Meta with the highest Ratings

[freakish777]

Alright, so an interesting discussion I had during the TMLO 2 weekend with Gearhart and Overlord was along the lines of "How competitive is a meta, and is rating really the best indicator?"

Essentially the argument boils down to that a metagame could be "inbred" so to speak, and due to the fact that the best players in that metagame only need White Weenie to beat the various Elvish Skysweeper.dec that the scrubs are packing. Thus the "good players" are just winning free points every week from the bad players.

While this certainly could be true, eventually the higher rated players won't be able to pick up these points because either the bad players (who are playing for competition) a) won't be having fun because they're crushed consistantly and leave, or try and make better decks until they find something that works (ie, get better) or b) will drop so horrendously low on points that the good players will only pick up 1 point for each match win or so over the bad players (quiksliver might be able to fill people in here with a story).

In any event, I figured it'd be interesting to take the average rating of the top 20 Eternal in states of interest just to see what things looked like. Obviously there's some problems involved in order to get any meaningful numbers seeing as how some people will have higher Eternal Ratings based on sanctioned Vintage, and there will always be the players that get to 1900+ rating and then just stop playing, college students playing in a different meta than they have their address listed as, etc, but it should be a fun exercise anyways (this exercise does have to flaw of only looking at the top players, which means it's more prone to players achieving a high rating and then quiting, and also that if one place has more frequent tournaments than another, the good players will win points more quickly due to that frequency).

AL - 1796.4 (Tacosnape's from here right?)
AZ - 1803.1 (unexpectedly high)
CA - 1865.35 (the San Diego meta, if I'm not mistaken though the highest rated Eternal player is Luis Scott-Vargas's teammate and has a large portion of his eternal rating from Vintage)
CO - 1830.5 (one of the surprising higher top 20 lists)
FL - 1808.85 (has 2 2000+ players)
MA - 1836.3 (should be noted this includes some pros that probably don't play anymore like Darwin Kastle-Mess, Rob Dougherty, and people like Rich Shay who are bigger into Vintage)
NY - 1880.25 (again, old pros like Finkel, Pikula, and SteveOMS who probably don't play much anymore)
OH - 1828.55
VA - 1782.45



States I'd like to know more about as far as ratings go but didn't do averages for:

MI
MN
NM (Jazzykat is from here right? and from all accounts its a struggling and scrubby meta?)
PA
TN (seems like it'll have a decent average)
TX
UT
WA (seems like a decent average)


Some other interesting areas for comparison sake:

Rochester NY - 1828
Syracuse NY - 1793.4
San Diego CA - 1815.95
NY NY - 1858.15 (again, some old pros here possibly skewing things, also I know Jeff Folinus plays in Rochester while at RIT, a Legacy GP winner having residence there can't hurt either)


I'm not looking for this thread to turn into "Our meta is totally better than your meta!" Instead I'm looking for people to post the average of the top 20 players in their area along with their area and a description of the metagame.

I'm from Rochester, and among the regulars are Nantuko Shady (who will almost always be playing Tide-Reset), Legacy Player0 (slowly rotates decks, is currently playing Aluren), quiksliver (playing Survival almost always), and kirdape3 (lately has been playing Affinity, he's essentially always there every week, but some weaks he's playing Standard). The RIT crew makes appearances on and off (obviously not when RIT has breaks) including Gekoratal (playing Goblins consistently) and some of his friends (one plays Goblins consistently as well). Then there's Ta_Jugs and Mr_Teeth (they change decks more frequently) who usually show up but don't always play. Next, the group of people who I believe are unregged that may or may not show up every week aren't there every week but play decent to mediocre decks (for instance Shaun Doran shows up close to every week playing Affinity [it should be noted that I've got a lot of respect for this guy, I'd put him with the regulars if he showed up regularly, he's a very good player, it's just easier to lump him in with "unregged on The Source" bit], Nate Isaac occasionally plays, generally with a metagamed deck, Zach Fine slowly rotates deck, lately it's Landstill, to the various Angel Stompy players, to the mediocre like the White Weenie and Burn players who'd play with better cards if they had a larger budget). Next there's the players who go rogue (generally show up every other week or so? maybe once a month?), there's usually 1 or 2 of these guys a week, stuff like 43 Lands with their own tweaks, Scepter-Chant, Illusions-Donate, BW Stax, to the more bizarre Patron Wizard + Temporal Adept.dec. Lastly, there's the players that don't really seem to come with any frequency, they're there for one week, and you're unlikely to see them again. These are typically the players with the worst decks. The 5c Sliver decks, the sligh-esque decks that don't contain Lightning Bolt. Sometimes you'll see these players come in for a couple of weeks in a row and listen to the advice that other players have to give them about improving their decks. For instance on of the kids Chris has a WW deck, he can't afford Jittes, but he's slowly been improving his deck since I met him (picking up Jotun Grunts, etc) and has occasionally come out with a positive record thanks in part to Silver Knight beating up on Goblins.

