How to best react when your opponent has the nuts

Sometimes your opponent just has the best possible cards. Say a perfect curve, the exact right response for your board, having lethal just in time, or exactly the right removal (yes Warrior I look at you). I can't help feel a little desparate and sometimes just concede far too early since I do not believe I can come back.

What is the best way to cope with this emotions? Just play on and play as good as possible? Get more chocolate? Kick the door/dog/wall?

I feel like the best way to cope with situations like this is just simply to take a break from Hearthstone for a couple of hours \ a day. I think that ultimately the game should be played for fun, and when it stops being fun (whether due to a lack of updates or situations in which the universe decides you are cursed for the day) - I just simply move on to doing something else.

I think that if you just force yourself through more and more matches like this - you would get burned out quick. And kicking furniture around would only make your mood sour when you would need it later ;-)

I have often suffered from RnG-triggered rages after games of Hearthstone - which surprised me greatly as I have never experienced anything similar in any game I've played before (including CS:GO which can be very triggering).

Random (seemingly unfair) circumstances in the game can cause a sea of red mist to descend and you often find yourself wanting to curse and/or scream at the screen or something similar.

Seeing the opponent get god-draws and perfect answers to everything can be one such cause.

I have found (for me personally) that sometimes you have to do something to shake yourself out of that feeling of "Reeeee!!!" somehow. One thing I will sometimes do (if I am alone), is to stop and think about what I am doing / imagining (suitable death and punishment for my opponent, etc) and simply laugh at myself and forcibly tell myself how silly it is to get so worked up over a game.
The wors that can happen is I tell myself to "F--- off" or something :-D

And if I can't calm down, I certainly don't start another game. I know for a fact I will lose and  be increasingly more angry through it and come off worse. Instead I'll get up, go make a cup of tea, go play with the kids or simply do something else. 
The best way to deal with Hearthstone Rage (if you can't calm yourself down) is get rid of Hearthstone for a bit. :-D

RNGesus giveth and RNGesus taketh...

Sometimes you lose and sometimes you win, you will generally end up being one side or the other of the good luck.

Just breathe, keep playing until you get luckier...don't stop on a lost game (I feel very energised on the days I start by thrashing an opponent!).

I personally feel far worse when I lose due to my own mistake than due to bad luck...it's a game much closer to poker than chess...skill matters but luck applies VERY much.

Likewise in some cases I felt the victory was too easy and I got lucky or the opponent was beginner/unlucky.

The whole game for me is about factoring luck, and crafting a deck is all about controlling luck and minimising its effects.

Concede when you are fairly sure you're out of steam, compared with the opponent's estimated resources. 

Don't give up hope too early ofc, stop for a second and rationally sum up what's left for you to play, believe in your deck as much as possible, but spare  yourself some brain when against a clearly desperate case, and use it in your next, hopefully more favorable, game.

Accept the cruel justice of RNGesus, have faith in it, and move on.

I would just quit Hearthstone and play something more enjoying.

Oh wait, I already did :))

To be perfectly honest the best thing you can do is to just accept that it happens some games and move on, forget it, it's out of your control and nothing you can do about it. Some say RNG evens itself out after time so some games down the line it will be you who draws the nuts/perfect curve and it'll be you who wins those games so your opponent will be feeling exactly the same.

Throught all of these years, i managed to learn to calm myself after RNG losses. Since that, i started to enjoy the game more. (Im not casual, im every season rank 5+ or even legend when i have time to push a bit)

But tbh, the worst part of RnG that makes me me angry is when i lose the game bcs i didnt draw 1 out of 2 copies of some card that i needed in that game/situation. And the very next game, there is both copies in mulligan/starting hand. That shit happend very very often.

As i said, happily i learnt how to manage this rng rage, so i just laugh when i see that happen (p.s. who knows, maybe im mentally dmged from this game :D)

I don't mind losing to cards that are in the deck, but it's the random cards that always piss me off. I remember a game where I was playing Holy Wrath Paladin against Cyclone Mage, which is usually a good match-up, but he got 3 Counterspells from random effects. It's so hard to play around those things, because my opponent will always get the exact thing they need. Losing like that is enough to make me quit for the day.

I remember a wise man's saying in those times:

"This game is bullshit." -kripp

I don't care. I play HS to finish my dailies with as Memey a deck as I can be assed to build. 

 Other than that, it's a game. Sometimes you win and sometimes your Opponent has the Nuts and gives you the most thorough beating you've ever had. 

 I actually find getting my ass handed to me to be a cathartic experience. 

In truth, I feel better about those situations.

I know many well made decks have a 'God mode' where everything just syncs together and the deck is unstoppable.  If I see that then I know that my loss isn't due to my deck or my ability or even bad luck but just the deck hitting God mode.  I still play it out in case it's "mostly a God mode" and an opening shows up but when the loss comes I shrug and move on.

