Here is what I learned when I was exposed to other games after about a decade of exclusively playing MtG:
MtG is just a high-variance game. Not the highest variance game, but it's pretty high. There are numerous factors that come together and add up to this reality (mana system design, hate card design, etc), but the bottom line is that it is very hard to get consistent results from a small sample size.
You could easily get blown out by your best match-up because they drew the nuts, or mulligan three times in a row due to not finding lands in a deck that runs 27 of them. There is also the fact that even if you dodge the "unlucky" fairy, you might just get matched up against a coin-flip deck like Bogles where games are decided on opening draws more than anything else. Of course, sometimes this will happen in your favor also. You will need to either play a large number of games to average out your results, find a different game where variance is low (ie. Yomi, Chess, VS System), or just accept that variance is a thing to deal with when you play games.
Also, while we're on the subject of selective memory, I find that I am pretty good at remembering exceptional variance in my games regardless of whether it helps or hurts me. The best examples I can think of, just from the last month or two, are the following:
* I played Underworld Connections on turn 3, with three lands in play. By turn 13, I had only played four lands despite drawing two cards a turn in a deck with 25 lands (I even scryed a spell to the bottom).
* An opponent whiffed with three consecutive Ajani, Mentor of Heroes activations in a deck that was more than half relevant targets
That game that you lost to chandra, you could have done something else to save yourself 1 life and survive that turn. etc
I don't believe that is always true. Sometimes there is nothing you can do. The [quote]- Turn 1: Duress
- Turn 2: Thoughtseize + Duress
- Turn 3: Sin Collector [/quote thing is a perfect example. Yes, your BW Midrange opponent will occasionally draw this hand. It happens.
Some very good player once opined that in an 8-10 round tournament, you are likely to lose one match to mana screw of some sort. Just happens. Some tournaments it will happen more than once, some it won't happen at all; some tournaments your opponent will lose due to mana screw, sometimes more than once, sometimes not at all.
As the OP said, this sort of "luck" or batter described as randomness, I think, is part of the game. As others have stated, there are a lot of non-lick factors as well, don't blame everything on luck, look for your misplays (or for the deck building errors, or less than optimal side boarding, etc.), when you correct those, it will suddenly seem like you aren't quite so unlucky.
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"Because we cannot prevent draws in paper Magic we allow IDs. If we could prevent draws we would not have IDs in paper Magic. " Scott Larabee.
Magic is a game of variance, and yes, luck matters... but not as much as you think.
When I was a younger and inexperienced Magic player, I used to blame luck for all of my loses "got mana screwed", "he drew the one card he needed", "how do you expect me to win if he killed all my guys with a single wrath?". It took me a while to understand that most of the time wasn't luck what made me lose games, rather wrong plays the lack of a game plan and its proper execution.
Now every time I lose a game I ask myself "what I did wrong?", "was there something I could do to win the game?", "should I have played this instead of that?", and so on. You'll learn a lot if you are honest with your own mistakes.
Yes, you will get color screwed, mana screwed, opponents will topdeck, they will have a nuts opener and you will lose because of it. But blaming luck for each lose is not quite right.
That said, if you can't stand losing because you had bad luck or your opponent got lucky, then Magic is not the game for you.
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Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have. - René Descartes
Magic is a game of variance, and yes, luck matters... but not as much as you think.
It's important not to go down the rabbit hole in the other extreme, though. As a beginner you don't recognize how important card drawing and redundancy is, how you should play to your outs, etc. When you get to even a semi-competitive level, luck starts to matter a lot more. That's the thing about MtG: variance becomes more and more relevant the higher the level you are playing at. This is because the skill-gap will likely be lower between two PTQ grinders as opposed to two dudes playing at a kitchen table.
In addition, any given player has the option of injecting more variance into the game if they feel that their skill is not up to snuff. Think of the Spartans. They were vastly outnumbered, but they wisely chose to fight at the Hot Gates, "where numbers count for nothing". You could be going to your first big Modern or Legacy tournament this weekend with zero knowledge of the format, but you always have the option of taking the fight to Bogle-town or Dredge-avenue, "where skill counts for nothing".
