Episode 2-15* Coaching in the Pokemon TCG Re-release

Hey everybody, Aaron here. Just a quick update before the episode starts. This week we're actually going to have a re-release of one of our highlighted episodes from last season. We were supposed to have a guest this week, but unfortunately our guest had some things come up that made it so that they were unable to attend our scheduled recording time. And John and I felt that it was best to put out something that we consider to be of reasonably high quality this week rather than trying to rush and slap something together just for the sake of putting an episode out. So hopefully, if you haven't listened to this before, this is a great time to listen to it. This is going to be our coaching episode featuring Hunter Butler from last season. Slightly trimmed down, cutting out some of the excess pieces that were in the original recording. If you do want to hear that in its entirety, it is also uploaded. But without further ado, I hope that everyone enjoys and we will hopefully see you again soon for a new episode. Hello and welcome back to the Battle Frontier podcast where we aim to help you level up in your journey as a competitive Pokemon TCG player. I'm Aaron Curry. Here with me as always is my co-host John Orgel. And this week we have a special guest host as well, Hunter Butler, who I'm sure some of you are familiar with. But for those people who aren't, Hunter, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself? Hi, my name is Hunter Butler. I've been playing competitively since 2009-2010. I'm a regional champion. I've gotten invited to six, about to be seven world championships hopefully. And I've also been invited today automatically to day two. And I am also a coach. Perfect. And so that kind of segues properly just to give the structure for the episode moving forward. We're going to look at just what everyone did last week, how everyone did. I know we're going to talk about John's EUIC travel in particular. Then we're going to do a review of EUIC, go over our predictions, the general meta trends and meta percentages and the results for that tournament. And then we're going to dive into how those results impact what Hunter does as a coach and how he would take that data and kind of transform it for his students' purposes moving forward. The thing that I wanted to have Hunter on the show for this week was to talk about the concept of coaching in Pokemon. As someone who played the game heavily from in the first EX era and exited the game as we were entering into like the Sun and Moon era. When coaching really kind of first started to pop up, you know, back when I played, everything was either on message boards or forums. And six prizes had kind of just started the article game in full swing. And coaching wasn't really a thing. Maybe it was happening, but it wasn't super widely talked about. And now I feel like things have transitioned to the point where most of the article sites are gone. Almost everything is in the form of metafy or private coaching. And as someone who's been heavily involved with the latter of those, I think that you can give us a unique perspective into what does coaching do for players in the Pokemon TCG? What does a typical coaching session look like? And how you as a coach approach looking at the data that we just gathered from EUIC and transform that forward, both for yourself and for your students heading into the next major event in Vancouver. So I'll start with the first one. Sure. About the being present for the no coaching to coaching. So I don't a lot of maybe not everyone knows this, but Zach Lissage and Jay Lissage started this thing called the Pokey Academy. This is what I know to be is like the first real like coaching establishment where it was like most of the top juniors and seniors were going to them. And then there were several players underneath them that were also assisting it. Finn was one of them. Danny was one of them. I was one of them. So, but it started out with just them. And that's like the first memory that I have of like an actual organized, like comparing to like something like Metafy, right? Because it's kind of gone buck wild since then. So, you know, there was a small collection of people helping out certain juniors and seniors, right? To not only improve their game, but I think in the beginning to a lot of people won't say this, but the Internet age of playing Pokemon, there was not a lot of sharing lists. I think some, to some degree, a lot of people's coaching, no matter how, if you're a Tord or if you're a dude who's day two, like five, six regionals and you're, you know, bottom barrel Metafy person, right? To some degree, some people are paying you for your deck list at some degree. And I'm saying in the beginning to like, kind of, this was like kind of one of those things that, you know, was kind of taboo. Not everybody was sharing. They weren't taking pictures of their deck list and posting them. They weren't, there weren't the every, not the person that was playing the deck didn't write up this extensive how to method, right? You had to essentially sit down with your friends and play games and figure the deck out, you know, figure out these minute scenarios. Now