Subject: whoa, an article :) (RE: Scrubs/Magic isn't dying) Date: Sat, 03 Oct 1998 05:52:57 PDT From: "Kimmo Hovi" To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Hello all you happy people Let me first introduce myself. My name is Kimmo Hovi, and I am PTLA97 winner Tommi Hovi’s brother. I’m also a 10th place finisher at the 1995 World Championships (And I got the koolest competitor tees ever heh, would you really wear those pink shirts in public?) I’m also the creator of (tada) Staunch Bwatdown and some other decks. And I am the very guy who lost about 100 games in a row with Necro against Tommi’s stasis deck back in 1996. Goddamn I wanted to ban Despotic Scepter. Anyway, to add to this Scrub/Magic Is Dead conversation... This thread has already made it pretty clear what exactly is a ”scrub”. It’s a Magic lingo term for people who are inferior to Joe Random when it comes to playing skillz. Sadly, people have taken this word out from its true meaning and starting to apply it to anything not perfect. People go as far as calling draft choices made by players such as Dave Price (Mana Leak over an Avenging Angel?) and Mike Turian (Opportunist over a Staunch Defenders) as ”scrubby”, when these players obviously had their reasons for these choices. I’ve even heard of a ”scrubby way to dance” whatever that is. Now, the so called problem with scrubs winning tournaments and beating players rated 300 points higher than them. I don’t see this as a problem though. Sure I admit it’s annoying when you lose to a scrub because they top decked a certain card. But then again, it’s almost equally annoying losing to a higher-rated player because they top deck that very same card. But what’s different in a player losing to Joe Random than Jon Finkel is what makes scrubdom a critical topic. Said player losing to Jon Finkel would go ”Whatever, I had to play Finkel” after the match and he would be greeted by ”Dude, good think I didn’t have to play him, he’s a machine” by his fellow team mates etc. He would even have the comfort of not losing but a single DCI point But, if said player lost to Joe Random, he would say something like ”Dude I can’t believe I lost to that scrub” and he’d be greeted by a few laughs and a couple of nasty remarks about his playing ability. And he lost more than half K DCI points. So what really made a difference in these games, was _one match_ worth of DCI points and a bruised ego. Now, take a look at Worlds 98 for example.Finkel played sligh in the type 2 portion. Do you hear me? a sligh deck. One that has been modified ad nauseum ever since Magic was first created. One that’s contents can easily be gotten off from almost any Magic related web site. Hell, most people who’ve been to Magic tournaments or even have paid any attention to tournament Magic scene can practically recite the contents while they’re sleeping. I’m sure there was a person at Worlds 98 who most of the ”gravy train people” (The ones who qualify via 100 PT points, a 2250 rating, top 32 from previous PT AND being the POTY... Yes, this means even Jon Finkel heh) consider(ed) a scrub (Obviously on false premises. If everyone who had to win 2 tournaments in a row and then another round was a scrub, there would be nothing bun Finkel and a huge pile of scrubs) who was playing sligh. Maybe one, maybe 8 cards different from Finkel’s deck, but still essentially the same deck. Sligh isn’t exactly the hardest deck to play if you know what I mean. If you do some math and correctly manage to guess what you’re opponent is up to, almost everyone would play a certain situation identically. I’m not saying there wouldn’t most of the time be a ”right” play and a number of ”not so right/wrong” plays. People will sometimes even knowingly do the ”not so right” play if they’re willing to gamble. Now, let’s say Jon Finkel and this other sligh player both faced almost identical decks on a given round. Let’s say it’s a deck that has about 50/50 chance against sligh. Jon Finkel naturally wins. The other player takes his opponent by surprise by beating him in 2 straight games. Afterwards, when their opponents would meet and talk about the matches, Finkel’s opponent would just go ”Oh I played Finkel, he just outplayed me” while the other guy would go ”I can’t believe I lost to a totally janky deck played by a scrub.. I guess it was just a matter of the fireblasts”. Why? Are they assuming that just because Jon Finkel is ranked first in like 3 out of 5 categories it’s more acceptable for him to draw the more powerful cards in the correct order? Should the ”scrub” be a worse, non-thorough shuffler who’d always start the game with a 4 fireslinger/3 mountain draw when Finkel would get fanatic/Orc/burn/scroll/land draws? Although Finkel obviously has more skillz than the other player, they both won their matches. Still, if Finkel was matched up against the very same sligh player, even if they were playing identical decks, I’d put my money on Finkel (I don’t like losing money heh). Why? Because it’s the tight spots, the difficult situations where his skillz would kick in. Given the same resources, a more skilled, a more experienced player will almost always make a ”less wrong” play. But Finkel’s opponent would still have a chance. All he’d have to be