January recap and setting goals for February

I didn’t feel to great about myself at the end of last year. I was in the worst shape of my life (and I’ve never been a particularly healthy or active person), I wasn’t miserable but I wasn’t happy, and I ended a lot of days feeling like I just hadn’t accomplished anything. So in December I made a decision to try to make my life a little bit better every day. I’m pleased with my progress so far, but I still have a lot I want to accomplish.

I know enough about myself to realize that while I’m very good at stopping doing something all at once (e.g. when I quit smoking), I struggle when I try to start something big or make changes to existing behaviors. So my strategy has been to introduce gradual changes to my life, set goals for my self, gather data frequently, and evaluate how well I am implementing these changes and whether the changes are actually effective at heading towards my goals. It’s a semi-Scrum type of project management, in that I’m breaking things down into small tasks, tacking a lot of problems simultaneously, and constantly measuring and re-evaluating against my goal burn down.

I’ve decided that I want to set new goals and evaluate progress on at least a monthly basis for all the things I’m trying to accomplish, and I want to have something permanent that I can point to and say “you made a commitment,” so I’ve decided that I’m going to publish my goals and my progress evaluation here on this blog. I may decide that I want to track things at a finer-grained level in the future, but again, part of my process is initiating small change that is easy to commit to and attempting to ingrain it as habit before introducing new change.

So where am I at? Well for January I wanted to do the following:

• Take a 15 minute walk every day
• Call my parents every weekend
• Improve the cleanliness/clutter level of my apartment every week
• Weigh myself every day
• Don’t have shut-in, depressive days

I’ve accomplished all of these goals and they are all feeling pretty natural. Additionally, I’ve taken steps to really organize my online and offline life, post here more frequently, and try to be more social, all things that I wanted to work on but hadn’t set as goals for January. So yay so far!

For February I want to:

• Maintain all of my January goals
• Average 6,000 steps per day
• Track my food intake
• Track my sleep cycles
• Get 120 hours of poker in
• Continue to organize my life along a task oriented methodology
• Write at least four posts here
• Don’t skip any IRL Magic PTQs
• Play in at least one MtGO PTQ
• Play more MtGO (30+ tickets worth of tournaments)

So that’s what I’m doing for the next month.

Gatecrash Legacy Review

And I think that’s about it. Frown town.

Ok, ok, we’ll be a little more thorough, but unlike Return to Ravnica there are no format defining cards like Deathrite Shaman, staple cards like Abrupt Decay, or even powerful sideboard options like Rest in Peace. Instead we have a number of niche cards that are unlike to make the cut, the Nivmagus Elementals and Worldspine Wurms of this set. The potential Legacy cards in Gatecrash can roughly be divided into four categories: flexible cards that fit in existing archetypes, powerful cards that currently do not have a home, cards that only fit in a single archetype, and sideboard cards. Let’s walk through them:

Flexible currently playable cards

Dimir Charm is a lot like Izzet Charm – it kills a bunch of relevant creatures (Dark Confidant, unflipped Delvers, Deathrite Shaman, Elves, utility creatures), can counter relevant spells in all of the combo and most of the control decks, and has a marginal card filtering ability that can be used in a pinch. I think it’s a lot more likely to see play than Izzet Charm, however, because it is a better fit for the BUG decks than Izzet Charm was for RUG Delver and it shores up their weaknesses whereas Izzet Charm addressed issues that weren’t pressing for RUG Delver. Specifically, a 2cc reactive spell is much more palatable to BUG decks that run more lands, have Deathrite Shamans, and want to play a longer game than in the mana light RUG Delver decks. RUG decks didn’t need the flexibility of Izzet Charm because they use burn spells for removal, meaning that they don’t have to worry as much about their removal spells being dead in combo matchups, whereas BUG decks will appreciate having removal that doubles as a counterspell more. Additionally the disruption that Dimir Charm gives BUG decks is a better compliment to its existing suite of disruption, because it attacks from a different angle than the discard that BUG relies upon. I think that Dimir Charm has enough things going for it that it should see some maindeck usage in BUG decks.

Orzhov Charm could see some play in Junk decks if we ever move to a point in the format where a Maverick deck splashing black became a viable choice again. A deck would have to want the third mode to be significantly useful in order to choose to play Orzhov charm, since the first mode is mostly useless and the second mode has to compete with Swords to Plowshares. Realistically the only 1 drops I would be willing to pay 2 mana to reanimate are Deathrite Shaman, Mother of Runes, and Heritage Druid/Nettle Sentinel/Wirewood Symbiote/etc. I’d want at least eight creatures I could get back in order to run this card, so either I’m looking at a combo Elves deck or a Maverick deck to play this. Unfortunately Maverick is not playable in the current meta and I think trying to play a double splash non-creature card in Elves is pretty ambitious.

I’ve heard arguments that Simic Charm is a card that RUG Delver decks would want, but I’m skeptical. I’d argue that Vapor Snag is a better card than Simic Charm if you’re in the market for an Unsummon, as two mana is much more than one mana in the sort of tempo decks that want an Unsummon and bouncing your own creature is almost as good a defensive measure as giving your guy Hexproof. Simic charm has the nice upsides of countering an opponent’s Wasteland activation and winning Tarmogoyf wars, but you’ll rarely realize the former since you would be leaving up two mana and you already have burn spells to realize the latter. Simic Charm just doesn’t match up well to with RUG Delver’s plan of attack.

