Murphy is a VtES Player

In general (at least) the first three "Murphy's Laws" can be applied to VtES as well. In fact I believe Murphy came up with the laws when playing VtES first.

1. If anything can go wrong it will.
2. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems.
3. Everything takes longer than you expect.

But there are special pitfalls for the VtES players, which everybody should be aware of. Warn your noob players, your neigbour's dog and your co-workers, so they will be prepared when playing VtES next time:

General

1. You have always one pool less than you need to have. Your prey has always one pool more than you can remove in a single turn.
2. When being ousted (or trying to oust) the next card in your library is the one you needed, but didn't draw.
3. A hand jam always occurs at the worst time possible.
4. Your opponents can top deck, you can't.

Vampires & Cards & Combos

5. The vampire in your torpor region is the one with the disciplines/abilities you need right now.
6. If you play a deck with a star vampire, you either have none in your starting crypt or at least two.
   Corrollary: If you happen to get your star vampire in your uncontrolled region nonetheless, your grandprey or grandpredator will contest him.
7. If you bounce a hefty bleed to your prey, you will have no bounce card left for the next and bigger bleed that you cannot block.
   Lemma: Your grandprey will always play "My Enemy's Enemy", when you can't block or bounce.
8. You always have plenty of DIs and Washes, when there's nothing important to cancel. If there are plenty of opportunities to cancel, you have none.
9. If you have a "Concealed Weapon" in your hand, the weapon will only show up as replacement for the "Concealed Weapon" you have just discarded.
   Corrollary: When all of your vampires are tapped out, you either have a untap card or bounce card, but never both.

Deck Construction

10. Cardtext always precedes player's wishes.
11. If you come up with great deck idea or card combo, LSJ has already made a ruling which leaves a key angle of the deck/combo no longer feasible.
12. If you managed to trim your deck down to 60 cards, your predator will play a Milling & "Brinkmanship" deck. This law especially applies when playing "Twister" decks.
13. Either your predator is a stealth bleed deck, or your prey is a rush combat deck. Or, mostly likely, this happens at the same time.
    Corrollary: If you play wall deck, your prey will too.
14. Your crosstable "buddies" are either noobs who never played a tournament or megalomanics who think they can safely go down to 1 pool in turn 4 even if their predator is playing a Giovanni powerbleed deck.

Real Life

15. When playing with four players and everything is looking great for you, a fifth player is showing up, and you will have to restart the game.
16. When you are drafting (or opening boosters with a friend), the player next to you/your friend gets a "Heart of Nizcehtus", you get "Lobotomy" or "Crusade: Miami".
17. If someone spills a drink (or any other liquid) on the table, most of liquid spills in the direction of the player who does not use card sleeves.
18. If one of your deck gets stolen or lost, it's the one with the most expensive/hard-to-get cards.
19. Your decklist is only wrong, if you manage to qualify for the finals. It's impeccable if you're finishing without any VPs.

Most Important

20. "Arika" is a bitch (even if you control her).

All of the above can be applied to casual games, but the larger the event (tournament, qualifier or championship) is, the more probable they are.

References

• The House of Murphy
• Murphy's Law And Magic by Henrik Bentzer
• Murphy’s Law - RPG edition! by Maikl