The argument has never been that luck can be eliminated. The argument is that it can be significantly minimized by the proper application of skill.
Correct. And the degree to which luck can be minimized through skill is drastically over-stated. There is MASSIVE amounts of luck involved in every game of Magic, as I stated, from the cards you draw to the matchups you are paired with to who rolls higher on the dice. All of these elements highly influence the outcome of a game, and are only marginally diminished by "skillful play".
And that is just not correct. Yes, the die roll is random, and so are your pairings to a degree, though isn't it odd that the same people generally get paired towards the end of a given tournament? Wonder why that could be.
Again I will dispute that the card you draw is random. The card you draw is not drawn randomly from the thousands of Modern legal cards. It is drawn from a very small subset of those Modern legal cards which you chose to put into your constructed deck. Therefore, every card you draw is a reasonable outcome, and while it may be a lower probability than another five cases or subset of cards, it's not as if you're reaching into a bucket of he unknown. Skillful players know what their outs are and will do everything they can to maximize their chances to hit. Which is why they get 'lucky' so often.
I don't discount the role that luck plays in Magic. When I'm on Living End and my first two matchups are Boggles and Elves, that is lucky to face two very favorable matchups. When I then beat Amulet Bloom, a horrible matchup, because I Beast Within my own land and swing for the lethal 2 points using Kessig Wolf Run after a 35 minute game, that isn't 'wow what a lucky draw.' It is more like using Faerie Macabre 7 turns ago after he discarded a Primeval Titan to hand size (skillful play on his part) bought me the time it took to craft a winning line. Or 4 turns earlier when my 'lucky' singleton Shriekmaw took down his cast Primeval Titan. So you could say 'wow he only has a 1/60 chance of that play.' But you may not have noticed since I've cycled 10 times and fetched 3 more that I'm halfway through my library when I find that card.
Calling it lucky is just lazy and frankly disrespectful to those who take the time to learn the 20-30 most common strategies in Modern so that we aren't free wins to bad matchups.
The argument has never been that luck can be eliminated. The argument is that it can be significantly minimized by the proper application of skill.
Correct. And the degree to which luck can be minimized through skill is drastically over-stated. There is MASSIVE amounts of luck involved in every game of Magic, as I stated, from the cards you draw to the matchups you are paired with to who rolls higher on the dice. All of these elements highly influence the outcome of a game, and are only marginally diminished by "skillful play".
If the game is luck and only luck, why we can see consistent result from certain type of decks ?
Why at the beginning at my fnm and draft I was loosing everything and now I am almost always in the top 4 of every events I go in my LGS ?
Why we always see the same dudes everywhere at top rankings ?
Of course there is luck in magic, but it's far less impactful as you suggest.
If you want a real tcg based on luck, go try hearthstone and go look some disgusting yogg Saron wins. You will see what is a luck based game.
In describing MTG to "outsiders" in the past I've sometimes described it as a combination of Poker and Chess. It's a card game where you shuffle your cards, so there's randomization and variance involved. And yes, early round pairings and die rolls are "luck" based (although both are still within certain expected parameters). But that's basically the extent of it. Everything else is closer to the skill portions of Poker or Chess, including reading your opponents and bluffing correctly.
If you were to put a number to the amount of luck is involved, I'd say it's no more than 5%. Even that number seems extraordinarily high to me. If you play 100 games, will you win or lose around 5 due to "luck" factors? Sure. But the vast majority of the time you win or lose it has nothing to do with luck.
In describing MTG to "outsiders" in the past I've sometimes described it as a combination of Poker and Chess. It's a card game where you shuffle your cards, so there's randomization and variance involved. And yes, early round pairings and die rolls are "luck" based (although both are still within certain expected parameters). But that's basically the extent of it. Everything else is closer to the skill portions of Poker or Chess, including reading your opponents and bluffing correctly.
If you were to put a number to the amount of luck is involved, I'd say it's no more than 5%. Even that number seems extraordinarily high to me. If you play 100 games, will you win or lose around 5 due to "luck" factors? Sure. But the vast majority of the time you win or lose it has nothing to do with luck.
I take issue with this, which is weird because we are usually on the same page. 5%? Every single card you draw is random right? And every game, provided you have been already lucky with your meta, will come down to drawing the right card at the right time while your opponent draws the wrong card at the right time? I'd say the relevance of chance in a game of magic has to be significantly higher than 5%.
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Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
In describing MTG to "outsiders" in the past I've sometimes described it as a combination of Poker and Chess. It's a card game where you shuffle your cards, so there's randomization and variance involved. And yes, early round pairings and die rolls are "luck" based (although both are still within certain expected parameters). But that's basically the extent of it. Everything else is closer to the skill portions of Poker or Chess, including reading your opponents and bluffing correctly.
