History Lesson 3: The Limit of Skill

                I have spent more time on what I am about to discuss than probably any single other subject in my entire life.  In fact, I once wrote a book on it, although the text has been lost to the ravages of a nomadic existence and several computer updates, I’m trying to pull most of the concepts and ideas back together, so we will see if I can get a solid monograph constructed at some point.

                Essentially, you can sum all 80,000 words up in one sentence:

               

·         Concerning any human activity not bound expressly by direct manipulation of all integral elements, there exists a point at which the outcome of random chance exceeds the ability of the actor.

As a Magic player, this relates to you because at some point, unrelated to your playtesting, theory,

or skill, luck begins to affect your results in important and unalterable ways. 

               

                Ashley Moray wrote an interesting article on StarCity last week that is notable for several reasons, but the issue I am writing about today involves her contention that given a large enough sample size, luck cannot explain your lack of success or your excess of it.  She is trying to suggest that if you are a skilled player, you will learn to ignore or move beyond mana screw, top-decks, or unbeatable match-ups, and enter some vaguely Elysian plane wherein your actions always dictate the outcomes of your game.

                It is my contention that the converse is actually more accurate, and in this article I want to explain why it makes sense so that next week, we can explore how we can either take advantage of the notion, or what needs to be done to minimize the damage. 

First, Ignore the Man Behind the Curtain

                Any article that suggests that luck does not factor into our game is trying to pull the wool over your eyes.  There is an anti-gambler’s fallacy at work here, known usually as the Myth of Horatio Alger.  Several notable, intelligent, and rational players fall victim to this concept.  They believe that if you work hard, practice every day, and generally lead a good life, that good things will happen to you. 

               

                Before we can get into anything more complicated, you need to understand that this myth is patently untrue when interpreted to mean that doing such things directly affects the outcome of such activity.  Whether it is in Magic, or life, pursuing this course of action does not guarantee anything.  One of the most important things to learn is that there is a man behind the curtain, and all you can do is maximize your opportunities to become friends with him.

Second, You Are Playing a Game of Chance, not Skill

                This is probably more misunderstood than any other issue at the basic theoretical level of Magic.  R&D has been specifically designing the game to increase the effect of random chance on the outcome of matches in order to appeal to the widest variety of players (they have even said so).

                Good players, skilled players, win more often at Magic not because they have some secret ninja ability that allows them to “make the right play” but because they recognize and understand—even subconsciously—that the game is random and they play in a certain way to minimize the impact of that randomness.

                If you haven’t figured out where I am going with this yet, I’m going to stop taking the roundabout way and arrive directly at my point:  You win games not in spite of the randomness but because of it.  A well-tuned deck and course of play is designed and executed to minimize the random elements of the game and people do not seem to understand what this means!

                For example, Kai Budde’s Morphling topdeck was widely regarded as the “luckiest” moment in Pro Tour history—until Craig Jone’s Lightning Helix, of course.  Commentators and the general public were constantly talking about the importance of how Kai was “playing for that top deck”.  Flores has said on multiple occasions that Kai knew what he had to draw in order to win, and then played in a way that “allowed him to get lucky.”  But no one ever seems to comprehend that this is the very basis of the game at every stage: pre-game, sideboarding, and post-match. 

                It flabbergasts me that people use this notion as a defense of skill, rather than as a head nod towards the reality of luck.  If Kai had not drawn the Morphling on that exact turn, there would be considerably fewer people who even know about the incident, let alone still talk about it.

Third, Do You Feel Lucky?

                I have mentioned in this column (and my other one) about how match-ups have evolved to the point that almost any two deck s are very close to 50-50, usually deviating only by a maximum of 10% either way. 

               

                This issue is where the name of my other column comes from, The Extra 2%.  Finding the miniscule edges, and trying to create a situation (usually by large sample sizes) where those edges allow you to eek out wins, is the fundamental guiding principle behind improving in games of chance. 

               

                To give the single most important example, poker professionals make money by understanding exactly when to take advantage of a situation that favors them by fractions and always making the correct decision when that choice comes up. 