I used to think magic was mostly luck. Then I thought it was mostly skill. Now I'm back where I started. Against budget minotaurs.dec or w/e yeah you can win every time, but against a competent opponent with a relevant deck, those little miscues and insightful advantages you can accrue from the relevant decisions both players make won't be enough to sway most games.
That's the thing about MtG: variance becomes more and more relevant the higher the level you are playing at.
I'm re-reading this post, and I feel the need to clarify further because it wasn't worded as well as it could have been. Basically I am not saying that high level players are just luck-sacks, or that skill doesn't matter in high level play. What I am saying is that the smaller the gap in skill between the two players, the more relevant luck becomes. MtG is just the type of game where a little luck can make up for a lot of skill.
Once you get to the point where both players are playing "competently", the advantage you get from making a slightly less risky or a slightly more correct play is dwarfed by the advantage you get from simply drawing the card you need. Go read a couple of tournament reports. Almost no one wins a big tournament by using skill to play through their worst match-ups anymore. The vast majority of top 8 tournament reports go something like "I dodged my worst match-up all day and rarely mulliganed, while constantly drawing my sideboard cards in games 2-3".
At best, there will be one or two "close calls" where they had to draw from their extensive experience or superior skill to identify an obscure but correct line of play. The best players are what they are because they can turn more of these "close calls" into wins, but even the Jon Finkels of the world need a heaping helping of luck to prevail. Does anyone really believe that it took this long for Reid to get a Pro Tour top 8 because he lacked skill? He's had the skill to make top 8 for ages. What he lacked was luck.
You could be going to your first big Modern or Legacy tournament this weekend with zero knowledge of the format, but you always have the option of taking the fight to Bogle-town or Dredge-avenue, "where skill counts for nothing".
While I think there is almost certainly variations in difficulty of play for a deck, I don't think they are as dramatic as people's hyperbolic assertions maintain. One of the things that I have come to learn with Modern is that deck v. deck matters less than "deck play hours" v. "deck play hours". I have watched and read about so many higher level matches in which the smart money was one a given deck but the other pulls it out with such proficiency not because the player is that much better, but because they have played so many more hours of games with that deck (and learned from them). Variance happens, but the person that knows their deck the best knows how to take advantage of that slightest mis-play or bad/good draw. My point is that a person that wins with a deck like Bogles may just know their deck better than the other person, and that skill that you gain with familiarity happens regardless of deck.
One of the things that I have come to learn with Modern is that deck v. deck matters less than "deck play hours" v. "deck play hours".
The skills you gain from deck familiarity and experience are only part of that equation. It is also true that you need to play a ton of matches for your advantage to actually be statistically significant. Because MtG is a high variance game. Sure, it's nice to watch Patrick Dickmann outplaying control with Twin in Richmond, but Travis Woo has extensive experience with the Modern format and Living End in particular yet he had a middling PT record. Kibler is a veritable master of green aggro/midrange decks but he hasn't been doing too well in big events lately.
Interesting that people only complain about luck when they lose....
This.
Good players build their decks and play their games to maximize their chances in both the games they have better than average luck, and worse than average.
A good player on the draw looks at a 1 land hand that is solid if it hits two lands by turn 2 (say a Thoughtseize/Tarmogoyf/Tarmogoyf/Dark Confidant/Abrupt Decay/Overgrown Tomb/Liliana hand in Modern), and calculates the probabilities. They take into account that the opponent is playing all-in Twin and so the Decay and Thoughtseize are good cards, and they make the call "Keep".
A bad player looks at that hand and says "The RNG gods hate me, 1 land again!!!!! Waaaaah! Mulligan." Then they draw 6 cards with a nice balance of creatures and lands, say "Keep" and lose before their fourth turn because they were foolish enough to keep a no-interaction hand. They blame that on luck, too.
My favorite is always the aggro player in an absolute winning position that casts 2 unneeded creatures, loses to a topdecked Supreme Verdict, then complains about luck. Luck gave your opponent the Verdict; your own stupidity gave them the win.