As for myself, I somewhat fall into the "regular" crowd, but am not there exactly every week. I change what I play each week, though I typically play combo or Threshold since I have cards for those (don't have cards for most aggro decks, lack stuff for the more equipment centric aggro-control stompy decks).

Typically Millennium gets 20ish people each week, and it's essentially always 5 rounds of Swiss. Usually 25% are the regulars/good players, 50% are the decent to mediocre players, and 25% are the scrubs (the people playing rogue decks usually fall under decent to mediocre, since they're unlikely to hit upon the "next best thing.").

So, post your metagame's top 20 average (just use the DCI's look up for your city, the top 20 of Rochester include some players that don't play at Millennium currently, and that's fine because other cities will have players that don't play at the store you play at, so it should balance out in some regard), and a description (what decks the regulars/good players play, what the decent to mediocre players play, what the rogue players played in weeks past, how many people you get each week, estimated percentages of "regular/good," "decent to mediocre," and "why are you playing with Heroes Remembered?!"

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

While this certainly could be true, eventually the higher rated players won't be able to pick up these points because either the bad players (who are playing for competition) a) won't be having fun because they're crushed consistantly and leave, or try and make better decks until they find something that works (ie, get better)

This assume a limited pool of bad players that doesn't change over time.


or b) will drop so horrendously low on points that the good players will only pick up 1 point for each match win or so over the bad players (quiksliver might be able to fill people in here with a story).

I mean, when you get to 2000 like Dave Pirce I guess that's true.


There are other factors; availability of sanctioned tournaments, for example. The Lucky Frog has been almost entirely unsanctioned through the history of the 1.5 scene there, but I doubt there are many metas on the same competitive level based on the decks and development that has come out of the Frog. Solidarity entirely, Jack Elgin decks, most of the popularization and a large part of the development of Threshold, Red Death, Enchantress, U/B Landstill. Even our beloved black sheep Roopey had a significant part in the early development of Vial Goblins.

[noobslayer]

When I'm not away at school, I'm one of the most regular players at Rochester. Not consistent deck. Bu it is worth mentioning the reasoning of my old title, which was "3-0 Drop." The meta in Rochester is such that you might as well play scrubs for three rounds and get some points and a pack, and then just drop because that's when actual competition kicks in. Although I never did, it was always something to joke about.

[gustoh]

-Minnesota has an average of 1823

I personally know that 7 out of the 20 are active in the Legacy field.

I counted 3 that are strictly known for playing "vintage"...

-The Twin Cities area Minneapolis/Saint Paul has an average of 1814

This number increases to 14 out of 20 that are active in the Leagcy field

and just a random thought...

If our tournaments on Wednesday Nights were sanctioned... our number one player in the state (Jeremy Zwirn) would probably have a rating of over 2000 easy.

LT...

[Tacosnape]

I am indeed from Alabama. It's a wonder I can even find time to post, what with my cousins being so hot and all.

Alabama has a small Legacy metagame, but it packs three or four players who are incredibly skilled, and five or six more who are probably as good as the average non-adept on here. Average tournament size around here is between 10 and 16, with 20-30 being common for $100 cash tournaments. That said, winning a tournament around here is very tough, and would still be considered so if the other two top players didn't bribe their way into wins and the concept of "Purity of the Turf" existed. Alabama also is home to a lot of Vintage players who have been playing for about fifteen years. It has a solid but small community in that regard. A lot of the players you see on Eternal ratings are just that. Vintage players.

