, you need to do that as your opponent may think that you don't want to demonstrate that but what happened is too good that it made you giggle. He will probably hold back, and you'll have one more turn to draw what you really need.

That's all for today, See Ya

Tips for Pro Playing #2

Read this post (TfPP #1) if you didn't before continue reading.

Rule n.5, "Opponent's not a noob"

That's important, you must think that your opponent's not a noob to foresee throught everything (more or less). 

Example: opponent's first turn, he set's 5 cards and no monster, so you can't guess what kind of deck he is playing. Think, if he's a good player, would he set mindlessly 5 cards that are ALL effect/summon negation? No, so he must have something to negate it, more likely starlight road, so you would lose a card and he could summon a big monster that has a negating-destruction effect.

Rule n.6, "What's he doing?"

As said before, the opponent isn't always a newbie, so if he makes something that looks foolish, well, be prepared to something. For example, I knew that my opponent had mirror force, because he chose that with Pot of Duality, but I attacked no matter what with 3 big monsters that wouldn't have killed him with just one attack each. He of course mirror force'd me, I used Starlight and won. In this case you should have used both rule n.2 and rule n.5, "take your time" and "opponent's not a noob", he has a face-down card and he's attacking me with big monsters he has just summoned, why is he doing that? Then rule n.0, "know your deck perfectly", if you didn't stopped the OTK, could you win the game with cards you have in hand and on field and 1 card you could have draw into? If yes, wait, don't mirror force 'em, if no, hope he's using rule n.4, "like poker", to bluff.

Rule n.7, "Know the rulings"

Yeah, maybe I should have mentioned this before, but they aren't in order of importance (except for rule n.0, of course) and I forgot this. Rulings are a powerful weapon, you can use strange and forgotten ones to stop the opponent, you don't need to ask the judge because that would alarm your opponent and you won't misplay realizing a wrong ruling at the end of the combo making you waste useful resources for nothing.

Rule n.8, "What will happen if..."

I always used this rule, only while playing Fabled I totally forgot that, because the kind of Fabled I was playing wasn't something that used 2/3 cards to combo for half an hour, that one could combo for an hour entire, making it impossible to think about it. Said that, what does this rule means? You need to think about everything that happens after one of your moves. 

If I use my Dark Hole now, I won't draw into another, so I must think "Is it really needed to use it now? Is it worth the situation? Can I block opponent's comboes by destroying cards he has on the field right now or can I stop the comboes that will follow with the cards I'll set (maybe against hieratics, if he drew into a REDMD the next turn he could have easily killed me, but by destroying this field now he won't be summoning him)?". Those aren't easy-to-answer questions, but you can apply rule n.2, "take your time", and think easily about that.

This is still not all, I'll add something an other day.

Tips for Pro Playing #1

I saw the blog was a little dead, but these days I have pretty much nothing to talk about, because I sealed all of my "Single Card discussion" into the "Card of the Week" label, so I wanted to write something. Well, here's I kind of post I think I never did before: Tips for pro playing.
Let's start.

Rule n.0, "Know your deck perfectly"
I'm not a good example for this, I change deck everyday, so I can never remember EVERYTHING about my deck, but I'm fine with that as long as I have fun. BUT, if you want to play competitively, this rule is the basis for everything. As long as you know perfectly your deck, you can increase your probability of winning by the 200% of actual probabilities, except that for mono-combo and auto-pilot decks.

Rule n.1, "Know the meta"
I was going to write three different rules for this, but I decided to put 'em together. This helps preventing opponent's unexpected moves because you know his deck and how it is built, it helps facing some situation where you don't know what that set card is, because if you know how his deck looks like, less or more, you can foresee that.
To achieve this I'd recommend trying all the decks in today's meta and read the more you can about them on the net, selecting a version and reading a lot of other lists on the net to see techs. Repeat this for every deck and for every variant to be preparated to EVERYTHING.

Rule n.2, "Take your time"
Yeah, take your time, this was going to be rule n-0, but I changed my mind about that. You have time to thing about every move, read always all of the opponent's cards, you have the right to do that, look at the opponent's grave/field to foresee what he's going to do (in a deck full of dark monsters, if he has 3 DARK monsters in the grave, summon that TK to negate DAD's summon). This rule is highly related to others, that's why I wanted to put that first.

Rule n.3, "Don't stop, never give up"
Never give up, never, if your opponent is in a big advantage there could be one card that can save you, and, if your opponent is playing an highly combo related deck, or a deck taht has a long and difficult combo, look good at his moves, something could go wrong and you could always win. Of course do this only in tournaments if you're really interested in it, because that's lame if you're doing that in 4fun games.

Rule n.4, "Like Poker"
BLUFF, you can do that. This is related to the previous rule if your opponent is in a big advantage, and there's a card that can save you, even if you don't play that card, bluff as you have it, that really helps. Face expressions, some movements, laughs or simply smiles could help you making your opponent think you drew into that.

Ok, that's NOT all, I'll continue this, so stay tuned, only two days and I'll post the next card of the week.