Powerful cards without a home

Twitter’s been all aflutter with Boros Charm ever since it was spoiled, and with good reason – it’s a sweet card. Boros Charm is a great card for aggressive creature based decks that either have a few key creatures they want to protect or which exist in a format where Wrath effects are prevalent. Unfortunately there aren’t any viable decks in Legacy that would want Boros Charm and Boros Charm doesn’t match up well to the removal in the format. The first issue is that there aren’t any red white decks in Legacy anymore – ever since the demise of Zoo this color combination has been virtually non-existent as these two colors have been relegated, in creature decks, to splash colors that are both splashed primarily for removal (and thus are never splashed together). Neither of the two relevant red decks in the format, Burn and Goblins, would want to splash White for this card as only one of the modes is relevant to either deck (Burn is interested in dealing damage and Goblins is interested in indestructability) and splashing an additional color is a real cost for both decks. Maverick might have been interested in splashing Boros charm, but, as mentioned previously Maverick isn’t a deck currently, and if it were to become more viable it would be more interested in splashing black for disruption than red for Punishing Fire and Boros Charm. In addition to not having a deck that wants these abilities, Boros Charm simply doesn’t match-up well with the format right now. The third ability is only relevant in creature combat, as you’re rarely going to deal more than 4 additional damage to an opponent by giving a creature double strike, particularly in the fast aggressive decks that want the other abilities. Four damage for two mana is actually a pretty good deal, but the granting indestructibility to your permanents isn’t as relevant as we would like given that the only Wrath in the format is Terminus and that Swords to Plowshares and Liliana of the Veil are prevalent removal spells. It’s too bad Boros Charm was printed in the post Delver of Secrets world, as it would have been an awesome card in Zoo, but as it is it doesn’t have a home.

Domri Rade is another card that would have been sweet in the heyday of Zoo but doesn’t have a good home right now. I don’t think that the current Jund decks are creature dense enough to get card advantage with Domri and the format isn’t enough about board control for her -2 ability to be relevant right now, unlike two years ago when Zoo would have been interested in a card that helped you win the mirror and was good against Goblins and Merfolk. It’s possible that a Goblins deck splashing Green would be interested in Domri simply as a card advantage engine, but drawing cards is not something that deck really has a problem with, so I doubt it would be good enough to lower your Goblin count.

Crypt Ghast and Blind Obedience are both on the Legacy power curve but they don’t do things that make sense in the format right now. Crypt Ghast is somewhat in the Nic Fit wheelhouse of accelerating your mana in a significant way and then casting large threats, but so far that strategy has proven to be too slow and not disruptive enough to be successful in Legacy. Blind Obedience is the best Kismet ever printed, but I think we would need something more to make Stasis playable in the first place, and it’s been years since a prison style deck that didn’t interact on the stack was viable (the last one, mono-white Stax, wouldn’t benefit from playing Blind Obedience).

Niche cards

Cards that only go in one deck can still be powerful and format altering, but unfortunately most of the niche cards in Gatecrash are either less effective than existing cards, or are doing something that isn’t really relevant to the current Legacy metagame, and thus I don’t expect any of these cards to make waves.

Prime Speaker Zegana is the niche card that I think is most likely to see main-deck play in Legacy, as part of a Hypergenesis deck. Hypergenesis and Eureka are somewhat different from other cards that put multiple permanents in play at once in that they put cards in play in an order instead of simultaneously, which means that Prime Speaker Zegana can see the creatures you put down before her, and will get her +1/+1 counter bonus. So as long as you have another fatty the Speaker will also sport some muscle, and, more importantly, she will draw you a bunch of cards so you can either protect your goon squad or go off again.

Everyone loves gigantic, flashy spells, but the truth of the matter is that it is a lot harder to cheat in big Sorceries than it is to cheat in expensive permanents. Additionally, Enter the Infinite is not super exciting if you expend all of your resources to cast it and then don’t have enough resources left to cast the spells you just drew. I think a lot of the ways we have for cheating spells into play, like Fist of Suns, Mosswort Bridge, or Windbrisk Heights are just not viable as you can’t guarantee a win just by drawing your deck, so we have to look to a shell with Dream Halls, Omniscience, or High Tide to use Enter the Infinite. High Tide doesn’t need an expensive kill card once it gets it’s mana engine going – it’s perfectly able to win using Cunning Wish and the cards it uses to go off in the first place, and since Enter the Infinite can’t be wished for it would have to be in the main deck, clogging up our ability to go off in the first place. Omniscience seems like a good fit, but we already have a compact single card win with Burning Wish that we can use with Omniscience, and Burning Wish also helps us find the pieces to go off with Omniscience. Dream Halls also seems like a good fit – we have an enabler that lets us cheat out Enter the Infinite and it lets us cast the spells we draw off of Enter the Infinite. That said, casting Enter the Infinite off of Dream Halls seems like it’s just as good as casting Conflux off of Dream Halls. In both cases you win as soon as you assemble Dream Halls and the card in question, and your in deck kill condition is super compact. Given that Dream Halls has not been a winning archetype in the past year, I doubt that adding Enter the Infinite, either as a supplement to or a replacement of Conflux, is going to make Dream Halls a viable archetype.

Like every other Goblin card ever printed Legion Loyalist has been suggested as an addition to the Legacy Goblins list by dozens of forum posters. And while Legion Loyalist has a great rate for the effect it generates, this isn’t an effect you really want in your Goblin deck. Giving a bunch of 1 and 2 power guys trample isn’t super effective, nor is the first strike. We may see this guy as a one of sideboard card in Goblins, especially if Goblins swings back to a more aggressive posture in the metagame, but that’s the best I would expect of this card.

Hellkite Tyrant may see some play in the sideboards of Dredge and Reanimator should the Welder MUD deck have a resurgence. Both Dredge and Reanimator are able to benefit greatly from singleton reanimation targets in the sideboard, as witnessed by the use of Aura Thief a few years ago in Dredge sideboards when Enchantress was on the rise. As far as I can tell Hellkite Tyrant is the best “artifact deck” trump card printed for these types of strategies, and so it has a potential future walk on role.

