In all honesty, everything that can be said about Luck (or randomness) in Magic has probably already been said. The reason I’m dedicating a column to it is because, after my first article about finding the right deck and playtesting properly, and my second covering playskill, I felt I had to talk about the final element you need to understand when trying to win any given tournament. You may have the best deck for the metagame you’re facing, and you may be one of the more skilled players in attendance… but sometimes that’s not enough.
It can be frustrating.
If we take in consideration these three factors – deck, skill, and luck – we can analyze our final finish in the tournament with a combination of these factors. It can be a mathematical puzzle: for example, our deck times our skill times our luck could equal our final finish.
(Let me warn you that I’m terrible at math, having flunked it during High School. This limited my options when I came to choose a degree.)
I showed some people the following simple equation for this process, and while they all agree it’s not 100% accurate, it is still very easy to understand. Correct or not, it is how I attribute the Luck Factor, and it makes it easier for me to accept.
(Playskill x Deck) x Luck = Final Finish
If you read my last article, where I compared Magic players to RPG characters, you’ll understand that we can go a long way towards quantifying our current level of playskill. When you enter a tournament, your maximum Playskill factor – assuming you play focused and don’t make too many mistakes – can be any specific value, just like a statistic for an attribute of an RPG character.
How, though, do we assign a value to our deck choice? Let’s try to define our Decks factor on in a numerical scale from one to ten.
In Constructed, we should attribute the lower stats to bad decks, while grading a deck that no one saw it coming (and one that is clearly the best deck in the format) as a straight “ten.” An “eight” or “nine” is a strong Tier 1 deck that is a very good metagame call, and so on.
In Limited, taking Sealed Deck as our format of choice, a “one” would be represent an unplayable card pool, while a “ten” represents the perfect deck across two colors, with a nice curve, solid commons, and plenty of bombs.
Considering only the Playskill factor multiplied by the Deck factor would explain why a good player with a bad deck can perform well, as well as a bad player with a good deck. But sometimes a good player with a good deck finishes really badly, or a bad player with a not-so-good deck choice wins it all. That’s because there’s (at least) one more thing interfering in the outcome: the random element.
Many players deny the existence of luck in Magic, or claim it’s a negligible factor that’s more psychological than anything else. From my long experience, luck (or something like it) definitely exists. Maybe “luck” is not the appropriate word for it, but there are many random elements whose outcome will sometimes benefit you… or your opponent. You have to understand that Magic is played one-on-one: if the match were decided entirely by a random factor, your chances of winning would be the same as your chances of losing.
The last factor of the equation – the Luck factor – is, for me, a number between zero and two, which is the average value of all the random outcomes you faced in the tournament. After all these outcomes are compiled, an average Luck Factor of “one” (or close) to it means your luck was even – you had approximately the same amount of luck benefiting you as hurting you. Higher than one means most of the random encounters you faced benefited you, and multiplying (Playskill x Deck) by this number will improve your overall expected finish for that tournament. A value less than one means the random outcomes didn’t favor you, and multiplying your (Playskill x Deck) by that value will produce a score that will be detrimental to your overall expected finish..
In a Magic tournament, there are lots of minor random elements. Every pairing, every dice rolled, every coin flipped to decide who goes first. Starting hands, cards drawn. If, for any of them, you received a value from zero to two, after calculating the average value it should be very close to one. A very low score mean you had your worst matchup in every round, you lost all your die rolls, you mulliganed every duel, and had the absolute worst draws. It may happen, but it’s very rare.
By now, those more expert in math and statistics have found a dozen of errors in my mathematical exposition. But it doesn’t matter if it’s correct or not. I believe there are many studies about this subject, but not many conclusions. What you need to keep in mind is:
Luck can affect your outcome, but you have very little control over it.
In the long run, the more important factors will be your deck and your playskill, as luck will tend to be approximately value one (and multiplying by one means we obtain the very same result).
Accepting Luck and its Interference in the Outcome
With his permission, I’m sharing the thoughts of a Portuguese player, the 2004 National Champion Mauro Peleira. He says that every single one of us has played a game in which we had complete control, and then it all slipped away from us because of one lucky draw from the opponent, or we lost against the best matchup our deck could have. Everyone has lost to a player whose playskill was lower than theirs. Why should Magic have this luck factor? What many of us haven’t still realized is, if it wasn’t for the existence of this random factor, many of us wouldn’t be playing this game.