                So wait, it sounds like I am agreeing with Ashley, right?  Well, yes.  But I disagree with her conclusion.  Proponents of poker love to make the statement that the game involves considerably more skill than opponents of the game perceive.  This is factually correct, but it is flawed for the same reason that Ashley’s conclusion is flawed.  Poker is a game of chance that involves skill.  By contrast, golf is a game of skill that involves chance.  By the same token, Magic is a game of chance that involves skill (more skill than poker, although not as much as people wish).  The other side would be a game like Magic, but with perfect information, and perhaps a die roll to influence the outcome of creature combat (I tried to find a game like this, but I couldn’t, and I apologize for that, I know they exist). 

                You can even simulate that game by playing with no hidden cards at all.  Try it sometime and see how you do.  Hands, libraries, everything revealed at all times.  Some players even do this while playtesting.  One thing you’ll quickly realize is that even with perfect information, sometimes you just lose.

                To conclude this section, when we look at a big tournament, say a Grand Prix, with the largest sample size possible in a single tournament setting, the difference between 8-2 and making the second day or going 7-3 by losing in the last round, is not going to be because of skill, but because of random events that happen during those last games.  The larger sample size actually works against you because it gives more opponents more opportunities to win via fluke circumstances. 

                To illustrate, let’s look at the result of a series of coin flips with a slightly weighted coin so that it comes up heads more often than tails.  If you were gambling on the outcome of 100 coin flips, you would choose heads to come up more often, and it goes without saying that you would usually be right.  In fact, because of the weight, you would win this gamble more than 55% of the time.  Again, this seems like I am agreeing with poker professionals and Ashley.  Here is where the gambler’s fallacy comes into play, because in a tournament setting, it isn’t all of the other coin flips that matter, it’s the last one.  You could win everything other flip, but if it comes down to it and the darn coin comes up tails, you are riding the pine birding the feature matches, and that is the limit of skill.

Conclusion

                I hope that this is a clear discussion of the concepts in play.  Remember, it took me almost 80,000 words to explain all of this before, so I understand if it isn’t making complete sense yet.  Essentially, the end result of all of this is going to be, hopefully, that you come to understand that if you are playing the game correctly, it won’t be some games that you lose to top-decks or mana screw, the ONLY games you lose will be due to top-decks or mana screw.

                This should, in turn, provide a psychological boost as well as improvement in your record, by helping you to understand that you cannot actually control the outcome of the game.  In life, as in Magic, all you can do is make it so that if you happen to wait on George Lucas’ table, he will like you enough to invite you to audition for his next sequel.  Most importantly, you’ll know that that reality is actually pretty darn ok.

On Writing: Part Ten

One thing that I always remind people who send stories to me, or who ask me to comment on their work, especially if it is a long piece, is that there is a certain amount of danger involved with “too many cool things”. 

While we don’t exactly get overwhelmed by explosions, cursing, violence, and rape, the reality is that the more you put in to a story, the less likely any one part of it is going to have the kind of impact you are looking for it to.  This parallels what I said in an earlier entry, that there is such a thing as too much complexity, even in an 80,000 word novel.

The reason War and Peace is so difficult for most people isn’t the length or the words themselves, it’s keeping track of a thousand different characters and dozens of events, some of which are not related to each other at all.  And, let’s be honest, your novel probably isn’t going to be a classic of Russian literature.

Most of the time, I try and focus on one or two characters, even in a long piece, and let the smaller cast experience more.  Giant legions of Twitter followers and hundreds of Facebook friends aside, most events in any one individual’s life only involve a few people anyway.

Since I mentioned that I would eventually expand on my rant about “compelling background stories”, now seems to be a good time to explore my conception of a well-developed character.

Santiago, from The Old Man and the Sea, has always been one of the most interesting protagonists that I have encountered.  The beauty of the character is in his simplicity.  What the reader knows about him is that he is poor, old, and that he fishes in the open water off the coast of Cuba.  It sounds like I am over-generalizing again, but that is almost entirely the extent of the background we are given about his character.  And yet, no intelligent critic would ever dare to suggest that the old man is one-dimensional or weak.  Even if you do, it is often with the understanding that the story itself is more like a parable, or an ancient myth, passed down in the telling.  Yet, it is neither of those things; it is an intensely personal revelation of the profundity of the human soul and the majesty of trying circumstance.