Skullcrack is probably the second most likely card to see play among these niche players. Like Searing Blaze and Smash to Smithereens, it seems like a viable anti-strategy burn spell that will see sideboard and maybe even maindeck play in mono-red burn. I don’t think red decks have a need to fight lifegain right now, but it’s a good tool to know you have in your arsenal for when you want to sleeve up 21 mountains.

Giant Adephage looks like it might be a good fatty for a Sneak Attack/Natural Order deck, but Worldspine Wurm is miles better than this card and currently sees zero Legacy play.

The obscurely named Pact SI, a RGB storm deck that boasts a low land count, Summoner’s Pact, Diabolic Intent, and Culling the Weak already runs Wild Cantor and would probably welcome the ability to get your mana back and get a warm body to sacrifice to one of its black sorceries in the form of this Gruul Emissary.

Speaking of weird Storm decks, while Whispering Madness doesn’t seem to fit into any of the current Storm decks, a four mana Windfall is probably still strong enough to play in Legacy and therefore may end up turning into a building block of some new Storm combo deck.

Cloudpost decks have occasionally done well in the Star City Games circuit, but they’ve been held back from widespread adoption by the high price tag of Candelabra of Tawnos. The printing of Glimmerpost a couple years ago was a significant addition to this deck, but I’m somewhat skeptical that the clunkiness of Thespian’s Stage isn’t going to be a big enough barrier to adding it to this deck …

Sideboard cards

All three of these cards are highly situational and probably too narrow and underpowered to see play in Legacy, but they’re worth mentioning in passing.

• Illness in the Ranks is a potential answer to both Lingering Souls and to Empty the Warrens, but it’s probably worth it to pay the extra two mana to get the versatility of an Engineered Plague.
• Serene Remembrance is pretty low on the power spectrum for graveyard hate cards, but I can imagine there being some iteration of a grindy deck like 43 Lands that might want to maindeck a card like this to have graveyard hate in game 1.
• Shattering Blow is a pretty excellent answer to Painter’s Servant/Grindstone decks (which run Goblin Welder) and to Sword of the Meek/Thopter Foundry decks (which run Academy Ruins). Being a hybrid Red/White spell means that virtually every deck in Legacy can cast it, and while the card lacks the versatility of a Disenchant, it does its job at the best rate available. Neither of these artifact based combos are prevalent in the current Legacy metagame, but if they become relevant in the future this is a valid way to attack them.

Folding big hands when action gets heavy

Today was a good day. I had a nice brunch at Blue Star, my favorite breakfast place in Seattle, then spent the afternoon and evening playing poker. And while my results were disappointing, I feel pretty good about how I played throughout the day.

I started out in a 1/3 game while waiting for a seat at 3/5. Early on I had a hand where I picked up AsKs in the big blind after four people, including the small blind, had limped in. I made it 18 to go and, as sometimes happens at these stakes all four of them called. Frown town. In general I’m pretty happy when my preflop raises get called as I find there’s a lot of money to be made getting one or two callers pre that will play fit-or-fold post flop and fold to a continuation bet when they don’t make top pair or a strong draw. I’m less happy here because I am both out of position and I have a ton of callers. The flop comes Qh3h2c, which is a fairly good flop for us to continuation bet. I bet $40 into $90, which is smallish as a percentage of the pot but it’s a big looking bet at these stakes, and three of my opponents fold. Unfortunately John, the loose calling station in the small blind, decides to continue. After mulling it over, talking about how he probably shouldn’t be in the hand but how he can’t just call with this hand he raises all in for $58 more. I expect his range to mostly consist of bad queens, flush draws, and some weak combo draws, and after doing a little math I figure out that I’m getting about the right odds for a call (my post table calculations determine that I need 20.6% equity and I have between 23% and 24% equity against single paired queens) and make the call. I’m rewarded by finding out that he has Q5 off and while I bink a King on the turn he hits a 5 on the river to redraw on me. I’m happy enough with this hand, however, as both my initial instinct and my at the table math came to roughly the same conclusion as the post-fact calculations.

Shortly after I move to 3/5 where I play for a couple of hours before joining the 7 PM tournament. My 3/5 time is fairly uneventful, although I was involved in three separate 3+ bet pots, which is fairly high for these stakes and is definitely high for me. In the first I was 3 bet fairly small ($50 over $20) when I opened in early position with AhJh. I took a flop given the small 3 bet size and my confidence in playing against this opponent, and was rewarded when I was able to extract another $15o from my opponent’s KK on a AQT flop. The next two times I get in small raising wars preflop with the two players on my right with AK and take down each pot on the flop when they show weakness.

The tournament starts of auspiciously when I double up on the very first hand. The guy on my immediate right opens it up to 150, I flat with Ad7d, and the guy on my left makes in 500 even. It folds around to the original raiser, who folds, and I decide to take a flop mostly on the strength of my Ace, as I expect his range to be heavily skewed towards pocket pairs. I need 29% equity to make this call, which I have against every hand except AA, and I am fairly sure I can outplay this guy post flop, even though I’m out of position. The flop comes out fairly dreamy: 3d4d5h, giving me a double-gutter and a flush draw. I check planning on check-raising and jamming the turn, but I’m able to get it all in on the flop when my opponent bets 600 and then jams 5,500 on my raise to 2,000. He asks me if I have a set and I get to calmly tell him “no, I have an 18 out draw.” I run bad and he has the two red diamonds, which means I have to correct myself and proclaim I have a 17 out draw, but then I run good and hit a deuce on the river to make a straight and double up.

I make another 2.5K over three streets with QQ against AJ an orbit later, but then things dry up for a few levels. Sometime in the third level our table breaks, which was nice since it was filled with competent opponents, and I get moved to a new table next to my buddy Joe. We chat a bit while watching the unpredictable donk two to my left run over the table while getting smashed by the deck. I make a little money before the break on a resteal-into continuation-bet that has my heart going pitter-patter as the donk is in the hand and is capable of anything, but I survive and chip up to about 18K.

