The “heart of cards” doesn’t exist in real life, but your emotions do.

The “heart of cards” is a concept from the Yugi-oh series were your deck apparently has feelings and if you believe hard enough you can change your fate by drawing the perfect answer (or the perfect question — the card you want). Or something like that. At this point I’m pretty sure most people don’t believe on that. And yet, they seem to ignore how the real world works.

In a game where probability plays a huge factor (card draw %, item drop %, stat roll %) you can’t control all the variables. It’s not a pure game of chance because there are some variables under your control. It’s different when someone else is throwing a coin, 50–50, and you bet on the results while the coin is flying in the air; or when you in front of a slot machine. That’s pure gambling. We won’t cover that here. It’s rigged or not, if not, it’s just chance. No further action needed on your side. Maybe leave?

On a card game, there is the probability factor on top of skill/knowledge. What does that mean? Luck is not enough, but it’s not irrelevant. If you are outrageously lucky you can make up for the lack of skill. If you are super unlucky no skill can make up for that. Good thing it’s not (always) about extremes…

You could replace the heart of cards with Karma…

Wait. It’s not the Hollywood-like Karma on which a train falls from the sky in your face because you took candy from a child or whatever. It’s conditioning. Kinda of. I’m going closer to the root concept of Karma, not the fantastic ones.

Say you are playing a card game tournament and you decide to keep a fringe hand. The top of your deck starts to deliver you an horror show of “wrong place and wrong time” cards.

STEP 1 — Don’t freak out

Assuming you shuffled your deck and you’re not some sort of god/freak, you cannot control probability. That makes overreacting about something that fits perfectly into the spectrum of possibilities something really weird. Because if you finished high school (or even junior school in some countries) it is expected that you have a fringe notion of probaility.

If you draw a card that it’s not in your deck, or if you draw a coconut instead of a playing card, well, then you are allowed to freak out. If you drew a card that was in your decently shuffled deck, you are not allowed to freakout. Superhero from the meme slaps you in the face if you do.

STEP 1.5 — But I want to freak out! You’re not the boss of me! (optional)

That creates a conditioning, you are chosing a new set of rules to yourself. By not trying to calm the f*** down and acting like a reasonable adult with basic knowledge of math, you allow yourself to get enraged. That’s “bad karma”. You are training your brain into “letting go”, as if that’s the go-to reaction you should have on an unlucky draw.

That’s good, you are venting out… Or are you?

We are not in the self-help movie world were you can shape snowflakes and water molecules with your mind Matrix style, but we are in a world were your body can produce a bunch of chemicals to fight a threat. Those chemicals aren’t the ones you are looking for when you are trying to make calm and collected decisions.

On top of bad draws (out of your control), you get into a bad state of mind (should have controlled that) and start making mistakes (oh-oh, def. should have controlled that) that will make your state of mind even worse (oops, now we can’t control it anymore for a while), making more mistakes for the rest of tournament (game sucks)…

It would be cool if it ended there, but after a while you basically let your body believe bad draws (something out of your control if you shuffle) are an attack on you, an external threat. And they are just math. You internalize the thing.

On the next tournament, the downward spiral will be more likely to happen again because you trained for that (you might have even spiraled out during your training). After a few years, you will have created a set of conditions that will be really hard to escape from and what could be an esports career will end up as another entitled manchild that quit something and can’t stop complaining about how bad that thing is. And blaming external factors might become part of your life… Basically, welcome to the human society in 2021. The end. ;)

STEP 2 — The next move

Assuming you didn’t take the step 1.5, you have a terrible hand and a terrible draw. Well, screw you. I mean, screw the “heart of the cards”, that’s not your fault. Controlling probability is way above your paygrade. You still have to control your actions/emotions, tho. There you are, the opponent is waiting…

You need to figure out the best move to make at the real world scenario you are in, which also involves probability (and future rolls). Ideally, you also have to poker face during the whole thing and pretend you are holding into something, giving the impression you are actually considering one of the ton of options you have. Think about future tunrs. Think about how you can prepare for future draws. Think about your cat. Take some time to make sure you are in control of your emotions at very least. On the other side there is a human that doesn’t know your hand sucks, if you can make him hold off, you might buy yourself some time to fix this mess you have in front of you.

Focus on the things you can actually control and you might be able to steal your win. Your opponent could get overconfident and make mistakes, your deck could decide to start working and you have a setup going for when that happen. Because you are doing your best regardless of what you can’t control. Like, playing the game. You are a player, you are not a trickster “God of Probability”. So don’t be insane and start beating yourself over something you cannot control and do your thing… Don’t try to change how math works by protesting during a card game (actually, never try to do that). Play. The. Game.

STEP 3 — The branch

Either things worked out in your way and you learned a lesson from a comeback — And no, you weren’t “lucky”, because you had to work hard to keep it together. — Or maybe you lost, but you had a chance to improve on your poker face, baiting, controlling your emotions, maximizing your (lack of) resources and that might helpful in a future game, shall your deck decide to work when you are in a losing postion.

In both scenarios you had a positive attititude that helped you to improve as a player, instead of raging about things you can control. Two different outcomes for the game, but only one real outcome to your development — you built “good karma” — aka trained to become a better player. It’s about improving and getting better and better, not about “a win” or “a loss” (a.k.a. don’t tilt, don’t be results oriented, especially not in a card game.)

It wasn’t the heart of the cards, it was your heart all along… And I can’t finish this with that. It is super tacky. I’m not a care bear… Emergency sub topic we go.

How does that translate to other games with item drops?

I used a card game on the example because it’s easier to explain to almost anyone. Let’s say you have to kill a boss or finish a dungeon for loot on an action RPG. After beating it, you failed because you get some random crap. That’s a fail, right? Well, no. There is always something to improve. If it’s a hard fight, you will improve your gameplay, your combos, whatever. If it’s an easy one, you can improve your clear time, test stuff while you are farming as a change of pace and stumble into something you didn’t know about.

It’s not “loot or bust”. There is a whole process where you can evolve as player in order to get better at the game, improving “the big picture”. If there’s a new dungeon in the future, your mechanical skills will be better because you had to grind a dungeon in the past for drops and some of those skills might translate into the new dungeon. Or at least the emotial state that will prevent you from beating yourself up at every single bad drop…

Conclusion

Try to control the things you can control (that includes your emotions, they are a big part of it) instead of beating yourself over things you can’t control. Don’t let your bad emotions condition you to failure. Because that you can - and you are expected to — control. (Hey, that’s a good one... Maybe you can use that in your life…)