In fact, in the story, he is the kind of character that a creative writing major would likely devote seven or eight pages of blasé exposition to.  Thankfully, Hemingway ignored the impulse, and shrank the narrative until we had exactly what we needed.

There are only two characters in the book; three if you count the marlin.  And they are the only characters that you need to tell that story.  It is my contention that if we were all a little more willing to build stories that way, we would all have far more interesting stories to share.  

The Extra 2%: Last Man Standing

I don’t get a lot of comments about the articles on this website (I’m still trying to decide how disappointing that is) but one person (she doesn’t even play Magic) did message me on Facebook with a lesson that stuck with me enough to want to talk about more in depth.

 

Essentially, her position was that for someone who spends as much time and effort on the game as I do, I come across as not enjoying it that much.  Her advice was to remind myself of what I love about the game and maybe I would have fun again.

I’m not sure, to quote somewhere I can’t remember, if this is “Alanis irony” or “real irony”, but ironically, after submitting my rant Sunday afternoon, I’ve gone on an incredible streak on MTGO with UW Shape Anew.

As of this writing, I have won 28 Standard 2-man queues and lost only 4.  Here’s the breakdown:

Opposing Deck	Match Score	Game Score	Game Win Percentage
Wolf Run Ramp	12-0	24-3	89%
Township Tokens	3-1	7-2	78%
Mono-Red Aggro	4-0	8-4	67%
UW Blade	1-1	2-2	50%
UW Control	0-1	1-2	33%
UB Control	1-1	3-3	50%
Mono Black Infect	5-0	10-2	83%
Goblins	1-0	2-0	100%
Illusions	1-0	2-1	66%

Basically, this is exactly what I needed to happen in order to make me feel like quite an idiot for writing the whole 4,000 word opus I sent in on Sunday.

Some Analysis

Wolf Run Ramp is a plague on MTGO right now.  I made the mistake of not recording the names of the players I squared off against, so I may have been playing the same guy over and over, but I highly doubt that.  I’m genuinely surprised by its popularity, since it really isn’t that fun to play.  But, as Sondag proved during the SCG Open, you can play like an idiot and the deck will still pull wins out of its ass for you, so maybe that explains the prevalence of the archetype.

·         More importantly, as you can tell by the results, I’m extremely happy every time my opponent opens with Copperline Gorge.  The deck has almost no way to beat UW Anew.  It plays 6 relevant cards in 3 Beast Within and 3 Slagstorm, and if they are holding up mana to cast those spells in response to your Shape Anew, then they aren’t casting any spells at all, and eventually you can Shape Anew with counterspell back up, or Snapcaster Mage it back after they blow their relevant cards.  Sometimes, you just slowly kill them with Myr and Blade Splicers because they know that if they tap out at any point, they’ll be staring down the ichor-dripping maw of a Big Dirty Robot. 

·         The deck initially ran 2 maindeck Twisted Image as a way to deal with Spellskite on the draw.  Spellskite is currently becoming more popular again, but Wolf Run doesn’t play them often.  The losses to the UW and UB decks were primarily because of Spellskite, as my current build does not have a lot of ways to deal with it.  So, lesson number two?  I’m adding Twisted Image back into the sideboard, and they may even find their way to the main (the imagined expression I see on my opponent’s face when I block their Nexus with mine and Twisted Image theirs after they pump it with Wolf Run is so hilarious that even thinking about it makes babies smile).

·         Mono-Black Infect’s Memoricides are annoying, but hardly the end of the world.  If they turn two Distress into Surgical Extraction, into Memoricide, it becomes much more difficult to deal with.  As Mono-Black Infect grows in popularity, Mental Misstep may be needed to curb Surgical Extraction issues.  You don’t want to Mana Leak an Extraction and walk into Memoricide…

·         The Goblins deck I played against was interesting, although it had no real way of winning against me.  But it drove me nuts that he was playing with Shock over Galvanic Blast.  I’ve said this a million times, but it bears mentioning again.  Even if all you have are 4 Inkmoth Nexus and 4 Shrine of Burning Rage, you have to run Blast.  Even if you only have 3 Shrine and no Inkmoths, you run Blast.  Basically, there is never a situation in which Shock is better than Galvanic Blast, and you should never be playing it, unless you already have 4 Galvanic Blast in your deck, and need more for some really bizarre reason.  Or if you forgot that Galvanic Blast existed.  Which I totally didn’t when I first started testing the new Standard.  (Ok, yeah, I did)

Why I’m Grinning Like an Idiot Again

If you, for some very strange reason, are reading this without having read my “History Lesson” from Monday, go back and take a look.  But to sum it up briefly, one of the reasons I was so angry and disappointed by Zac Hill’s development article that was featured on the Mothership was because he listed a bunch of things that Wizards has essentially solemnly sworn to never allow to happen again, all of which happened to be the things that made Magic fun for me in the first place.