The fourth through sixth levels go fine – I’ve got enough of a chip stack that the chip leader at our table is staying out of my way (he even folds AQ when we’re 75 BB deep when I raise UTG and get a caller between us), I pick up good cards in a few crucial spots, and I make two judicious 3-bets. I’m at around 45K when we go into the second break with three full tables.

After the second break I get into it with a 35K stack at my table in this hand:

• With 1K/2K blinds and a 100 ante I raise it up to 5K under the gun with black 7s and get one caller.
• The flop comes Q86 with two hearts, and I make a continuation bet of 7K into the 14K pot. My opponent tanks for 15-30 seconds and then makes the call. From his body language I’m pretty sure he was deciding between folding and calling. If that’s the case I expect his range to mostly be flush draws and underpairs to the queen. Since I expect that he would mostly 3 bet me with JJ, TT, and the like I expect him to have mostly flush draws.
• The turn comes an offsuit 5. I tank for a bit here, which is probably a mistake. The 5 changes things a bit in that I now have 10 outs if I’ve misread my opponent and he has a pair. I had been planning on firing a second bullet on any non-heart non-paint card, but I paused here to reevaluate, which I think my opponent took as a sign of weakness. I then bet 14K into a pot of 28K, leaving my opponent about 10K back, which is also probably a mistake. Given that I expect my opponent to mostly have draws I really want to project an aura of confidence here – I don’t want to give him the sense that he might have any fold equity and I don’t want him to call me since he’s probably got a 12 to 15 out draw and has enough equity that folding would be a mistake given our stack sizes. I think the correct play here is to simply go all in.
• My opponent raises me all in and I snap call. He has AhKh for the full 15 outs and he gets there when the Kd comes on the river.

This is basically the end of the tournament for me. I’m able to pick off a small stack and steal the blinds once, but I’m fairly card-dead for the rest of the level and the tight non-folders in front of me keep opening the pot so I can’t steal. Once the blinds go up to 1.5K/3K with a 200 ante I’m quickly blinded down to 5 BBs and get it in bad with Ad3d against QQ and AA to go out in 18th.

I’m pretty happy with how I played, however, and I left the casino feeling satisfied. Most of the hands I played throughout the night felt fairly standard, but there was one hand that someone else played that I thought was actually super interesting:

• In the 3/5 game we have a six way limped pot with a flop of Ah2h5d. The first four players check and the guy in the hijack bets $15 into $25 (after rake). The button, who is a kind of crazy old guy (very aggro, loose, willing to make plays at the pot, and a frequent over-bettor) who I think is actually an above average player, makes it $30. It folds around to the hijack and he calls the $15.
• The turn is the 2c and the hijack checks. The button snap bets $45 and the hijack makes it $145. Then the button snap shoves! The hijack has a little over $200 left and the button has him well covered. The hijack thinks for not too long and then says that he simply can’t imagine that he is good here and folds the 3d4d face up!

Initially I was floored that this guy was able to fold a straight here – you just don’t see that at this level. Then I started to wonder whether that was actually a good fold. So, let’s do some hand analysis and figure out whether we like this fold or not:

• The preflop action leaves villain’s range really wide. On the button facing three limps villain really doesn’t have a bottom to his range – the only question is whether we can eliminate any hands that the villain would have raised 100% of the time here. We can probably eliminate KK and QQ from his range, but paradoxically I don’t think that we can rule out AA. Most players feel like they have to raise KK and QQ because they are afraid of an Ace flopping, but they will feel secure in “slowplaying” AA here because there isn’t the potential for that feel bad moment where an overcard flops.
• On the flop we have to interpret what a min-raise to $30 means. This raise, to me, looks like it is about making sure that there aren’t any other callers (or that other callers are going to be charged enough). Raising to $30 isn’t going to chase off the original raiser unless he had complete air but $15 is a small enough bet that the villain may be concerned about a waterfall effect if he just calls.
  • We can eliminate complete air from villain’s range – he knows he’s getting called by the hero.
  • We can also eliminate strong flush draws from villains range – if he had a K, Q, or J high flush draw he’s going to want to keep things cheap both so he has better implied odds and to keep in smaller flush draws that will pay him off if he hits.
  • Villain could have a weak flush draw that he’s raising to knock out other flush draws and to get a free card on the turn. I don’t think this is super likely as I don’t actually give villain that much credit for thinking deeply about the spot, but it is a possibility.
  • A gutshot and a pair, something like a 54, could be played this way to get a free card on the turn and knock out draws and other weak made hands.
  • We can probably eliminate weak Aces, pocket pairs other than 33 and 44, and random 5s and 2s from villains range – these hands are all likely to simply call and either try to see showdown cheaply or make a play at the pot once we’ve made sure the other 4 players aren’t doing something crazy.
  • Strong aces could definitely be played this way, trying to get value from weaker aces and other pairs.
  • Similarly two pair, sets, and straights all could be played this way. In these cases the raise is building a larger pot and charging other hands (mostly flushes) more to draw against villain. I tend to discount sets and made straights here since villain is going to feel more comfortable slowplaying and is probably happier if the $15 gets called in a couple places as it makes the pot larger while still allowing a raise on the turn.
• The turn bet doesn’t narrow villain’s hand range too much, but the reraise all-in probably does.
  • Villain’s range was weak flush draws, pair+gutshots, strong aces, two pairs, sets, and the straight.
  • The turn bet eliminates the flush draws and the pair+gutshots that don’t include 2s.
  • The snap reraise all-in probably eliminates strong aces from the villain’s range, as well as A5. While I think these hands could be 3bet on the turn, I think the snap 3bet is indicative that the villain feels that he has a nutty hand. He doesn’t need to actually have the nuts here, he just needs to have a hand that he feels like he would never fold here (and thus doesn’t need to think about getting it in).
  • I think this leaves full houses (A2, 52, 55, and the improbable AA), quads, trips (23 and 24), and straights in the villain’s range.
  • Based on the flop play I think we can discount flopped sets and straights a bit, simply because villain is going to slowplay these hands some of the time and isn’t going to feel the need to make a “protection” raise every time.
  • There are eight combos of 23, eight of 24, three of 55, three of AA, one of 33, nine of 34, six of A2, and six of 52, for a total of forty-four combos. I think we can discount five of the seven flopped set combos and six of the nine flopped straight combos, giving us thirty-three combos.
  • Of these thirty-three combos we are ahead of sixteen, tied with three, and behind against the remaining fourteen. We have 0% equity against the hands we are behind, have about 76% equity against the hands we are ahead of, and have 50% equity against the hands we are tied with.
  • That gives us an average equity of 41%. We’re calling about $200 into $575 ($25 preflop + $60 on flop + $290 of called turn action + $200 raise), which means we only need about 26% equity.
  • If we assume that the villain has all of the non-AA boat combos, all of the straight combos, and Y combos of trips or Ax, villain only needs to have 4 combos of trips or Aces for us to get to 26% equity.

