Luck in Magic

[Smmenen]

One thing that was driving me crazy was hearing Steve, Paul, and Tin_Mox say GL is unbeatable unless you fuck up. 

I have seen absolutely no evidence to support that contention that this statement is false.    That doesn't mean it is true, but I haven't seen evidence to show that it is false. 

[ErkBek]

One thing that was driving me crazy was hearing Steve, Paul, and Tin_Mox say GL is unbeatable unless you fuck up. 

I have seen absolutely no evidence to support that contention that this statement is false.    That doesn't mean it is true, but I haven't seen evidence to show that it is false. 

Off the top of my head, how about games where your opponents play duress on you. They are in the driver's seat. Suddenly, you might not even be in the game because they took your 1 business spell. What if they back it up with more disruption?

For example, I lost the semi finals to SS. He won the dice roll, and I mulled to 5 becuase I didn't see any lands until then. He countered my ancestral and wasted my land. I didn't have any other decisions before I was locked out of the game. Game 3 I played flawlessly as well, but he just one since he had well timed answers. There was nothing I could do. I understand my deck is a little different from yours, but I would have lost with your deck too.

[Smmenen]

The windfall illustration you posted in another thread lends credence to my view and merely reifies my view that intelligent, thoughtful and informed decisions are not necessarily the correct decisions.  Your deicsion was intelligent, but I knew immediately, as you saw, that it was wrong becuase i've been playing Long for 3 years.  Making good plays is not the same as the correct plays.  Plus, you know very well that there dozens of variables.  We can't conclude that my deck would have had the same result against SS.  ESG makes a difference in the early game.  As does cards like Wheel and Swarm just becuase of their early game potential. 

I think it is more reflective of the fact that, as you said, you have done very little testing with Grim Long prior to a month ago.  Despite your impressive instincts with combo and your exhibited skill, I think there is still a vast gap between playing Grim Long well and mastering it.  Despite the fact that I invented it, it is my view that I still haven't fully mastered it.  Part of that is becuase I keep switching between other decks instead of focusing entirely on one thing.  I love design too much to focus entirely on one deck. 

[Smmenen]

Gandalf was the only person whose posted on this topic but had actual stuff to say about Grim Force too, so I'm taking the liberty of putting his post in here, just before Steve's response to it, and leaving the edited original in the other thread.
-Jacob[/b]

One thing that was driving me crazy was hearing Steve, Paul, and Tin_Mox say GL is unbeatable unless you fuck up. 

I have seen absolutely no evidence to support that contention that this statement is false.    That doesn't mean it is true, but I haven't seen evidence to show that it is false. 

Saying that one will only lose because of mistakes with ANY deck is simply ridiculous, because luck IS a factor in the game.  As an extreme example one could simply never get a hand with any useable mana (even after mulling multiple times).  Quite unlikely, yes, but possible.  Without mana one would not be able to cast spells, and therefore one would lose.  (Oh and Eric mulling to 5 and getting his ancestral countered and land wasted is a good real-life example.  Without insanely lucky topdecks it seems very difficult to recover from a situation like that, regardless of play skill or what decisions one makes.)  Not to say that many games and matches aren't lost because of mistakes, but simply that perfect play will not always result in victory.

because luck IS a factor in the game. 

I'm not even going to read the rest of your post, becuase I strenuously disagree with the implication here.

YES, luck is a factor in the game, BUT it NEVER control imo.  Sure, there is luck, but I have never, to my recollection, won or lost a match because of luck. 

There are simply too many variables for luck to be a determinate variable. 

So, in short, I disagree with your point.

[BreathWeapon]

One thing that was driving me crazy was hearing Steve, Paul, and Tin_Mox say GL is unbeatable unless you fuck up. 

I have seen absolutely no evidence to support that contention that this statement is false.    That doesn't mean it is true, but I haven't seen evidence to show that it is false. 

