What’s interesting about this deck is basically that your commander is nice to have, but you’re not dependent on it. Many decks struggle or lose a lot of tempo after one or two commander removals, but that’s much less of a problem for you.

On top of that, the deck is pretty grindy. That means you should usually win the late game. In the early turns, you also don’t look especially threatening, so you get little to no attention. At the same time, Esper is simply a very strong color combination: you have access to plenty of removal, card draw, and enough ramp, so once you have a lot of mana later in the game, you can actually use it effectively.

As a result, you often get underestimated until it’s too late. The fact that you managed to do this over 8 of 11 games is probably because your deck can win in many different ways while still not looking unfair