In League of legend, LoL, through my personal achievements in league, I learned how to improve at something I want to get better at.
I am now carrying all those "learnings to learn" technics to yugioh edison.
1- the game is muscle memory.
This is particularly true in a League or any real time games, but also applies to yugioh.
The brain has to systems : conscientious, and unconscientious. You have full control over your conscientious system ; but it's capacity are VERY limited.
Your have no control over unconscientious brain but its capacity are near unlimited.
Example : in tennis, your conscientious thinks "I want to swing the ball to the end of the field". Your unconscientious is the one that directs all your muscles to create your swing.
In yugioh you do have a bit of time on your hand (unlike Real time) BUT the outcomes of a decisions are nearly unlimited. Example : your opponent has a set spell/trap. The trap can be anything. Your best play is the one with the better risk/reward and the most likely. Here are all the options :
Dprison, bottomless, TT, mirror, royal oppression, MST, book, solemn, compulsory, coth, return, raigeki break, phenix wing, legacy, pro storm, mindcontrol, any other bluffs, any archetype specific cards. You cannot quickly process all the possibilites during a game. This is where unconscientious comes into play : if you have already been in this situations many times or you sat on your own to consider all the options, the best play will come to you very quickly.
To improve your unconscientious, you must CONSCIENTIOUSLY repeat and repeat and repeat a task until it becomes natural to do the task.
After many times repeating your tennis swing, it will come naturally. After many times siding against the same deck, it will come naturally.
1b - taking notes to learn.
Notes are important to remind yourself, but keep in mind, notes are only useful once they are stuck in your unconscientious. Use science techniques/recommandations to learn your notes : spaced repetitions, reading the notes before sleep.
Go back to your note to refresh them otherwise they will be useless.
2 - at least one learning per game
Your goal when playing to learn (recommanded on DB) is to get one learning per game. Improving is not suddenly skyrocketting to top level, it is one small step at a time, through a lot of playing.
This is why after each game I force myself to load the replay to take one learning out of it. Yes, that is an effort. I usually only want to load a new game, but I do the effort to review and take at least one learning that I can write on my notes to come back later that day.
3 - snowball effect
It is mandatory to see how snowballing a game of yugioh can be. Snowballing means : your actions on turn X, directly impact what you can and cannot do on turn X+1.
An example of non snowbally game : American football. After a touchdown, the gamestate resets : the same 11 players stay, the field and ball is the same. A touchdown done at 0 minute worth the same 6 points than a touchdown done at minute 60.
In yugioh, destroying an opponent in the first turn has a direct impact on the fifth turn/holding a card in turn 1 will directly impact turn 5.
Keep this in mind when reviewing your games.
In my spare time, I am a volunteer facilitator for the game "Climat Fresk". Climat Fresk is a serious game which lets you learn about the climat change. Please try it, you will learn a lot of things thanks to it ! => https://climatefresk.org/
Thank you for reading, to end this, I recommand the following books :
"The art of learning" by Josh watzkin. It is the bio of a successfull chess player and martial artist who shares his tips on "learning":
link
Also "The inner game of tennis" by Thimoty gallway, it talks about the "consciencious" and "unconsciencious" system in the brain.
link