you can kind of just either if you work with a coach or, or you trust a site that is, has coaches like a, like a PokeBeach or Metafy, right? Where they have the articles in the classroom and stuff. So we're talking about a huge difference between like, all right, we're coaching. What I felt like coaching started as was helping top juniors and seniors continue to place high, right? To now where it's trans transition to a whole different set of stuff, right? Teaching to some degree, it could be teaching math to some degree. It could be teaching metagames to some degree. It could be teaching deck building to some degree. It just could be pointing out your mistakes. So there's this large collection of things that not only can be wrong with you as a player when you're trying to improve, as well as there are people who are just looking for certain things, right? Like there might be some guy who is a solid player, right? Doesn't really have any problems. And he reaches out to some, you know, decently established player, not a crusher, not something like a hundred dollars an hour, right? And he just needs help building his deck. So there's kind of a weird space for coaching where it's kind of the transaction is different compared to kind of what you're trying to offer, right? So coaching is gone. To answer the first question about the difference, I mean, coaching has just gone to plenty of different places, right? For me, I do a goal-based coaching, right? I'm trying to meet with someone to where I can help them, where I think I can help them with their goal, something that's feasible, right? Whether it be placements or worlds or improving in deck building, improving in basic, you know, card, Pokemon card game skills, right? These core things, time management, hand reading, emotional reading, these type of things, which can get advanced depending on who I'm working with. But at the root of it, it's goal-based, right? So if I think this goal is feasible based on an assessment that I have with you, then we can make it happen, right? Because not every coaching relationship works out. In my experience, I've been coaching for seven, this is my seventh year. And there are plenty of relationships where I've had, like, they're either not picking up the lessons, they're not sticking with deck choice. They're paying for something that they're not, like, taking account of, right? And I'm not trying to fleece someone for money. If it's not working out, we're both wasting time here. You're not getting better, and I'm sure you're not feeling good about the deal, right? And then I'm spending all these hours testing and doing all this research about the meta to try to help you, and it's not going anywhere, right? It's just not a good transaction. So I try to be, one, goal-based. And two, you know, like I said, I don't want to string anybody along. So for me, it's a little bit different, I feel like, than not to talk down on anybody, but a majority of people where I feel like sometimes there's not that relationship cut off, right? I'm trying to help you reach a goal. I want this to be good for both of us. I don't want it to just be you're dumping money to me to get my deck list and to hear my thoughts. You know, I really want you to improve, you know, so at some point you don't need this anymore. If you want to come back, and I've produced testing. I've produced a testing partner. I shouldn't say multiple testing partners, but I've produced one for sure, and I'll shout out to Bodie Robinson, where, you know, he had worked with tons of coaches. I'm not the only one, but a relationship that we had where we could build decks together, and, you know, we had massive goals that we had reached winning national. We worked so hard to win that national championship. His one goal at the beginning of the year was, my last year as a senior, I want to win a national championship. So for those national championships, it was week in, week out, multiple hours, deck list, going through ideas, you know. So when you really take to the information and you're inheriting, some of these kids are just geniuses, right? No matter what, Pokemon aside, they're doing good in school. They're doing good in sports, right? Bodie is one of those kids who's very smart and has, you know, a lot of mental capability. So when you get somebody like that and they take it on, now down the line, it's like, you don't need coaching from me. I need help from you. Now we're working on decks because you're, you know, the kids are a lot, and I've been saying this too, the kids are locked in. The 17 to 21 right now are the ones that are eating up the money in this game right now. They are fresh. They have all the time. They're playing so many games. Those are the kids that are, they're eating it up. So to sum all that up, I offer different things for different people. I try to cater to what my student needs. I use an evaluation method, right? I do opening sessions. I talk to their parents. I talk to the kids. I ask about the decks that they play. I watch them. I watch them play, you know, with me when we have the games. And then also with their parents, I ask about their parent, with the parent and kid situation, right? The games that they're