So in other words, Grim Long == God? Not that I don't respect your opinion, especially on combo, but Grim Long will get its ass handed to it by either an SS player or Fish player prepared to meet it. We all understand the deck is difficult to play, but stop using that to justify your statement. Bombarding us with logical vageries taught in law school isn't doing any one a favor, and expecting some one to believe in an ascertion with out an argument or empirical data makes you no better than those damn god damn Gideons.

Any way, I think this deck has a ton of potential, and I'll be playing it at my next tournament. I knew it was only a matter of time until some one took a U/b Long list to a Top 8. Now the deck will get the attention it deserves from the community.

[LotusHead]

because luck IS a factor in the game. 

I'm not even going to read the rest of your post, becuase I strenuously disagree with the implication here.

YES, luck is a factor in the game, BUT it NEVER control imo.  Sure, there is luck, but I have never, to my recollection, won or lost a match because of luck. 

There are simply too many variables for luck to be a determinate variable. 

So, in short, I disagree with your point.

I heard that TheAtogLord had 2 Mainphases last time you met, yet you won again.  Sounds lucky enough to me.

(obviously that means props to you for building GrimLongBroken.dec, but luck IS a factor, always, from the die roll at the onset, to the openning grip of 7 or 6 or (gulp) 5 or 4.)

[Gabethebabe]

because luck IS a factor in the game. 

I'm not even going to read the rest of your post, becuase I strenuously disagree with the implication here.

YES, luck is a factor in the game, BUT it NEVER control imo.  Sure, there is luck, but I have never, to my recollection, won or lost a match because of luck. 

There are simply too many variables for luck to be a determinate variable. 

So, in short, I disagree with your point.

Of course luck is a factor. It is in fact the determining factor in type 1. Without luck you will not make any top 8 in your life. Luck is not having to mulligan, not finding land pockets, not being paired against your nightmare matchup, topdecking a bomb when you need it, having trini in your opening hand and winning the dieroll, winning the Mana Crypt flip 4 times in a row. That is luck.

A lot of games are won by the weaker player, just because he drew better cards.

Fortunately, luck isn´t the only factor as skill is also utterly important. Skilled players usually beat poor players and skilled players will handle unlucky hands better than those that are not skilled, because they can postpone their doom by playing well and maximizing their possibilities to get back into the game if they make a couple of good topdecks.

Ignoring that luck is an important factor is plain stupid. Luck and skill go hand in hand.

[Tin_Mox5831]

Luck is one part of the winning equation, true. However, unless you're a weak player it is by far the weakest of these parts. If a player is winning more games by luck than deckbuilding, proper mulliganing, etc, something is terribly wrong. You can control a higher percentage of the "variables" in Vintage than in any other format. We have infinite tutors and quality draws compared to other formats, so why are we still bitching about luck? Good play and educated decision making can transcend luck on most occasions, so to put it simply, citing luck is an excuse folks make for the most part. Granted, once in a while, someone draws the utter nuts against me, but it's the exception rather than the rule. The fact is, you can flat-out get your doors blown off by someone via lucksackery once a tourney and still T8 easily, so what's the big deal? Play tight all day, be X-1, and just put the Swiss behind you.

[LotusHead]

Luck is one part of the winning equation, true.  Granted, once in a while, someone draws the utter nuts against me, but it's the exception rather than the rule. The fact is, you can flat-out get your doors blown off by someone via lucksackery once a tourney and still T8 easily, so what's the big deal? Play tight all day, be X-1, and just put the Swiss behind you.

I revise my statement: Luck plays a damn fine factor, from the die roll up.  But sometimes, you hope you are luckier than your opponent and blindly play oath turn 1 or Trinisphere turn 1 or Salvagers turn 1. Sometimes, you are the Beatdown. You play combo. (or prison).  It is your job to make the opponent lose to die roll (or lack of Force). Fear Combo.

Sometimes, you hope your opponent doesn't have a force and bypass their "skill".  I have lived this senario many a time.

