Many times, this card has been requested to be banned in every format.  However, it was only ever banned in one: Tribal Wars Standard.  Why is this?  Many people said that Jitte was not fun to play against.  Others said that fun did not matter.  Apparently, the others won.

Not much fun!

Also not fun!

This card was restricted in Vintage.  The reasoning, to quote Aaron Forsythe, was, "One of the most damning statements that can be made about a game is that it is not fun....  While it does serve a role of keeping combo decks in check, it also randomly destroys people on turn one, with little recourse other than Force of Will. And those games end up labeled with that heinous word—unfun. Not just “I lost” unfun, but “Why did I even come here to play?” unfun."  (The first sentence in the quote was introducing the Ravager Affinity bannings, banned on the same principle.) Jitte was not banned despite being not fun.  Trinisphere was restricted and Raffinity banned because they were not fun.  Where is the difference?  I conjecture that the difference is this: Cards are banned when a tournament player building a deck that beats them is not having fun, and no other time.

 Obviously I'm not going to toss a conjecture at you and not support it.

Bannings cater to tournament players.

This topic will be obvious to some people.  Bannings cater to tournament players because bannings only necessarily take effect in tournaments.  Although casual players may choose to play by bannings, they have the option to ignore bannings or impose extra bannings by mutual consent within a playgroup.  (Magic Online players, unfortunately, do not have the first option, but that's all the more reason to be careful what you ban.)  Thus, if casual players find Umezawa's Jitte unfun, they can ban it without consulting Wizards of the Coast.  In fact, that's what many of them did.  Tournament players, on the other hand, must play by Wizards' chosen bans and restrictions.  Thus, since tournament players are the only ones truly affected by the ban, they should be the only ones who cause the ban.

Just because you can't beat it doesn't mean it's unbeatable.

This was and is my argument against the nerfing of Flash in Classic.  Although many players cannot build or play a deck that beats Flash, that doesn't mean that Flash is broken, that means that Classic is not right for them.  Many other players can build and/or play a deck that beats Flash, and many do.  Thus, Flash is not broken.  However, why in that case was Flash restricted, Trinisphere restricted, and Raffinity banned out of existence?

Winning should be fun.

While many of us (myself not included) like to picture Spikes as heartless netdecking machines (and that's a topic for another article), Spikes do have fun.  Spikes have fun when they win.  Aaron Forsythe, earlier in the article I referenced, said,

	"Was Standard that bad? Was the format actually not diverse enough, and not solvable enough?
	Looked	at purely analytically, the format probably wasn't that bad. Decks emerged that could 
	beat Affinity. You could play something other than Affinity or Tooth and Nail and have a decent 
	chance to succeed....  The best deck only won X% of the time, was beaten by the second-best 
	deck Y% of the time, and decks #3, 4, and 5 were all played in reasonable numbers. If we like 
	the math, no problem." 

This was followed by the first sentence of the quote from above.

The point of all this is that yes, you could win by playing something other than Affinity, or even something other than Affinity or Tooth and Nail.  However, was it fun to win that way?  Forsythe, and apparently the DCI, said no, it wasn't fun.  When winning is no longer fun, why play anymore?  That is when people leave, and that is when cards need to get banned.

Losing does not need to be fun.

As a corollary to the above, losing does not need to be fun.  If you're not having fun even though you're winning, then cards get banned.  However, if you're not having fun because you're losing, then there's not necessarily something wrong.  In a case where, if you played a deck that won, you would be having fun, then the format is fine.  If there is no deck that both wins and makes you have fun, then the format is broken.  However, if you are not having fun winning but other people are, then the problem is not the format but you.

I will conclude with examples to illustrate my point, drawn from the discussed topics above:

Playing against Ravager Affinity, there was no deck that people could play that would make winning fun.  Although you could play Affinity and win, it was a chore.  Although you could beat Affinity by loading up on hate, it was a chore.  Thus, Affinity was nerfed.

With Umezawa's Jitte, there were many ways to win.  The important thing was that those ways did not mean destroying your entire gameplan, they only meant adding one or two cards to your deck.  In addition, some decks were hardly if at all affected by Jitte.  While casual decks may have been hurt, casual players could and often did say "no jitte".  Thus, jitte was not banned except in Tribal Wars - Standard, where it hurt just about every deck around.

Playing against Flash and winning while having fun was possible, but not for long.  With the introduction of Force of Will to the Classic format, decks that you could have fun with would not be able to keep up with Flash.  Thanks to the restriction of Flash, the deck is still playable (thank you Mystical Tutor!) but it is beatable.

Winning should be fun, but as long as it's possible to win and have fun at the same time, losing doesn't have to be fun.