If you were to put a number to the amount of luck is involved, I'd say it's no more than 5%. Even that number seems extraordinarily high to me. If you play 100 games, will you win or lose around 5 due to "luck" factors? Sure. But the vast majority of the time you win or lose it has nothing to do with luck.
I take issue with this, which is weird because we are usually on the same page. 5%? Every single card you draw is random right? And every game, provided you have been already lucky with your meta, will come down to drawing the right card at the right time while your opponent draws the wrong card at the right time? I'd say the relevance of chance in a game of magic has to be significantly higher than 5%.
Well, yes and no. Deck construction goes a long way toward mitigating random draws. If you include filter, selection, or drawing tools you're allowing yourself to either control your draws or get through enough of your deck that your chances of seeing what you need significantly increase. But even in a deck with 0 filter/selection/draw cards, let's say Burn, your deck construction helps mitigate randomness. I forget the numbers but you have an X% chance of drawing any of your 4-ofs in your opening hand and Y% in each consecutive draw step. Playing in a way that takes those percentages into account significantly reduces the impact of randomness. As does including redundancy, which is where the Burn example comes into play. It's the extreme example, but the deck is constructed in a way where every card is either a land, repeatable damage (creatures), or 3 points of damage. Is a Burn player lucky when his opponent is at 1 and he draws a lightning bolt off the top?
People who play a lot of 1-ofs will also either have the 1-ofs be redundant spells, versatile spells or include enough consistency tools that they're mitigating the random impact of their draws.
I guess this is where a definition of how the thread is using the word "luck" comes into play. Because I don't see drawing a card that you intentionally included in your deck as being lucky. Drawing it at the right time in the perfect scenario can sometimes be lucky, but that entirely depends on the sequence of events that got you to that point.
In my opinion the major elements of luck in Magic are early round pairings (which having byes helps mitigate) and the roll of the dice determining play/draw. Your draw steps (and your opponent's) have elements of luck in them, but much less so than I think most posters believe.
In describing MTG to "outsiders" in the past I've sometimes described it as a combination of Poker and Chess. It's a card game where you shuffle your cards, so there's randomization and variance involved. And yes, early round pairings and die rolls are "luck" based (although both are still within certain expected parameters). But that's basically the extent of it. Everything else is closer to the skill portions of Poker or Chess, including reading your opponents and bluffing correctly.
If you were to put a number to the amount of luck is involved, I'd say it's no more than 5%. Even that number seems extraordinarily high to me. If you play 100 games, will you win or lose around 5 due to "luck" factors? Sure. But the vast majority of the time you win or lose it has nothing to do with luck.
I take issue with this, which is weird because we bare usually on the same page. 5%? Every single card you draw is random right? And every game, provided you have been already lucky with your meta, will come down to drawing the right card at the right time while your opponent draws the wrong card at the right time? I'd say the relevance of chance in a game of magic has to be significantly higher than 5%.
Again, I'll point out that the top card of your deck is not even close to random. If you gave me 10 guesses as to what is on the top of the constricted deck I'm piloting, I'm going to get it right very, very often because 2/3 of my list (40 cards) or MORE are 4-off.
Let's say I'm on Living End with 5 lands and a Simian Spirit Guide. My opponent is tapped out and if I don't cascade right now, I lose the game. I have 7 hits left in my deck of 49 cards, so 7/49 or 1/7 (roughly 14%). I also am running 16 cards that cycle for 1 or 0 mana, but let's assume I have already cycled 2, so I have a 14/49 (2/7 or 29%) chance of hitting a cycler. So I have a 43% chance to at least not missing and giving myself another shot or hitting outright. I can even cycle up to 3 times total and still find my my spell.
Say I don't find it. Was I unlucky? Not really. 43% to not whiff will work out against me more often than not. If I do find it, am I lucky? Again, not really. I'm not likely to do it, but with 7 live draws and 14 more that give me another shot, I'm reasonably going to get there 2 of 10 times with filtering. If over my career, those numbers reverse and I'm hitting 6 of 10 times, then I'm probably not lucky, I'm cheating.
Besides, luck has a way of working itself out. Because some percentage of the time that I hit the cascade spell, my opponent draws two Burn spells in a row to close the game anyway.
There are several elements that involve skill and several elements that involve luck.
Skill:
Deck choice
Deck construction
Sideboard construction
Individual play choices
Preparation for various matchups
Luck:
What cards you draw
What cards your opponent draws
What deck you are paired up against
Effectiveness of deck choice against random opponent (deck v deck +/- matchup)
Effectiveness of relevant sideboard cards (do you draw them? how impactful?)