On one side of the coin…
* We’re going to lose games where we had the advantage – either by playing better, or by having a superior deck – simply because, at the perfect moment, our opponent drew the one possible card that wrecked our board position, sometimes his only out.
* We’re going to lose games against clearly weaker opponents, sometimes making sub-optimal plays, because the game proceeded perfectly for their side of the table from beginning to end.
* We’re going to lose games where we can’t do anything, simply because we drew too few or too many lands.
And on the other side of the coin…
* We’re going to win impossible games just because we drew, at the perfect moment, the one card to steal the game, sometimes our only out.
* We’re going to win against stronger opponents who might have played better than us, just because the game went smoothly for us and not for them.
* We’re going to win games against our worst matchups, because of luck. Our opponent will mulligan many times, or draw too many (or not enough) lands.
We sure will!
As you may have realized, these arguments are mirror images. It can happen to us, just as it can happen to them. Like myself, you don’t need to understand about statistics to realize the chances are equal for everyone. Mauro says luck is not an all-powerful entity that looks down on us, blithely deciding who’s going to be favored and who’s going to be cursed. Luck is a term we use to define some certain circumstances as favorable or unfavorable. We won’t be able to maximize our own luck – and remain mentally unaffected after a bad beat due to luck – if we don’t understand that.
Besides, would we be playing Magic if every outcome was so easily predictable? If it was every same time, and the best players or the best decks were victorious in every duel? Didn’t you find boring when Michael Schumacher dominated Formula 1 motor racing, or when Lance Armstrong dominated cycling? [The sport, not the mechanic. – Craig.]
Isn’t this what makes the Magic tournaments so appealing?
We may know we’re not the best player competing in the tournament, but everyone has a fair shot at winning it all. Even though it’s very unlikely for a weak player to do it, and most likely it’s not going to happen, there’s still a tiny glimmer of hope that it may. In Magic, no game is lost before playing it, no matter the difference between playskill and decks. This makes the competition much more appealing to the medium player, and more interesting for spectators to watch (or for readers of the Internet coverage). Sometimes, the underdogs can win.
Let’s take, as an example, the times I was eliminated in a Pro Tour Top 8: at Honolulu playing Owling Mine versus R/G beats, and at Worlds in Paris playing Angelfire versus Martyr-Tron. I was in a serious deck disadvantage and playskill disadvantage, facing two nightmare matchups and two of the best players in the world. However, I prepared the best I could and tried to put up some fight, hoping that if the Luck Factor was clearly on my side. Perhaps I could after all…
After understanding the impact that the Luck Factor has in determining the outcome, there are a few psychological and technical procedures that can help improve the symmetrical 50-50% stats, bringing the advantage to your side of the table.
Psychologically Dealing with Luck
Most Magic players can’t remember precisely those times where they had “good luck.” They tend to forget, and have a selective memory, because everyone remembers the worst bad beats suffered, in great detail. You can’t let yourself to be mentally affected by a lucky situation during a tournament. During the time between rounds, sure… share the story. Whine as much as you like, to relieve your frustration.
At a PTQ, a friend of mine lost due to multiple topdecks in a row from his opponent. After the round, my friend was furious. He cursed everything. He went to another friend of ours, who was sitting on a couch and described everything: every single turn, the board position, and the cards he and the opponent were drawing. After a period of one-way conversation, my furious friend was spent. He rose, and left.
What he didn’t realize was that our friend sitting on the couch was fast asleep!
The sleepy guy was wearing a hat and sunglasses, obscuring most of his face, and he’d driven all night to get to the PTQ. Even so, simple sharing the story helped our friend to calm down and deal with it, even if no one was listening. When the next round is up, you need to be completely focused on winning.
Another thing you need is confidence. You have to believe you will be lucky at least 50% of the time. If you don’t believe it can happen to you, you will throw away many games where you had a chance. The most common situations are when an opponent makes a turn 1 play where we acknowledge we’re facing our worst matchup (like Artifact land and Arcbound Worker, or Urza’s Mine, or Flooded Strand for Sacred Foundry and Isamaru). Some players mentally give up without realizing. They continue to play until the end, but they already visualized they’re going to lose the game.