Based on this, I think this is a bad fold. I think it’s pretty unreasonable to exclude straights from villains range, and I think we need to discount the number of flopped sets he could have. In order for this fold to be correct we need to be able to exclude trips from the villains range and we need to be able to exclude any sort of air, combo draws, etc. While the villain is unlikely to have hands that we beat, only a small percentage of them need to be in his range for this call to be correct. Most of this is a function of our small stack size – the more money we have behind the worse this call gets.

A non-post

No real updates today – I had a nice evening hanging out with the boys playing poker at Jeh’s house, shooting the breeze, and chatting about magic. Marsh and I spent some time talking about Magic coverage, which is a topic I’ve been thinking about a fair amount recently. I think I have a post or two that I’d like to write, but I need to mull things over before I put pen to paper.

In the mean time, you can see me doing some coverage, if that’s the sort of thing you’re into:

• Round 8 of the June SCG Seattle Standard open
• Round 7 of the June SCG Seattle Legacy open
• Round 7 of the October SCG Seattle Legacy open

Iso raising to realize draw equity

I’m unwinding at the end of a successful poker day, watching recorded coverage of GP San Antonio, and I thought I would share an interesting hand I played the other night at Tulalip.

I was playing in a somewhat wild 3/5 game at Tulalip on Sunday afternoon. The Tulalip end-of-month tournament was still going on and this was the third 3/5 table, with a 5/10 game and a PLO game going. I’ve been quiet and pretty tight so far and haven’t had opportunities to mix it up much.

The player to my right straddles to $10 and I open up AhKs under the gun. I raise to $30 and get called by the player to my left and by the big blind.

The big blind is an unknown – this is his first hand at the table and I don’t recognize him, but he was greeted by and chatted with the young, good regular at the table, so I assume that he is a fine, thinking, level-2 player. The guy on my left is loose, aggressive, and looking to gamble. A couple of times he has straddled and then raised all-in (for a huge overbet) when there are a few limpers, and he called another young gambler for $100 or so with T8 off when the other guy did the same to him. Chatting with this kid it’s pretty clear that he’s a bad level 2 player – he’s aware of concepts like ranges, pot odds, etc. but is too lazy to actually do any math and is locked up in doing cool things instead of actually figuring out whether his plays are profitable.

The flop comes Jh 5h 5d. The big blind checks, I bet $65 into a pot of $100, and the lagtard to my left goes all in for $145 total. The big blind thinks for about 15 seconds then reluctantly calls. He has about $25o behind.

I think this is an interesting spot because I’m getting very nice odds to call for pair outs against the all-in player – there’s $455 in the pot and it’s only $80 for me to call, so I am getting better than four and a half to one to call. I need about 15% equity to make a call correct, which I have against all of the two pair hands, even AJ, against which I have about 18% equity (I have about 29% equity against a hand like QJ). Additionally, I think there’s a significant chance that the all-in player has a flush draw or is on total air making a play at the pot, so I think my equity versus his range is probably around 40% or better.

Of course the problem here is that there’s another player in the hand – the big blind complicates things because I can expect them to either bet on the turn, keeping me from realizing the all in equity, or to reduce the number of outs I have. Most of the time this would be a negative expected value situation because I expect that I’m up against a Jack and a flush draw and I’m going to have a hard time realizing my full draw equity. If both players were all in I could call here and probably have about 20% equity, but again, the big blind is not all in.

The solution I came up with at the time, which I like and which might even be correct, was to raise all in. My reasoning for doing this was as follows:

• I think that the only fives the big blind is likely to have are pocket fives. He seemed fairly straightforward, most players don’t get crazily out of line when they first sit down, and an UTG raise and immediate flat looks pretty strong, so I would expect him to have a real hand when he calls out of position.
• Based on his body language I don’t think he’s slowplaying a monster – he seemed uncomfortable with the amount of action he was seeing in this first hand. I think we can discount JJ and 55 from his range (for the most part). Similarly, I think we can discount overpairs, which I would expect him to 3-bet preflop.
• So his most likely holdings are a Jack, an underpair, or a naked flush draw. I have the stiff Ace of Hearts, which is a bit of a blocker for him having a flush draw, but more importantly means that he can’t have the nut flush draw, which has to make him worried about being overflushed by either the all-in guy or me.

If I raise all-in here I think my hand looks a lot like an overpair, which makes it really hard for a bare Jack or an underpair to call. So I expect that I only get called by flush draws, forming a side pot where I have roughly 50% equity. Raising all-in here actually accomplished the holy grail of raises – I fold out all of the hands that beat me and I only get called by hands I (kinda) beat.