Alabama's metagame is, as I said, filled with bribery, which makes determining the -best- players around here impossible from ratings. But here you go anyway. I'm the big fish in the ultra small pond, and I bring Goblins, Solidarity, RGBSA, 4C Landstill, and very soon GK Salvagers and Faerie Stompy to a tournament. Very often anywhere from 2-4 people will borrow decks from me, so that's a lot of your metagame right there. The best besides me is Daniel Oravet, who packs Affinity, Threshold, Goblins, or whatever he's built at the time. Then Jeremy Duncan, who packs a fantastic 4C Loam Control deck, as well as Warrens-Belcher and 4C Survival. My friends, who I refer to as Team Laughing Hyena, pack Scepter Chant w/ Extirpate, Terrageddon, Red Death, MBC, The Rock, Burn, Angel Stax, and a U/W Flying Fish deck packing Pride of the Clouds.

Other decks that tend to show up from random players include Affinity, Pox, 6/1, and a bizarre UGW Gro deck.

[freakish777]

This assume a limited pool of bad players that doesn't change over time.

Correct, I forgot to mention that there will usually be "fresh blood" every now and then, but there's always the chance that the players that show up for their first week actually have some semblence of skill/a good deck as well.




There are other factors; availability of sanctioned tournaments, for example.

Thought I addressed this on the "frequency of tournaments" part. Obviously 0 sanction tournaments a month means your ratings are basically stagnant while other meta's ratings will change.


The Lucky Frog has been almost entirely unsanctioned through the history of the 1.5 scene there,

You guys should all petition the store for sanctioning. If they're like "We don't have a Judge to sanction it" one of you should volunteer to become a judge. Seriously there's little to no reason to have un-sanctioned events.


I'm not sure whether or not I think the creation of new decks necessarily means that a metagame is more competitive. Certainly more creative.

[Happy Gilmore]

Correct, I forgot to mention that there will usually be "fresh blood" every now and then, but there's always the chance that the players that show up for their first week actually have some semblence of skill/a good deck as well.





Thought I addressed this on the "frequency of tournaments" part. Obviously 0 sanction tournaments a month means your ratings are basically stagnant while other meta's ratings will change.



You guys should all petition the store for sanctioning. If they're like "We don't have a Judge to sanction it" one of you should volunteer to become a judge. Seriously there's little to no reason to have un-sanctioned events.


I'm not sure whether or not I think the creation of new decks necessarily means that a metagame is more competitive. Certainly more creative.

The problem with sanctioning the tournaments at the Frog is we have multiple pro players who could not play in that case. Plus, with ratings as high as they are amoung some players, our attendence might go down. Powergamer1003 for instance has a 1900 constructed rating giving him 2 byes at the GP. Is it worth risking that?

[Nightmare]

Playing Legacy wouldn't effect that.

[Happy Gilmore]

Playing Legacy wouldn't effect that.

I realize that is the case for Powergamer1003 but then the other tournaments held at the frog might be sanctioned as well, which would affect the constructed rating.

The pro player thing is more of a valid point. Besides, it makes the tournament slightly more casual. We tend to travel to enough major tournaments to make up for it. The weekly tournaments are an extension of testing in many cases. If points were on the line you would not see quite so many people trying new inventions.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Even our beloved black sheep Roopey had a significant part in the early development of Vial Goblins Every Deck Ever.

Fixed.


Yeah, certain people wouldn't be able to play if tournaments were sanctioned at the Frog. Cough.


PS: What the fuck? Why don't we have strikeout?

ah fuck it, I'm pretty sure we do but I don't remember the command. PM Zilla---frogboy

[Ophidian]

CA - 1865.35 (the San Diego meta, if I'm not mistaken though the highest rated Eternal player is Luis Scott-Vargas's teammate and has a large portion of his eternal rating from Vintage)


I assume you are referring to David Ochoa (aka Webster) if you are, then yes... almost all of his Eternal rating is from Vintage. Although, LSV, and Webster both play in the Bay Area, so they should not be factored into the San Diego meta.