Outcome of play choices (whether correct or not)
The discussion here revolves around how much weight you give to any particular category for results. Sure, more skilled players will be above the curve in terms of overall win percentage, but that's not something in dispute. The point I am trying to make is that these other factors weigh in heavily for every single match we play. Let's say I am playing against LSV round 1 of a random tournament with no byes. I am on the play with a deck that has a 80/20 matchup against his. The skill factors of preparation, deck choice, construction, and sideboard makeup are no longer relevant, as the pairings board gave him a random rogue brew and a moderately competent opponent. Skill factor of play choices mean very little in this case because of the monumental disadvantage provided before he even draws his first card. He may be able to rely on his masterful skills and play to bring this matchup to 75/25 or something, but I'm likely winning this match, given relatively even draws for either of us. It would take works of luck (no land mulligans, bricking on lands or gas, etc) in order for LSV to overcome such a deficit.
Many pros have experienced just that. For all the events they have Top 8'd or won, there are dozens that they have scrubbed out early, likely due to luck and variance of the things listed above.
Basically speaking, skill can tilt an evenly-weighted matchup in your favor or win-more in an already positive matchup, but is extremely difficult to rely on to close gaps against poor (or unforeseen) matchups. This is exactly why pro records are such a poor representation of luck vs skill since their premiere events always have byes (in order to dodge situations like this and inflate their ability to win by reducing the luck factor the rest of us have to face) or are partially made up of booster-pack-opening drafts (Pro Tour).
I feel what we are discussing here though, is what are you attributing your win/loss to after the fact. Essentially Monday Morning Quarterbacking decisions and plays and things that happened in the game after they happened and trying to justify whether it was correct or not; whether it was "your fault" or not. I can certainly point to several choices and actions that have cost me games (down to a single play, or lack of play I should have made), but these examples are also distorted by the lenses of hindsight. Was it correct to do XYZ? At the time, maybe. After knowing what would happen, maybe not. Does that mean this play choice was correct and you lost to luck? Or was it a poor choice due to lower skill? There are too many variables and gray areas to properly analyze this, so we get 6 pages of bickering about opinions and feelings or use totally meaningless and irrelevant numbers and statistics. Not that I mind, because I find it very interesting, but let's call it what it is.
Let's say I am playing against LSV round 1 of a random tournament with no byes. I am on the play with a deck that has a 80/20 matchup against his.
Part of my points above is that what you describe here would never happen. Only at a PT would LSV not have byes for the first 2, probably 3, rounds. After that point he would have made a terrible decision to bring a deck that has a 20/80 matchup against a deck he can expect to go 3-0 and for him to sit across in Round 4.
I guess I just don't see "ugh, he had it" as being at all influenced by luck as opposed to intentional deck construction, sideboarding, mulliganing, sequencing, and threat evaluation.
Let's say I am playing against LSV round 1 of a random tournament with no byes. I am on the play with a deck that has a 80/20 matchup against his.
Part of my points above is that what you describe here would never happen. Only at a PT would LSV not have byes for the first 2, probably 3, rounds. After that point he would have made a terrible decision to bring a deck that has a 20/80 matchup against a deck he can expect to go 3-0 and for him to sit across in Round 4.
I guess I just don't see "ugh, he had it" as being at all influenced by luck as opposed to intentional deck construction, sideboarding, mulliganing, sequencing, and threat evaluation.
OK, then an LSV-level player that does not have byes. The point of the example is to showcase something specific. Byes make the luck v skill argument very diminished because starting 3-0 for free removes MASSIVE amounts of luck when it comes to predictable match ups.
Let's say I am playing against LSV round 1 of a random tournament with no byes. I am on the play with a deck that has a 80/20 matchup against his.
Part of my points above is that what you describe here would never happen. Only at a PT would LSV not have byes for the first 2, probably 3, rounds. After that point he would have made a terrible decision to bring a deck that has a 20/80 matchup against a deck he can expect to go 3-0 and for him to sit across in Round 4.
I guess I just don't see "ugh, he had it" as being at all influenced by luck as opposed to intentional deck construction, sideboarding, mulliganing, sequencing, and threat evaluation.
OK, then an LSV-level player that does not have byes. The point of the example is to showcase something specific. Byes make the luck v skill argument very diminished because starting 3-0 for free removes MASSIVE amounts of luck when it comes to predictable match ups.
I agree it removes massive amounts of luck. I've said all along in this thread that early-round pairings are one of the elements of luck in Magic. That said, a grinder or good player will get past that luck-based element by having byes. They get byes by winning or grinding - in other words, via time and/or skill.
Let's say I am playing against LSV round 1 of a random tournament with no byes. I am on the play with a deck that has a 80/20 matchup against his.
Part of my points above is that what you describe here would never happen. Only at a PT would LSV not have byes for the first 2, probably 3, rounds. After that point he would have made a terrible decision to bring a deck that has a 20/80 matchup against a deck he can expect to go 3-0 and for him to sit across in Round 4.