This game is about the journey, not the destination. Even former players of the year only win about 65% of the time. The fun part should be combing through every play and deck slot so you can get to that 65%, not lamenting that it can't be 100.
At least, that's what keeps me playing when I lose to inferior players/decks.
65% on the Pro Tour. That's an important distinction. At random lower-level events or on Modo, the percentage is closer to 75-80.
Variance is a part of the game. It's fine to blame the occasional loss on bad luck, but when that starts to happen a noticeable proportion of the time, then that's an indication it's being used as an excuse.
Also, a good player will appear to be more "lucky" than an average player, because the good player sets up long-term opportunities and manages their resources more effectively. This will look like luck to someone who doesn't see the advantages being developed through taking the correct lines of play. Conversely, a player who misuses their resources will appear to be more "unlucky" than other players because they don't see just how they're shooting themselves in the foot.
If two players play against each other that actual perform lots of minor mistakes, the game becomes actual more random, as it comes down to who just draws out of the mistakes or who randomly doesnt perform a mistake for some turns.
If two actual good players play against each other, its much less "luck" involved.
Sure, in the end magic isnt a 100% guaranteed game, we are allways playing odds against odds.
Even the best decks will have just slightly more than 50% win Chance against all other decks combined (the relevant ones) , but that still means you lose games.
In the end, the only thing that matters is having fun, as many times as you randomly lose, you will randomly win ; if you skill level gets higher, the chances to see the "random" luck out becomes higher, as you might survive longer by playing accordingly, while a bad player would allready tilt.
At any point in the game, do the plays that actual lead to a winning position. If your plays cant do that, and no matter what you end in a losing position, then you can only use the time to get information, but its a trade against time ; so even here its a skill to determine when to scoop and when its better to see what the opponent has.
Just some basic examples:
If a game stalls with creatures and nobody attacks, then it looks "random" if someone pulls the Overrun and just wins.
BUT that means, players might have simply missed chances to bluff, and yes, bluffing is a real thing in magic, and that can shift the balance of a game quite hard.
Opponent plays his 5/5 bomb that probably wins the game, so thats your chance to attack, as they might not block with the bomb to keep it alive (and thats free damage, which actual helps you to pull the removal, or just some tricks from the top to win the damage race).
All this choices and topdecks can easily look random, but you have a fair deal of choices to make.
Even losing in a glorious blow out means you might have sideboarded some cards to avoid that.
Especially in Tripple Theros a Ordeal draw was quite annoying and super hard to survive.
But you could drasticly increase you odds if you boarded to combat especially that (and that also means drafting accordingly, which is just another dimension of the game).
Yea, magic is complicated and yes it clearly has randomnes, but a better player will in the end win more games than a bad one ; still its never 100%, which actual helps the game to keep it fresh (so every game plays out different).
65% on the Pro Tour. That's an important distinction. At random lower-level events or on Modo, the percentage is closer to 75-80.
I noticed that too. When we had a thread about viewing one's all time W/L statistics on kavu.ru, many people here had 60% or greater winning percentages overall. I even noticed that one person had a 71% winning percentage. I can't remember who it was. I'm pretty sure that none of these players were "Pro players," but rather just grinders. So, with Pro Players, the percentage would be even higher.
Yea, magic is complicated and yes it clearly has randomnes, but a better player will in the end win more games than a bad one ; still its never 100%, which actual helps the game to keep it fresh (so every game plays out different).
Yep. Also the game has become more and more like this. Around 2006 and before, I noticed that it seemed the better player almost always won over a lesser player. The game has become less and less like that. I believe this is what makes this game appealing to newcomers and why the game has exploded in popularity over the past 5 years. There are 14 yr. olds winning PTQs. There are players who just began playing Magic who are getting Top 8s at Grand Prix. The days of a newcomer getting smashed by better players their first month of playing, thus making them quit, are over.