[Harlequin]

I think something more relevant to ask would be: Does a casino make money due to luck? 

Well, if you define luck to be an event whose outcome is determined by a set of random events, then the answer is yes.  If you define luck to be something that is unpredictable then, then the answer is no. 

Take roulette for example.  Roulette has 36 numbered black and red spaced plus 2 green spaced for "0" and "00."  If you bet on any single number than you get paid 36 to 1.  If the wheel did not have 0 and 00 then roulette would not make a casino any money.  Why? Well they would be "paying odds."  Meaning if you sat there and bid on "4" all week at a $1 per bid, you would win 1/36 of all your bids and make 36 to 1.  Meaning you would walk out with same amount as you walked in with.  Now if you add in the 0 and 00 all of a sudden you stand to loose 2/38's of all your money.  The reason being, you will now win 1 out of every 38 rolls and still only make 36 to 1.  So with N bets on the table, over R roulette tables, running X hours a day, for 365 days a year the casino has a statistically impossibly change of loosing money in the long run.

Now, did the casino make its money because they were lucky?  You tell me.  As I'm sure you know, the casino didn't choose to pay 36 to 1 by accident (or by - luck - if you will)... They know the exact probability of "success" on every bet that gets placed, and the payout for any of these bets is never "at odds."

Now let’s say, some gambler comes in and puts his whole months paycheck on luck #4.  Just one bet.  And he hits it!  Now let’s say that the casino looses money for that night on Roulette, because of this one huge payout.  Can you say that this casino's nightly loss was attributed to "Bad luck?" You tell me.  Let’s not forget about the 37 people who did this same exact thing as this guy and ended up winning nothing but Gambling Addiction Intervention.

I think when you’re playing competitive magic, the best players think of themselves as the casino.  And the newer players think of themselves as gamblers.  And this is reflected in tournament results.  Let’s face it, scrubs make top 8, and vets scrub out all the time.  But in the long run, the vets will make top 8 with regularity, and the scrubs basically end up getting "lucky."

Notice what Steve said: "I ... have never won or lost a -Match- to luck."  And I would agree with that.  I'm not going to try and put words in his mouth and correlate his argument to my example, but I will say that for the most part I would consider a "Match" to be the long run.

[UR]

Still... when you mise an Ancestral Recall from the top the turn before you would have died, you are lucky. You can calculate your odds as being something like 1/45 or go on about the design of the deck and how it is supposed to do that and that is was pretty likely to draw something broken anyway. But you were lucky... plain and simple. Ripping an Ancestral from the top certainly can't be defined as skill. Just a 'random' factor that worked out in your favor (which, in my book, is luck).

[Harlequin]

My point was exactly that, yes ripping ancestral for the win is "Lucky" but how does the entire match ride on that?  sure odds are 1/45, but how many times did you not draw ancestral recall over the course of the day and still ended up winning.  Drawing a single ancestral recall durring the day is not lucky.  haveing ancestral in every opening hand all day IS lucky.

[UR]

That single Ancestral probably makes the difference between a T8 and just missing it.

[Harlequin]

Given that you have not drawn ancestral recall in the top 13 cards (so you have a 47 card deck) the odds that you will draw ancestral in the next 5 cards (so drawing from 47 to 43 cards) is 10.6%.  Now lets assume that as few as half of the rounds you play go to 3 total games.  so by round 5 (where your still in contention) you've played 7 to 8-ish games.  So if you break it down FOR THE DAY.  you will draw ancestral in that aproximately 1 in 45 cards chance with the following break down:
N   Prob( that you draw Ancestral N times between draws #13 and #18 totalled over 7 games )
-----------------------------
0   46.36%
1   38.39%
2   13.63%
3   2.69%

Edit: fixed numbers - math error.