Another example would be a mulligan to five cards, or a land drop missed on turn 3. Even if the game is going smoothly with five cards, or if they draw the land later, they forget about little plays or small interactions because they’re still crying over the cards or the tempo lost, and that clouds their vision.
Something you should not do is become frustrated, since that won’t do anything for you. One of my worst unlucky streaks was during the late spring early summer of 2004. I was playing Mono-Red Ponza in Standard, a deck featuring land destruction, Chrome Moxes, Slith Firewalkers, and Arc Sloggers. The metagame was mainly this deck, Blue Tron, and Tooth and Nail. I lost the die roll fourteen times in a row on Magic Online, while playing this deck in 8-man queues. Not a single die roll won, where going first with Slith Firewalker and land destruction was very important. During the time I played this deck, the number of mulligans I took was superior to the number of games I played. Mulliganing to six or five was a very frequent occurrence. However, many of my friends raised their accounts by hundreds of tickets by playing the exact same decklist in the very same 8-man queues. They claimed there was no problem with the manabase, as they weren’t mulliganing a lot. Meanwhile, I buried close to eighty tickets, with no return, in entry fees for the queues.
Since I was becoming more and more frustrated, I decided to stop and take a break from Magic Online. From my experience, and after watching and hearing plenty of stories from many players, I believe this is still a very small sample of games from which to take data. The reason why I choose to stop was simple: I was running out of tickets.
Apart from being focused, being confident, and do not become frustrated, what else can we do to try to maximize our own luck?
Improving Our Odds
Since most of the bad luck situations come from mana (screw or flood), we should play with solid manabases in our decks. I see many players who have a decklist and need to make room for one more card… the easiest thing to cut is a land, thinking it’s no big deal between 24 and 23.
Five years ago, when Super-Grow was arguably the best deck in Extended (or undeniably one of the top Tier 1 decks), the common sense was to run thirteen lands plus four Land Grants. There were a lot of options to build the deck, especially the creature base. Everyone had Quirion Dryad and Werebear, but then you could opt for Merfolk Looter, Mystic Enforcer, Wild Mongrel, and Meddling Mage. Some players did some trickery with the numbers, and after cutting some other spells to fit all the answers, they dared to go down to twelve lands. As for myself, I was afraid to lose to mana screw against fast decks with Wastelands, so I added the fourteenth land and sided it out against control decks.
Maybe this can all be summed in one question: Would you rather be mana screwed or mana flooded? Personally I prefer to be mana flooded in the late game, as at least I was in the game for a while, even though everyone knows when the screw draws lands he has much more gas than the flood. In Limited, I feel more comfortable running eighteen lands, something I do sometimes rather than running sixteen. Sometimes I analyze my deck and I see it’s correct to go to sixteen, but it’s not something I like. I prefer to play more lands, and have extra use for them in the late game. Some good examples of late-game land usage are the Guildmages of Ravnica Block. For me, the perfect manabases for Limited decks were found during Onslaught-Legions-Scourge draft: every single one of my draft decks was running sixteen basic lands, two cycling lands and at least one land cycler (e.g.: Twisted Abomination, which can serve as an extra land in the early game or a late game threat).
When building Sealed Decks, keep an eye on your colored casting costs. Many players run manabases of 6-6-5, or splash cards with double colored mana in the costs. Sometimes they win the tournament without being color-screwed once, yet sometimes they complain that they didn’t draw the right color. If you want to maximize your chances, and therefore have the correct amount and color of mana, try to build manabases that require less luck to run smoothly. I’m not saying “add more lands,” or “cut the Opal Guardians and Pentarch Paladins from your decks,” but build your manabase according to your deck (and your play style). If you don’t mind being mana screwed in the abstract, then go down to sixteen lands and play more aggressively. If you like to play all your good cards in Sealed with the risk of being color-screwed, there’s nothing stopping you. Sometimes it will work. Just accept it when it doesn’t.