In the past 3 years, I have learned to be a lot more humble. I have lost to a bunch of "lesser" players as well as beating some better players. I still remember my 32 player FNMs where I would usually beat most of the players only to make the finals and have an occasional Pro Tour player always beat me. In fact at one time, I was 0-13 vs. him. I have since "bettered" that record to 6-17, as I can see a head to head record on kavu.ru. Nowadays, there are players who say, "they have never beaten me" before and then they end up beating me. A lot of this is also due to the fact that it is tough to name a "best deck" in any given format. Before when I would play the best deck like UW Delver in Standard and learned to play the mirror, these 2 in combination makes it almost unbeatable.
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
I think it's just one of those things where if you don't want luck to be a part of it, then play a game with less variance. That's all the advice anyone can really give.
I can certainly understand losing in such a situation, but when you take the statistical approach to the matter you realize that over time if you are a good player... you will have more success than a bad player.
And something I don't think people realize about luck... it's actually a big part of why the game is as good as it is. For those of us that watch sports, they will probably tell you that one of the best parts of the game is when the improbable happens. It's a similar thing in Magic. You can talk about how you topdecked just the right card to win the game.
Also, the luck factor makes it MUCH easier to get into the game. Which means that there's more "dead money" in tournaments. Which means when you do eventually win, it will be for more money.
That's roughly my win percentage vs. Pro Players (20%). I've seriously been smashed by them, occasionally even when they played an inferior deck (ie. Kibler's UB Infect deck during Caw Blade Standard or Sperling's BW Discard/Finks during Thopter Combo in Extended). These losses were pretty embarrassing since I was doing well otherwise and I had a superior deck.
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
Variance also depends on the format. Like FoodChainGoblins said variance has become more noticeable in the more recent years. And if you look at the recent design you see why. Tutors and library manipulation got toned down hard. In one of Maros drive to work podcasts even he even talks about variance and why they want it that way.
If you are not a big fan of that you will likely have to play Legacy/Vintage and to an lesser extent Modern since those formats have the type of cards that reduce variance.
Variance also depends on the format. Like FoodChainGoblins said variance has become more noticeable in the more recent years. And if you look at the recent design you see why. Tutors and library manipulation got toned down hard. In one of Maros drive to work podcasts even he even talks about variance and why they want it that way.
If you are not a big fan of that you will likely have to play Legacy/Vintage and to an lesser extent Modern since those formats have the type of cards that reduce variance.
The biggest factor in increased variance has been the shift away from games being decided by multiple 2-for-1s to games being decided more by tempo, and resilient, deadly threats.
Consider Invasion block constructed, your opponent plays a Kavu Titan with kicker. Their 5 drop is a 4 turn clock. Top card of your library does not matter all that much. You can spend your next turn comfortably ignoring the Titan and casting a card draw spell, trying to find your Annihilate or a combination of Repulse and Exclude.
Contrast to today. Opponent plays Kalonian Hydra - it's a 3 turn clock. And that card is not playable in Standard because it is too slow and too easily answered.
A good player on the draw looks at a 1 land hand that is solid if it hits two lands by turn 2 (say a Thoughtseize/Tarmogoyf/Tarmogoyf/Dark Confidant/Abrupt Decay/Overgrown Tomb/Liliana hand in Modern), and calculates the probabilities. They take into account that the opponent is playing all-in Twin and so the Decay and Thoughtseize are good cards, and they make the call "Keep".
An average player would make that keep, lose after failing to draw two lands, lose the next few matches as he goes on tilt, then proceed on the internet to complain. A good player would make that keep, lose after failing to draw lands, and then shrug it all off. He knows that there will be more games in the future, that he would keep the same kind of hand every time, that he is at risk of losing without having had a chance to play with a one-lander that needs to peel one more, and most importantly that it's still a better bet than the average 6-card hand.
Luck does exist in MtG. It does influence match results. It will trump skill in most games. But the thing is, everyone's luck will average out in the end. If I play one game against a much more skilled player, and I am luckier than him, I am a favorite to win that game. But I won't always be luckier than him and he will always be more skilled than me, so over a large number of games he will get the same number of luck-based wins as me, while I will get less skill-based wins than him.
"Better lucky than good."
- Patrick Chapin (Pro Tour Champion), to Andrea Mengucci, after topdecking an Elspeth to win the game.
