...without losing sight of the fact that having allowed myself to get into a position where my only path to victory requires a low-probability event that I don’t control was already a huge mistake that I should confidently expect to result in my failure.
This is a very fine line to walk, especially in magic. Finding the places you could have made better decisions, while understanding what decisions you could not have made better with the information you had at the time, is not an easy task- although at my skill level, it is generally easier to assume I made a poor decision and find it.
I don’t know much about magic, but yes, when games have a significant random element it’s often difficult to tell the difference between an optimal strategy that just happened to lose this time, and a suboptimal strategy.
...without losing sight of the fact that having allowed myself to get into a position where my only path to victory requires a low-probability event that I don’t control was already a huge mistake that I should confidently expect to result in my failure.
This is a very fine line to walk, especially in magic. Finding the places you could have made better decisions, while understanding what decisions you could not have made better with the information you had at the time, is not an easy task- although at my skill level, it is generally easier to assume I made a poor decision and find it.
I don’t know much about magic, but yes, when games have a significant random element it’s often difficult to tell the difference between an optimal strategy that just happened to lose this time, and a suboptimal strategy.