Page 2 of 5 FirstFirst 12345 LastLast
Results 21 to 40 of 81

Thread: Sorting with Petals of Insight: Shortcutting and Slow Play?

  1. #21

    Re: Sorting with Petals of Insight: Shortcutting and Slow Play?

    Quote Originally Posted by danyul View Post
    All this math talk is confusing. I am a simpleton and it's weird to me that an opponent can show me a math equation in order to avoid actually playing Magic. If an opponent starts going into this combo, is it asinine of me to make them play it out and then call a judge over to watch for slow play? With the vague hope that my opponent makes a mistake somewhere? Is that a dick move or totally reasonable?
    You can't make someone play a valid shortcutted loop out. Once they've satisfied the rules requirements for a valid loop, it's done.
    “It's possible. But it involves... {checks archives} Nature's Revolt, Opalescence, two Unstable Shapeshifters (one of which started as a Doppelganger), a Tide, an animated land, a creature with Fading, a Silver Wyvern, some way to get a creature into play in response to stuff, some way to get a land into play in response to stuff (a different land from the animated land), and one heck of a Rube Goldberg timing diagram.
    -David DeLaney

  2. #22
    Tundra Player
    alphastryk's Avatar
    Join Date

    Feb 2011
    Location

    Atlanta
    Posts

    1,072

    Re: Sorting with Petals of Insight: Shortcutting and Slow Play?

    Quote Originally Posted by cdr View Post
    You can't make someone play a valid shortcutted loop out. Once they've satisfied the rules requirements for a valid loop, it's done.
    It's not clear to me that this is a valid shortcut though - thats the issue.

    The IPG says this: "...if a player wishes to demonstrate or use a new tournament shortcut entailing any number of priority passes, he or she must be clear where the game state will end up as part of the request."

    Here's a better way to think about the algorithm though (from discussion with Phazonmutant):

    You have a ring of elements (since cards loop from top to bottom of the library using petals). Starting from arbitrary point, can look at 3 at a time, rearrange, and look at next 3. Treat A as a fixed point, move B towards it.
    N = cards in library
    A = burning wish #1
    B = burning wish #2
    % = Modulo
    1) Determine where A and B are located within the ring (N/3) (But this might just count as the first iteration?)
    2) Move B towards A (each time you see it with petals, you can move it at most N % 3 cards in the correct direction)
    3) repeat (2) until A and B are adjacent. (N / (N % 3))
    4) move both A and B to the top of the library (rotating the ring) (N/3)

    total time = N/3 + N/(N%3) + N/3 = N/(N%3) + 2N/3 or maybe just N/(N%3) + N/3

    Assuming it takes only 2 seconds to resolve each copy (that's really quick given the physical manipulation required) and you have a photographic memory of where things are, this still takes quite a while - given a realistic N=40, it would take (40/1 + 80/3) * 2 sec = ~133 seconds, so a bit over 2 minutes.

  3. #23

    Re: Sorting with Petals of Insight: Shortcutting and Slow Play?

    Quote Originally Posted by alphastryk View Post
    It's not clear to me that this is a valid shortcut though - thats the issue.

    The IPG says this: "...if a player wishes to demonstrate or use a new tournament shortcut entailing any number of priority passes, he or she must be clear where the game state will end up as part of the request."
    ...
    It doesn't really get ugly until the other player has some way to interact like Lantern of Insight,Hedron Crab and Polluted Delta in play.


    Here's a better way to think about the algorithm though (from discussion with Phazonmutant): ...
    If it's just A+B then it's pretty simple and you can move them roughly three cards closer to each other each time through the deck.

    Edit: I don't think your time calculation is correct. Not that it matters much.

  4. #24
    Undefeated hair
    phazonmutant's Avatar
    Join Date

    Jan 2012
    Location

    Seattle, WA
    Posts

    1,152

    Re: Sorting with Petals of Insight: Shortcutting and Slow Play?

    Quote Originally Posted by alphastryk View Post
    It's not clear to me that this is a valid shortcut though - thats the issue.

    The IPG says this: "...if a player wishes to demonstrate or use a new tournament shortcut entailing any number of priority passes, he or she must be clear where the game state will end up as part of the request."

    Here's a better way to think about the algorithm though (from discussion with Phazonmutant):
    Agreed I'm not certain it's a valid shortcut because it involves the state of information in a hidden zone, and realistically no one can memorize the order of their deck in a tournament.