testing. I hear about those games. I have those recorded. When they go to League Cups, I get information about their losses, about their wins. So there are a lot of factors that go into the way that I do coaching, but there's a big, big spectrum. So that's the first question. The second question was, what was the second question? Well, real quick, before we get back into that, just as a question for you to follow up on this. So you have a very involved and in-depth coaching style, it sounds like. Yes. Would you say you believe that this is pretty unique in the coaching space? And do you think that, for the most part, what a lot of, I would say, average or mid-level coaches would offer to a player would be simply— Hopping on live. Insert decklist. Here's how you play decklist A. Here's how you play this matchup, this matchup, this matchup. Okay, cool. We'll see you for the next decklist in the next format, rather than being an involved interpersonal relationship. Yep. Yeah. And also, there's a lot of emotional. I try to teach some emotional stuff, too, because being high in competition, especially as kids, right? When you lose, it hurts. The tears are there. John knows because he's a coach or he's a judge, juniors and seniors. The emotion is there. Also, teaching composure, understanding losses. I have a newer student, actually, who he's emotionally so good. Loses doesn't care. I just want to know that I did everything right. Losing, I'm not even worried about that. Loss isn't a word. All I'm worried about is, did I do the right thing? Did variance hit me? Did I discover the right lines? That's all he cares about. And people like that, they really can take to it. Competition, if anything, is high emotion, too. There are people that are basically just logging on to live, shooting you a list. I'm not trying to talk down on the group classes. I'm just using it as an example. Go to my group class. Listen about this list. Go through the lines, right? And it's not as deep as it is for me. I really want to see the people that I work with succeed. That's what I want. I've been a part of and seen coaching relationships where people spend thousands of dollars and nothing happens. Nobody gets better. The coach doesn't work harder. Sometimes the kids get discouraged. Like, okay, well, am I just not good? Am I just not, you know? There's a lot of things that go into that type of relationship even before there was money exchange, right? When, for me, Aaron was one of these coaching peer figures for me and his dad, too, where it was like I would show up every week and I'm just blabbing off asking questions. Like, how many questions can I ask? And I know that Aaron's dad for sure got tired of me blabbing and asking questions. So it's like there's real skin in the game for me. And I feel like that's maybe the biggest difference is that I don't want to sell snake oil. I don't want to waste anyone's time. And I want you to reach your goal. Let's make it happen. That's what matters to me. And I'm not saying that anyone else out there is scamming if you just go on live or whatever. I just feel like PTCG Live is not a client that you should be coaching on due to the time restrictions, not being able to rewind game states, not being able – it's just so many reasons why. Especially with how the client is right now with the bugs that we currently have. The timer thing before. It's like what if we need to have a three-minute conversation about why this is happening? Now that the timer has been fixed. I don't know if the action timer might still exist. So that may still kind of put a damper on things. But I'm not positive about that. I don't know. I haven't really tested it since coming back to – For me, reversing game states is really big because sometimes there will be a loss that will happen. No cards get picked up, and I might have a student or even myself sometimes because I'm not perfect. I might be like, wait, if I did this on this turn, would this be different? And we rewind the whole thing to get to that point. Like there's – I want – if you really feel like that play was that detrimental, let's rewind it. Play the game from the exact scenario, right? And most of the time we can get it close, and then we play out the game from there. And you can't just – you can't do that on PTCG Live. You can't get in-depth. You definitely can't have – with the timer. You can't have the conversation rapport that we're talking about because there might be certain times I'll have the parent with me. I'll be playing the game. We'll be talking about the game, and the parent might be like, hey, I had this question that I wrote down for you that I wanted to ask you. So I can't have that conversation in due live as well either. It's easier to do it over camera, which is why we're doing this. That's what I prefer. I think if you really care about your coaching, PSA message to all coaches, get off of live and get a webcam. Play with cards. That's how you should do it. Give up. Oh, that's great. So how long would you say an average coaching session is for you? And I know that this could probably vary from student to student. Like you said, it depends on what their goals are. Maybe it depends on what deck they're trying