This, I believe, is somewhat true. The opportunity in Legacy to brew is limited. (Although, I believe there are some undiscovered Legacy decks.) The skill factor in Legacy comes from knowing the meta, knowing your deck, and making good decisions. Simply playing the wrong land on turn 1 can cost you the game. Stacking your triggers wrong can cost you a game. Not knowing what piece of, or when, to counter a Storm deck can cost you the game. The cards are so powerful that misplays are magnified. This is why Legacy is more skill intensive than Standard. You are punished much more severely for your misplays.
At the same time however, Legacy has the most easy mode land base, you can just play two colour lands with zero draw back.
In standard you always have to be tactical about your two mana lands. Do you play a scry land on turn 1 or save it for late game when the scry can bring more value? :nod::nod:
In Legacy if you need more colours no problem just fetch out your duels.
Any fetchland is possible of fetching any colour. The main limitation to legacy is the cost of entry as opposed to the skill gap.
Taht's why I stuck with mono blue, you get to stay cheap while being competetive.
From your posts in this thread, BlackHalo, I feel pretty safe saying that your win % in a GP-style Legacy field would probably be no more than 50% no matter what deck you were playing (no matter how much money the deck was worth, too). You don't seem to have a firm grasp on the levels of thinking required for Legacy success at all, and you're grossly misevaluating key interactions in the format basically every time you open your mouth. Lurk in the Legacy forum more, you might learn something.
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Lots of talk about %'s but there really isn't a measure to prove it except feels. Still this is a game of luck and skill, Skill in deck building, and skill in making good plays, and luck of the draw. The main reason why most matches go to best of 3 is because the game has luck, and if the match includes more games then there is less of a chance that luck is a factor. I would say that to remove as much of luck as possible that best of three isn't enough games to make a point. After all the world chess championships have 12 games in a match, and chess has essentially no luck involved, and no hidden information, or differing parts. Where as magic has these three elements meaning that a player's skill will take a long time to measure and have confidence in the result. I'd estimate that with those three elements it would be very hard to rise above 60% total wins in a level field of play, with hundreds of games played. Maybe it could be visualized with some sort of normal distribution where 40% and lower losses is the lower 5% and 60% and up is the upper 5% of the population. Meh just a thought. Anyways the real message is that there is luck in this game which might be considered skill, such as really great top decking skills, or whatever
Does anyone know similar stats for games like Go or Chess? the win percentages of the absolute best among fields of very good players?
3 main skill games are Go, Bridge, and Chess. Chess is probably the lowest of the 3 and good players still crush bad ones 50 times out of 50.
Bridge changes the most every time and is more of a logic puzzle which some like. The main competitive events typically have you play 64 hands against the opposing team to determine a winner which helps a lot too. Jeff Meckstroth, for example, has 51 National Championship wins. Only 1 person has won more than 3 pro tours thus far in MTG history as a comparison.
Go is the one that makes my mind hurt the most when playing. Skill is huge and noticeable, and there is a TON of progression from beginner to amateur to expert hence the 40-50 different ranks that players progress through from beginner to master. There is so much going on that there will be some randomness for who wins if both players are the same skill lvl but those are mental errors rather than "ooops, I mana flooded" errors.
EDIT: If you're actually a "part time semi pro" player, what's your name? I'm curious to see what events you place in. If you're a semi pro, I must be Jon Finkel, LSV, and Patrick Chapin rolled into one sexy MTG god.
During pro tour coverage they make a huge deal about people with 60% win rates at the pro tour or 65% win rates at grand prix.
If the game was 100% luck we would expect tendancies toward 50% win rates.
60 - 65% seems like still a huge amount of luck is involved in each game.
Does anyone know similar stats for games like Go or Chess? the win percentages of the absolute best among fields of very good players?
You can tell approximately by the elo spreads. Every 400 points of elo corresponds to approximately a 90% win rate. In limited, when we had elo ratings, the range between a complete beginner and the best pros was around 400 points, with the worst of the worst dropping down to around 1400 or so vs. the pros at around 2000. Given that there was some mathematical evidence to suggest that the players with the most skill would beat new players around 90% of the time, I would go with a 90/10 split for skill/luck. The spread was wider in constructed, but I suspect that is a result of the worst players not playing competitive decks, as card availability becomes a factor as well as skill and luck. A good player can likely post a 99% win rate with many decks against a pile of commons someone picked up after a draft piloted by someone new.