I guess I just don't see "ugh, he had it" as being at all influenced by luck as opposed to intentional deck construction, sideboarding, mulliganing, sequencing, and threat evaluation.
OK, then an LSV-level player that does not have byes. The point of the example is to showcase something specific. Byes make the luck v skill argument very diminished because starting 3-0 for free removes MASSIVE amounts of luck when it comes to predictable match ups.
I agree it removes massive amounts of luck. I've said all along in this thread that early-round pairings are one of the elements of luck in Magic. That said, a grinder or good player will get past that luck-based element by having byes. They get byes by winning or grinding - in other words, via time and/or skill.
Yeah, but the question here wasn't about byes, it was about luck vs skill. And that example shows how irrelevant skill can be in a given match pairing.
Let's say I am playing against LSV round 1 of a random tournament with no byes. I am on the play with a deck that has a 80/20 matchup against his.
Part of my points above is that what you describe here would never happen. Only at a PT would LSV not have byes for the first 2, probably 3, rounds. After that point he would have made a terrible decision to bring a deck that has a 20/80 matchup against a deck he can expect to go 3-0 and for him to sit across in Round 4.
I guess I just don't see "ugh, he had it" as being at all influenced by luck as opposed to intentional deck construction, sideboarding, mulliganing, sequencing, and threat evaluation.
OK, then an LSV-level player that does not have byes. The point of the example is to showcase something specific. Byes make the luck v skill argument very diminished because starting 3-0 for free removes MASSIVE amounts of luck when it comes to predictable match ups.
I agree it removes massive amounts of luck. I've said all along in this thread that early-round pairings are one of the elements of luck in Magic. That said, a grinder or good player will get past that luck-based element by having byes. They get byes by winning or grinding - in other words, via time and/or skill.
Yeah, but the question here wasn't about byes, it was about luck vs skill. And that example shows how irrelevant skill can be in a given match pairing.
One of the points I and a few others have been making, though, has to do with how skill mitigates and in some cases outright negates the impact of luck. Having byes as a result of time/skill is one of those instances.
Allow me to put it another way: if I were to hold a chambered pistol to your head while you draw, you live if you're right, not so much if you're wrong: how confident are you? 43%? Here is the point: plain and simply there is a massive element of chance in magic, it's just the game. I'm not saying there isn't a lot of skill involved or intelligence involve. But when you have the best players in the world going to the gps and they are not in the finals every single time, how does that happen? If its mostly a skill based game, professional magic players should by rights be in every gp finals. You can say oh well they don't play modern often or aren't familiar enough with their decks, but I call bs. These guys live and breath mtg. Or how about the 12 year old that I believe got to a finals running a Zoo deck recently(last couple years). You're gonna tell me that a 12 year old possessed enough skill to wreck an entire field in two days? I don't care how much of a prodigy you are, in two days straight of gaming, luck matters.
Edit: Sorry for the grime analogy. It was the only way I could express the impetuous of a top draw, at least that I could come up with.
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It would be like Chess, but you had to roll a dice to see which of your pieces you get to actually start with (let's say you only start with 4), roll another dice to determine their starting position on the board, and then each turn, roll another dice to see if you get to add new piece(s)to the board.
That would definitely lead to some skillful game determinations.
Allow me to put it another way: if I were to hold a chambered pistol to your head while you draw, you live if you're right, not so much if you're wrong: how confident are you? 43%? Here is the point: plain and simply there is a massive element of chance in magic, it's just the game. I'm not saying there isn't a lot of skill involved or intelligence involve. But when you have the best players in the world going to the gps and they are not in the finals every single time, how does that happen? If its mostly a skill based game, professional magic players should by rights be in every gp finals. You can say oh well they don't play modern often or aren't familiar enough with their decks, but I call bs. These guys live and breath mtg. Or how about the 12 year old that I believe got to a finals running a Zoo deck recently(last couple years). You're gonna tell me that a 12 year old possessed enough skill to wreck an entire field in two days? I don't care how much of a prodigy you are, in two days straight of gaming, luck matters.
Edit: Sorry for the grime analogy. It was the only way I could express the impetuous of a top draw, at least that I could come up with.
You can come up with outliers for anything. That is the nature of sampling. Pros win the majority of GPs. Not the same pros every time because the tournaments happen all over the world, often on conflicting days, and there are now enough pros to spread out the wins.
Look at Yuya Watanabe... dude top 8s more han a quarter of the GPs in which he plays! And many other top tier pros have a 15%+ conversion ratio, which is crazy higher than the EV of a tournament with 1600 entrants (which is at .5%). So before you look at the 15% as a negative and proof of luck, realize that someone is performing, over a large sample size, 20-30 times better than than expected value. Statistically, that cannot be luck!