[DeathwingZERO]

I can't say much for the Seattle area of WA, but I can tell that most of the areas in Vancouver/Portland of OR/WA as well as a good chunk of Salem, etc are all non-sanctioned 1.5 tourneys.

So with guys like Volt, myself, LinkXwing, etc that have at some point been playing weekly somewhere for a number of years now, we don't have any rating to speak of, short of some very few and far between sanctioned "big" tournaments. I'm pretty sure that'll be the case for almost the entirety of the NW players, those with ratings probably won't show up on this forum often.

[revenge_inc]

As interesting as the averages are, they mean nothing. I do not think we will find a correlation.

Because:

-Only the top 20 rated players in each state
-Vintage players aren't include
-It tells us nothing of recent tournament participation
-Some places have larger tournies

[Lanfeng]

well when it comes down to legacy if you pooled the player base San Diego seems like it'd be really low, You can't walk into Game Empire on friday night for a tournament without tripping over a noob.

[freakish777]

I realize that is the case for Powergamer1003 but then the other tournaments held at the frog might be sanctioned as well, which would affect the constructed rating.

So then he can either decide not to play the Standard/Extended events, or he can decide to, ya know, actually win with his skill to keep his rating up.


Besides, it makes the tournament slightly more casual.

How is sanctioning going to make an event more casual (unless I'm reading this wrong)? Because less people would actually play to protect their rating? I think that's kind of dumb when there isn't a looming GP to collect byes to, or PT to get invited to based on rating.


If points were on the line you would not see quite so many people trying new inventions.

How does this make your meta more competitive? Certainly more creative, again there's no doubt about that. But testing new decks doesn't necessarily make your meta more competitive. Especially not on a weekly basis. If it were instead "Who's team is going to put the highest percentage of their players into Day 2 at Columbus" then yes testing everything under the sun is great because you might stumble upon the most busted deck possible and then you all play it and crush the field there. But if an observer just saw all of your meta playing new inventions each week they might come to the conclusion that your metagame isn't as competitive as a metagame where the decks that have been proven consistantly show up.






I assume you are referring to David Ochoa (aka Webster) if you are, then yes... almost all of his Eternal rating is from Vintage. Although, LSV, and Webster both play in the Bay Area, so they should not be factored into the San Diego meta.

There should have been a period in there over a comma. I know LSV and Ochoa play closer to SF than SD. My bad on my sentence being to short and not expressive enough.



As interesting as the averages are, they mean nothing. I do not think we will find a correlation.


Again this is just supposed to be a fun exercise and see if we can find where the rating carries meaning, and where it carries less meaning (both in having a low average top player rating in a highly competitive meta, and in having a high average top rating in a more relaxed meta).

[freakish777]

Alright, there's some posters from the Netherlands, Germany and France on here as well, can we get some metagame descriptions from you guys also, as well as perhaps cutting these down to regions of the metagames (going by country seems kind of hard to say it's one metagame)?

Germany - 1877.8 (this is a large rating, but there's also over 2200 players with Eternal Ratings in Germany, hence I'd like some European posters to do the averages for their regions or cities since I obviously don't know where the hot spots to play Legacy in European countries are)

France - 1877.75 (maybe Toad can get us the average for his metagame?)

Netherlands - 1806.9 (number 2 rated player here is Hugo Dijke, he's the creator of Terrageddon, correct?)

[frogboy]

So then he can either decide not to play the Standard/Extended events, or he can decide to, ya know, actually win with his skill to keep his rating up.

It is massively -EV for ratings purposes to play 8k events against 1600s if you have a 1900+ rating. Skill is not a significant enough factor to get around pairings and variance in draws.

[freakish777]

It is massively -EV for ratings purposes to play 8k events against 1600s if you have a 1900+ rating. Skill is not a significant enough factor to get around pairings and variance in draws.


Then perhaps he doesn't deserve the 1900+ rating that he currently has?

[Nihil Credo]

That's not what it means. If you play a lot of players with ratings lower than yours, for each time you win, you gain an insignificant amount of points. But if you lose even just once, you lose massive points. I don't have a calculator ready, but I'd estimate that if you were at 1900 and went 4-1 against players at 1600, you'd end up losing points.