What bothers me is when losses DON'T come from God mode.  If I know they are playing poorly and didn't get lucky.  When it's a deck that needs a key card and that card never shows, and I still lose.  That sort of thing.  Then I KNOW it's not RNG and it's instead my deck or myself that lost. 

But what REALLY brings the rage?  When "I" have God mode in my deck, I know they don't, and I still lose.  Then I can't blame myself or my strategy or RNG or my opponent being better or even having a better deck.  I lost because the deck I'm playing, the deck I probably made or simply really REALLY like playing, SUCKS right now.

I'd take 5 days of God mode losses over that day I felt earlier when I realized that heal paladin just isn't going to work at all even with good luck.  When that happened to ALL of my decks, I closed the game and really considered not opening it anymore.  

Don't you ever kick the, or any, for that matter, dog.

If they have the nuts, at least you know where you're supposed to kick them.

In all seriousness though, I think all that's needed is more self-awareness and attention to what's happening. I've noticed in the past how I got demotivated and pissed when my opponents just kept getting what they needed at the right time, but when I was the one with the clutch saves, it was like "finally, where was this card the whole game" or "about damn time". When I get the god hand from the get go, I just shrugged and tought "yeah, that's how the deck's supposed to work, so...as expected". In other words, I was either pissed at my opponent when they got lucky or I was pissed at the game when I had to get lucky to win, or, at best, took good hands for granted. The average response was negative, rather than middle of the road. It took me some time but once I learned to appreciate my own luck, my own top decks or the games where I just wiped the floor with the opponent cause I drew the nuts, I became much less negative about it when it happened to me.

This goes both for the game in general and for individual cases within the same match. I used to really dislike RNG messing up my plans and putting me on the back foot and those moments stuck in my mind, but I never really kept a mental tally of the moments when I was the one getting lucky. So I knew that opponent got lucky 3 times that game but had no awareness of how many times I drew just what I needed etc, or when they didn't have the answer for 6 turns even though it's in their deck. Now I'm much more aware of when I get saved by a lucky roll and when that save had to come because my opponent got lucky first etc. When you have the perspective of "RNG keeps screwing me over" you're more likely to rage than when you realise that it all averages out. Because I pay more attention to it now, when I lose a game due to RNG I can exactly pinpoint the moments where I got lucky that game (topdecked doomsayer with frost nova in hand and they had no response, etc.) and often come to the conclusion that yeah, they got lucky and won, but I got lucky like 5 times that game as well so it was about time they got some luck on their side too. Often, I find that I should never have been in a good position to begin with given the matchup, and their luck just pulled the game back to average after my lucky draws.

TLDR: It all averages out, if you pay enough attention and are objective.

The best advice i've ever gotten/can give about hearthstone is to not be results oriented, be performance oriented.  Being good at hearthstone is skill dependent, but not always skill rewarding.  Sometimes you can make the best plays available and you still just have pretty much no chance.  It's a one on one game, so you are going to lose a lot, because only one of you can win.  If you focus on playing well, winning or losing is inconsequential. 

But also, you should play your games out.  Sometimes you draw the nuts and still lose.   I can't tell you how many games I seriously considered conceding just to save time, but played the game out and won.  Always play to your outs.  If there is a way to win, even if it's low percentage, go for it.  

"God f***ing damnit!". Shout this and move on. Unless there are people around and in that case I shout internally. 

What I indeed do sometime is something else, like making coffee, clean up something, just a short break and try to forget and then retry with a fresh mind in my next game.

I never feel the same frustration rage when playing that other game I play a lot, which is chess (2200 elo). Since in chess it is always your own fault or strong play by the opponent in both cases you "deserve" to lose, and I realize perfectly, it would be no fun either if you win all the time, since winning can only be rewarding if you sometimes also lose. That's why with chess it is no fun playing against someone who is a lot weaker than you.

Its just the "not fair" part that is frustrating.

At the beginning of the year I started playing meme decks in wild whenever I got tilted by a succession of high rolls in standard. Now I play the majority of my games there, pushing for legend and mainly sticking to 5 in standard. Because everything is pretty broken in wild, the bad beats never feel so bad; besides, whatever deck I'm playing is just as degenerate in its own way as my opponent's. Except big priest, for obvious reasons.

This about times when YOU had the nuts, the best curve, the perfect answer, the best outcome. That way you won't get as much demoralized since every coin has 2 sides. 

Quote From lMarcusl

If they have the nuts, at least you know where you're supposed to kick them.