I'm not saying skill is a non factor. But top 8 is also not winning. In fact, I'm not sure you can even use top 8 as a stat since a lot of the pros get through the first 3-4 rounds with buys, ergo, they aren't even playing the game in the most volatile rounds. I would say that the deeper into a tourney someone gets, the more the outcome is dependent on skill because the amount of variance diminishes. Look, I'm not saying these guys aren't amazing players who know the game on a level I couldn't even dream of, I'm just saying that anytime you randomize anything, getting what you need, when you need it requires some luck at some point. Again though you're looking at the exceptions to try and prove a rule. Who is to say that professional magic players are not inherently luck individuals? Or on a given day, luck favored them more. I know it's a huge nebulous concept but what if Watanabe is just more lucky than most? I'm just kinda going off on a tangent that really isn't necessary. The pros are good at the game. Everything that they can have control over, they do, and yet they lose. If luck was such a non factor, how come they lose so often? Especially at gps were they have to mingle with the common folk. Even in games and sports where luck and change are almost a non factor, it is still a factor. That is the nature of a game.
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Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
You can't look at evidence like I posted and still be on how important luck is. Yes, in a single draw, or game or match, maybe even a whole tournament, the amount of luck in Magic can significantly affect that draw, game, match or tournament. But over the course of many matches, luck is not significant, as proven with that chart.
Byes never account for more than 20% of a pros wins, and often the byes don't really matter because all the silver, gold and platinum guys get them. So yeah, your local grinders are at a disadvantage but all the pros, significantly more than 8, get the bye advantage.
GP top 8s are certainly a good enough measure of skill. GP Copenhagen had over 1600 players in it, meaning one had to finish in the top .5% of the field to achieve top 8. That is plenty difficult enough to demonstrate skill over a 15-round tournament.
Where you really lose me is suggesting that maybe Yuya Watanabe is just really lucky to have Top 8'd 22 GPs since 2009 (almost 3 per year for 8 years). That just tells me you've made up your mind on how much luck is a factor and will question or reject all evidence to the contrary.
Skill and luck are two different things. I think we are getting off topic with all of the skill talk. Luck is , 2 people step out side one gets hit by a meteor and dies. The one who got hit by the meteor was unlucky had nothing to do with skill (before someone says skill might have been involved, they didn't have time to make a saving throw)Lol. It had nothing to do with skill. The real question, Is Luck just random chance or something more supernatural? You could argue that skill is a variable of luck.
I have seen lucky people, it seems like everything comes up roses for them. I have also seen unlucky people were it seems like fate is looking for ways to screw them over. My personal believe is there is some random chance but there are also karma and supernatural factors involved. I know it's impossible to prove karma and supernatural factors, since it is something unseen and unmeasurable in are physical realm.
Skill and luck are two different things. I think we are getting off topic with all of the skill talk. Luck is , 2 people step out side one gets hit by a meteor and dies. The one who got hit by the meteor was unlucky had nothing to do with skill (before someone says skill might have been involved, they didn't have time to make a saving throw)Lol. It had nothing to do with skill. The real question, Is Luck just random chance or something more supernatural? You could argue that skill is a variable of luck.
I have seen lucky people, it seems like everything comes up roses for them. I have also seen unlucky people were it seems like fate is looking for ways to screw them over. My personal believe is there is some random chance but there are also karma and supernatural factors involved. I know it's impossible to prove karma and supernatural factors, since it is something unseen and unmeasurable in are physical realm.
For the most part, I actually agree with you, but you're going to have an impossible time convincing some people. Many people simply don't ascribe to this type of thinking and never will. Ask me how I know.
I see it all the time. The guy who plays every Prerelease and never opened an Expedition or Masterpiece. The girl who played in 2 PRs, never to be seen again, opening up 1 in each. Sure, someone can say that "maybe she played in every PR at another store, but never got one," but that's speculating a bit too much. I've heard Shahar Shenhar to be a pretty lucky player. Then again, he's an amazing skill player as well, so luck is certainly NOT the only factor.
I know against some opponents, I've drawn pretty well. They assume that I'm a lucky player. Then, I've also played other opponents where I've been terribly unlucky and they probably wonder how I ever win a match.
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I think a lot of the "skill" attributed to consistent T8 appearances has more to do with their deck selection and sideboard structure than their actual gameplay decisions. Not to say that those aren't skillful traits (or the product of working closely with testing teams), but let's be honest, the deck you are playing against is often much more important than the person you are playing against.
Edit: never mind the byes they get, which allow them to more carefully select and tune their deck for a more predictable meta.