The very purpose of the rating system is exactly this: to disincentive players from playing against those with ratings too lower than theirs.

[frogboy]

Then perhaps he doesn't deserve the 1900+ rating that he currently has?

Perhaps it's not possible to consistently go 8-1 or better in nine match sets against a varied metagame because of manascrew and bad pairings?

I'd put a lot more money on Mark Herberholz making the top eight of a Pro Tour than I would a 1600 player, but that 1600 player probably has positive expectation with regard to his rating if they were to play ten matches of Standard, randomly choosing decks each time. If Heezy slams two aggro decks into Dragonstorm, he's probably down for the session.


The very purpose of the rating system is exactly this: to disincentive players from playing against those with ratings too lower than theirs.

The purpose of a ratings system is to have a reasonably objective, quantifiable method of discerning skill. I'd be thrilled to run into a 1450 player at a PTQ playing some god awful homebrew deck even if I was going to lose thirty points if I lost, because the value of winning a PTQ is significantly greater than winning a half dozen packs at an FNM.

[wmagzoo7]

I live in PA and our average for the top 20 is 1804.95 Our highest rating is 1915 so it says a lot i guess. Though there are 0 sanctioned eternal tournaments :frown:.

[freakish777]

@ frogboy & Nihil

I know how the system works, it's loosely based on the USCF/FIDE's rating systems (USCF = US Chess Fed, FIDE = International Chess Fed) so as to encourage "working your way up" in skill by finding better opponents to play against. My comment with the whole "maybe he doesn't deserve a 1900+ rating then" essentially was to question if he were to play constructed against other 1900+ opponents this second would he actually go 50-50 with them? If you play with players that are worse then you, you tend to pick up bad habits. Too much time spent playing in unsanctioned events with players who aren't as good as you is essentially a disservice to your playskill.

I didn't mean that he should realistically go on a 20 win tear to gain the 20 points to make up for losing the 1 match to a 1600 player, however while we're on that subject I don't see why that wouldn't be reasonable against truly awful players (seeing as how they'll have suboptimal decks, make suboptimal mulligan decisions, make suboptimal plays, all adding to the favor of the 1900 player who should have a bye barring a mulligan to 3 or something, and even then there's game 2 to get back in it).

Again, I'm more so focused on the first part, that perhaps in order to keep himself at 1900, he should have to go and play with other 1800~2000 players and make sure his skill stays at 1900 instead of dropping by learning sub-optimal strategies to beat sub-optimal players.

[frogboy]

Again, I'm more so focused on the first part, that perhaps in order to keep himself at 1900, he should have to go and play with other 1800~2000 players and make sure his skill stays at 1900 instead of dropping by learning sub-optimal strategies to beat sub-optimal players.

Why would he need a sub-optimal strategy? The primary issue at hand is an unwinnable matchup (you have to be really really bad to lose Zoo vs Owling Mine, for example) or manascrew. Most people know that when they develop an unorthodox strategy that it's unorthodox, and thus how and when to use it.

Magic and Chess both use the ELO rating system, by the way. I'm under the impression that in chess, you can challenge players of similar rating. That option does not exist in Swiss pairings.


If you play with players that are worse then you, you tend to pick up bad habits.

I don't. I doubt many other people do either. Aside from technical errors I'm not even sure how this would be the case. I can see not getting any better if you never have to think, but I can't see a backslide.

[DeathwingZERO]

Who's to say that a 1600 player is bad in the first place? I play the game on a very regular basis in unsanctioned tournaments and play with friends, yet I've only gone to one Regionals in Type 2, which bumped me up a small portion of points.

If I continued to put enough time and money into T2, I could also reach the 1900s in due time. But I don't want to, partly in the fact that it'd ruin the game for me playing on that serious of a level.

The point of the system being this way is it's easier to climb over time with being a consistently good player, but to fall hard if you don't continue with being a good player. So no, playing against a bunch of 1600s wouldn't say anything about 1) being a better player just because you have a 1900 rating and 2) the 1600 is bad, when they could just as easily be a new prodigy. The system has to work this way so new players coming in and players around for years are relatively "on the same level", so to speak, in regards to getting and staying on the top.