So now what does that all mean?  well it means unless your ripping ancestral's left and right (meaning you've pull ancestral more than once that day), then you are more or less meeting expectation for the day.  Thats not luck, thats actually right on curve.  By the way the Expectation of N = 0.75.  Meaning if you played for 4 different tournements you would "Rip Ancestral like a pro" a total number of 3 times (not nessisarily on 3 different days).

[kombat]

YES, luck is a factor in the game, BUT it NEVER control imo.  Sure, there is luck, but I have never, to my recollection, won or lost a match because of luck. 

I don't believe you.  Luck permeates Magic.  We implicitly accept that luck is a contributing (but, as you say, not a "controlling") factor in the game.  If we truly wished to banish the effect of luck entirely from the game of Magic, then we would not require players to shuffle their decks.  We'd allow players to build their decks and stack them however they wished.  But how to decide who goes first?  Is that not presently decided by luck?  We must rewrite the rules to remove alternating "turns" and instead play the game in simultaneous iterations.  Iteration 1, both players lay a land simultaneously.  APNAP would have to be rewritten.

But we don't do all that.  We accept that random chance will determine which player receives the all-important momentum of the being the beneficiery of the first turn.

Luck matters, Steve.  When you rip that bomb off the top of the deck when you were almost dead, that's luck.

In the top 4 of a tournament for a beta Ruby, I was playing against Rich Mattiuzzo.  He was playing a blue/black deck that killed via Brain Freeze or a Tinkered Darksteel Colossus.  I was playing Oath.  It was game 3.  He had an Engineered Explosives on the board naming "Spirits," I had both an Oath and a Forbidden Orchard, but without being able to get a Spirit token to stick to Rich's board, I was unable to trigger Oath.  Rich knew his Brain Freeze kill was no good against me, as I run two Gaea's Blessings maindeck.  I was at 6 life, having taken some Spirit token beats before I found Oath and he found Engineered Explosives, plus some life loss from Force of Will and fetchlands.  Finally, he Tinkered in Darksteel Colossus, allowing me to activate Oath.  However, being as I could only Oath once, and none of my creatures could absorb more than 6 damage, I was dead anyway due to trample damage.

On my turn, I Oathed.  Of 4 creatures in my deck (Akroma, Razia, Woodripper, Blazing Archon), only one would save me.  At this point in the match, I had a 75% chance of being eliminated.  Guess which one I found.

Rich groaned in frustration as Blazing Archon eventually popped off the top of my deck.  His Darksteel Colossus stood their helplessly as Blazing Archon flew over 4 times in a row, giving me the win.  I went on the finals, Rich went home.  I won that match because of luck.  There was no skill involved in revealing Blazing Archon instead of Akroma or Razia.  That's just how it happened to turn out.

You can build the best deck possible, you can play it like a champ, but you cannot completely eliminate luck from the game.  Indeed, the very format of the game ensures that luck remains a factor.  By having certain cards restricted, we're manipulating luck.  From the opening coin flip to see who goes first to the die roll for the Mana Vault, luck is a major factor in Vintage.  To pretend that it's not is, frankly, a little arrogant, in my opinion.

[Komatteru]

Notice what Steve said: "I ... have never won or lost a -Match- to luck."  And I would agree with that.  I'm not going to try and put words in his mouth and correlate his argument to my example, but I will say that for the most part I would consider a "Match" to be the long run.

That match at Richmond where Steve beat Rich on the first turn 2 of 3 games seemed pretty lucky.  You can say it takes skill, but you don't win on the first turn without some serious cards to pull it off.

I used to count my wins and losses due to luck, and the number was staggering.  In fact, it's one of the reasons I stopped playing.  When I looked back at it, I found I was winning games because I happened to draw certain cards, and losing as many games where my opponent had something ridiculous.  The number of games where we had equally powerful (and mostly fair) cards was far less than the games where one person had something outrageous.

[kombat]

I think something more relevant to ask would be: Does a casino make money due to luck?

Yes, of course they do.  Every penny the casino wins and loses is due to luck.  If there were no luck in casinos, nobody would go.  The whole attraction of casinos is in knowing that anyone can "get lucky" and win big.

