Nice SCG Tournament Mindset Article

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/fundamentals/20826_The_Past_Present_and_Future.html

These fundamentals articles are a little passe at this point, but I always get some good stuff out of them.

I direct the first two topics specifically to Jim: Don't Dwell, and Don't Give Up.

On the topic of giving up, if you consistently concede when things are looking bleak, you don't learn how to turn the game around. If you're dead on the board, that's one thing, but if you concede, say, when your opponent has a 7/7 on the board with nothing else, and you have about 8 mana available and 20 life, you're selling yourself short. This is big deck; you have at least 30 outs (that I'm going to list right now):

Spoiler:

I find that when I start to play poorly, I start to sabotage my game to lose quicker (also happens in long tournaments). Last night at draft, there were several games where I was just thinking "can this be over soon? I hate this deck. And I'm losing anyway..." I had to force myself to keep paying attention to the game and not give up, and I was able to eke out 2-1 by doing so.

Okay, next time we play I won't concede until you have literally beat me to death. I do appreciate the sentiment though, hope I haven't been too much of a bad sport recently.

And I will beat you to death, you know, no doubt about it.

Again, concede if you're dead on the board. Don't concede on turn 5 because you missed a land drop.