The top 100 chess players have a 200 point elo spread in the FIDE rankings, indicating that the best should beat the 100th best around 70% of the time. This was a bigger spread than found in magic, which is to be expected. To be a FIDE master, you need a rating of 2300, which would indicate you probably lose to the best grandmasters 93%+ of the time. FIDE has a range of 2800 points, which the ELO formula would indicate that random scrubs are projected to beat grandmasters something like 0.00001% of the time, although with spreads that large the estimate becomes kind of meaningless.
Note that almost everyone on the pro tour is probably 1900+ rated. The elo ratings would predict that there should be a 60-65% win rate for the best vs. the worst, which is what we see.
3 main skill games are Go, Bridge, and Chess. Chess is probably the lowest of the 3 and good players still crush bad ones 50 times out of 50.
Bridge changes the most every time and is more of a logic puzzle which some like. The main competitive events typically have you play 64 hands against the opposing team to determine a winner which helps a lot too. Jeff Meckstroth, for example, has 51 National Championship wins. Only 1 person has won more than 3 pro tours thus far in MTG history as a comparison.
Go is the one that makes my mind hurt the most when playing. Skill is huge and noticeable, and there is a TON of progression from beginner to amateur to expert hence the 40-50 different ranks that players progress through from beginner to master. There is so much going on that there will be some randomness for who wins if both players are the same skill lvl but those are mental errors rather than "ooops, I mana flooded" errors.
One other interesting thing about bridge is that it's played 2v2, and in order to minimize the effects of randomness, many tournaments are played with teams of 4, split into 2 tables, with each table getting the same pre-randomized hands dealt to the opposite teams.
It might be cool to try to set something up like that in standard, especially with tutors being such a small part of the viable cardpool in standard nowadays.
This one time, I goldfished with 61islands.dec and took zero damage. I expect similar results this Friday.
Standard is a more forgiving. That's just how playing with less powerful cards works.
The difference is, I actually win when I gold fish.
Also, Standard takes strictly magnitudes levels of more skill then legacy.
Playing less imba cards prevents one small error from deciding the game when it should be more of a battle of wits.
In Legacy most of the time I'll just turn 1 my opponents. One game I was playing mono blue control, my opopnent taps a green to play Glimpse of Nature. I decide to let it resolve as I could easily just counter the creature played.
Opponent proceeds to luck sac a bunch of 0 mana creatures onto the table. Not sure how that's skill but ok.
The difference is, I actually win when I gold fish.
Also, Standard takes strictly magnitudes levels of more skill then legacy.
Playing less imba cards prevents one small error from deciding the game when it should be more of a battle of wits.
In Legacy most of the time I'll just turn 1 my opponents. One game I was playing mono blue control, my opopnent taps a green to play Glimpse of Nature. I decide to let it resolve as I could easily just counter the creature played.
Opponent proceeds to luck sac a bunch of 0 mana creatures onto the table. Not sure how that's skill but ok.
Well it's obvious now. IMO you layed it on a little too thick.
Standard takes more skill than Legacy? I don't know about that. Maybe because you need to spend time each set release to relearn the cards and archetypes since you don't generally have to do that in Eternal formats
I would say eternal formats require more skill, there is a larger cardpool ad deck types you must initially learn and far more complex interactions than what standard generally has to offer,
The difference is, I actually win when I gold fish.
Also, Standard takes strictly magnitudes levels of more skill then legacy.
Playing less imba cards prevents one small error from deciding the game when it should be more of a battle of wits.
In Legacy most of the time I'll just turn 1 my opponents. One game I was playing mono blue control, my opopnent taps a green to play Glimpse of Nature. I decide to let it resolve as I could easily just counter the creature played.
Opponent proceeds to luck sac a bunch of 0 mana creatures onto the table. Not sure how that's skill but ok.