to play. But just generally, how long do you think you spend with each student in a given week? So two hours is the minimum. Usually the minimum session that I do, depending on if it's at night and how young the kid is, right? Bedtime, sports, schools, these kids can't, you know, I get off of work at six. If we start a session at seven, it's two hours, seven to nine, they might be zonked out, right? They're not, they're not all the way there, right? So mostly two hours, but sometimes I discover that the productivity or the amount of attention that there is. So then we shorten them. So for some of my students, we'll do an hour and a half. I pretty much never do an hour. An hour is pretty much out of the question because we're not, I use kind of a, it depends on sessions, but for general, overall, 20 to 30 minutes about talking about lines, taking notes, right? So they have, most of my students have a notepad that has tons of matchup information that they could just go flip back and look at, right? Because this typing stuff, you know, like you said, eight, nine, 10 year olds, they don't have phones that they need to be typing all that stuff. You could just have it just like school, right? For your notes and your binder. So 20 to 30 minutes of that, and we actually get into live gameplay and a lot of my gameplay is timed. So depending on if we're learning the matchup or we're testing the matchup, right? So those are two different things. Learning the matchup is going through all the lines, having practice games, understanding, and then testing the matchup is live gameplay, no help. I'm seeing how fast your reactions are to plays, how fast you're playing in your turns. So these types of things would not be able to happen in an hour. It's not, it just wouldn't be possible for what I'm doing. And then after we do review and then I give homework just like a real class. So there's a method to the madness for sure, and it changes for different kids. But for me, I feel like two hours is perfect, 20 to 30 minutes, especially if we're going over the matches learning, and then an hour to an hour and 20 minutes of gameplay, right? And then 10 to 15 minutes of review in the end and giving homework, right? And then when we're doing live, when we're doing testing, then we're just doing two best of threes, 50 minutes, right? And then after the games, I'm talking about taking their time, which I go over with all my students. I take their times. I guess I check their internal clocks, right? So I don't allow them to wear a watch. And throughout the game, I will ask them, how much time do you think is left? Or how much time do you think is passed? Or how much time do you think that turn took? And I ask these questions and I compare them to a real time that I'm timing them. And after the game, we go over the results of those or any mistakes that I saw because I give them no help. We're simply playing a game. And then I will give them a review of how the games went afterwards. Okay. Very different from anybody else's. Super in-depth. I love it. Yeah. So I guess another follow-up question. Do you have any master's students currently? And if so, do you structure things differently for them? I have one master's student, but he's on and off because of college. And I will say for the most part that in my experience in coaching, that I think most masters who want coaching kind of go about it the wrong way and kind of have an ego about their results. And they're not as intent to learn as the kids that I'm working with, for sure. They're not hungry. These kids are hungry. They really are there to listen and learn and soak it up. And this is not a knock at anyone who's a master getting coaching. I totally think coaching is a great thing. Just in my experience, it has not been. I haven't produced that many. Bodhi became a master, right? But I haven't produced from working with a master to, you know, it just deck choice seems to be a big thing, I think. I help them with their deck choice and with their gameplay and a lot of last minute. My friend's playing this and I feel like this is a better call and da-da-da-da-da. I changed my list, but then I didn't use any of the cards that I changed it with. I ran into a lot of those things. So, yeah. Okay. Yeah. What I've heard from other coaches is like masters don't feel like that their gameplay is where they need to improve. They always feel like it's their deck lists or something like that. Which is totally right. No. And I agree. But like, that's the vibe. That's what they're feeling when they get coaching is like, I just need help with my deck list. And that's okay. There are those people, right, who are just, they're like, man, I suck at deck building. This guy from Medify, great guy, 25 bucks an hour. Maybe I'll get two hours, like a month, and I'll ask him questions about my deck and deck building and that type of stuff. And that will be beneficial to that person. But the things that I'm trying to do where I meet someone and I'm like, you want to go to Worlds? You want to date to a regional? You want to win League Cups? Like goal-based. That doesn't really, that style of thinking doesn't really work out because I'm trying to improve your overall skill. Right. And