    Here's a visualization:



    The high level overview - loop around the deck moves a window of the top 3 cards 0, 1, or 2 cards towards the bottom (depending on if the deck is divisible by 3 + 0, 1, or 2 respectively). By moving a card to the bottom of the window, you can move it towards the bottom by the same increment each loop around the deck. I don't have the exact language to rigorously prove the algorithm, but basically because you know the distance between the cards and you know where they are relative to each other, you can decrease their distance from each other every time you see a card of interest. The algorithm terminates when the distance is 1 (they're next to each other), and they are in the top 3.
    Languages and dates for every set. For all you true pimps.

  5. #25

    Re: Sorting with Petals of Insight: Shortcutting and Slow Play?

    Quote Originally Posted by phazonmutant View Post
    ...
    The high level overview - loop around the deck moves a window of the top 3 cards 0, 1, or 2 cards towards the bottom (depending on if the deck is divisible by 3 + 0, 1, or 2 respectively). By moving a card to the bottom of the window, you can move it towards the bottom by the same increment each loop around the deck. I ...
    Let's say that you want to move two cards together. You don't care about which card is first, so we can assume that the gap is at worst half the length of the deck.

    Then whenever you see the 'front' card, you put it at the bottom of the three cards before you put them on bottom of the library, and whenever you seen the 'back' card you put it at the top of the three cards.

    If the size of the library is equivalent to 1 mod 3 (i.e. if the remainder after you divide the size of the library by 3 is 1) then the 'front' card will always show up on top, and the back card will always show up second from the top.

    If the size of the library is equivalent to 2 mod 3 (i.e. if the remainder after you divide the size of the library by 3 is 2) then the 'front' card will show up as the 2nd card, and the 'back' card will show up as the 3rd card.

    Either way, the two cards get closer by 3 positions every time through the deck.

    So it takes deck size / 2 / 3 times through the deck, and each time through the deck takes deck_size / 3 plays of petals, so a total of roughly deck size ^ 2 / 18 + deck size / 3 to get the library order on the first go around.

    With a deck size of 40 that works out to about 105 castings of petals. With a deck size of 60, about 220.

    Since the operations involved are really simple, I do think you can go a lot faster than 2 seconds per.

  6. #26

    Re: Sorting with Petals of Insight: Shortcutting and Slow Play?

    When a player rearranges cards using something like Petals, do his opponents get to know how the cards were rearranged or not?

  7. #27

    Re: Sorting with Petals of Insight: Shortcutting and Slow Play?

    Quote Originally Posted by alphastryk View Post
    It's not clear to me that this is a valid shortcut though - thats the issue.

    The IPG says this: "...if a player wishes to demonstrate or use a new tournament shortcut entailing any number of priority passes, he or she must be clear where the game state will end up as part of the request."
    Petals is deterministic. Not being deterministic is what sinks other psuedo-loops like Four Horsemen.

    You have a L3 judge (Ubernostrum) in this thread saying it's OK and others elsewhere, if you want authority.

    "These X cards on top, the rest in the order they're currently in" is an acceptable shortcut, by the way.
    “It's possible. But it involves... {checks archives} Nature's Revolt, Opalescence, two Unstable Shapeshifters (one of which started as a Doppelganger), a Tide, an animated land, a creature with Fading, a Silver Wyvern, some way to get a creature into play in response to stuff, some way to get a land into play in response to stuff (a different land from the animated land), and one heck of a Rube Goldberg timing diagram.
    -David DeLaney

  8. #28
    Tundra Player
    alphastryk's Avatar
    Join Date

    Feb 2011
    Location

    Atlanta
    Posts

    1,072

    Re: Sorting with Petals of Insight: Shortcutting and Slow Play?

    Quote Originally Posted by rufus View Post
    When a player rearranges cards using something like Petals, do his opponents get to know how the cards were rearranged or not?
    No - see Sensei's Divining Top

  9. #29
    Member

    Join Date

    Dec 2011
    Location

    Seattle
    Posts

    146

    Sorting with Petals of Insight: Shortcutting and Slow Play?

    I think/hope we all agree that stacking the deck with petals conceptually is deterministic. For those who aren't sure, let's assume it for the sake of argument.