The casinos mitigate the swings of wins and losses by running over a long period of time, with a slight edge in the odds.  It all balances out, but it is still entirely based on luck.

[Neonico]

Notice what Steve said: "I ... have never won or lost a -Match- to luck."  And I would agree with that.  I'm not going to try and put words in his mouth and correlate his argument to my example, but I will say that for the most part I would consider a "Match" to be the long run.

That match at Richmond where Steve beat Rich on the first turn 2 of 3 games seemed pretty lucky.  You can say it takes skill, but you don't win on the first turn without some serious cards to pull it off.

I used to count my wins and losses due to luck, and the number was staggering.  In fact, it's one of the reasons I stopped playing.  When I looked back at it, I found I was winning games because I happened to draw certain cards, and losing as many games where my opponent had something ridiculous.  The number of games where we had equally powerful (and mostly fair) cards was far less than the games where one person had something outrageous.

I dont know exactly what is the sequence of plays for this game for steve, but it can also be the result of a big part of chance (Such as rich doesnt get FoW etc...)

In magic, the luck takes a biggest part of the game. Ok its not easy to win with a bad deck but considering all the people who got skill, good decks etc... The luck will allways do the difference. I top8ed in several big tournmanets (at least 80 90 players) such as Trials, PTQ, Big vintage and legacy events, and when i did top 8, my deck wasnt better than any other day, i didnt play better than any other day but i got alot of favorable conditions, such as opponents mulligans, death, full.. And the most important, i got the feeling that my deck was totally with me those days (good hands, good draws etc). It doesnt make the deck better, i wasnt better too but it was just the day.

The only strategical game i know where luck has no place is chess. As soon as you shuffle/cut a deck, the luck will take a big part of your result.

Now i totally agree that some people got the skill to turn bad draws into wins but i really think that it is less usual than good players that loose to bad luck.

[Harlequin]

Magic is a game of a serise of random events, no one is disputing that.  Each even can go either in your favor or not in your favor, no one is disputing that.  BUT there is a horizon to the variablitly.  Things like Casino's and Insurance show us that as long as you have a good calculation of risk then in the long run you hit some target Horizion Value that is calculated through mathematics.  Insurance companies are so good at this, they can purchance re-insurance on the amount of risk above a certain "acceptable" threshold.  In your example your opponent had a choice, Do I bet on A: Play Tinker, Betting on the chace that you do not oath into some sort of "stopper" like Archon, Sweeper, or even Duplicant -- or B, wait around until I can bounce Oath of druids, Betting on the chance that you do not have better countermagic or even worse Misdirrection (to bounce the E.Plague), or a bounce of your own.  Your opponent took a calculated risk and bet on the "winning horse."  Sure he may have lost on that particular event, but in the long run if he keeps making bets that are statstically in his favor, then he will win more than he looses.

Out of all the times you've played the deck (even outside of the tournement you go into t8) did you oath the "wrong" creature into play.  How many times was your opponent at 6 life with an unstoppable win in hand and you oathed in a non-haster?  if its more than half the time (assuming you've always run 2 haste angles and 2 non-haster) then your ahead of the curve and I would consider you "Luck."  Just because you happened to, in this example, get the 1 in 4 chance to come out in your favor... does not mean you are lucky by any stretch of the imagination.  Assumeing you've played this deck for more than 1 game, the odds would say that 1 out of ever 4 times your first oath hits, you would get the right creature.  if your 10 for 10, or 100 out of 100 then I would say that YES, you ARE lucky.

The casinos mitigate the swings of wins and losses by running over a long period of time, with a slight edge in the odds.  It all balances out, but it is still entirely based on luck.