So, I raised all in, the big blind mucked AJ face up, and I successfully isolated against the all-in player. Unfortunately the all-in kid had A5 off for flopped trips and I can only peel one of the two hearts I need on the turn and river.

While I’m unhappy with the hand results, I was pretty pleased with the analysis I was able to put in at the table and that the actual numbers I’m getting from PokerStove bear out my at the table thought process.

Tulalip end of month tournament

I just got home from a fairly disappointing session at Tulalip. I played in the $750 end of month tournament, which had a large starting stack of 25K, 30 minute levels, and a generous blind structure. It was a nice tournament, and even though I had a harder than average starting table, I felt pretty good about it. Unfortunately I simply didn’t see many playable hands, lost a few large pots where I made strong second best hands, and couldn’t find good spots to get involved with the 4-5 spots at the table. I played maybe a dozen hands post flop in the four hours I was in the tournament:

1. I called an early raise with AsQs in the second level from a decent player, looking to play against a dominated hand, but then folded on the turn when he led pot into 3 players on a raggy flop.
2. I lost a few too many chips calling down one of the two good players at the table with 10h10d when I led a raggy flop, checked back a K turn, and called when he led a A river. I think I can comfortably fold the river (he had AJ off) since there is so little of his range that I beat given the action. I was in position in this hand and probably should have bet turn to try to take down the pot when my opponent checked it to me.
3. I got 4 streets of value with AK against Ax suited off against a trappy, bridgey asian player when we had a A high flop and then he turned a flush draw.
4. The first time it folded to me in the small blind I got into a fight with the big blind with 7c5c, raising pre and then firing 2-barrels on a raggy flop and turn. I might have fired a third barrel on the river, depending on texture and how he called, but luckily he folded and I took it down. I wanted to set up a dynamic where the guy on my left knew that I would make his life miserable if he fought with me so I would have an easier time stealing the blinds once the antes kicked in.
5. I lost a pretty large pot to one of the good players when he took an unusual line and made a pretty bad crying call. I raised it up with QcJs in UTG+1 and got called by both of the blinds. The flop came As Qs 7s, the blinds checked to me, and I made a continuation bet. The good player in the big blind made a standard raise. I called with my second flush draw and a pair. The turn brought a Kc and went check check. The river brought a blank and the big blind made a one-third pot size bet. I should fold here, but I called and he showed AdQd for a flopped two pair. I think there are enough times that my opponent semi-bluff raised the flop with the Ks that I can consider bluff-catching him, given the price he is laying me, but, of course, I need to be able to beat his bluff to bluff catch him, which simply isn’t the case here because the turn brought the Kc.
6. I raised it up in early position with KQ off and got 3 callers. The flop came Q high and I led for about 40% of the pot, hoping to get called by worse Queens and underpairs. Jason, one of the two best players at the table, re-raises me small (2.5x), everyone else folds, and I call. The turn brings a blank, it goes check check, then the river also brings a blank, and I lead for a bit less than half pot, Jason makes some noises about me having Kings, then calls with AQ. I’m pretty OK with how I played this hand – I knew that by leading smallish on the flop that I might induce some plays at me and Jason is an aggressive player that loves to play any two cards preflop. When the turn checks through I think Jason’s range is capped at one pair, and I think that he has a lot of worse Queens in his range, so I do like betting for value here.
7. There’s a long stretch of hands where I sit right around 10-15 K in chips. I slowly ante and blind off chips, then get a few back with two streets of value with Aces and a continuation bet with AT where my opponent was clearly uncomfortable with his small pocket pair on a KK3 board.
8. I raise it up in mid position over one limper with AK and get called by the limper and the small blind, after a crippled stack goes all in for less than the big blind. The flop come 569 rainbow, I make a 60% pot size continuation bet (for a third of my remaining stack) when it gets checked to me and the limper calls. The turn brings an 8 and completes the rainbow and the limper leads into me for my remaining stack, about 2/3 pot. I think for a while, then fold, and I get to see that he turned the straight with T7 suited when they resolve the main pot with the all-in player.
9. A couple of hands later I get QQ under the gun, make a largish 4x bet, get called in 3 places, then take it down with a pot sized all in on a raggy flop.
10. The very next hand I go all in with AcTc from the big blind when it gets limped 6 ways to me, and amazingly they all fold. The T7 guy says that he seriously considered calling me both of the previous hands. I tell him I wish he had. He later considers calling two open shoves for about 20% of his stack with Q9 suited, but decides to be magnanimous and lay it down :).
11. The next time I am in the big blind I find AK off when facing a 2.5x raise with a stack 20BB stack. I make the standard all-in raise and the original raiser calls with 88, which holds. I think this is actually a bad call on his part – he’s calling 7 to win 9 (approximately), so he needs about 43% equity to call. Against a range of AJ+, 77+ he’s only about 42% equity, so my range needs to be wider than that for his call to be correct. I don’t think I am shipping any worse aces and I don’t think I am reshipping king high hands here either, so I have to be shipping 66 here for the call to be correct, which I don’t think I am doing.

And that was my tournament. I walked off, got some food, and thought through my play. I came back and played in the cash games, which did not go well from a results perspective, although I have a couple of interesting hands to discuss later.

The win rate fallacy and 4-3-2-2s

Many people have pointed out that, from a pure expected value standpoint, drafting in the 4-3-2-2 queues on Magic Online is a misplay because it pays out 11 packs, compared to the 12 packs that the swiss and 8-4 queues pay out. A common response is that I win more matches in 4-3-2-2s than I do in 8-4s and so I’ll end up winning more packs in 4-3-2-2s and thus they are better value. I’ve heard this response a number of times, but I’ve never actually seen anyone include their win percentages, so I decided that to dig in and find out whether there are win percentages that make 4-3-2-2s a better choice.