    Regardless, I have several issues with letting someone shortcut to stacking their deck:

    Merely demonstrating the ability to alter the arrangement of cards in the deck 3 at a time, even in order to stack say one specific card to the top, as this thread shows, it may be provable that you can stack your deck, but it is not at all obvious, and the middle of a Competitive REL tournament is not the place to be providing mathematical proofs or esoteric diagrams involving conceptual wheels.

    As an opponent of this deck, I will always call a judge in this situation. My opponent can save the themselves the effort of trying to convince me they get to stack their deck, and use that energy to convince the head judge. In fact, I would strongly recommend convincing the head judge of it before the tournament.

    I still have an issue in that even if we all agree that it is completely deterministic that a player can stack their deck, it is not at all clear that even if they know that fact that they will do it correctly.

    So there is a second burden here, and that is that the player must be able to demonstrate that they can perform the series of actions *perfectly* and in *exactly* the number of iterations they specify in order to stack their deck.

    Why do I say "exactly"? Because if you say you're going to recast petals one trillion times, stacking your deck somewhere along the way, and then after that just returning it to the same order, you still have the problem of choosing the correct multiple of [num cards in deck]/3 iterations to required to return your deck to a known and desired order. One iteration too many and the cards you want at the top of your deck are at the bottom. In order to know that some arbitrary but specific large number of iterations will keep your deck in a desired order after you presumably stacked it along the way, you have to know exactly how many iterations it will take to stack it.

    That is, you cannot just name some random, obscenely large number, because how do I know that that number wouldn't be exactly one more iteration than you wanted, and end up sticking the cards you really want at the bottom of your deck?

    Thus, I believe you should have to name *exactly* how many iterations it will take for you stack all of the cards in your deck how you want them (in order to stack only the top X cards of your deck, you would not only need to still know a specific number of iterations which will lead to one of the permutations with those X cards on top in a particular order, but you also need the rest of the cards in your deck to be in a possible order for that number of iterations; it's not obvious to me that this calculation is any easier than just stacking your entire deck).

    Therefore, I argue that it's not sufficient to show that you can theoretically stack your deck after some number of iterations of casting Petals. It is necessary that you demonstrate, based on how many cards are in your library and the starting state of your deck, *exactly* how many iterations it will take (whether that's the minimal number it will take or that value plus some multiple of the number of iterations to return to a previously visited state; but to know the latter I suspect you have to know the former).

    But wait, there's more: the starting state of your deck- that is, the present location of all the cards you wish to stack, is unknown to me, your opponent. (It's unknown to you as well until you perform enough iterations to have seen the order of all of your cards *and* to return the deck to the starting permutation.) For one, in order to demonstrate to me that N iterations (where N was a number you stated) will put the deck in a precise desired order of your choosing, short of revealing the initial order of all of your cards (which I believe would actually be an illegal action), you would have to somehow index each card in your deck, face down, so that we could verify that your ending permutation (the stacked deck) is a valid permutation after N iterations. I have no idea how you're going to do that, especially given that at each iteration, you can choose from 6 different orderings for the cards that you're returning to the deck.

    This is quite a proof you're going to have to provide to the head judge, and in fact, you probably should need to provide a series of equations to the judge that solve for N which you will use during play that cover all the different scenarios that might come up. And frankly unless the head judge is Richard Garfield, I don't want match results that rely on the head judge's ability to check your mathematical work.

    There is also always the very real possibility that, even having definitively proven the validity of your equation(s) to solve for N, that actually solving for N itself would be slow playing.

    In my opinion, therefore, we should do away with the notion that you can realistically stack your deck having demonstrated a Petals loop, and instead you should just loop until you draw your Emrakul or whatever and then just win.

  10. #30
    !
    jrsthethird's Avatar
    Join Date

    Jan 2010
    Location

    Lehigh Valley, PA
    Posts

    1,654

    Re: Sorting with Petals of Insight: Shortcutting and Slow Play?

    The assumption that you would need to choose an exact number beforehand is ludicrous. You can stop the loop when you get the desired 3 cards, so just pick a number larger than that and say "I'll stop when I get X cards." You only need to prove that it can happen eventually.

  11. #31
    itsJulian.com - Legacy Videos
    Julian23's Avatar
    Join Date

    Apr 2007
    Location

    Munich / Germany
    Posts

    3,141

    Re: Sorting with Petals of Insight: Shortcutting and Slow Play?

