How to be better at trading Yugioh cards with your friends

Hey, you. That's right, you. I bet you're here because you keep failing at trading Yugioh cards. Sometimes a friend will end up walking away with two or three more cards than you feel comfortable with. Afterwards, I bet your pride hurts; that's fine. I understand. I'm here to help you out and teach you a couple of cool tips and tricks you can try out when it comes to asserting yourself, your intentions, and ultimately walking out on top.

Many teachers you'll find ask you to put blind faith in them - "trust the process!" is what they say. You know what I say? Don't trust the process, I want you to be skeptical at every step. Try it, test it out for yourself. These tips are meant to be put into application, and learning concrete experience in the process is only an added bonus. You'll see that these ideas aren't broad, abstract concepts, but real world skills that are meant to be built on.

Going into a duel, you know what your deck is. You know what cards you want to find in your hand. Now, for a minute, I want you to humor me at this crucial beginning stage. Close your eyes. Picture that dream hand. Focus on the vividness of the holos, perhaps they're glimmering slightly in your eye. Maybe you catch the scent of fresh packaging, or spot the familiar creases leftover from age. Now, picture those key spell or trap cards that a friend has used to defeat you in the past. There might even be a monster or two that would be perfect additions to your dream hand. Its important to imagine these cards materializing into your dream hand's dream-hand. Please do that, and when you can, open your eyes. That's called goal setting and visualization, and its the first step to understanding what you want and eventually offering and trading cards with your friend. When you understand what you want, you understand what you're willing to sacrifice for it, and you gain the mental resolve needed to bargain yourself to success.

Whenever you're about to float the prospect of a trade, you must do it gracefully. If you're in the middle of a duel and you pull off a nice play, gauge the reaction of your friend. Are they angry? Are they surprised? Are they relaxed? If your friend in anyway seems moved by a play involving a card you're willing to trade, then that's how you know you should seize that moment and ask them for a trade. State your intention of wanting your chosen card, and offer the one that they recently got outplayed by. By having a direct example of just how useful that card can be, a friend will be a lot more willing to offer his card for a 1 to 1 trade, rather than pressing you for multiple cards.

Ok, that was easy enough, right? Lets shake off the training wheels now. If you want to trade at an advanced level, you're going to have to minimize loss. This means trading cards to your friends that don't even fit in any of your decks, or are otherwise not good enough for you to want to duel with. Even though those cards might not be relevant to you or your deck, its important for you study them. Learn their effects and what they do, so that when the opportunity to play that card arises, you can tell your friend all about how great it'd be. Tell them that you'd be interested in trading it for a card of his 'sometime later'. Keep postponing the trade, and casually mentioning the range of cards that are applicable towards their deck and taking inventory on whether or not they seem interested in any of them. Odds are, before you're even done showcasing your cards, they'll be begging to trade with you.