I was obviously aware of this deck by that point (I had been writing about it for two weeks) but since MTGO didn’t really have Innistrad yet, I had only played it in one live tournament and a couple of playtesting sessions.  I mean no disrespect to the people I played with, but they weren’t exactly fantastic players, either.  So, while I presented them as such, the results weren’t really spectacular.  Now, having played in some Gold queues and 32 2-man events, I can say that I feel like my deck is the best deck in Standard and actually have data to back that up.

What’s even better is that I said something about making the cards seem bad, so that only a small group of players (mostly my friends and readers) would have access to the deck.  This is exactly what happened.  Out of the fifty or so matches I’ve played total online (including Tournament Practice matches) approximately forty of my opponents have conceded to lethal Blightsteel with a “play real cards, noob” or “you are such a f-c-u-k-i-n-g bad player” or “I can’t believe you spent 80 tickets on Snapcaster for that pile, you idiot”. 

Hey, thanks to Elspeth jumping from 12 to 20 tickets, I’ve already made my monthly goal of 200 tix.  (Unfortunately, the Liliana’s I bought at 35 are down to 17, so I lost a bit there, but I’ll hold them for a while, mise)

Innistrad Limited:

After playing two PTQs, a Sealed event, and a dozen drafts, I can fairly honestly say that the format is robust, entertaining, and dramatic in ways that I haven’t experienced playing Magic before.  There is a huge difference between the skilled players and amateurs, and I am excited to keep going with the drafts and Sealed deck events.

A few notes:

·         Invisible Stalker:  This is the worst card in the format to play against and the best card to have in your deck.  Like Snapcaster Mage in Constructed, having one or two of these feels like cheating, and once you have any relevant equipment, it actually is cheating.  Rolling Tremblor and Tribute to Night are the only realistic methods of dealing with the card, and Tribute doesn’t even work after turn three.  Yes, Blasphemous Act can kill it, so sure, we’ll put that on the list, but if you are resolving Blasphemous Act, then you were going to win any way.  Same goes for any of the other rares or Mythics that can take him down.  The biggest thing I have to put in this section is: DO NOT PASS INVISIBLE STALKER OVER ANY NON-MYTHIC INCLUDING MOST RARES.  If you do, expect to lose to it, every time.  In 14 Innistrad drafts, I’ve had Invisible Stalker 8 times.  I’ve won all 8 of those drafts, almost always on the back of the 1/1 for 1U.  I’ve lost 4 drafts, and in every case, I lost to Invisible Stalker. 

·         The other rares and Mythics are not nearly as gamebreaking as Invisible Stalker.  For one, if you are playing blue, Dissipate and Lost in Mist are real cards, and they are worth playing.  Frightful Delusion is not a real card, but if you don’t think that they will play around it (even accidently), then you can side that in, too. 

·         Some key cards I recommend always picking up when you have a chance:

·         Rolling Tremblor – Against R/B Aggro, Army of the Damned, Invisible Stalker, Humans

·         Naturalize  and Urgent Exorcism– This format has tons of relevant enchantments and artifacts.  I play Naturalize main in most decks, Urgent Exorcism I play main in all decks.

·         Purify the Grave – Goes around the table usually, but it’s a key counter to many cards.

I’ll add more to the list, and suggest some building strategies possibly next week. 

The Infinite Challenge

                Most writers seem to be doing this, so I thought I’d have some fun with it as well.  I started with $100 and 9 packs of Innistrad.  Through investing and playing, my goal is 1000 tickets by the end of November.  In this section, I’ll list any speculation I’m doing, and also track my performance in the queues.  So far this week I am at 76 tickets and 24 packs.