that's going to take some humility. It's going to take some, that's going to take a lot more time than a lot of masters are willing to give it. You know, I don't feel like people realize like the amount of hours you have to put in before you like, but you got to suck for a really long time at Pokemon before you can make the breakthrough. I've told this to people that go to my league and they get frustrated. It's like, I can't, I can't beat you. I can't win. And I'm like, dude, I had to, I had to suck for like two years. As a master trooper, sure. The kids are different. Like my, like. Oh yeah, they're faster. Yeah. They'll pick up. I'm not trying to pump myself up, but players like Xander, uh, Bradner that played since they were kids, Tanner, Grafton, some of these guys, you might not know all these names, but like people who've played since they were kids, like myself, who have years and years and years of play versus like someone who's like, this is my second year. Like, why am I not making day two? Like you're, you're behind like a decade of Pokemon, you know? So it's, yeah, it's crazy. I didn't get started until I was, so this is crazy. I didn't get started until freshman year of college. Like I didn't start playing until freshman year of college. So yeah. And I felt like way behind, like I remember, and this was before, like we had online coaching, my coaching experience, um, as a new player was driving up to Ryan and Kyle's Sable houses and getting my face kicked in, um, like on the, yeah, that's before you had online, it was literally them like getting bored and making their own games to play against me. Cause I was so bad as a player that they were just looking for any amount of challenge, but like eventually like, you know, and I think there is, I can point to like different things. Like I remember the city marathon was just such a crucible that just heated you up and like forced you to like become a good player or like just never play Pokemon again, essentially because you're forced to for like five, six, seven days, be confronted with your deck choice, be confronted with your ability to play that deck and metaphor and like, and metagame and all this. It's just like a, it's a crash course. Um, so I kind of wish we had something similar to that now. But you can basically achieve that if you really want it to buy like laddering at the higher levels. Like I feel like it's just as skill intensive as going to a league cup or if not higher, you know? So yeah. The problem is just getting to that point. Yeah. Yeah. Is it's a slog and a half, especially when you get reset back to essentially zero every month now. And that's the thing we talked about. I mean, I credit it a lot, like my successful run at Puerto Rico with the fact that I played probably hundreds of games, if not, no, yeah, I've, I wasn't near a thousand, but just hundreds of games with my deck. And you know, I just chatted with Hunter and you, John, just with the evolutionary process of my list from like, okay, I started with something that was totally different than what I initially eventually ended up with and kind of talked through why I initially chose the cards that I did and then got to, well, I'm going to try it and then just made a decision. I'm going to try this instead. And then try this and then try this and try this. And that iterative process and actually putting the time and effort in, but making sure to give each of those iterations of a deck an adequate amount of time to determine whether or not the inclusions or exclusions that were put in there actually had a place in the deck. And that can be very difficult to do as a player. You know, one, you may not have, you may not have enough time to commit to that too. If you added something for a specific matchup and you're playing on ladder, you may never run into that matchup. If you're in a, you know, a working adult, like I don't really have that much time to just jam live games. And I really had to kind of force the time to be available, you know, thankfully my wife was okay with it. And we made it work through that and just doing things where I'm like probably staying up later than I should in bed or playing games on my phone or like just doing it while I'm on lunch at work and just trying to grind, absolutely grind out games to fully understand a deck inside and out. And if you don't have the discipline to do something like that, I can totally understand if you don't have the time available or you don't want to put in that much effort and you could totally go find insert coach on Medify to tell me about how to play, you know, Henry Chow's masterclass as an example. If I want to learn from probably, not even probably, from the best guard war player in the world. No probably, Henry, you're getting the close-up on me. 100% right. Go pay, you go pay for that. I mean, and especially with a deck like Guard of War, it's so time intensive to put in that amount of effort to learn that deck. If I can pay Henry 40 to 50, I don't even know how much this class costs, but 40, 50 bucks to condense that information for me and give me a head start, that's probably worth that money. And I can use that, but can you utilize that as a jumping off point? And