You just turn one win your opponents "most of the time"? Are you playing against competitive decks or just random jank? Because in a competitive meta game, even Spanish Inquisition doesn't just turn 1 their opponents most of the time.
As far as your Glimpse example, you just proved the skill point. You were just looking at the wrong player. You obviously should have countered the Glimpse. It was YOUR play error that ended up costing you the game. Your opponent didn't luck sack into a bunch of zero cost creatures. That was clearly the point of the deck. The fact that the one mistake cost you the game shows that skill is more important. In this case, the glimpse counter was actually fairly obvious so the loss was deserved. It wasn't about luck. You were punished for a mistake.
The difference is, I actually win when I gold fish.
Also, Standard takes strictly magnitudes levels of more skill then legacy.
Playing less imba cards prevents one small error from deciding the game when it should be more of a battle of wits.
In Legacy most of the time I'll just turn 1 my opponents. One game I was playing mono blue control, my opopnent taps a green to play Glimpse of Nature. I decide to let it resolve as I could easily just counter the creature played.
Opponent proceeds to luck sac a bunch of 0 mana creatures onto the table. Not sure how that's skill but ok.
Yeah, it sure is lucky when your deck does exactly what you build it to do. And it sure is skillful to let it happen when you have a counterspell in your hand.
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I'm always looking for foil Madcap Skills and Ghitu Fire-Eater, [trade thread link forthcoming]
My favorite format is draft. But one thing I especially appreciate about constructed is that you have more control of your mana base and what cards you draw. Especially in Legacy, you can use cantrips to get more mana or smooth your draws.
In comparison, way more draft matches can come down to mana screw, which is frustrating. This is one way that there can be more luck in draft than constructed magic.
I'll continue going infinite in type 2 while you guys watch your imba duel lands drop to zero value cause no one wants to play LuckSac Legacy:nod::nod:
If you want to really see how luck can affect the game of magic consider this:
How much do you think luck plays into a game where each player has 100 life points vs. a normal game of 20.
If you want to try a little experiment do this: Create a deck any way you wish and have a friend do it the same way. Now each of you stack your deck any way you wish. (Library manipulation cards of any sort are prohibited-including mill, and scry. Once the deck is set you only touch it to draw for the turn or extra draws) Don't tell each other what your deck is at would ruin the experiment.
Now play a game of magic. Do you think luck plays into this game. How could it, you are drawing exactly what you wanted when you wanted it.
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Praise not the day until evening has come, ice until its been crossed, beer until its drunk.
I only learned one thing in kindergarten: The bigger you were, the less you had to share!
If you want to really see how luck can affect the game of magic consider this:
How much do you think luck plays into a game where each player has 100 life points vs. a normal game of 20.
If you want to try a little experiment do this: Create a deck any way you wish and have a friend do it the same way. Now each of you stack your deck any way you wish. (Library manipulation cards of any sort are prohibited-including mill, and scry. Once the deck is set you only touch it to draw for the turn or extra draws) Don't tell each other what your deck is at would ruin the experiment.
Now play a game of magic. Do you think luck plays into this game. How could it, you are drawing exactly what you wanted when you wanted it.
Your logic is flawed. You play against another person, another deck. The situation is changing on a constant basis. Just because you can set up your deck to have a solid goldfish game, does not mean that same set up will beat the deck your friend builds, or any deck for that matter.
Luck does play a factor in the game. Some people just dont understand that.
If you want to really see how luck can affect the game of magic consider this:
How much do you think luck plays into a game where each player has 100 life points vs. a normal game of 20.
If you want to try a little experiment do this: Create a deck any way you wish and have a friend do it the same way. Now each of you stack your deck any way you wish. (Library manipulation cards of any sort are prohibited-including mill, and scry. Once the deck is set you only touch it to draw for the turn or extra draws) Don't tell each other what your deck is at would ruin the experiment.
Now play a game of magic. Do you think luck plays into this game. How could it, you are drawing exactly what you wanted when you wanted it.