able to do was to count down from 20, and add up damage. Why? Because, while Magic is a skill game, there is an element of chance. And yet there’s one more element that ”favors” the _total_ scrub. Their decks probably have some sub par cards that most real players have discarded as ”too costly” or ”situation dependant” or for some other equally rational reason. But some cards just wreck certain decks. A good example would be from the Rome PTQ on 20/9 in Helsinki, where a ”good WW” deck played by a guy who enrolled into high school for the second time because he wanted to take more math classes (LOL) just couldn’t handle a Dauthi Horror/Seething Anger/Fling combo, giving his opponent his first tournament victory ever. Boy was his opponent happy, I would’ve thought he’d just won the lottery. Let’s compare this to another sport. Let’s take hockey for example. The ”best” team doesn’t always win. It would be sad if that was the case, people would soon stop ordering ESPN, stop buying fan stuff, and the sport would die out. But every once in a while you see a weird deflection from the backboards right in front of the net and the Carolina Hurricanes player just happened to be there with his stick ready. There are few sports that have no element of chance whatsoever other than what the players bring into it... The biggest of these are chess and go. The advantages those games have over a ”Magic with no luck” is that in every game, there is ALWAYS the same starting position, and game only advances how the players will. In Magic, this would soon create a stale situation where you would roll a die before the tournament to decide which deck you would play and in which order you would draw the cards, since it would soon be just a rock-paper-scissors with just a lot more choices. That kind of means it couldn’t be totally skill only. This situation would happen in Chess and Go, too, if players were allowed to set up before a game. How silly would go be if both players had to have a 10-stone layout how they would have to play their stones no matter what their opponents would do (who would have to do the same of course). The above after-match conversation holds true for other sports, too. I can easily see the Hurricanes head coach explain ”Hey, they’re starting Roy, Sakic, Lemieux etc, we didn’t have a chance to begin with” after a loss to the Avalanche, as I can see the Avalanche coach going ”Kapanen just over exceeded today, and we had a bad day” after a loss to the Hurricanes. Magic would soon become a boring game and die out if the luck element was completely removed. (And Jon Finkel would net $150k a year while waiting for Magic to die) Why? Because it’s basic human nature to try to alleviate boredom. Noone likes to be bored. So why would you insist on doing something boring when you knew you couldn’t benefit because you were only the 65th best player in the world? Because I’m a good player, I always lose to ”Mana Screw” and ”Opponents’ Mad Top Decking”, never to ”Wrong/SubPar Plays”, and when I win, it was just that ”My Deck That I Designed Beats The Whole Field” and that ”I Played Flawlessly”. Then again, if I lost to ”Bad Plays”, ”Mistakes”, ”My Opponent Outplaying Me”, or ”Sideboarding Improperly”, and won my matches by ”Outplaying My Opponents ” and ”Learning From My Mistakes” Id probably be a good way better. Kimmo ”Kimsta” Hovi Brother of a PT Winner and proud of that ______________________________________________________ Subject: ADDENDUM to my post Scrubs/Death of Magic Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1998 05:36:50 PDT From: "Kimmo Hovi" To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com As an addendum, I'd like to point out a few things: 1) I state in my article that Mike Turian drafted an opportunist over a Staunch Defenders. I took this piece of information from one of the draft overview articles, but it turned out to be false. After I posted the article, Mike came forward, and informed me that the card he picked over the Staunch Defenders was actually a Flowstone Giant. I apologise for this mistake, but for the sake of my article, let's all suppose that it is a hypothetical situation :) 2) Someone on the IRC inquired me why I was so "blatantly disrespecting Jon Finkel" in my article. Again, there's been a flaw in the communication between me and him. Obviously he either misunderstood my words, their meaning, or I failed to use the correct words. For my article, I chose to use Jon Finkel because he's arguably the most known Magic player (Well, everyone hates Long, but that's another point), definitely among the best of the best (I only put it this way because deep inside, every one of us believes he's got the talent to dethrone Jon, but has yet to hit the lucky streak), and he used a simple deck that just auto-wins in some situations (Sligh). I respect him, more than the average Magic player, because _he doesn't cheat or otherwise in an unsportsmanlike manner try to mess up with his opponent_, he's always nice to people, and he's an amazing player. The only downsides he has when it comes to Magic is that he tends to "Finkelize" people (Have them believe they will face a certain deck every round in a tournament), and he's yet to agree to teach me how to do it. - Kimsta