I was digging around trying to find the old breakpoints for rating for PT invites. I ran into a thread on MTGSalv, which I know is not exactly a gathering of the best minds in Magic, but I was shocked by how much people thought skill shifted a matchup. One guy stated that in a mirror match vs. a pro, an average player would win 20-30% of the games and the pro would win 70-80%, based on skill alone. This makes sense if your argument is that pros can consistently place well in major tournaments simply because they're better. Even with 3 byes, T8ing a 15 round GP requires you to go 83.33% against the field.
The whole discussion started because someone said that you couldn't do well consistently without being lucky. Immediately several people jumped in with variations on the "luck isn't a factor, if you aren't winning you're just bad" theme. So here's my question to you all: how much can skill shift a matchup? Can skill shift a matchup by 20-30% or more? Could you take Zoo, as an amazing technical player, and turn the storm matchup into a coinflip (~20% up to ~50%) on just playskill?
It's my opinion that luck is a much larger factor than people believe. Pro players *don't* consistently place highly at tournaments. Any given GP you go to, there will be a few dozen PT-caliber players who don't make day 2, including at least 4-5 big names. Lincoln, for example. The list of people who didn't make day 2 included Ben Zoz, Craig Wescoe, Caleb Durward, PVDR, David Ochoa, Michael Jacob, Melissa deTora, Raphael Levy, Adrian Sullivan and Sam Black. GP Indy winner Tom Martell finished day 1 with 4 wins, putting him somewhere between 4-3 and 4-5 on the day. That's nearly a dozen people with name recognition who couldn't manage to day 2 even with byes.
Luck is always a big factor.
Sometimes you get awful pairings. Sometimes you have to mull to 5 two games in a row. Sometimes you topdeck 4 lands in a row when you need business. These sorts of things happen whether you're a pro or an amateur. Sometimes you get that savage topdeck for the only card in your deck that can save you.
Playskill matters too, don't get me wrong. But in large events like a GP, I think luck is the biggest factor.
I think Hanny chose the right approach to answer your question, by putting it differently:
"How much will the luck factor impact a player's performance?"
Mathematically this question is quite easy to answer. Luck (getting the right cards/ good MUs, your opponents failing etc.) is like flipping a coin: while 10 times heads in a row is possible and will happen now and then, the "luck factor" will ultimately even out the ratio over time, meaning for a long-term comparison luck may be ignored in competitive play (well to certain degree that is).
Then again luck is much more relevant for MtG than for chess - but that's whole different story.
I have been thinking about that question for a long while, I like discussing it with people I know. I consider myself a reasonable to pretty good player both in Limited and in Legacy. Those numbers about the mirror are nonsense, it depends a LOT on the matchup. If you would pair a decent FNM player with some experience with a wolfrun ramp deck versus Kibler with the exact same ramp deck I don't think Kibler would win more than 65-70% of the matches. In terms of Legacy, use Belcher as example. If you are talking about Delver and you let a top pro with a lot of experience with the deck play against a decent FNM player with experience the FNM player would be CRUSHED almost every match. It really depends on the deck, the amount of play a deck has, how long the match generally takes (in turns) because every decision adds up to the pro his match win percentage.
I think in general, there is a lot of skill involved but it is very obvious that not every time the better player wins.
I think that playskill is more important than luck, for example Saito did top 8 in two legacy gps in row.
On other hand one of the most important (and difficult) factors for winning a tournament is to select the most optimal deck for that metagame.
Didn't Saito get banned for cheating?
Anyway, playskill obviously matters. If you're playing a difficult to pilot deck and you suck, good luck isn't going to make you Top 8 an event with 1000+ players.
Some decks are relatively easy to pilot compared to other decks, though. It's a lot easier to play Burn than it is to play ANT, for example.
I do agree that metagaming correctly does have a big impact too, but that still comes down to pairings. If you metagamed for RUG Tempo, Maveric, and Stoneblade, you can still run into different decks for your first 4 rounds (supposing bad matchups for arguments sake) and not make Day 2.
Play skill, knowledge of the cardpool, familiarity with the format and decklists, and reading your opponents are all very important skills for high level play.
However, they don't guarantee that you will place high; just an indicator that you might. I think that luck has an important factor for high level play such as Grand Prix and Pro Tours. The reason is fairly evident as to why - you have to hit really good matchups the whole way through in order to reach the final 8. Luck can be in the format of many factors during such a tournament - winning the die roll, topdecks, random deck-checks into game loss, drawing good opening hands, not having to mulligan, etc.
You have to be a good player to reach the Top 8, but you also have to be ridiculously lucky throughout the day too.
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Skill comes from
-putting together a decklist for the meta
-being aware of how other decks you face work and how to play against them
-knowing when to mull
-seeing optimal lines of play
-taking advantage of your opponent's mistakes
-playing to win
-putting yourself in a position to capitalize on getting lucky
I think the last one is my favorite aspect of Magic strategy. Sometimes you must chose between making two plays, neither of which will have a significant impact this turn, but one of those plays will be significantly better if you draw the card you need next turn. You clearly got lucky by drawing that card, but you skillfully set-up that luck.