                There is a PTQ in Arizona this weekend, so I should be in the Mesa/Tempe area on Saturday.  If you game in the area, come on over and say hi, and hopefully I’ll be able to show you my PTQ winning deck with 3 Invisible Stalkers and 2 Silver-Inlaid Daggers (I really don’t care what else is in the deck at all if it has those five cards, it should never lose a game).  

                Until next time,

                 @snglmaltproof, BJSnyder8478 at gmail dot com, or Stormskull on MTGO

Updated Posting Schedule

Ben Snyder's M:tG articles are by far the most popular on the site, so we will continue to offer as many as two articles per week, and we are looking for more authors to write about Gaming.  If you are interested, submit to wherethemeatcomesfrom at gmail dot com.

Unfortunately, the rest of our content has not proven nearly as popular.  The "On Writing" blog will be shifting to a single weekly appearance on Thursdays for now.  We will still feature short fiction, poetry, and photography should any be submitted.

Thanks to everyone for your visits, and we will try to provide more content as it becomes possible to do so!

On Writing: Part Nine

Story-crafting is a term that I prefer over most others when it comes to discussions about the act of “writing” fiction in the twenty-first century.  To reiterate some of the points I have made earlier in the series, I don’t believe in super-realistic backstories or clever experimental styles, so it is important to have a term that allows me to talk about “writing” in a way that separates my vision of the act and process from the traditional conception of modern “writing”. 

To that end, I want to take a moment to discuss memoirs, as this is by far the fastest growing section of the market after Young Adult Generic Fantasy Romance.  For a memoir to be successful, and I’m not referring to the commercial notion at this point, the author needs to balance craft and truth.  This is almost directly opposite of the tool of the novelist who substitutes fiction for truth.  Because of that, memoir-writing is much more difficult, no matter how interesting you think your own story is, your role becomes communicating that story in an honest way that incorporates the same kind of story-craft that fiction does, but limits it by virtue of mandating that same honesty.

In general, when you join a group dedicated to polishing their memoir, you are entering into a contract with the other authors that you will pretend to find their life interesting in order to help them make it into a story.  Most of the time, I find that even harder than pretending that some would-be novelist’s three hundredth version of Romeo and Juliet is bearable.  (Hence the reason everyone who has ever bought me a copy of Twilight begging me to “just try it, it’s better than you think” receives a paperback version of the play, with the inscription: “No, it’s not.  Read the original.  The dialogue is four hundred years old and is more realistic. And as a bonus, you get no sparkly vampires.)

I do have some advice though, in case you really want to put yourself through the hell of memoir-writing.  Avoid the temptation to include stories that you think are funny or profound.  That’s the extent of my advice, and it can be explained rather simply as, don’t tell the stories that make you laugh, unless you are prepared to spend thirty pages on exposition to set context, and don’t tell stories that make you cry, unless you are prepared for people to give you very odd looks when you describe the death of your gerbil. 

The key there is that the stories that most impacted you are memorable to you because of how they shaped your own life.  Your life is very different from that of your readers.  Unless your goal is to share with family some of the embarrassing back-stories behind the joke you tell every year at Thanksgiving, most of your readers are going to respond differently to the events you present.  So tell them the stories that they will think are funny.  These stories tend to be embarrassing for you, or profound in a very general sense.  When writing personal essays and memoirs, having a circle of friends who can tell you, honestly, if something is working is critical.

You can be objective when writing a novel, because in that situation story-craft can guide you and you have an understanding of the goals and process behind your plotting.  With memoir, you will not be objective, no matter how Zen you are, and the temptation to try and present your “building a soap-box derby car with my father” story, complete with lamentations that you never spent enough time with him will override your literary sense to tell a story that matters. 

The memoirists that I read and enjoy tend to write their stories in a way that makes them seem like fiction, but too outlandish to be made up.  If you only have one “stumbling drunk out of the bar one night and going up to Random Celebrity A and slapping his ass before going to Waffle House and getting robbed” story, don’t try and stretch it out to 150 pages.  Just write one essay and move on.

Very few people have lives filled with enough stories to make their memoirs readable, and few of the people whose lives are filled with that kind of content are sober enough to write a whole book.