that's where it becomes difficult for people. They want to pay for a Medify course and be the expert. They want to get a result off of buying a Medify masterclass, which is just, it's not even... It's not realistic. You're not paying for what you think you're paying for. There are very good things to buy from these things, depending on the person or what's being talked about, just like you explained. But that, I don't think anybody, if you have that mentality of, I'm buying this masterclass because I'm going to Day 2, that is the wrong mentality that you should be having about putting money into that, because that's not what that is. The information is not going to get you to Day 2. Your play is going to get you to Day 2. Sure. Okay. So now that we've gone through all that, the second question that I had for you was, we've seen the results of EUIC and these other major events in this format. And I know that the juniors' metagame is not one-to-one with masters, but you've gone through the process of combing through all the PokeData information to compile that metagame percentage information for yourself and for your students. How do you take what we've seen here and what developed here and translate that forward moving into the next major event in Vancouver? Right. So for my junior kids, the turnarounds are so small, you're able to just literally grab all the results, right? So I take the results from Puerto Rico to EUIC. And then what was the other one? Mexico, right? Mérida. Correct. Yep. So I would just add that for those three, right? For an overall meta percentage, right? So I would take all three of those and put them together, first specifically for Vancouver, right? I would look at that. And then I would also just look at EUIC by itself, right? And compare it to Mérida and Puerto Rico combined. So I would take Mérida's information and Puerto Rico's information, put that data together, take EUIC's data, right? Compare that data to also look at the meta. And then obviously, student to student, it's going to matter on play style. I've heard this argument that play style isn't a thing, the right play is the right play. And I totally and wholeheartedly disagree with that for not only juniors, but seniors as well, that their comfort in competition matters, knowing your deck matters. And you cannot, a nine-year-old or a 10-year-old, if there's an event that is two to three weeks or from apart, and this kid is in school and has normal extracurricular activities that are not Pokemon, they are not putting in enough games to properly, fully learn a new deck from one tournament to the next tournament, just because it's the play, right? So for some of my students, the meta won't really super affect deck choice, because we might be flopping between two aggressive decks for kids that are very into linear prize trades, right? Their strength is sequencing and understanding prize routes, and those are their strengths. And then there are kids who can win from ahead and behind that like tempo decks, right? And have the ability to play fast enough to play something like a tempo deck, because there are kids, seniors and juniors, who are simply not fast enough to win a tournament with Garni. It's just not there. Some of them can't, and this is going to sound so stupid, but this is a real factor, some cannot shuffle quick enough to be able to do that. Their hands aren't big enough, their hands are small compared to their cards, dude. There are little outside things that matter that people are not thinking about, right? Like that, not that I think that's the overall, you can't learn Garni because you can't shuffle fast enough. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just putting things out there. But it is something you have to factor in. Yeah, you have to factor in that, yeah, that this person, they're not a great shuffler and they're not great at understanding multiple win cons in the late game, right? If we have a solid matchup plan and this kind of matchup plan or line applies to most matchups, especially when we're talking about something like a Raging Bull or Viridon, where what you're knocking out against each matchup is, you know, pretty across the board going to be the same, right? You'll have different variations, but the collection of things that you're taking knockouts are the same. They're going to be able to lock in on that and just focus. on their prize map rather than okay well two turns from now I need Iono to stick me this while also taking a knockout here and then the following turn I need to be able to produce this combo and then I need my opponent to stumble and I need to pressure this part of their board. There are some kids who are not ready to process the game like that and so they can take an aggressive deck and get massive results. Wins, top eights, worlds and bites just with aggressive decks just simply focusing on the part of the game where their sequencing is really solid, their pace of play is really good and they know exactly what to knock out every turn and they don't make mistakes on that. So when you have a deck that's very simple that you can make marginal errors with you can see a lot of success. So the people who say play style this is the play