I think a lot of the "skill" attributed to consistent T8 appearances has more to do with their deck selection and sideboard structure than their actual gameplay decisions. Not to say that those aren't skillful traits (or the product of working closely with testing teams), but let's be honest, the deck you are playing against is often much more important than the person you are playing against.
Edit: never mind the byes they get, which allow them to more carefully select and tune their deck for a more predictable meta.
Tell that to players like Craig Wescoe who always play the same variant of deck regardless of meta and still manage to top 8.
Can you guys potentially find some data hat backs up your view on lucky people? Most of that is pretty anecdotal. Again, I've given you statistical data that goes miles beyond proving that skill plays a much more significant role than luck.
When Reid Duke exceeds his tournament EV by 3000% over the course of 80 tournaments, he demolishes any notion that he is lucky.
I think a lot of the "skill" attributed to consistent T8 appearances has more to do with their deck selection and sideboard structure than their actual gameplay decisions. Not to say that those aren't skillful traits (or the product of working closely with testing teams), but let's be honest, the deck you are playing against is often much more important than the person you are playing against.
Edit: never mind the byes they get, which allow them to more carefully select and tune their deck for a more predictable meta.
Tell that to players like Craig Wescoe who always play the same variant of deck regardless of meta and still manage to top 8.
According to the link above, Wescoe has only 7 T8s out of 94 GPs. This tells me that more often than not, White Weenie decks are pretty bad, but once in a while, they do well and he has the skill to capitalize on when they are doing well (like at the recent Vegas GP). His numbers show that skill alone can't reliably overcome a deck's inherent weaknesses, and further illustrates the impact of deck choice over individual player skill.
I think a lot of the "skill" attributed to consistent T8 appearances has more to do with their deck selection and sideboard structure than their actual gameplay decisions. Not to say that those aren't skillful traits (or the product of working closely with testing teams), but let's be honest, the deck you are playing against is often much more important than the person you are playing against.
Edit: never mind the byes they get, which allow them to more carefully select and tune their deck for a more predictable meta.
Tell that to players like Craig Wescoe who always play the same variant of deck regardless of meta and still manage to top 8.
According to the link above, Wescoe has only 7 T8s out of 94 GPs. This tells me that more often than not, White Weenie decks are pretty bad, but once in a while, they do well and he has the skill to capitalize on when they are doing well (like at the recent Vegas GP). His numbers show that skill alone can't reliably overcome a deck's inherent weaknesses, and further illustrates the impact of deck choice over individual player skill.
First of all, I don't believe this list of GPs is just modern events, so it's not like we can evaluate his performance with a certain deck in a certain format. Furthermore, even getting in the top 16/32 consistently as he does is pretty impressive for a style of play that has never been considered tier 1. If he can play a strategy that is considered weak and get consistent results from his career I find that pretty indicative.
And that is just not correct. Yes, the die roll is random, and so are your pairings to a degree, though isn't it odd that the same people generally get paired towards the end of a given tournament? Wonder why that could be.
Again I will dispute that the card you draw is random. The card you draw is not drawn randomly from the thousands of Modern legal cards. It is drawn from a very small subset of those Modern legal cards which you chose to put into your constructed deck. Therefore, every card you draw is a reasonable outcome, and while it may be a lower probability than another five cases or subset of cards, it's not as if you're reaching into a bucket of he unknown. Skillful players know what their outs are and will do everything they can to maximize their chances to hit. Which is why they get 'lucky' so often.
I don't discount the role that luck plays in Magic. When I'm on Living End and my first two matchups are Boggles and Elves, that is lucky to face two very favorable matchups. When I then beat Amulet Bloom, a horrible matchup, because I Beast Within my own land and swing for the lethal 2 points using Kessig Wolf Run after a 35 minute game, that isn't 'wow what a lucky draw.' It is more like using Faerie Macabre 7 turns ago after he discarded a Primeval Titan to hand size (skillful play on his part) bought me the time it took to craft a winning line. Or 4 turns earlier when my 'lucky' singleton Shriekmaw took down his cast Primeval Titan. So you could say 'wow he only has a 1/60 chance of that play.' But you may not have noticed since I've cycled 10 times and fetched 3 more that I'm halfway through my library when I find that card.
Calling it lucky is just lazy and frankly disrespectful to those who take the time to learn the 20-30 most common strategies in Modern so that we aren't free wins to bad matchups.
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If the game is luck and only luck, why we can see consistent result from certain type of decks ?
Why at the beginning at my fnm and draft I was loosing everything and now I am almost always in the top 4 of every events I go in my LGS ?
Why we always see the same dudes everywhere at top rankings ?
Of course there is luck in magic, but it's far less impactful as you suggest.
If you want a real tcg based on luck, go try hearthstone and go look some disgusting yogg Saron wins. You will see what is a luck based game.