So its considered "Lucky" that casinos make millions of dollars a day?  they are simply lucky?  You and I fundamentally disagree about what is "Luck."  You seem to define it to be any event that is random in outcome.  So to you, Its lucky that you woke up today without a metor strikeing your house over night.  what you call "luck" I call "Calculated Risk."  by this logic Loosing a game of Chess can be attributed to your opponents luck,  because your opponent could have had a fatal heart attack durring the game.  The fact that they didn't means they got lucky.

[kombat]

Just because you happened to, in this example, get the 1 in 4 chance to come out in your favor... does not mean you are lucky by any stretch of the imagination.  Assumeing you've played this deck for more than 1 game, the odds would say that 1 out of ever 4 times your first oath hits, you would get the right creature.

Sorry, I guess I moved a bit out of context.  My point with that post was to refute Steve's comment that he'd never won or lost a match due to luck.  I was giving an example of a single match which I did win due to luck.  The fact that I could've lost an equal number of matches under the exact same circumstances, thus balancing things out over time, does not refute the point that there exist a nonzero number of matches (as in my example) which are in fact won or lost by sheer luck.  Steve didn't say "things balance out," he said "I've never won/lost due to luck."  That's what I was disagreeing with.

[Harlequin]

So what was all this:

In the top 4 of a tournament for a beta Ruby, I was playing against Rich Mattiuzzo.  He was playing a blue/black deck that killed via Brain Freeze or a Tinkered Darksteel Colossus.  I was playing Oath.  It was game 3.  He had an Engineered Explosives on the board naming "Spirits," I had both an Oath and a Forbidden Orchard, but without being able to get a Spirit token to stick to Rich's board, I was unable to trigger Oath.  Rich knew his Brain Freeze kill was no good against me, as I run two Gaea's Blessings maindeck.  I was at 6 life, having taken some Spirit token beats before I found Oath and he found Engineered Explosives, plus some life loss from Force of Will and fetchlands.  Finally, he Tinkered in Darksteel Colossus, allowing me to activate Oath.  However, being as I could only Oath once, and none of my creatures could absorb more than 6 damage, I was dead anyway due to trample damage.

I don't see anywhere: "we decided that we would both randomly play cards from our hands, until a winner was decided"

It seems that that -GAME- can be chalked up to luck at the end... but what about the other game you won durring the course of that -MATCH-  Was that luck too?  I fail to see how one randomly deturmined event that decided how a game would end, justifies an entire match being won on "Sheer luck."

[Neonico]

Just because you happened to, in this example, get the 1 in 4 chance to come out in your favor... does not mean you are lucky by any stretch of the imagination.  Assumeing you've played this deck for more than 1 game, the odds would say that 1 out of ever 4 times your first oath hits, you would get the right creature.

Sorry, I guess I moved a bit out of context.  My point with that post was to refute Steve's comment that he'd never won or lost a match due to luck.  I was giving an example of a single match which I did win due to luck.  The fact that I could've lost an equal number of matches under the exact same circumstances, thus balancing things out over time, does not refute the point that there exist a nonzero number of matches (as in my example) which are in fact won or lost by sheer luck.  Steve didn't say "things balance out," he said "I've never won/lost due to luck."  That's what I was disagreeing with.

The only thing that differs in every single magic game isnt if youre lucky or not, its the % of luck and skill/Deck quality that you use to win/loose.

[Liam-K]

You guys saying luck can't lose you a match have NEVER kept a bomby hand with disposable mana, then drawn no sources for the rest of the game and had your teeth kicked in by goblins?  Not even once?  Bullshit.  Sometimes those hands are correct to keep too, so don't play slippery eel with your mulligan descision trump card.

It's rare that it will lose you 2 games in 1 match, and it's probably even rarer that that match will be the deciding factor about your making top 8, but it CAN happen.  Saying it can't is stupid.  Good players aren't worried about it because they are focusing on the things they can actually control and using them to overshadow randomness, but impossible is an absolute.  It is simply not impossible.

[darkchild]

Luck is an important factor in Magic. No matter how good you are with say Grim long, you can never win if your deck refused to give you a land in your first 3 hands foricing a mulligan to say 4-5 cards each time.