I used to think MTG was all about luck. Then I watched LSV draft, and saw just how different he plays, and how often he wins.
His draft picks I thought were crazy, until I saw how they interacted as a whole.
His attacks seemed way too aggressive and I thought for sure would result in wiping his board state. But he could almost predict what the opponent was going to do 3 turns ahead, and knew he was in the right.
Even when it seemed like he was at a disadvantage, he would pull off a combo I didn't even see to turn it around.
All of a sudden, I could see what that "bad luck" was from the other side of the table: "you just got served".
As I started to get better myself and started to win more games, instead of saying "ugh my opponent got that card just at the right time" I would instead say "I saw that coming." Instead of saying "ugh how did my opponent just beat me" I would say "woah my opponent just misplayed that situation, they would have won if they didn't do that". Instead of being on the bad side of luck, I started to become on the good side of skill and experience.
So how do you get good? You've got to know the format.. I mean really know it. You've gotta know every deck, every card in that deck, and every possible play your opponent could make for the next 2-3 turns. You have to anticipate what is in their hand and pick up on the smallest of cues. You have to learn when to ATTACK. This is where I see the biggest mistakes. You can't be timid, but you also can't be aggressive. You have to learn how to go from the beginning of a phase to the end of a phase and be able to come out on top every time. Magic is so much more like chess than poker, except everything is a pawn; just a tool to push through to the next phase. Opponent blew out your board with supreme verdict? Good, now they don't have it any more, what's next. They countered your bomb? Alright, now they have one less counter, time to bring in the punisher.
It's a game of information. The more you know and the more you can anticipate, the more likely you are going to win. Unless you get mana screwed. But no one really wins in mana screw. It's not fun to win against, it's just lame for everybody.
I used to think MTG was all about luck, and then I accepted that it pretty much is. When you get to hi level play luck is the most important factor. If we square off and are both have the same amount of skill and are playing a 50/50 matchup, then what else is left but who gets more lucky? This is part of the game, and its a big part of the reason that new players and veterans like it. Statistically, Goliath always beats David, but only statistically.
MtG is just a high-variance game. Not the highest variance game, but it's pretty high. There are numerous factors that come together and add up to this reality (mana system design, hate card design, etc), but the bottom line is that it is very hard to get consistent results from a small sample size.
You could easily get blown out by your best match-up because they drew the nuts, or mulligan three times in a row due to not finding lands in a deck that runs 27 of them. There is also the fact that even if you dodge the "unlucky" fairy, you might just get matched up against a coin-flip deck like Bogles where games are decided on opening draws more than anything else. Of course, sometimes this will happen in your favor also. You will need to either play a large number of games to average out your results, find a different game where variance is low (ie. Yomi, Chess, VS System), or just accept that variance is a thing to deal with when you play games.
Also, while we're on the subject of selective memory, I find that I am pretty good at remembering exceptional variance in my games regardless of whether it helps or hurts me. The best examples I can think of, just from the last month or two, are the following:
* I played Underworld Connections on turn 3, with three lands in play. By turn 13, I had only played four lands despite drawing two cards a turn in a deck with 25 lands (I even scryed a spell to the bottom).
* An opponent whiffed with three consecutive Ajani, Mentor of Heroes activations in a deck that was more than half relevant targets
I don't believe that is always true. Sometimes there is nothing you can do. The [quote]- Turn 1: Duress
- Turn 2: Thoughtseize + Duress
- Turn 3: Sin Collector [/quote thing is a perfect example. Yes, your BW Midrange opponent will occasionally draw this hand. It happens.
Some very good player once opined that in an 8-10 round tournament, you are likely to lose one match to mana screw of some sort. Just happens. Some tournaments it will happen more than once, some it won't happen at all; some tournaments your opponent will lose due to mana screw, sometimes more than once, sometimes not at all.
As the OP said, this sort of "luck" or batter described as randomness, I think, is part of the game. As others have stated, there are a lot of non-lick factors as well, don't blame everything on luck, look for your misplays (or for the deck building errors, or less than optimal side boarding, etc.), when you correct those, it will suddenly seem like you aren't quite so unlucky.
