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This week on Limited Resources Marshall and Jon take a close look at managing your Magic bankroll. How to maximize EV on MTGO is the main topic, but this applies to paper Magic as well.
Original article by Steven Stadnicki about raredrafting: http://puremtgo.com/articles/ev-raredrafting-and-you
Link Jon mentioned: http://i.imgur.com/0iqAq.png
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You guys tried to correct your EV calculations for the dollar game at the end, but still kind of flubbed it.
If the game is: I pay $1 to flip a coin and I get my dollar back if it’s heads and nothing if it’s tails, then the EV is -$0.50 per play. I pay $1 for every flip, so I’m -$1 at the start of the game, and I earn $0.50 on average every time I play. So my expected value is -$0.50 each time I play this game.
Well, it’s a question of definitions… whether you’re talking about the expected payout (in which case you end up ahead if the EV is higher than the entrance cost) or the expected value of the whole transaction (in which case you’re ahead if the EV is greater than 0). Throughout the podcast they’re usually talking about the former.
Also, I updated the graphs to include a hypothetical 5-3-2-2 tournament, to compare the payouts:
http://www.mrphlip.com/tmp/mtgo_ev_by_round.png
http://www.mrphlip.com/tmp/mtgo_ev_by_game.png
Note that now it passes through the same crossover point at 50% along with the other 12-packet formats. Though this graph looks like it would never be maximum-EV to play a hypothetical 5-3-2-2 tournament, but the graph can be misleading, as it doesn’t take into account the fact that your probability of winning a single round can be lower in an 8-4 than in a Swiss (because of the difference in expected strength of your opponents) so that can change matters. However I don’t think the effect is strong enough to make 4-3-2-2 the ideal choice anywhere, or even if it is, it’s a very narrow window.
Match win % variation between different types of formats is the crux of the problem. I don’t do table selection (Impatience/laziness), I just hop on the queue with the most players, so I play a variety of payouts and in most formats I seem to have a significantly better match win % in 4322 than in the others. I haven’t recorded my results, but maybe I should.
If you’re not keeping a spreadsheet for MODO I feel like you’re missing out. You’re on your computer anyways so it’s really easy. I’ve expanded the one Ryan has posted to where I can easily filter my results by set, queue type, etc to see stuff like my match win pct, EV, etc for the filtered data.
My results really back up what Marshall and Jon are talking about, so I thought I’d post them.
Swiss – 82 events, 67.9% match win rate, 2.09 EV (packs)
4322 – 127 events, 63.35% match win rate, 1.93 EV
84 – 35 events, 61.9% match win rate, 2.34 EV
Win rate decreases as you would expect, but it hasn’t really been too dramatic, especially when you look at 4322 vs 84. EV per queue carries out what the guys were saying on the podcast and tells me at least that I should never do 4322 if there are other options.
One last thing, thought I’d throw in my results at 4 booster sealed, which I love:
4 booster sealed – 171 events, 62.82% match win rate, 2.81 EV (packs)
Even when you account for the difference in entry fee this is slightly better EV than 84′s for me, you get an extra pack of cards out of the deal, and you don’t have to worry about raredrafting. So IMO this is the highest EV queue for most people.
So much good talk about the mtgo economy and its advantages (are there any?) and disadvantages, and how to circumvent them.
But no talk about what can be done to make it better and who is best suited to do this; WotC. Frustrating…