The only difference as what Harlequin pointed out is that over a period of time, skillful players do their best to maximize the luck factor by playing well like fetching when you need to thin your deck to maximize the chance of drawing your required card. Therefore though it always seem that skillful players are lucky, it is often not the case as they actually do their best to maximize their luck.

But to say that luck is irrelevant in a game of Magic is definitely wrong.

[Harlequin]

@Liam-k
Nowhere did I say it was impossible to loose to luck.  Infact, I even brought in the odds of a Fatal Heart Attack!  My point was not "Its impossible to be luckly (and by extrapolation impossibly to be un-lucky)"  My point was that the Oath example was a bad one.  The 2 bad opening hand example is bit better.  And Steve Turned the example into a personal one by saying "It has never happened to me."   I think people like Kombat put far too much focus on 1 or 2 particular events that go "against odds" and lump the entire match into the luck-sac-boat.  

Here is a better example:  "I won my match because my opponent got DQed for cheating"

I would say thats a lucky win.  I define a lucky win as something that DRAMATICALLY goes against the odds.  Im not talking 10% or even a whole 1% chance of winning.  I would say maybe 1 in 1000 matches gets deturmined by Disqulification.  So the fact that little Billy won a match because of that means he rolled that "1000" on the D1000.  That my friends is what I call luck.

[Smmenen]

Part of the problem is that those of you who disagree are not thinking broadly enough. 

You are thinking about luck, ceteris peribus.  From that perspective OF COURSE luck will seem to control.  If your deck choice, card choices, sb, sbing decisions, and in game decisions are all constant, luck is the ONLY remaining variable and it will ALWAYS appear to determine the outcome of a game.

The problem is that this is the ass backwards way of looking at things.

When I think about all the possible things I could have done:

a) Play a different deck
b) play different card choices
c) play a different sb
d) sb differently
e) mulligan different
f) tutor for different cards
g) make different, earlier, in game decisions

When you put all those things in the mix, how important is luck really?  Pretty damned marginal.   I acknowledged that it's there, but not determinative.

That’s why I say luck is a factor, but never controls.  If you disagree with what I just posted, that’s pretty bold.  You're saying that all of your decisions were perfect and that you played the perfect deck with the perfect sb. 

[kombat]

It seems that that -GAME- can be chalked up to luck at the end... but what about the other game you won durring the course of that -MATCH-  Was that luck too?  I fail to see how one randomly deturmined event that decided how a game would end, justifies an entire match being won on "Sheer luck."

I didn't say that luck controlled the entire match.  Skill could have won the first game, and lost the second one, and even controlled the majority of game 3.  But at some point, the outcome of a game state hinged on luck, and it just happened to turn out that that particular game state affected the rest of the game, and since it happened to be game 3, the outcome of that game affected the match.

Usually, when luck rears its head in Magic, its not a win-or-lose scenario.  If I'm at 10 life and I lose a die roll to a Mana Crypt, it probably won't affect the outcome very much.  I can use my skill to alter my play as required to compensate.  Such as only Necroing for 5 cards instead of 7.  Or if I have win in hand or already on the board, and I have a terrible string of draws that yeilds 3 lands in a row, it doesn't matter.  But every now and then, the outcome of one of these random events happens at a crucial time in the game (sometimes even during the crucial game of a match, or the crucial match of a tournament) and has a day-ending result for the player.

For someone who plays as many games as Steve Menendian to say this has never happened to him seems highly implausible to me.

If you flip a coin 100 times, it will (probably) come up heads 50% of the time, and tails 50% of the time.  But that doesn't change the fact that the outcome of each individual flip is determined by luck.  Why is this so hard to understand/accept?

If you flip a coin 99 times, and amazingly, it comes up heads every time, then what are the odds that when you flip that coin for the 100th time, it will come up heads again?  Seems pretty unlikely, no?  Actually, it's 50/50.  Luck has no memory.  Each individual event has the same odds as every event before it (all other factors being equal, of course).