When I was a younger and inexperienced Magic player, I used to blame luck for all of my loses "got mana screwed", "he drew the one card he needed", "how do you expect me to win if he killed all my guys with a single wrath?". It took me a while to understand that most of the time wasn't luck what made me lose games, rather wrong plays the lack of a game plan and its proper execution.
Now every time I lose a game I ask myself "what I did wrong?", "was there something I could do to win the game?", "should I have played this instead of that?", and so on. You'll learn a lot if you are honest with your own mistakes.
Yes, you will get color screwed, mana screwed, opponents will topdeck, they will have a nuts opener and you will lose because of it. But blaming luck for each lose is not quite right.
That said, if you can't stand losing because you had bad luck or your opponent got lucky, then Magic is not the game for you.
It's important not to go down the rabbit hole in the other extreme, though. As a beginner you don't recognize how important card drawing and redundancy is, how you should play to your outs, etc. When you get to even a semi-competitive level, luck starts to matter a lot more. That's the thing about MtG: variance becomes more and more relevant the higher the level you are playing at. This is because the skill-gap will likely be lower between two PTQ grinders as opposed to two dudes playing at a kitchen table.
In addition, any given player has the option of injecting more variance into the game if they feel that their skill is not up to snuff. Think of the Spartans. They were vastly outnumbered, but they wisely chose to fight at the Hot Gates, "where numbers count for nothing". You could be going to your first big Modern or Legacy tournament this weekend with zero knowledge of the format, but you always have the option of taking the fight to Bogle-town or Dredge-avenue, "where skill counts for nothing".
Trolling Warning -Cythare
I'm re-reading this post, and I feel the need to clarify further because it wasn't worded as well as it could have been. Basically I am not saying that high level players are just luck-sacks, or that skill doesn't matter in high level play. What I am saying is that the smaller the gap in skill between the two players, the more relevant luck becomes. MtG is just the type of game where a little luck can make up for a lot of skill.
Once you get to the point where both players are playing "competently", the advantage you get from making a slightly less risky or a slightly more correct play is dwarfed by the advantage you get from simply drawing the card you need. Go read a couple of tournament reports. Almost no one wins a big tournament by using skill to play through their worst match-ups anymore. The vast majority of top 8 tournament reports go something like "I dodged my worst match-up all day and rarely mulliganed, while constantly drawing my sideboard cards in games 2-3".
At best, there will be one or two "close calls" where they had to draw from their extensive experience or superior skill to identify an obscure but correct line of play. The best players are what they are because they can turn more of these "close calls" into wins, but even the Jon Finkels of the world need a heaping helping of luck to prevail. Does anyone really believe that it took this long for Reid to get a Pro Tour top 8 because he lacked skill? He's had the skill to make top 8 for ages. What he lacked was luck.
Reprint Opt for Modern!!
FREE DIG THOROUGH TIME!
PLAY MORE ROUGE DECKS!
The skills you gain from deck familiarity and experience are only part of that equation. It is also true that you need to play a ton of matches for your advantage to actually be statistically significant. Because MtG is a high variance game. Sure, it's nice to watch Patrick Dickmann outplaying control with Twin in Richmond, but Travis Woo has extensive experience with the Modern format and Living End in particular yet he had a middling PT record. Kibler is a veritable master of green aggro/midrange decks but he hasn't been doing too well in big events lately.
This.
Good players build their decks and play their games to maximize their chances in both the games they have better than average luck, and worse than average.
A good player on the draw looks at a 1 land hand that is solid if it hits two lands by turn 2 (say a Thoughtseize/Tarmogoyf/Tarmogoyf/Dark Confidant/Abrupt Decay/Overgrown Tomb/Liliana hand in Modern), and calculates the probabilities. They take into account that the opponent is playing all-in Twin and so the Decay and Thoughtseize are good cards, and they make the call "Keep".