Regarding shuffling: I’ve witnessed the following situation countless times. We finish game 1 and start to shuffle for game 2. My opponent picks up his cards and does some riffle shuffling. I cut, he draws his seven initial cards, and mulligans. He riffle shuffles a couple more times. He draws his six cards, complains about his bad luck, sends it back, and does some more riffle shuffles. In order for your deck be well shuffled, do at least one series of pile shuffling followed by many riffle shuffles before presenting. In Lisbon, we do a lot of four-on-four Team Booster Draft, and we usually run with random teams. There’s one player who is always one of the first to finish his series of four matches. He’s a very decent player, but very laid back. It’s very rare for him to pile shuffle during our four-on-four Team Drafts, because he finds it boring. As a result he finishes very quickly, not only because he takes thirty seconds to shuffle for each game, but also because he’s mana screwed or flooded more than anyone else.
Usually, it goes like this: he finishes his first match, goes outside for a smoke, comes back and asks who’s his next opponent. He takes his cards from the pocket and does a couple of riffle shuffles. Mulligans to six. Riffle shuffles a couple more times. Mulligans to five. “I can’t believe it!”
Neither can I, when he’s on my team. (Okay, I might be exaggerating a little…)
The final advice I have to offer today is more difficult to execute, and involves some strategic decisions. Sometimes, some of our luckiest situations come from such strategic decisions. In order to be lucky, you have to position yourself to obtain that luck.
Example #1: the Lightning Helix from Craig Jones, during the semi-finals of Pro Tour: Honolulu. Craig Jones draws a Lightning Helix, his only out to win the game, in his last turn before dying to Olivier Ruel little army. But in the previous turn, Craig Jones held a Char and neglected to use it as removal spell on Ruel’s Hand of Cruelty. Craig realized there was no point in trying to contain the creatures, as he knew the only way out would be to get lucky and try to draw a Helix for the win.
Example #2: at Pro Tour: Chicago 2003, in triple Onslaught Rochester draft, I had an aggressive W/R soldiers deck. I was playing against a Black/Green deck featuring Nantuko Husk and many beasts. The board situation was clearly unfavorable to me, as my creatures were smaller, and it was very difficult for me to do more damage with my creatures. My opponent was at six life, and I drew Erratic Explosion. I had the option to try to kill Wirewood Savage with a toughness of two (which was gaining him card advantage), or to try to kill a problematic creature, but after studying the situation I figured it was pretty messed up already. My creatures weren’t winning that game. I chose to target my opponent with Erratic Explosion and then hope to topdeck more burn spells like Solar Blast for the win. As a result, I got lucky and revealed a Crowd Favorites, dealing seven damage to my opponent. (The other card good enough for the win was Grassland Crusader, which cost six mana.)
Example #3: Pro Tour: New Orleans 2003 finals, Kai Budde against Tomi Walamies. In the fifth game, Kai was at four life facing two Call of the Herd tokens. On his turn, Kai drew a Morphling with enough mana to play it and pump it, and from here he took control of the game. A first look makes us believe that Kai was so lucky. But I watched the whole finals, and even though Kai was lucky, not drawing the Morphling would have been unlucky. During the whole game, I believe Kai played perfectly, allowing the Call of the Herd tokens and countering other spells. Eventually it reached a point where Kai was facing a death from the elephants. But in this game, he drew more than enough cards to justify the topdeck. Accumulated Knowledge for three cards. Accumulated Knowledge for four cards. Stroke of Genius for three. Walamies mulliganed to six and played without being able to draw extra cards, mostly due to Kai countering. Kai, on the other hand, drew ten extra cards. I would say he was favorable to win this game. What made it more dramatic was the fact that it was his last possible card before his death to elephant beats… In this example, maybe there weren’t that many strategic decisions, but from my point of view, Kai – or at least his cards – put him in a position to be “luckier” than Tomi.
After everything I’ve said about luck, I believe Kai Budde and Jon Finkel have demonstrated the proportionate value of Skill and Luck in Magic: when they were playing, they were undeniably the best. Magic will always have the Luck Factor, but there are no ridiculously lucky or unlucky players. At the moment, there are no players like Kai and Jon, but there are some players in the world who show us the best players are usually on the top.
That’s the mentality we should have in order to improve our game.
Thank you for reading, and special thanks to my friend Mauro Peleira for his considerations about luck, and for his permission to share some of the ideas he expressed in a Portuguese article. Even though they’re universal ideas that no one can claim to own, I used Mauro’s article as a reference when researching for my own writing.
Until next time,
Tiago