Hate drafting is a term that is most common in Magic: The Gathering, but is used in any game that has drafting or draft-like elements.

The most traditional form of drafting consists of each player taking a stack of cards, picking one, and passing the stack over to the next player, who takes one and passes it on. It is a fair way of distributing cards between two or more players, and is prefered over random shuffling in games where strategy is more important than luck.

Hate drafting is a strategy in which you don't take a card you want, but rather a card that you know your opponent wants. This can be a winning move, but has a high opportunity cost. Ideally, you should be building a deck that is made from lots of good cards fitting together well; taking a card that does not fit well, while at the same time passing over some other card that hopefully would be good for your hand, is a costly move.

Because this sort is strategy can be used in any game where players gain power by monopolizing shared resources, this term is likewise used in those games. However, the less card-based a game is, the less likely it is that the term 'hate draft' will be used, and terms like backstabbing and evil become more common.

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