Variation is Essential

Hello everyone!

I'm sorry I haven't been posting very much recently. I haven't played any magic for the past 10 days, and honestly it has been nice for a change. I spent a lot of time thinking about and preparing myself for SCG Providence and after the event I was kind of lost because it passed so quickly. I will probably be going to Wednesday Night Magic though, so I should be getting back into the game again.

In this past week and a half I have done some reflecting, about magic and beyond, and I thought this might be something cool to talk about to get back into blogging: Variance.

Magic is a hugely complicated game, this has been said many many times. But you know what else is a complicated game? Chess. But I would say that Magic is more complicated than chess because Chess lacks any variance. Play 5000 games of chess, and they all start the exact same. Often times, depending on your style, your first 4 or 5 moves may be the exact same every game too! This is obviously not the case with Magic. Deck and card selection is a cause of variance before you even sit down to play! Never mind opening hands, mulligans, etc!

I obviously love playing Magic, and I used to be an avid chess player. However, I have grown a little further from Chess because I feel it is a "fixed" game. Because there is absolutely no variance, there is the capability for there to be an equilibruim to be reached where the only way for the game to be different is if a player makes a move that is objectively non-optimal. I tried to have a game against myself last week, but after 5 moves I had to walk away. I wanted to make the absolute best move possible for each player, so before I would do anything I would plan out how things would go the next half dozen moves. It took about a good minute of thinking for each potential move, and if you know anything about chess than you know by 5 moves in there are up to a dozen pieces that can justifiably be moved. So after 15-20 minutes of thinking about potential moves, I finally decided to choose the one that didn't seem so bad. Now the problem here is that I know exactly how I will react to everything, so it is completely impossible for me to make a mistake and capitalize on it (or maybe I make a mistake, and I never see it to win a free piece or something). After 30 minutes I had to call it quits because I could smell the neurons frying themselves in my head....

A different example of a "fixed" game is called the Prisoner's Dilemma. I highly recommend you take the time to watch that video, it is only 3 minutes long and it's very efficiently explained. I have been watching a lot of his videos and have been thinking about the elements of game theory in a lot of places in my life. So many things beyond the prisoner's dilemma have strictly better choices, and very quickly we can shortcut them such as playing a land turn 1 instead of discarding down to 7. Very quickly, these fixed games become boring. At first you may have been intrigued by the Prisoner's Dilemma. Couldn't both players just not rat the other out? Then they both get only 1 year in jail! However, once you learn the real solution to it the game is no longer interesting. For example, if I showed you this game matrix:

3, 7      4,10
1, 6      2, 8

The obvious answer is that the game will come to an equilibrium at 4,10. This video is about humor specifically, but the lessons about learning and boredom and still relevant here. So to bring it all back together I had been playing so much that I felt I had solved all my matchups, or at least done enough that I felt thoroughly satisfied. I had everything "fixed" in my head, I knew how every matchup would basically play out, where I would play my cards on what, etc. Unfortunately after doing all that and the event came and went there was a very quick drop off back to reality. Big events are awesome! So much so that normal FNMs become meh again. Just like how people say they had the best X food in the world that they can't eat it anymore because nothing else compares, in the same way after going to a huge event everything else feels underwhelming.

So this is where variance kicks in. Deviation from what we would expect. A lot of people are complaining that Avacyn Restored has made magic way too variance based especially with Miracle cards. For the first time in 27 months - 2 1/4 years - Channel Fireball did not make the top 8 of a Pro Tour. That is incredible! I asked PV on twitter what the first event was that CFB tested as a team for and he said PT San Diego (right after Worldwake came out, CFB played Boss Naya and LSV went 16-0 in the swiss). Pro Tour Avacyn Restored was the first Pro Tour in the history of Team Fireball that they have not Top 8'd. WOW! I looked at the coverage of all the Pro Tours and World Championships, and while usually there was only 1 in the top 8, they often had 2, and they even had 4 this past World Championships! Blame the bad mana, blame the super-high variance of miracles, whatever you want. But if it weren't for variance changing the way this game works, then CFB would simply top 8 every Pro Tour for the rest of time, and win a good amount of them too.

Without variance magic becomes a game of chess where we both players can quickly get full information either based on way opponent plays or based on your turn 1 Gitaxian Probe and can then solve the game. Sure there is some small variance based on what they draw, but that rarely can completely change everything as the game goes on. With miracles though, we have an aggressively undercosted spell that dramatically changes the game state. This is exciting! This makes me want to get right back into the game again! This is what made me not scoop up my cards even though I was at 2 life, my opponent had 12 power on board, and I had no creatures in play (didn't get the bonfire, but how incredible would it be if I did?!?).

Sometimes the only way to win is to get super lucky. Variance creates those moments. Sometimes you find yourself paired against LSV round 1 and you just have to hope you get lucky and pull out a win from nowhere. With the higher-variance standard format we are now in this is a lot more possible. People complain about variance because "rather be lucky than good" but I love it! Standard is going to be awesome for the next 18 months and many many matches will come down to "at the last possible moment I topdecked a miracle!" and everyone will really enjoy it (maybe not your opponent, but if he is a good sport then he should be able to enjoy the euphoric moment with you).

Will Miracles and the higher variance destroy magic? Please, don't be ridiculous! The best players will still rise to the top, but now there is more opportunity for insane games and overall more fun moments! If I weren't leaving to work at camp this summer, I know that I would be thoroughly engaged for the long run!

I did in fact get back and play in my local Wednesday Night Magic event and went 3-2 with Goblins, which I should write about soon. But that's all I have for today! Until next time, stay classy!

Ryan Lackie
Ryan.Lackie92@gmail.com
@ThingsILack