The Levine Trench

I "discovered" the Levine Trench in mid-2012, when one of the regulars at the Superstars Game Center, the precursor to the ChannelFireball Game Center, described the difference in attitudes between a "real pro" (in this case, Josh Utter-Leyton, now a member of the Magic Pro Tour Hall of Fame) and people who were grinding PTQs. In four solid minutes, I MSPainted my way to the bottom and created what would eventually become known as the Levine Trench, pictured above. In an article later in 2012, I wrote:

"I wrote, at the time: “Again, this is a huge generalization. New players are in a new environment and often are extra nice to compensate for not knowing what’s going on. The mediocre learn quickly to hate mana screw, mana flood, and anything out of the ordinary that their opponents do. The truly good have generally seen everything and are liable to be quite nice to you if you are nice to them. The ‘almost good,’ however, is where all of the anger lies, probably due to the Dunning-Krueger effect making them unhappy with their results because they are ‘better than’ whatever it is that is happening to them. This causes some ordinarily friendly people to become horrible misanthropes during games of Magic.”

I drew this in four minutes, and I want to address two things:

1) If you are concerned that this applies to you and are thinking critically about it, it probably doesn’t apply to you, or at least, not any more.
2) My definition of “good” is unlikely to match yours. Luis Scott-Vargas is good at Magic. You and I are not. Unless you are Luis Scott-Vargas, in which case, withdrawn.”

I feel like this is largely accurate, and I would change very little of it. Mostly I'd fiddle with the "I wrote at the time" bit because it doesn't quote super well, and I'd dig a little deeper into bullet point #1. Awareness of the Levine Trench does NOT constitute immunity to the concept - it's merely the first step on the journey out of the Trench itself. 

More to come on this topic.