In all seriousness though, I think all that's needed is more self-awareness and attention to what's happening. I've noticed in the past how I got demotivated and pissed when my opponents just kept getting what they needed at the right time, but when I was the one with the clutch saves, it was like "finally, where was this card the whole game" or "about damn time". When I get the god hand from the get go, I just shrugged and tought "yeah, that's how the deck's supposed to work, so...as expected". In other words, I was either pissed at my opponent when they got lucky or I was pissed at the game when I had to get lucky to win, or, at best, took good hands for granted. The average response was negative, rather than middle of the road. It took me some time but once I learned to appreciate my own luck, my own top decks or the games where I just wiped the floor with the opponent cause I drew the nuts, I became much less negative about it when it happened to me.

This is a powerful message here about expectations.

Whenever you do something, you have an expectation of some type.  I take a test and expect a B.  I go driving and expect not to crash and die.  I run this computer and expect not to be beamed away by alien ducks.  Whatever your expectation, you are going ot set your anger and joy based on that expectation.

If you, for example, take a test and expect a 70, then a 70 will leave you neutral, less will make you sad or angry and more will make you happy.  Thus a 90 would leave you bouncing for joy that you "beat the test!"  

OTOH, many people expect perfection.  They demand 100 from themselves.  For them, 100 becomes the norm. Getting that doesn't bring joy since nothing special has happened or, at best, a soft contentment of things 'being right with the world'.  Anything less, though, and you'll feel horrible as things 'went wrong' somewhere.  As you can guess, this makes for a much more stressful lifestyle.

Now take this to HS where there is always ALWAYS a % chance of failure and people are bad enough with percentages to not realize that '10%' still means it can happen 20 times in a row.  

If you are going into a game expecting a win.. not 'wanting to win' or even 'desparate to win' but thinking that you SHOULD win, then the above ends up the result: wins don't bring joy because things are 'as they should be' while losses feel horribly wrong.  

When I was learning to drive I received some very powerful advice: everyone is crazy.   If a car is parked by the road, the driver WILL come out in front of you. If you want to change lanes, the driver behind will rush forward.  They won't always, but the expected is that they will.  Thus when it happens, you already planned for it and everything is normal. If it doesn' thappen then.. yay an easy time driving.  

So yes, if you are playing odd paladin then expect for them having Dreadlord.  Expect for God mode to kick in.  Expect things will turn south until you know it can't.  You don't have to PLAN for it. You can play as if they won't come, but don't let yourself expect it SHOULD not come.  

And for goodness sakes, don't plan on your plans to work out. Then when they do, you'll actually enjoy it.

First I check if I made a mistake myself. The other day I played a lackey I didn't need to but had the mana left, and that gave my opponent lethal. I probably still would have died the turn after, don't quite remember, but if I play into my opponent's tools ofcourse I'm gonna get punished. I like baiting my opponents into my tools too, it's part of the game. And games are a fun pastime, if it's no longer fun I quit and do something else.

What is even the point in getting frustrated grinding ranks if all you ever want is just reach legend but not have fun at it? It has become routine as opposed to fun. Quit for a week, should be long enough to forget the game if you are genuinely no longer having fun at it. And otherwise simply come back. One week won't set you back.

Quote From duppie

The best advice i've ever gotten/can give about hearthstone is to not be results oriented, be performance oriented.  Being good at hearthstone is skill dependent, but not always skill rewarding.  Sometimes you can make the best plays available and you still just have pretty much no chance.  It's a one on one game, so you are going to lose a lot, because only one of you can win.  If you focus on playing well, winning or losing is inconsequential. 

But also, you should play your games out.  Sometimes you draw the nuts and still lose.   I can't tell you how many games I seriously considered conceding just to save time, but played the game out and won.  Always play to your outs.  If there is a way to win, even if it's low percentage, go for it.  

Mmm. I find it difficult to play games out which started bad, I rather start a new one soon :). But I will take your advice and try to win anyway. Its amazing how boards can turn around sometimes

How weird I find this right now at just this moment! I have just now learned that I have become a detached, soulless thing that won't even bother with the salty thread anymore. Earlier today I would have answered this question with "chuck all my electronic devices onto a fire pit and burn them all up into toxic fumes." But today was the day I was broken. I am now a broken Hearthstone player. I have now been brainwashed by the software algorithms. The computer is my boss and the things that happen in a match are what I deserve. Randomness is my master. I must obey the master. The master knows what is best for me and I must accept the will of the master. I will click buttons to the best of my ability and allow the RNG to decide the rest. If I lose to the RNG I will coldly press the "Play" button for a new matchup and play some more RNG cards into the void and see what I can do with them, all the while drawing from the deck that I created. If the other player can draw the nuts, I will just lose and feel nothing and play another game of Hearthstone after. 