this is not the play go look at the junior's division and go look at the amount of raging bull compared to the amount of raging bull in seniors and masters and tell me that the play style is the thing. Meta meta like raging bull isn't like they have the exact same pool that we have so you can't say like oh well the meta the meta the meta no. Raging bull isn't doing that great against most meta decks however it is a very very fast consistent simple deck and kids especially juniors can pick a deck like that and just get not also get lucky we didn't even throw in getting lucky in any of these conversations getting lucky and just steamroll an event with an aggressive deck just based on that. So for me I'm going to take those results depending on what list we're working on. Most of the kids that I have will probably stick with the same deck that they play at EUIC. I really am a firm believer that you know in the younger divisions the meta shifts are not as big as in masters where it's like totally this wheel that's going like this. I don't find juniors and seniors to have a meta that spins like a wheel and I do believe that comfort and understanding every single match and the amount of games that some of my students have with their quote-unquote pet deck. It's just so many games that you're just there they have so many small percentage points where they're like yeah this one game two months ago this happened. They have literally hundreds and thousands of games like I coached Cody for like four I mean I can't even imagine how many little situations like that not and not even just with me in their in their homework with their testing with their parents they're testing with their friends or their group or whatever or studying VODs or playing on live whatever all of that combined right that combined information of all of it and the tournaments didn't even mention the tournaments playing with tournaments as well. So yeah it depends to each student but I do use that data the data doesn't matter but I also on the flip side of that I pay attention to things like like the raging bolt phenomena in the juniors it doesn't make any sense but it's there it's there. So if someone that you're coaching is has been playing raging bolt for multiple formats and whatever etc would you ever a encourage them to start branching out and start learning a different deck or a different type of strategy so that they could go down that path in the future if they desired to or I guess a kind of in the same vein if the data showed that there was a large uptick in decks that were extremely good against the type of deck that they typically play would you ever discourage them from playing it? Yes and yes I would encourage them to learn more decks and that when we're not preparing for specific tournaments like downtime usually downtime between tournaments where because not all kids just go to every tournament so when there's downtime we take that downtime to learn other decks and learn other perspectives for sure and then also in the same coin most of my students have between have their main deck and then a backup deck for each event we never go in like 100% this because things happen and also just like how masters have emotions in the middle of the night kids have emotions in the middle of the night too and they're like dad I have a bad feeling I'm not going to hit my generators on Mariah I'm going with my backup pick switch my list please just like okay so that you know for me they should most of the time they will have two decks unless some of you know I've had situations where people are just like blind faith like I love this deck this is what this is what I enjoy playing and for some of you that you know don't just play for results some people get coaching to still have fun and get better and they might just have fun playing that deck maybe that maybe not on the success side of this whole conversation but you know you're paying a lot of money to or the parents are paying a lot of money to travel and go to these events like the kids want to have fun so sometimes they're going to play the fun deck even if it's not meta position or whatnot so that happens too not that I encourage that but it happens it definitely happens so yes sometimes you got to put the bolt down for sure yeah we're we've been pretty big haters on bolt now granted no more bolt most of most of our conversation has been about bolt in the master's division to be fair but at where it's a totally different beast like you said but I think that this has been really enlightening for me you know I for someone who we unfortunately in my local area we don't have a ton of juniors players so I don't get to see a lot of that interaction happening or see the evolution of those players as they progress and learn the game and it's sounds like a really cool process to be a part of yeah I enjoy it gives me a lot of pride too because you know I don't want anyone to feel like they're not getting a good end out of the deal I feel like that's probably the most sour thing about coaching is some people feel like they're you know they're just not getting a good end of the deal sure now we're doing this for so many years I just if we can make your goal happen and we reach