Let’s start out by looking at some data. I don’t draft a great deal online, so I don’t have a nice MtGO dataset of my own. But I do have my real life limited data that we can use to approximate my expected MtGO win rates. I went to the Planeswalker Points website and aggregated all of my limited match records. I grouped these data into three categories – matches in prereleases and release events; matches in PTQs, GPs, and Pro Tours; and all of the rest of my matches. Let’s map these three data categories to swiss, 8-4, and 4-3-2-2 queues respectively. This seems like a decent first approximation, although I’d imagine that my win percentage in actual 8-4s would be better than my PTQ/GP/Pro Tour win percentage. This data includes both sealed and draft data as otherwise I’d have very few data points for the top and bottom categories. So, mapping my results to the queue payouts, here’s how I did:

Queue	Record	Win Percentage	Expected Value
8-4	80 wins, 51 losses	61%	2.4 packs/draft
4-3-2-2	192 wins, 78 losses	71%	2.29 packs/draft
Swiss	61 wins, 18 losses	77%	2.32 packs/draft

As we would expect I have a higher win rate in swiss than I do in 4-3-2-2s and I have a higher win rate in 4-3-2-2s than I do in 8-4s. But even though my win rate is 10% lower at 8-4s than 4-3-2-2s, I still have a higher EV in the 8-4 queue. This is partially due to the structure of the tournament (8-4s reward higher win percentages more than 4-3-2-2s), but it is also because there is a pack missing from the prize pool (if it was a 5-3-2-2 my EV would be 2.65). You’ll notice that I also have a higher EV in swiss than in 4-3-2-2. When people make the “my win percentage is better in 4-3-2-2s than 8-4s” argument they frequently don’t take into account that they probably have an even higher win rate in swiss.

Let’s look at some more data. My friend Daniel Duterte kindly let me publish his MtGO draft numbers from the last year:

Queue	Record	Win Percentage	Expected Value
8-4	85 wins, 72 losses	54.1%	1.8 packs/draft
4-3-2-2	13 wins, 7 losses	65%	2.0 packs/draft
Swiss	13 wins, 2 losses	86.7%	2.6 packs/draft

OK, small sample size on 4-3-2-2s and swiss queues, but this is an example of how just crushing swiss queues gives you a huge edge on 4-3-2-2s. The whole “my win percentage is higher in 4-3-2-2s than 8-4s” argument is a double edged sword.

One more set of data, Limited Resources listener Vis posted his win percentages in the comments of one of the latest LR podcasts:

Queue	Number of events	Win Percentage	Expected Value
8-4	35 events	61.9%	2.48 packs/draft
4-3-2-2	127 events	63.35%	1.92 packs/draft
Swiss	82 events	67.9%	2.04 packs/draft

Well, we keep having pretty bad EV with 4-3-2-2s. We’ve got a decent sample size here and see that 4-3-2-2 is wildly less profitable than 8-4 when there’s a small difference in win percentages and we’re a solidly winning player. And, again, swiss manages to edge out 4-3-2-2s, even though the win percentages aren’t as dramatic as they were in Daniel’s case.

So, we’ve got some real world data sets in which 4-3-2-2s seem to be a losing proposition, in terms of EV opportunity cost. Let’s take a look at the actual EV numbers for particular win rates and see if we can draw some conclusions. Here’s the relevant info:

Win %	8-4 EV	4-3-2-2 EV	Swiss EV
5%	0.01	0.10	0.15
10%	0.04	0.21	0.30
15%	0.10	0.33	0.45
20%	0.19	0.45	0.60
25%	0.31	0.58	0.75
30%	0.47	0.72	0.90
35%	0.66	0.87	1.05
40%	0.90	1.02	1.20
45%	1.17	1.19	1.35
50%	1.50	1.38	1.50
55%	1.88	1.57	1.65
60%	2.30	1.78	1.80
65%	2.79	2.00	1.95
70%	3.33	2.23	2.10
75%	3.94	2.48	2.25
80%	4.61	2.75	2.40
85%	5.35	3.04	2.55
90%	6.16	3.34	2.70
95%	7.04	3.66	2.85
100%	8.00	4.00	3.00

That’s useful reference data, but it’s a bit hard to interpret. Let’s visualize this by looking at equivalent win percentages for 8-4s and swiss compared to the 4-3-2-2 queue:

4-3-2-2 Win percentage	Swiss	8-4
5%	3%	15%
10%	7%	21%
15%	11%	26%
20%	15%	29%
25%	19%	32%
30%	24%	36%
35%	29%	39%
40%	34%	42%
45%	40%	45%
50%	46%	48%
55%	52%	51%
60%	59%	54%
65%	67%	57%
70%	74%	59%
75%	83%	62%
80%	92%	65%
85%	N/A	67%
90%	N/A	70%
95%	N/A	73%
100%	N/A	75%

Here’s how you read this chart: let’s say you have a 40% win percentage in 4-3-2-2s, so you look at the 40% line under “4-3-2-2 Win Percentage,” then look at the percentages for swiss and 8-4, which are 34% and 42%. This means that a 40% win rate in 4-3-2-2s is equivalent to a 34% win rate in swiss or 42% in 8-4.

Looking at the chart, it’s pretty obvious that if your win rate is 60% or less in 4-3-2-2s then you would do better by simply playing swiss queues, since you’ll have the same or better win percentages and a higher EV (actually the break-even point is at a 61.9% win rate). If you have a greater than 60% win rate in 4-3-2-2s there needs to be a pretty large difference in your win rates between 4-3-2-2 and 8-4 queues AND there has to be a small difference in win rates between 4-3-2-2 and swiss queues for 4-3-2-2s to be correct. The win rate differences between 4-3-2-2s and 8-4s are so big, however, that this isn’t really plausible. If you win 70% of your 4-3-2-2 matches then you should be able to win either 60% of your 8-4 matches or 75% of your swiss matches (or both!).