A bad player looks at that hand and says "The RNG gods hate me, 1 land again!!!!! Waaaaah! Mulligan." Then they draw 6 cards with a nice balance of creatures and lands, say "Keep" and lose before their fourth turn because they were foolish enough to keep a no-interaction hand. They blame that on luck, too.
My favorite is always the aggro player in an absolute winning position that casts 2 unneeded creatures, loses to a topdecked Supreme Verdict, then complains about luck. Luck gave your opponent the Verdict; your own stupidity gave them the win.
65% on the Pro Tour. That's an important distinction. At random lower-level events or on Modo, the percentage is closer to 75-80.
Yep, pretty much.
If two players play against each other that actual perform lots of minor mistakes, the game becomes actual more random, as it comes down to who just draws out of the mistakes or who randomly doesnt perform a mistake for some turns.
If two actual good players play against each other, its much less "luck" involved.
Sure, in the end magic isnt a 100% guaranteed game, we are allways playing odds against odds.
Even the best decks will have just slightly more than 50% win Chance against all other decks combined (the relevant ones) , but that still means you lose games.
In the end, the only thing that matters is having fun, as many times as you randomly lose, you will randomly win ; if you skill level gets higher, the chances to see the "random" luck out becomes higher, as you might survive longer by playing accordingly, while a bad player would allready tilt.
At any point in the game, do the plays that actual lead to a winning position. If your plays cant do that, and no matter what you end in a losing position, then you can only use the time to get information, but its a trade against time ; so even here its a skill to determine when to scoop and when its better to see what the opponent has.
Just some basic examples:
If a game stalls with creatures and nobody attacks, then it looks "random" if someone pulls the Overrun and just wins.
BUT that means, players might have simply missed chances to bluff, and yes, bluffing is a real thing in magic, and that can shift the balance of a game quite hard.
Opponent plays his 5/5 bomb that probably wins the game, so thats your chance to attack, as they might not block with the bomb to keep it alive (and thats free damage, which actual helps you to pull the removal, or just some tricks from the top to win the damage race).
All this choices and topdecks can easily look random, but you have a fair deal of choices to make.
Even losing in a glorious blow out means you might have sideboarded some cards to avoid that.
Especially in Tripple Theros a Ordeal draw was quite annoying and super hard to survive.
But you could drasticly increase you odds if you boarded to combat especially that (and that also means drafting accordingly, which is just another dimension of the game).
Yea, magic is complicated and yes it clearly has randomnes, but a better player will in the end win more games than a bad one ; still its never 100%, which actual helps the game to keep it fresh (so every game plays out different).
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
I noticed that too. When we had a thread about viewing one's all time W/L statistics on kavu.ru, many people here had 60% or greater winning percentages overall. I even noticed that one person had a 71% winning percentage. I can't remember who it was. I'm pretty sure that none of these players were "Pro players," but rather just grinders. So, with Pro Players, the percentage would be even higher.
Yep. Also the game has become more and more like this. Around 2006 and before, I noticed that it seemed the better player almost always won over a lesser player. The game has become less and less like that. I believe this is what makes this game appealing to newcomers and why the game has exploded in popularity over the past 5 years. There are 14 yr. olds winning PTQs. There are players who just began playing Magic who are getting Top 8s at Grand Prix. The days of a newcomer getting smashed by better players their first month of playing, thus making them quit, are over.
In the past 3 years, I have learned to be a lot more humble. I have lost to a bunch of "lesser" players as well as beating some better players. I still remember my 32 player FNMs where I would usually beat most of the players only to make the finals and have an occasional Pro Tour player always beat me. In fact at one time, I was 0-13 vs. him. I have since "bettered" that record to 6-17, as I can see a head to head record on kavu.ru. Nowadays, there are players who say, "they have never beaten me" before and then they end up beating me. A lot of this is also due to the fact that it is tough to name a "best deck" in any given format. Before when I would play the best deck like UW Delver in Standard and learned to play the mirror, these 2 in combination makes it almost unbeatable.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)I can certainly understand losing in such a situation, but when you take the statistical approach to the matter you realize that over time if you are a good player... you will have more success than a bad player.