it fantastic I just want to make sure that you feel like you're getting a good end of the deal that's what's most important to me for sure yeah and I can second the whole rewarding thing like I don't say that I'm a coach or anything like that but I definitely helped out Omar Cortez from my area who's like he's having a great year he just got top eight at EUIC and won Puerto Rico so he's had a good couple weeks last few weeks but it's always rewarding like I don't know I'm texting his dad and just like oh my gosh he's in top cut let's go let's go you know and cheering him on and so it's always fun to like live vicariously through the people you're coaching and I've gained I just I just jam games with them more than anything I don't really sit there and dissect everything but I'm definitely like asking questions and they can like let us like probably not as like intense as it sounds like with what you're doing but it's still I mean that's fine but it's still helpful you know I feel like that's my goal is with him was just to like be a competitive competent in real life player in our area you know that would take the time and play it against him I think that's all his parents really wanted out of it and what he wants out of it but it's been really cool you know so oh that's great I mean so if he as your student whether formal informal what have you is getting what he wants out of the coaching session I don't think he can really ask for more and I don't think you should really you know they shouldn't expect more than that like if you can deliver above and beyond what they're expecting from you then kudos to you as a coach yeah I mean he gets coaching from like pretty big names as far as I know and it's paying off I mean he's doing really well he's almost to the point where like he's better than me for sure you know he definitely understands the match huh I said hang it up John yeah well I yeah some days I feel that way but he's definitely like you know got a better grasp of all the matchups and like what why each card is in the deck and you know what what is my game plan for all this stuff he's definitely probably further ahead than me in that but you know there's still aspects that like it's just such an involved game and there's so many different little things throughout playing over the years you learn or like just emotionally until like being emotionally intelligent and you know not beating yourself up over something like that yeah I don't know that's kind of a life experience thing though yeah exactly it you can try to help them through that and teach them how to do it but until they experience it and learn how they get through that themselves they're not going to be able to deal with it like what you would consider the proper way trials and tribulations are real for sure learned experience right especially on some of those some of those situations I brought up like changing decks in the middle of night and then bombing the tournament the next day you're stuck with that I've never I've never done that before dude I yeah I didn't go 2-5 at worlds in 2010 or something just want to thank Hunter for taking the time coming on and talking about coaching with us I thought it was a great discussion and I feel like I learned a lot and if I guess the last thing would be do you currently have availability for any students and if someone was interested in coaching with you specifically how would they best get in contact with you meet me come find me at the tournament at a physical tournament you know that would be the best way I don't do social media and you can find my articles on cutter tap please go support the website that obviously means a lot to me you could post a message technically in cutter tap on the article and I could reach out to you from there but really I'm it's more on a personal level for me I would probably only have room for maybe three students at max more that I would feel comfortable with however it is something that I'm working on I'm going forward becoming more independent and relying less on other side works and other stuff that I do that I might take the time to have a larger have a larger group so in the future when that happens I will make it available but for right now I just want to keep it super personal and I want to make sure that I can take care of what I have and not eat too much on my play as I am a working individual that will also be going back to school at some point so I don't want to I don't want to just fill it all up where I can't and not give my full effort to somebody that I had so yeah come talk to me at a tournament if you want to if you want to talk about getting some coaching and I appreciate you guys having me on I've known both of you for a very long time since I was a kid so it's nice to be to be the young adult now yeah yeah now it's great it's great having you on man you've always been a great personality in the game one one person I'm always happy to see say hi to kind of you know tap up a little bit definitely somebody that I've learned I have grown to love a lot in the game so thanks for coming on man I appreciate you guys perfect perfect it's like John so we appreciate all of you we love all of you and we will see you next week