If you were to put a number to the amount of luck is involved, I'd say it's no more than 5%. Even that number seems extraordinarily high to me. If you play 100 games, will you win or lose around 5 due to "luck" factors? Sure. But the vast majority of the time you win or lose it has nothing to do with luck.
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
I take issue with this, which is weird because we are usually on the same page. 5%? Every single card you draw is random right? And every game, provided you have been already lucky with your meta, will come down to drawing the right card at the right time while your opponent draws the wrong card at the right time? I'd say the relevance of chance in a game of magic has to be significantly higher than 5%.
GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
People who play a lot of 1-ofs will also either have the 1-ofs be redundant spells, versatile spells or include enough consistency tools that they're mitigating the random impact of their draws.
I guess this is where a definition of how the thread is using the word "luck" comes into play. Because I don't see drawing a card that you intentionally included in your deck as being lucky. Drawing it at the right time in the perfect scenario can sometimes be lucky, but that entirely depends on the sequence of events that got you to that point.
In my opinion the major elements of luck in Magic are early round pairings (which having byes helps mitigate) and the roll of the dice determining play/draw. Your draw steps (and your opponent's) have elements of luck in them, but much less so than I think most posters believe.
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
Again, I'll point out that the top card of your deck is not even close to random. If you gave me 10 guesses as to what is on the top of the constricted deck I'm piloting, I'm going to get it right very, very often because 2/3 of my list (40 cards) or MORE are 4-off.
Let's say I'm on Living End with 5 lands and a Simian Spirit Guide. My opponent is tapped out and if I don't cascade right now, I lose the game. I have 7 hits left in my deck of 49 cards, so 7/49 or 1/7 (roughly 14%). I also am running 16 cards that cycle for 1 or 0 mana, but let's assume I have already cycled 2, so I have a 14/49 (2/7 or 29%) chance of hitting a cycler. So I have a 43% chance to at least not missing and giving myself another shot or hitting outright. I can even cycle up to 3 times total and still find my my spell.
Say I don't find it. Was I unlucky? Not really. 43% to not whiff will work out against me more often than not. If I do find it, am I lucky? Again, not really. I'm not likely to do it, but with 7 live draws and 14 more that give me another shot, I'm reasonably going to get there 2 of 10 times with filtering. If over my career, those numbers reverse and I'm hitting 6 of 10 times, then I'm probably not lucky, I'm cheating.
Besides, luck has a way of working itself out. Because some percentage of the time that I hit the cascade spell, my opponent draws two Burn spells in a row to close the game anyway.
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Skill:
Deck choice
Deck construction
Sideboard construction
Individual play choices
Preparation for various matchups
Luck:
What cards you draw
What cards your opponent draws
What deck you are paired up against
Effectiveness of deck choice against random opponent (deck v deck +/- matchup)
Effectiveness of relevant sideboard cards (do you draw them? how impactful?)
Outcome of play choices (whether correct or not)
The discussion here revolves around how much weight you give to any particular category for results. Sure, more skilled players will be above the curve in terms of overall win percentage, but that's not something in dispute. The point I am trying to make is that these other factors weigh in heavily for every single match we play. Let's say I am playing against LSV round 1 of a random tournament with no byes. I am on the play with a deck that has a 80/20 matchup against his. The skill factors of preparation, deck choice, construction, and sideboard makeup are no longer relevant, as the pairings board gave him a random rogue brew and a moderately competent opponent. Skill factor of play choices mean very little in this case because of the monumental disadvantage provided before he even draws his first card. He may be able to rely on his masterful skills and play to bring this matchup to 75/25 or something, but I'm likely winning this match, given relatively even draws for either of us. It would take works of luck (no land mulligans, bricking on lands or gas, etc) in order for LSV to overcome such a deficit.
Many pros have experienced just that. For all the events they have Top 8'd or won, there are dozens that they have scrubbed out early, likely due to luck and variance of the things listed above.
Basically speaking, skill can tilt an evenly-weighted matchup in your favor or win-more in an already positive matchup, but is extremely difficult to rely on to close gaps against poor (or unforeseen) matchups. This is exactly why pro records are such a poor representation of luck vs skill since their premiere events always have byes (in order to dodge situations like this and inflate their ability to win by reducing the luck factor the rest of us have to face) or are partially made up of booster-pack-opening drafts (Pro Tour).
I feel what we are discussing here though, is what are you attributing your win/loss to after the fact. Essentially Monday Morning Quarterbacking decisions and plays and things that happened in the game after they happened and trying to justify whether it was correct or not; whether it was "your fault" or not. I can certainly point to several choices and actions that have cost me games (down to a single play, or lack of play I should have made), but these examples are also distorted by the lenses of hindsight. Was it correct to do XYZ? At the time, maybe. After knowing what would happen, maybe not. Does that mean this play choice was correct and you lost to luck? Or was it a poor choice due to lower skill? There are too many variables and gray areas to properly analyze this, so we get 6 pages of bickering about opinions and feelings or use totally meaningless and irrelevant numbers and statistics. Not that I mind, because I find it very interesting, but let's call it what it is.