There's actually an interesting little variant that goes just like this, except you only get 3 cards and can't lose by deck-out. Interesting decks include: Force, Blue card, Memnite; Tropical Island, Skyshroud Cutter, Force Spike; Black Lotus, Hymn to Tourache, The Rack.
I find this whole type of topic sort of amusing. The whole "My format takes more skill than yours"... I think it comes from human-nature, wanting to feel that our preferred method of playing is superior.
Why can't we all accept that Magic is a skill based game (of which there is a luck component, as in most games).
Any format takes skill, and I wouldn't say each one is more or less skill intensive, just a different combination of types of skills.
Constructed vs Limited.
Constructed you can take your time fine-tuning your deck, really learn how to play it. You need to know how to handle a vast range of deck archetypes.
Limited you are forced to work with your small card pool, and work quickly. You'll be using and facing weaker cards that you would never see in constructed. You have to choose how to best use those weaker cards, but at the same time you don't need to figure out some of the nuances between cards that you would in the large card pool of a constructed environment. And there are also certain deck types that you are not going to go up against in a Limited environment.
Draft vs Sealed becomes a further debate within Limited. Draft takes some additional types of skill, but then you can also somewhat control your deck direction during the draft. With Sealed you could be forced into playing something you would never choose to play, and part of the skill there is seeing that you have to leave your comfort zone.
How come the same people who say legacy is more skill intensive than standard because of the larger card pool, also say limited is more skill intensive because you're working with a smaller card pool? (I know, it's not an exact comparison, as you can't pick up singles you need in limited).
With the whole Legacy/Modern/Standard debate. You could say more cards makes it harder, as you have more to choose from, more types of decks, more cards to know. Or you could say less is harder, as you have to be more creative with a smaller card pool.
Currently my favorite format to play is Modern Constructed, but it's not the only thing I play. And I wouldn't try and tell you it's tougher than your preferred format, I just enjoy having more variety of cards (and I don't have access to what I would need for legacy), and I like the slower evolution of decks with new sets, rather than the drastic change of rotation in standard.
The bottom line is that each format is different. People prefer different formats and that's great! We don't need to argue over whose preference is the "harder" format!
The difference is, I actually win when I gold fish.
How do you win when there is no opponent?
Or do you goldfish by playing against yourself? I'm sure it's very rewarding when you scoop to you.
Also, Standard takes strictly magnitudes levels of more skill then legacy.
Playing less imba cards prevents one small error from deciding the game when it should be more of a battle of wits.
The format where errors matter more means it has less skill?
Oh wait.
In Legacy most of the time I'll just turn 1 my opponents.
Find better opponents?
One game I was playing mono blue control, my opopnent taps a green to play Glimpse of Nature. I decide to let it resolve as I could easily just counter the creature played.
One time I was playing and had gotten to under three life. My opponent went to cast Incinerate but I let it resolve because I'm like "who cares, man?"
Do you have a point?
Opponent proceeds to luck sac a bunch of 0 mana creatures onto the table. Not sure how that's skill but ok.
Man that jerk totally "luck sac" into having all those zero cost creatures in his deck! How did he know they'd be there? He must have put them there ahead of time, that cheater.
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What's the big deal? You could have played multiple Righteous Avengers for years now.
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At the same time however, Legacy has the most easy mode land base, you can just play two colour lands with zero draw back.
In standard you always have to be tactical about your two mana lands. Do you play a scry land on turn 1 or save it for late game when the scry can bring more value? :nod::nod:
In Legacy if you need more colours no problem just fetch out your duels.
Any fetchland is possible of fetching any colour. The main limitation to legacy is the cost of entry as opposed to the skill gap.
Taht's why I stuck with mono blue, you get to stay cheap while being competetive.
Thanks to Gabgabdevo for the awesome sig image!
I'm always looking for foil Madcap Skills and Ghitu Fire-Eater, [trade thread link forthcoming]
lots of bad posters flaming for no reason.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=10533808&highlight=#post10533808 ...spot on.
If the game was 100% luck we would expect tendancies toward 50% win rates.
60 - 65% seems like still a huge amount of luck is involved in each game.
Does anyone know similar stats for games like Go or Chess? the win percentages of the absolute best among fields of very good players?