    Quote Originally Posted by jrsthethird View Post
    The assumption that you would need to choose an exact number beforehand is ludicrous. You can stop the loop when you get the desired 3 cards, so just pick a number larger than that and say "I'll stop when I get X cards." You only need to prove that it can happen eventually.
    You missed his very legitimate point: just because there's a way to do it doesn't neccessarily mean that the player is actually capable of coming up with how to get there.
    The seven cardinal sins of Legacy:
    1. Discuss the unbanning of Land Tax Earthcraft.
    2. Argue that banning Force of Will would make the format healthier.
    3. Play Brainstorm without Fetchlands.
    4. Stifle Standstill.
    5. Think that Gaea's Blessing will make you Solidarity-proof.
    6. Pass priority after playing Infernal Tutor.
    7. Fail to playtest against Nourishing Lich (coZ iT wIlL gEt U!).

  12. #32

    Re: Sorting with Petals of Insight: Shortcutting and Slow Play?

    I completely agree that it's a very good idea to consult the HJ before using an usual loop in a tournament.

    However, being able to (theoretically) perfectly play out every iteration of a loop is simply not a requirement when shortcutting loops.

    Neither is it a requirement to be able specify the exact number of iterations required to achieve a desired state; as long as the desired state is deterministically reachable, simply specifying that state is sufficient.

    Neither is it relevant that the cards are in a hidden zone.

    Being able to explain each part of the loop is a requirement, but I don't think that's too difficult.

    You can certainly call a judge, but be prepared to be shut down.
    “It's possible. But it involves... {checks archives} Nature's Revolt, Opalescence, two Unstable Shapeshifters (one of which started as a Doppelganger), a Tide, an animated land, a creature with Fading, a Silver Wyvern, some way to get a creature into play in response to stuff, some way to get a land into play in response to stuff (a different land from the animated land), and one heck of a Rube Goldberg timing diagram.
    -David DeLaney

  13. #33

    Re: Sorting with Petals of Insight: Shortcutting and Slow Play?

    Quote Originally Posted by cdr View Post
    ...
    However, being able to (theoretically) perfectly play out every iteration of a loop is simply not a requirement when shortcutting loops.
    ...
    The non-interactive case is pretty straightforward, but let's suppose I have Hedron Crab, Lantern of Insight and a fetchland in play when my opponent wants to go off with petals. How much license do I get about specifying when I fire off the fetchland?

  14. #34
    itsJulian.com - Legacy Videos
    Julian23's Avatar
    Join Date

    Apr 2007
    Location

    Munich / Germany
    Posts

    3,141

    Re: Sorting with Petals of Insight: Shortcutting and Slow Play?

    Quote Originally Posted by cdr View Post
    I completely agree that it's a very good idea to consult the HJ before using an usual loop in a tournament.

    However, being able to (theoretically) perfectly play out every iteration of a loop is simply not a requirement when shortcutting loops.

    Neither is it a requirement to be able specify the exact number of iterations required to achieve a desired state; as long as the desired state is deterministically reachable, simply specifying that state is sufficient.

    Neither is it relevant that the cards are in a hidden zone.

    Being able to explain each part of the loop is a requirement, but I don't think that's too difficult.

    You can certainly call a judge, but be prepared to be shut down.
    What bothers me about what you are saying is that I know several players who would not be able to actually play out the loop correctly in order to arrive at a specific combination of 3 cards on top. By allowing the shortcut, they get a freebie.
    The seven cardinal sins of Legacy:
    1. Discuss the unbanning of Land Tax Earthcraft.
    2. Argue that banning Force of Will would make the format healthier.
    3. Play Brainstorm without Fetchlands.
    4. Stifle Standstill.
    5. Think that Gaea's Blessing will make you Solidarity-proof.
    6. Pass priority after playing Infernal Tutor.
    7. Fail to playtest against Nourishing Lich (coZ iT wIlL gEt U!).

  15. #35

    Re: Sorting with Petals of Insight: Shortcutting and Slow Play?

    Quote Originally Posted by rufus View Post
    The non-interactive case is pretty straightforward, but let's suppose I have Hedron Crab, Lantern of Insight and a fetchland in play when my opponent wants to go off with petals. How much license do I get about specifying when I fire off the fetchland?
    I think you have no choice but to play it out.

  16. #36

    Re: Sorting with Petals of Insight: Shortcutting and Slow Play?