It turns out that the “I win more matches in 4-3-2-2s than I do in 8-4s, so I’ll win more packs by playing 4-3-2-2s” argument just doesn’t hold any water. First off, you have to consider swiss queues as well, and if you assume that your win rate is higher in 4-3-2-2s than 8-4s, you also need to assume that your swiss win percentage will be higher than either of the others. Given that, you now need to be an excellent drafter with a greater than 61.9% win rate for 4-3-2-2s to possibly be better than swiss queues. And you need to be doing much worse in 8-4s than you are in 4-3-2-2s, like 10% worse or more, to not move up to 8-4s. These circumstances just aren’t going to occur for the vast, vast majority of drafters.

The best way to figure out which queue to play in is to keep track of your results, determine your win percentage, and then figure out which queue offers the best value. If you want to challenge yourself and play against the best, or if you are a very winning player, you should draft 8-4s. If you’re just want to play some magic, or if you’re still learning and are not yet a strong drafter you should draft in the swiss queue. But please, do not ever draft in 4-3-2-2 queues – they’re a terrible deal that you always come out behind on.

Cheers,

Joe

Postscript:

For the mathy completionists out there, here are the equations I use to calculate pack EV:

• Swiss: EV = 3 * Win%
• 4-3-2-2: EV = Win% * (Win % * (4 * Win% + 3 * (1 – Win%)) + 2 * (1 – Win%))
• 8-4:: EV = Win% * Win% * (8 * Win% + 4 * (1 – Win%))

Is Elixir of Immortality right for my (limited) deck?

Marshall_LR is quick to dismiss cards like Elixir of Immortality. And with good reason – the effect Elixir has on the game is not worth the card you expend. The co-host of Limited Resources advocates a straightforward, value-based approach to card evaluation well suited to his audience and rejects cards that aren’t playable in most decks. The real life Marshall, however, is definitely interested in digging deeper and understanding when the normal case doesn’t hold. A couple of days ago, at our weekly poker game, Marshall posed the question “what kind of deck should run Elixir of Immortality?”

It’s an interesting question.

Let’s talk about what Elixir of Immortality does for you:

• It gains you five life
• It improves your future draw steps
• It lets you recycle specific cards
• It gives you inevitability
• It protects you from decking

It looks like Elixir of Immortality does a lot of things! Unfortunately, the things it does are irrelevant or marginal for most decks. Specifically, recycling specific cards, gaining inevitability, and gaining (some) protection from decking are simply irrelevant to most decks. Recycling specific cards is only relevant if you are subsequently tutoring for those cards – if your plan is to go long with Diabolic Revelation then Elixir makes sense as a way to cast your removal spells and Archaeomancers over and over again, but it’s only relevant if that specifically is what you are doing. There aren’t many decks that want Elixir to provide inevitability, simply because there aren’t that many decks that can beat every card in their opponent’s deck but don’t have a way to actually win the game. And unless you have a ridiculous amount of card draw AND plan to go super long you simply don’t need a card in the main to protect yourself from decking. There are definitely decks that want Elixir for these purposes, Brian DeMars’s GP Boston winning deck was a UR Control list that needed Elixir to balance out his tremendous card draw and slow threats, for example, but the decks that want Elixir for one of these three effects are both very rare and easy to identify.

So what about all the other decks out there – do any of them want Elixir of Immortality?

In the rest of our decks Elixir of Immortality reads “Gain 5 life. Improve your future draw steps.” Is this effect worth a card to us? Well, that depends on how much we’re improving our future draw steps. I wouldn’t play a three mana spell that gained me five life and drew me half a card. There are some decks that might play that life gain spell if it drew a full card, but Renewed Faith was never exciting and I expect this wouldn’t be either. I would be excited to play Elixir if it drew me two cards, but does that ever happen? Let’s find out:

Let’s say it is turn eight and we have 25 cards left in our library. We’ve drawn all the lands we need for the game, so any future lands we draw are dead cards. Our deck started with 17 lands and 23 spells, all of our spells are reasonable draws, and we’ve drawn spells and lands in proportion to our deck, so our deck now contains 15 spells and 10 lands.  If we shuffle eight cards into our library with Elixir we’ll increase our spell percentage from 60% to 70%, which means we’ll draw one more spell than expectation after ten turns. That’s a long time to wait to get our one card back from the Elixir. If we want to get a card back from Elixir after only five turns of waiting we’ll need to shuffle 25 cards back into our library, more spells than were in our deck to start the game!

In order to actually be up a whole card on the deal (i.e. replace Elixir and draw an additional card) we have to jump through some pretty big hoops. If we wait until there are only 15 cards left in our library and we shuffle 15 spells from our graveyard into our library we’ll be up a card after ten additional draw steps.

Limited games just don’t go this long with any routine frequency. Most limited games are over in less than ten turns, so expecting to live ten turns after you use Elixir, and getting a large number of spells into your graveyard before using Elixir is just something that realistically won’t happen. There are some decks that can use Elixir of Immortality, but those decks want it because of specific properties with recycling cards or needing to not deck yourself. Elixir simply is not a viable value card – you’ll never get a full card out of it by using it fairly.

Cheers,

Joe

Post Script:

If you’re interested, here’s the formula I used to calculate how many turns it takes to “draw” a single card after using Elixir:

You can calculate how long it takes to draw X cards by changing the 1 in the numerator to X for whatever value of X you want.

Also, here are some sweet quotes from the LR guys about Elixir of Immortality:

• “Everyone thinks it’s a freeroll, and it’s a complete blank.”
• “You’re increasing your chance of drawing a spell by a small percentage, which is not card advantage.”
• “This will be the most played F.”