You colonization of language is not appreciated.
3 main skill games are Go, Bridge, and Chess. Chess is probably the lowest of the 3 and good players still crush bad ones 50 times out of 50.
Bridge changes the most every time and is more of a logic puzzle which some like. The main competitive events typically have you play 64 hands against the opposing team to determine a winner which helps a lot too. Jeff Meckstroth, for example, has 51 National Championship wins. Only 1 person has won more than 3 pro tours thus far in MTG history as a comparison.
Go is the one that makes my mind hurt the most when playing. Skill is huge and noticeable, and there is a TON of progression from beginner to amateur to expert hence the 40-50 different ranks that players progress through from beginner to master. There is so much going on that there will be some randomness for who wins if both players are the same skill lvl but those are mental errors rather than "ooops, I mana flooded" errors.
This one time, I goldfished with 61islands.dec and took zero damage. I expect similar results this Friday.
I'm thinking Jackie Moon.
Standard is a more forgiving. That's just how playing with less powerful cards works.
You can tell approximately by the elo spreads. Every 400 points of elo corresponds to approximately a 90% win rate. In limited, when we had elo ratings, the range between a complete beginner and the best pros was around 400 points, with the worst of the worst dropping down to around 1400 or so vs. the pros at around 2000. Given that there was some mathematical evidence to suggest that the players with the most skill would beat new players around 90% of the time, I would go with a 90/10 split for skill/luck. The spread was wider in constructed, but I suspect that is a result of the worst players not playing competitive decks, as card availability becomes a factor as well as skill and luck. A good player can likely post a 99% win rate with many decks against a pile of commons someone picked up after a draft piloted by someone new.
The top 100 chess players have a 200 point elo spread in the FIDE rankings, indicating that the best should beat the 100th best around 70% of the time. This was a bigger spread than found in magic, which is to be expected. To be a FIDE master, you need a rating of 2300, which would indicate you probably lose to the best grandmasters 93%+ of the time. FIDE has a range of 2800 points, which the ELO formula would indicate that random scrubs are projected to beat grandmasters something like 0.00001% of the time, although with spreads that large the estimate becomes kind of meaningless.
Note that almost everyone on the pro tour is probably 1900+ rated. The elo ratings would predict that there should be a 60-65% win rate for the best vs. the worst, which is what we see.
One other interesting thing about bridge is that it's played 2v2, and in order to minimize the effects of randomness, many tournaments are played with teams of 4, split into 2 tables, with each table getting the same pre-randomized hands dealt to the opposite teams.
It might be cool to try to set something up like that in standard, especially with tutors being such a small part of the viable cardpool in standard nowadays.
The difference is, I actually win when I gold fish.
Also, Standard takes strictly magnitudes levels of more skill then legacy.
Playing less imba cards prevents one small error from deciding the game when it should be more of a battle of wits.
In Legacy most of the time I'll just turn 1 my opponents. One game I was playing mono blue control, my opopnent taps a green to play Glimpse of Nature. I decide to let it resolve as I could easily just counter the creature played.
Opponent proceeds to luck sac a bunch of 0 mana creatures onto the table. Not sure how that's skill but ok.
Well it's obvious now. IMO you layed it on a little too thick.
I would say eternal formats require more skill, there is a larger cardpool ad deck types you must initially learn and far more complex interactions than what standard generally has to offer,
You just turn one win your opponents "most of the time"? Are you playing against competitive decks or just random jank? Because in a competitive meta game, even Spanish Inquisition doesn't just turn 1 their opponents most of the time.
As far as your Glimpse example, you just proved the skill point. You were just looking at the wrong player. You obviously should have countered the Glimpse. It was YOUR play error that ended up costing you the game. Your opponent didn't luck sack into a bunch of zero cost creatures. That was clearly the point of the deck. The fact that the one mistake cost you the game shows that skill is more important. In this case, the glimpse counter was actually fairly obvious so the loss was deserved. It wasn't about luck. You were punished for a mistake.
Yeah, it sure is lucky when your deck does exactly what you build it to do. And it sure is skillful to let it happen when you have a counterspell in your hand.