It's sort of like how you could imagine yourself being Mecha-Jarraxxus. A robot warlock. That's my state of Hearthstone mind now. Cold. Unfeeling. Capable of taking damage for fun. Because I'm a mech. And a warlock.

Tony you have reached an elevated state of Hearthstonery. I only like taking damage when I have the lethal in hand for next turn, or when they hit face while they should have eliminated this minion. I find it impossible to not feel anything when losing. Some losses are worse than others of course. On the other hand, when I win too easily with a deck (I recently won a couple of games very smoothly with some tempo/aggro mage variant) I get bored :)

My dogs both stand up and immediately leave the room when I start making angry noises.  This makes me feel even worse.

da way

Quote From Zwane

Tony you have reached an elevated state of Hearthstonery. I only like taking damage when I have the lethal in hand for next turn, or when they hit face while they should have eliminated this minion. I find it impossible to not feel anything when losing. Some losses are worse than others of course. On the other hand, when I win too easily with a deck (I recently won a couple of games very smoothly with some tempo/aggro mage variant) I get bored :)

I am flattered you consider it an elevated state! You could be right. Since I got in this mode I have been taking more risks in my decision making. I'm not sure how long this will last. Maybe it can last forever. I'd feel lucky. Like I said, I think taking more risks is helping me out

If you're getting legitimate stress from the game that is when you should stop, for your own physical & mental health and especially if you have family or roommates that your changed mood can affect. Nobody gets paid for playing this game unless you are a Blizzard employee or a streamer so why should you then get free stress in your life essentially. Come back when you're not stressed.

let it burn!

Turn 7 18/18 Edwin, 13/13 Bunny and 15/15 Bunny!

Quote From RonnieDobbs

My dogs both stand up and immediately leave the room when I start making angry noises.  This makes me feel even worse.

When my daughter is in the same room she always asks me why I play a game which makes me so upset....good question :

Well first of , it´s just a game, so if you hit a bad/loosing streak just take a break. Breathe and try to relax and keep in mind that it´s simply not possible to win every game and sometimes your opponent will have the nuts opening hand - but also the other way around ( you have the nuts and finish him off on turn 4 , etc) 

Quote From tony

Quote From Zwane

Tony you have reached an elevated state of Hearthstonery. I only like taking damage when I have the lethal in hand for next turn, or when they hit face while they should have eliminated this minion. I find it impossible to not feel anything when losing. Some losses are worse than others of course. On the other hand, when I win too easily with a deck (I recently won a couple of games very smoothly with some tempo/aggro mage variant) I get bored :)

I am flattered you consider it an elevated state! You could be right. Since I got in this mode I have been taking more risks in my decision making. I'm not sure how long this will last. Maybe it can last forever. I'd feel lucky. Like I said, I think taking more risks is helping me out

It actually does.  Many of the major mistakes players make in hearthstone involve prioritizing what 'feels' better than what gives them the better chance.  For example, many players, when faced with a choice of defending an attack that will kill them or taking a chance that may win the game, will opt to defend: 100% to succeed feels better than, say, a 20% chance to succeed.  A pro though will ask "If I defend, how do I actually WIN afterwards." and realize that defending at that time will lead to just slowly losing as you never gain the advantage later on.  Thus they will take the 20% chance over the slower loss and win 1 out of 5 games instead of losing every time.

That's called "playing to win vs playing not to lose"  It's something you can only do if you are comfortable with losing, even though it actually leaves you winning more often.

It also lets you actually SEE your chances instead of FEEL them, which is important because we're..bad at feeling our chances.  For example, studies have shown that losing $10 feels as bad as winning $20 feels good.  Which means even though it's a good idea to take a coin flip chance between winning $20 and losing $15 your brain will see it as a bad deal.  It's also why you can easily ignore the 10 wins you got in a row but get pissed over 3 losses.  

(I know I felt that when I ran a deck tracker on some of my decks, lost a few with a particular deck, went to delete it out of frustration, and found I had a 10-3 win rate with it and just forgot about the earlier wins)

Just about everything from the mulligan to the deck choice to individual plays change once you can look at it logically rather than focus on feeling.  That's not to say that feelings are bad.  It's fine to be happy or angry at things.  The question is just whether they are simply guiding you or if they've taken over.  As I've had it put: your feelings should be in the car with you, but should not be the driver.

Don't worry about it, it is literally just a game and (unless you're one of the top 16 players in the world) that arbitrary number next to your name means nothing at all. Once you realise and believe these things, you'll be free to play the game without anxiety or stress.

I used to get super stressed about this shit, and in some way imagined it was important, until one day one of my dogs was trying to get my attention and I turned and said, 'will you fuck off.' At that point I knew I had to get myself in check. Nowadays I'll walk away from/concede Ranked games if dinner is ready or whatever. It doesn't matter.