    Quote Originally Posted by Varal View Post
    I think you have no choice but to play it out.
    And what if I have some instant like Archive Trap that I want to cast mid-sort for whatever reason?

  17. #37

    Re: Sorting with Petals of Insight: Shortcutting and Slow Play?

    Quote Originally Posted by cdr View Post
    You can't make someone play a valid shortcutted loop out. Once they've satisfied the rules requirements for a valid loop, it's done.
    716.2a At any point in the game, the player with priority may suggest a shortcut by describing a
    sequence of game choices,... It can’t include conditional actions, where the outcome of a game event determines the next action a player takes ...
    Sorting with petals requires game actions that are conditional on the order of the cards in the library, so sorting without paging through the library at least once is clearly not a legal shortcut.

    Moreover, the shortcut must be proposed in a way so that any intermediate point has a well-defined state.

    Let's say I'm holding a Mindbreak Trap an my opponent's used a fetchland this turn so I can cast it for free. With the "the library is sorted" specification, there's no way to predict the impact if I fire it off mid-sort. What's more, if the shortcut is "clarified" in response to the declared intention to interrupt, my opponent can make different sorting decisions in anticipation of the interruption.

  18. #38
    itsJulian.com - Legacy Videos
    Julian23's Avatar
    Join Date

    Apr 2007
    Location

    Munich / Germany
    Posts

    3,141

    Re: Sorting with Petals of Insight: Shortcutting and Slow Play?

    Especially when it comes to even playing around something while trying to setup the top3 cards of the library in a certain way, maybe even more than the top4 because we're playing around something, I would say that I don't possess the neccessary skills to do it right here, right now without having practiced it a lot. Allow me to stack my entire library and you're giving me a much bigger edge than I should have.
    The seven cardinal sins of Legacy:
    1. Discuss the unbanning of Land Tax Earthcraft.
    2. Argue that banning Force of Will would make the format healthier.
    3. Play Brainstorm without Fetchlands.
    4. Stifle Standstill.
    5. Think that Gaea's Blessing will make you Solidarity-proof.
    6. Pass priority after playing Infernal Tutor.
    7. Fail to playtest against Nourishing Lich (coZ iT wIlL gEt U!).

  19. #39
    Big Fat Hard Kicks, Oh My God I Want That Shit!
    Technics's Avatar
    Join Date

    Apr 2011
    Posts

    368

    Re: Sorting with Petals of Insight: Shortcutting and Slow Play?

    Quote Originally Posted by danyul View Post
    All this math talk is confusing. I am a simpleton and it's weird to me that an opponent can show me a math equation in order to avoid actually playing Magic. If an opponent starts going into this combo, is it asinine of me to make them play it out and then call a judge over to watch for slow play? With the vague hope that my opponent makes a mistake somewhere? Is that a dick move or totally reasonable?
    Due to slow play rules you are not allowed to force your opponent to actually physically perform the actions. Just like you can't loop to gain 3 billion life but then say "show me" to the kiki twin player when they try to combo off.

  20. #40

    Re: Sorting with Petals of Insight: Shortcutting and Slow Play?

    Quote Originally Posted by cdr View Post
    ...
    However, being able to (theoretically) perfectly play out every iteration of a loop is simply not a requirement when shortcutting loops.

    Neither is it a requirement to be able specify the exact number of iterations required to achieve a desired state; as long as the desired state is deterministically reachable, simply specifying that state is sufficient.
    ...
    That doesn't seem like it would work with the formal rules for shortcuts (i.e. rule 716) at all.

    The 'end in this state' stuff could get covered by floor rules 4.3 Out-of-order Sequencing, but that section specifies:

    ...
    All actions taken must be legal if they were executed in the correct order, and any opponent can ask the player to
    do the actions in the correct sequence so that he or she can respond at the appropriate time (at which point players
    will not be held to any still pending actions).
    ...
    Let's suppose that the 'shortcut' is covered under this floor rule, and that I'm holding an activated Archive Trap when an opponent tries to go off with petals. Can I ask the opponent to sequence out the petal castings at that point?

    What if, instead of Archive Trap it's Daze or Force of Will?

    What about a nonlethal Lightning Bolt?

    What about just a card in hand that's unknown to the opponent?

    (Notably, the floor rules just indicate 'any player' - there's nothing about actually having a response available.)

    Is the player who wants to repeatedly cast petals liable to get warnings for failure to advance the game state and slow play?

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)