So, luck and skill are both huge factors, but Magic has a way of kinda balancing them out. AKA- You're never skillfull enough to win without luck, and you're never lucky enough to win without skill.
If you paired a total newbie with Storm against a 'pro' with Zoo, I could see the matchup moving more towards Zoo's favor, or at least a bit closer to 50%
However, most Legacy players are relatively competant with their chosen decks and are familiar with most popular archetypes. The advantage seems to often go to players who adopt new/unfamiliar tech. So Martell playing Lingering Souls probably played a huge advantage just because of its 'newness'. As this card becomes more familiar to players, the advantage will begin to wear off. Another example of this was that guy playing 'Blouses' aka Bant with Hexproof guys + aggressive enchantments. The deck is pretty weak once its gimick is made known, but I can understand why it blitzed that tournament.
I feel like skill causes you to not lose a game, whereas luck can just win you the game.
I think your point of comparison is misleading. I think don't think that a 20-30% is at all unrealistic- you are talking about GPs, where pros are facing off against either other people who have three byes or other people who started 3-0. These opponents are much much better than your average magic player. If you want to say that pros don't have that much of advantage against those players, sure, but that is (taken as a whole, obviously there are some lucky x-0s) a very elite group of people, one that includes plenty of other pros. I think that if you match up a pro against some guy who plays magic a decent amount, but not too seriously (goes to FNMs often, goes to SCG opens and GPs when they're quite close, has 0 byes, maybe 1 if lucky) that kind of a swing isn't unrealistic at all.
It's actually a ton, but it's often hard to tell. Three main reasons:
1) When you are playing perfectly you feel the same as if you were misplaying and not noticing it.
2) Lots of your opponent's misplays are invisible and based on hidden information. Think just about mulligans and you will see what I mean.
3) In a lot of games, there are so many decision branches that it can be hard to pick out where things went wrong and how it would differ if it went right.
You won't be +30% in Storm vs. Zoo if you are a Zoo master, but if your opponent is not good with Storm or the matchup is instead something less lopsided (ie. Stoneblade vs Storm) you would be shocked.
There is still a lot of luck, and it's very easy to assume this watching a single pro over a season. But as you sample X pros over a season you will notice that their average performance is well ahead of the field.
If you take any difficult to play Legacy deck(TES,doomsday,dredge,countertop thopters), a player very experienced with the deck will travel further up a big tourney than a player who has not played the deck for more than a week. Is experience quite the same as skill?
Knowing when to mull is a much bigger skill than most people realize.
I feel like its more of a curve, with some decks having much more diminishing returns than others. For example, playing burn as a mildly skilled played and a pro is going to have a small impact where as with a deck like storm a mildly skilled player and a pro are very obviously on different levels. That said, matchup percentages are a stupid stupid thing since playskill and luck have such dramatic effect that even testing pro vs pro in a matchup is irrelevant because it will very rarely play out that way in a real matchup
Player skill and decision making is a huge factor, but luck is the biggest factor, because it is inerently built into most facets of the game.
The player's skill in deck building, tuning, metagaming, and playing matters. But luck (or chance, as it would more appropriately be called) is involved in every turn of the game of Magic. The chance of who/what you get paired against, the chance of who plays first, the chance of your "sufficiently randomized" draw every turn, the chance of what your opponent draws every turn, and so on.
There are certainly things you can do to mitigate chance (see: Sensei's Divining Top, as an example), but luck/chance is probably as big a factor (if not bigger) than the player's choices. I have heard the saying "luck is when preparation meets opportunity," and that's the most realistic description. Generally people that continue to do well are both prepared and on the occassions where they win, some things have also gone their way.
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I think that it all depends upon how many opportunities there are to interact in any given matchup. Any pairing that's close to even and involves a lot of interactions will swing into the Pro's favor, and the more interactions there are, the better it gets for the pro.
On the other hand, a burn mirror match isn't going to be nearly as dramatically in the pro's favor. The Burn / High Tide matchup isn't going to change very much because there just isn't much room for interaction between the two decks.
InfoNinjas
I agree that over the long haul, pros will do better, on average, than the unwashed masses. I think that in order to do well at major tournaments, you need at least 2 of the 3; good luck, good deck selection or good play. I think Angry has a good point about the level of interactivity. Additionally, I would say game length, but that generally leads to more interactivity. But the more cards you see, the more chances you have to leverege superior playskill.
Obviously playskill matters. Someone who knows how to play better, or rather play their deck better, is going to do better. Pros that are used to the competitive environment will also do better, and avoid match losses for things like forgetting to un-sideboard, which happens to amateurs a lot.
I still think luck is the biggest factor for making Top 8 at a 1000+ person event.
JACO pretty much summed it up.
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