Thanks to Gabgabdevo for the awesome sig image!
I'm always looking for foil Madcap Skills and Ghitu Fire-Eater, [trade thread link forthcoming]
In comparison, way more draft matches can come down to mana screw, which is frustrating. This is one way that there can be more luck in draft than constructed magic.
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I'll continue going infinite in type 2 while you guys watch your imba duel lands drop to zero value cause no one wants to play LuckSac Legacy:nod::nod:
Limited Magic (with older sets not designed for Limited) < Constructed Magic < No-limit Hold Em < Limited Magic (with sets from Invasion onward)
Limited of old was mostly about opening bombs and removal that trumped your opponent's bombs. Limited now is very different.
How much do you think luck plays into a game where each player has 100 life points vs. a normal game of 20.
If you want to try a little experiment do this: Create a deck any way you wish and have a friend do it the same way. Now each of you stack your deck any way you wish. (Library manipulation cards of any sort are prohibited-including mill, and scry. Once the deck is set you only touch it to draw for the turn or extra draws) Don't tell each other what your deck is at would ruin the experiment.
Now play a game of magic. Do you think luck plays into this game. How could it, you are drawing exactly what you wanted when you wanted it.
I only learned one thing in kindergarten: The bigger you were, the less you had to share!
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Your logic is flawed. You play against another person, another deck. The situation is changing on a constant basis. Just because you can set up your deck to have a solid goldfish game, does not mean that same set up will beat the deck your friend builds, or any deck for that matter.
Luck does play a factor in the game. Some people just dont understand that.
There's actually an interesting little variant that goes just like this, except you only get 3 cards and can't lose by deck-out. Interesting decks include: Force, Blue card, Memnite; Tropical Island, Skyshroud Cutter, Force Spike; Black Lotus, Hymn to Tourache, The Rack.
Why can't we all accept that Magic is a skill based game (of which there is a luck component, as in most games).
Any format takes skill, and I wouldn't say each one is more or less skill intensive, just a different combination of types of skills.
Constructed vs Limited.
Constructed you can take your time fine-tuning your deck, really learn how to play it. You need to know how to handle a vast range of deck archetypes.
Limited you are forced to work with your small card pool, and work quickly. You'll be using and facing weaker cards that you would never see in constructed. You have to choose how to best use those weaker cards, but at the same time you don't need to figure out some of the nuances between cards that you would in the large card pool of a constructed environment. And there are also certain deck types that you are not going to go up against in a Limited environment.
Draft vs Sealed becomes a further debate within Limited. Draft takes some additional types of skill, but then you can also somewhat control your deck direction during the draft. With Sealed you could be forced into playing something you would never choose to play, and part of the skill there is seeing that you have to leave your comfort zone.
How come the same people who say legacy is more skill intensive than standard because of the larger card pool, also say limited is more skill intensive because you're working with a smaller card pool? (I know, it's not an exact comparison, as you can't pick up singles you need in limited).
With the whole Legacy/Modern/Standard debate. You could say more cards makes it harder, as you have more to choose from, more types of decks, more cards to know. Or you could say less is harder, as you have to be more creative with a smaller card pool.
Currently my favorite format to play is Modern Constructed, but it's not the only thing I play. And I wouldn't try and tell you it's tougher than your preferred format, I just enjoy having more variety of cards (and I don't have access to what I would need for legacy), and I like the slower evolution of decks with new sets, rather than the drastic change of rotation in standard.
The bottom line is that each format is different. People prefer different formats and that's great! We don't need to argue over whose preference is the "harder" format!
How do you win when there is no opponent?
Or do you goldfish by playing against yourself? I'm sure it's very rewarding when you scoop to you.
The format where errors matter more means it has less skill?
Oh wait.
Find better opponents?
One time I was playing and had gotten to under three life. My opponent went to cast Incinerate but I let it resolve because I'm like "who cares, man?"
Do you have a point?
Man that jerk totally "luck sac" into having all those zero cost creatures in his deck! How did he know they'd be there? He must have put them there ahead of time, that cheater.