So overall, the points mean nothing in terms of being the only great players, it's merely a stat for those who "publicly" want to be known, and compete for the prize. If you want a "fair" overview of the numbers, you'd also have to look into their match history, and see how their win/loss % run out, how many games they actually played, etc. It'd be a much deeper analysis, and I assure you, those at the very top, may not be the "best" overall.

[freakish777]

Why would he need a sub-optimal strategy?

I didn't say you needed one, just that it's possible to learn one (or some). (deck selection aside, I don't want to get into arguments about what the best versions of lists are, that's what the main portion of these boards are for) For instance in Legacy you could be playing UGw Thresh with Mages (pre or post board, I don't care) against High Tide - Reset, and because you're playing against less skilled players you come to the conclusion (based on X games played against them that you won) that you're never under any circumstance going to name High Tide if a Mage resolves because "Hey I get mana too!" Where there's some obvious circumstances where naming High Tide is correct (like when they're mana screwed and can't get to 5~6 lands).



Most people know that when they develop an unorthodox strategy that it's unorthodox, and thus how and when to use it.

I'm not sure you can back this claim up.


I'm under the impression that in chess, you can challenge players of similar rating. That option does not exist in Swiss pairings.

Chess no longer uses the original Elo Rating System (it's similar however, as it's a derivative).

As far as challenging a particular player goes, I think you're missing something here. At Chess tournaments a Swiss tournmanet structure is arranged with random pairings if I'm not mistaken. However, you do not need to have 8+ players to "sanction" an event. You can challenge a player to a game/match just for the fun of it at your local Chess center/club and if there's a person on hand who's allowed to enter results for the USCF, they can report the outcome of a single game to have it count towards rating as opposed to needing sanctioning to be in a tournament. This practice isn't allowed in the DCI since membership is free. Membership with the USCF is about $40 a year, so creating "fake" accounts just to play against no one while your judge friend reporst the results isn't exactly lucrative (where with the DCI you could get yourself an invite to a PT based on rating). I could be mistaken here, but I don't think I am.



I'm not even sure how this would be the case. I can see not getting any better if you never have to think, but I can't see a backslide.

You could "get rusty." Any activity you don't spend time on, is an activity your skill will decrease in (even if only by small amounts, just like riding a bike, you're not going to forget outright how to ride it, but without practice you're not going to be as good as you once were initially upon starting to ride again), it should also hold true that any activity you don't spend the same amount of time/effort on you'll lose some skill in (even smaller amounts, but still).

If you really think you can do activity X with your average 5 year olds and not the group of competitive people you used to for say 6 months, and then return and be at exactly the same place where you left off, I think you're mistaken. I'm not saying "LOLOL, after playing with the 5 year olds you'd forget that your forests tap for G and not play your Mongoose 20 turns in a row." Just that you'll likely make small mistakes you wouldn't have otherwise. The longer the time and the larger the gap between the competition of the players, the more noticable the mistakes will be.

[Epheniculles]

IL - 1822.45 I guess that makes us 7th so far.

Here's the ranking so far:
NY - 1880.25
CA - 1865.35
MA - 1836.3
CO - 1830.5
OH - 1828.55
MI - 1823
IL - 1822.45
FL - 1808.85
AZ - 1803.1
AL - 1796.4
VA - 1782.45

I though VA would be higher.

[freakish777]

I though VA would be higher.

As did I, although it's been pointed out that VA doesn't get as many (or any) sanctioned events. I should also note that I think anywhere above 1750 has a competitive enough environment (in comparison some States only have 2~3 pages of players and their top player is at 1750 or some such).

[dahcmai]

Michigan wouldn't average high just for the sheer fact we have a ton of Vintage players and they don't do ratings for that. Ann Arbor probably has most of the standard croud right there. Traverse City, Mt Pleasant, Alpena, and Cheboygan are mostly Vintage. There's a scary amount of Vintage skill there though.

[Weekend Daddy]

I'm visiting Arizona and I'm surprised at it's results. They have 2 tournaments in town that happen about every other week.

Vegas has twice as much turnout and have tournaments every week. If anyone knows anything I don't know about the Arizona legacy tournaments/metagame, let me know.