[Mr. Nightmare]

Part of the problem is that those of you who disagree are not thinking broadly enough.

You are thinking about luck, ceteris peribus. From that perspective OF COURSE luck will seem to control. If your deck choice, card choices, sb, sbing decisions, and in game decisions are all constant, luck is the ONLY remaining variable and it will ALWAYS appear to determine the outcome of a game.

The problem is that this is the ass backwards way of looking at things.

When I think about all the possible things I could have done:

a) Play a different deck
b) play different card choices
c) play a different sb
d) sb differently
e) mulligan different
f) tutor for different cards
g) make different, earlier, in game decisions

When you put all those things in the mix, how important is luck really? Pretty damned marginal. I acknowledged that its there, but not determinative.

That’s why I say luck is a factor, but never controls. If you disagree with what I just posted, that’s pretty bold. Your saying that all of your decisions were perfect and that you played the perfect deck with the perfect sb.

Although, from your perspective, I agree that luck is a marginal factor, isn't that perspective unnecessarily generalized?  In any particular descriptive model, assumptions are made to simplify it.  Otherwise, you have an endless amount of variables, and hopelessly complicated equations to deal with.  It seems fair that you examine the luck factor, given that:

1) You've made a deck choice
2) You've made card choices within that deck choice
3) You've made SBing decisions based on the metagame
4) You've sideboarded accurately for the match
5) You believe these decisions are correct

While there may be slight variations in the accuracy of these assumptions, they should still be (at a level of play as high as we claim to play at) fair assumptions.  With these in mind, your list looks much more like this:

a) mulligan different
b) tutor for different cards
c) make different, earlier, in game decisions
d) luck

And luck plays a much more important role.  While nothing you said is wrong, (and I believe neither is anything I have said) the macro- view of things seems overly broad.

[Harlequin]

@Kombat (you guys post too fast =P  )
Easy there champ, I don't need a lecture on Independance Theory.  

I think your missing my point.  

... there exist a nonzero number of matches (as in my example) which are in fact won or lost by sheer luck.

I was simply refuting that in your example, that match was not won by sheer luck.  Sheer luck means your choices did not matter.  If you flip 99 out of 100 coins "heads" and asked me "AM I lucky now??" I would say sure, your lucky (assumeing your useing a fair 50/50 coin as you imply).  

If your interested in a mathematical example that factors your opponents "Luck" (odds of me failing to win) when it comes to combo check this out:
http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=27883.0

Its a question of pure probablity and "comperable probability"  At the end I essentially say: this probably will never hold water in a tournement for a legitamate way to deturmine who wins and looses, but its interesting non-the-less.

[AJFirst]

We all agree that luck is a contributing factor, but there are other aspects out there as well; aspects that allow you to control your luck, and not the other way around.

Simply put, people who blame luck too often or run the assumption that luck defines the format or all of their matches need to realize that the same names are putting up numbers consistantly. How can luck be that defining while that is happening? Luck,  by nature, balances itself out over time. That's what probability means.

If you are "losing to luck" more often than everyone else ove ra long period of time, maybe you should take a closer look at your deck, sideboarding, mulligan decisions, and PLAYSKILL.
-AJ

Wait wait wait, story time. I used to suck. I mean, we all did at one point in time, but I REALLY sucked. The worst part is, I didn't know it. I would blame my sealed decks for opening poorly, and my draft decks for mana-screwing me. My oponent's for topdecking and so forth. I then got good (well, better) and realized I was playing 15 land in Kamigawa block draft. I was not playing my Theif of Hope in my BUr Sealed deck. These are obvious errors, but the same ties in for vintage play. So next time you're blaming luck, take a close look at the way you played that game (then come to the conclusion that you played flawlessly and your oponent is a lucksack, then never get better.).
-AJ, again