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Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I guess I just don't see "ugh, he had it" as being at all influenced by luck as opposed to intentional deck construction, sideboarding, mulliganing, sequencing, and threat evaluation.
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
OK, then an LSV-level player that does not have byes. The point of the example is to showcase something specific. Byes make the luck v skill argument very diminished because starting 3-0 for free removes MASSIVE amounts of luck when it comes to predictable match ups.
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Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
Yeah, but the question here wasn't about byes, it was about luck vs skill. And that example shows how irrelevant skill can be in a given match pairing.
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Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
Edit: Sorry for the grime analogy. It was the only way I could express the impetuous of a top draw, at least that I could come up with.
GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
It would be like Chess, but you had to roll a dice to see which of your pieces you get to actually start with (let's say you only start with 4), roll another dice to determine their starting position on the board, and then each turn, roll another dice to see if you get to add new piece(s)to the board.
That would definitely lead to some skillful game determinations.
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You can come up with outliers for anything. That is the nature of sampling. Pros win the majority of GPs. Not the same pros every time because the tournaments happen all over the world, often on conflicting days, and there are now enough pros to spread out the wins.
Here is some actual data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Yv4qNJL1z4-b85U5pEWzfXXkIWLCN8EyG_6aHL6eXfc/pubhtml
Look at Yuya Watanabe... dude top 8s more han a quarter of the GPs in which he plays! And many other top tier pros have a 15%+ conversion ratio, which is crazy higher than the EV of a tournament with 1600 entrants (which is at .5%). So before you look at the 15% as a negative and proof of luck, realize that someone is performing, over a large sample size, 20-30 times better than than expected value. Statistically, that cannot be luck!
RBGLiving EndRBG
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GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
Byes never account for more than 20% of a pros wins, and often the byes don't really matter because all the silver, gold and platinum guys get them. So yeah, your local grinders are at a disadvantage but all the pros, significantly more than 8, get the bye advantage.
GP top 8s are certainly a good enough measure of skill. GP Copenhagen had over 1600 players in it, meaning one had to finish in the top .5% of the field to achieve top 8. That is plenty difficult enough to demonstrate skill over a 15-round tournament.
Where you really lose me is suggesting that maybe Yuya Watanabe is just really lucky to have Top 8'd 22 GPs since 2009 (almost 3 per year for 8 years). That just tells me you've made up your mind on how much luck is a factor and will question or reject all evidence to the contrary.
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I have seen lucky people, it seems like everything comes up roses for them. I have also seen unlucky people were it seems like fate is looking for ways to screw them over. My personal believe is there is some random chance but there are also karma and supernatural factors involved. I know it's impossible to prove karma and supernatural factors, since it is something unseen and unmeasurable in are physical realm.
For the most part, I actually agree with you, but you're going to have an impossible time convincing some people. Many people simply don't ascribe to this type of thinking and never will. Ask me how I know.
I see it all the time. The guy who plays every Prerelease and never opened an Expedition or Masterpiece. The girl who played in 2 PRs, never to be seen again, opening up 1 in each. Sure, someone can say that "maybe she played in every PR at another store, but never got one," but that's speculating a bit too much. I've heard Shahar Shenhar to be a pretty lucky player. Then again, he's an amazing skill player as well, so luck is certainly NOT the only factor.
I know against some opponents, I've drawn pretty well. They assume that I'm a lucky player. Then, I've also played other opponents where I've been terribly unlucky and they probably wonder how I ever win a match.
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)Edit: never mind the byes they get, which allow them to more carefully select and tune their deck for a more predictable meta.
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Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Tell that to players like Craig Wescoe who always play the same variant of deck regardless of meta and still manage to top 8.
When Reid Duke exceeds his tournament EV by 3000% over the course of 80 tournaments, he demolishes any notion that he is lucky.
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According to the link above, Wescoe has only 7 T8s out of 94 GPs. This tells me that more often than not, White Weenie decks are pretty bad, but once in a while, they do well and he has the skill to capitalize on when they are doing well (like at the recent Vegas GP). His numbers show that skill alone can't reliably overcome a deck's inherent weaknesses, and further illustrates the impact of deck choice over individual player skill.
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Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
First of all, I don't believe this list of GPs is just modern events, so it's not like we can evaluate his performance with a certain deck in a certain format. Furthermore, even getting in the top 16/32 consistently as he does is pretty impressive for a style of play that has never been considered tier 1. If he can play a strategy that is considered weak and get consistent results from his career I find that pretty indicative.