And something I don't think people realize about luck... it's actually a big part of why the game is as good as it is. For those of us that watch sports, they will probably tell you that one of the best parts of the game is when the improbable happens. It's a similar thing in Magic. You can talk about how you topdecked just the right card to win the game.
Also, the luck factor makes it MUCH easier to get into the game. Which means that there's more "dead money" in tournaments. Which means when you do eventually win, it will be for more money.
When facing an average player, how often should the best player in the world expect to win? 75% of the time? 80? 90?
That's roughly my win percentage vs. Pro Players (20%). I've seriously been smashed by them, occasionally even when they played an inferior deck (ie. Kibler's UB Infect deck during Caw Blade Standard or Sperling's BW Discard/Finks during Thopter Combo in Extended). These losses were pretty embarrassing since I was doing well otherwise and I had a superior deck.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)If you are not a big fan of that you will likely have to play Legacy/Vintage and to an lesser extent Modern since those formats have the type of cards that reduce variance.
The biggest factor in increased variance has been the shift away from games being decided by multiple 2-for-1s to games being decided more by tempo, and resilient, deadly threats.
Consider Invasion block constructed, your opponent plays a Kavu Titan with kicker. Their 5 drop is a 4 turn clock. Top card of your library does not matter all that much. You can spend your next turn comfortably ignoring the Titan and casting a card draw spell, trying to find your Annihilate or a combination of Repulse and Exclude.
Contrast to today. Opponent plays Kalonian Hydra - it's a 3 turn clock. And that card is not playable in Standard because it is too slow and too easily answered.
An average player would make that keep, lose after failing to draw two lands, lose the next few matches as he goes on tilt, then proceed on the internet to complain. A good player would make that keep, lose after failing to draw lands, and then shrug it all off. He knows that there will be more games in the future, that he would keep the same kind of hand every time, that he is at risk of losing without having had a chance to play with a one-lander that needs to peel one more, and most importantly that it's still a better bet than the average 6-card hand.
Luck does exist in MtG. It does influence match results. It will trump skill in most games. But the thing is, everyone's luck will average out in the end. If I play one game against a much more skilled player, and I am luckier than him, I am a favorite to win that game. But I won't always be luckier than him and he will always be more skilled than me, so over a large number of games he will get the same number of luck-based wins as me, while I will get less skill-based wins than him.
"Better lucky than good."
- Patrick Chapin (Pro Tour Champion), to Andrea Mengucci, after topdecking an Elspeth to win the game.
His draft picks I thought were crazy, until I saw how they interacted as a whole.
His attacks seemed way too aggressive and I thought for sure would result in wiping his board state. But he could almost predict what the opponent was going to do 3 turns ahead, and knew he was in the right.
Even when it seemed like he was at a disadvantage, he would pull off a combo I didn't even see to turn it around.
All of a sudden, I could see what that "bad luck" was from the other side of the table: "you just got served".
As I started to get better myself and started to win more games, instead of saying "ugh my opponent got that card just at the right time" I would instead say "I saw that coming." Instead of saying "ugh how did my opponent just beat me" I would say "woah my opponent just misplayed that situation, they would have won if they didn't do that". Instead of being on the bad side of luck, I started to become on the good side of skill and experience.
So how do you get good? You've got to know the format.. I mean really know it. You've gotta know every deck, every card in that deck, and every possible play your opponent could make for the next 2-3 turns. You have to anticipate what is in their hand and pick up on the smallest of cues. You have to learn when to ATTACK. This is where I see the biggest mistakes. You can't be timid, but you also can't be aggressive. You have to learn how to go from the beginning of a phase to the end of a phase and be able to come out on top every time. Magic is so much more like chess than poker, except everything is a pawn; just a tool to push through to the next phase. Opponent blew out your board with supreme verdict? Good, now they don't have it any more, what's next. They countered your bomb? Alright, now they have one less counter, time to bring in the punisher.
It's a game of information. The more you know and the more you can anticipate, the more likely you are going to win. Unless you get mana screwed. But no one really wins in mana screw. It's not fun to win against, it's just lame for everybody.
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We will rebuild.