Playing some Delver in Modern

LIMBO Playthrough

Pick it up! It's available on Steam, I think it's even on sale right now!

All about Dominion

For a while, I played an awful lot of Dominion. I think at my peak I was ~7th on isotropic, which is probably a fairly considerable accomplishment. As of today there are 7,900 players showing up on the isotropic leaderboard, and yesterday the site saw 15,000 games of Dominion played. I made my way up the leaderboard playing two-player games using completely random cardpools.

Dominion is an amazing game because of the huge variety of cardpools which you can be presented with. Because it was impossible to prepare for every possible situation, my edge against other players (and I think this is true of most of the successful players) came from having a strong ability to quickly parse which cards were relevant and which were not. Some of this came from understanding of specific cards - if there is Ambassador you should start double Ambassador and at that point the game is already basically over, for example. Some of it comes from a more general understanding of the game, though, and that's what I want to try to impart with this post.

I won't bother going over any basic rules or concepts, I'm just going to throw the pedal to the metal and hit you in the face with game theory.

At high levels, a game of Dominion is usually over before the first player's turn one buy. There are occasional tactical situations which can come up later in the game, but it is not overwhelmingly difficult to advance to a level where you are hitting all of these near-perfectly. Your turn one and turn two buys are often much harder to determine correctly, and much more impactful on the game, than the correct order of your 15-action card string on turn seven.

On turn one you have to decide whether you play low or high. A low strategy seeks to end the game as quickly as possible. The most rudimentary example is Smithy + Gold. You simply start with Smithy + Silver, then look to add another two copies of Smithy while upgrading the treasure in your deck, buying Provinces whenever you hit $8 on a turn.

Once you have worked out the lowest strategy, whatever it might be, you need to work out if the highest strategy beats it. The highest strategy seeks to delay the end of the game as much as possible, and gives up chances to buy victory points early to create an overwhelming deck infrastructure and quickly overtake a low opponent in the game's closing turns. Games in which the low and high strategy are approximately equal and players choose contrasting options can be the most exciting games of Dominion.

The high strategy is generally harder to identify than the low, but there are some obvious starting points. The high strategy wants to be able to draw its entire deck every turn, is there a way to do that? It wants to be able to close a large VP gap in the final turns, so it wants to see alternate VP cards like Nobles, Goons, Monuments, and Gardens in the card pool. It wants its opponent to struggle to end the game on his own, so it absolutely does not want to see a card like Remodel.

The most common mistake I think people trying to understand low and high strategies make is assuming that if the low strategy buys four Provinces it wins. This can be the case, but very very often there are ways to avoid it as the high strategy. In fact, if the low strategy plans to win by having Provinces run out you may want to just not buy a single Province yourself, which will give you an extra five or six turns to load up on alternate VPs and catch up. One of the largest advantages of the high strategy is that it is generally very easy for it to end the game the second that it is ahead, while the low strategy, often stuck with one buy per turn, is stuck trying to buy all the Provinces.

Here's the beautiful trick to Dominion. When you sit down to play a game you look at the low strategy and the high strategy, work out which beats which, and then play the one that wins. The game is actually, almost always, that simple. Midrange strategies tend to lose both to the low strategies and to the high ones. The basic skill and key to success is learning to first identify the two possible gameplans, and then correctly evaluate which wins.

Let's Play: Endless Space

Picked up this game on Steam when it came out a few days ago. I've been having quite a lot of fun with it! Check out the ~hour long stream I did of it last night.

IPA Draft!!

Gamestate 5/24/12

People in this episode:
Adam Ragsdale - @aWinnarIsYou, www.twitch.tv/awiy
Stephen Flavall - @931243732, www.twitch.tv/joinrbs, www.youtube.com/joinrbs, www.gainmes.com
Jarvis Yu - @jkyu06, www.gatheringmagic.com
Cedric Phillips - @CedricAPhillips, www.twitch.tv/ceddyp

Gamestate 5/16/12

People in this episode:
Adam Ragsdale - @aWinnarIsYou, www.twitch.tv/awiy
Stephen Flavall - @931243732, www.twitch.tv/joinrbs, www.youtube.com/joinrbs, www.gainmes.com
Jarvis Yu - @jkyu06, www.gatheringmagic.com
Cedric Phillips - @CedricAPhillips, www.twitch.tv/ceddyp

Topics covered this episode:
2:00 - Introductions
3:00 - PT: Barcelona Coverage
12:15 - The Decks!, well, mostly the Miracles Deck
37:00 - Cerdic on the GW Top 8 deck
40:00 - The Top 8 matches
45:00 - The judge decision on Hayne presenting 65 cards
57:30 - More Top 8 matches
1:06:00 - SCG: Madison Standard
1:23:20 - SCG: Madison Legacy
1:27:00 - Cavern of Souls judge decisions in PT: Barcelona
1:47:00 - Viewer Questions and outros

Relevant links:
Starcitygames Open Decklists: http://www.starcitygames.com/pages/decklists/

Gamestate 5/7/2012

Gamestate for 5/7/2012!!

People in this episode:
Adam Ragsdale - @aWinnarIsYou, www.twitch.tv/awiy
Stephen Flavall - @931243732, www.twitch.tv/joinrbs, www.youtube.com/joinrbs, www.gainmes.com
Jarvis Yu - @jkyu06, www.gatheringmagic.com
Cedric Phillips - @CedricAPhillips, www.twitch.tv/ceddyp
Gerry Thompson - @G3RRYT, www.starcitygames.com

Topics covered this episode:
0:00 - Introductions
1:00 - SCG Open: Standard
28:00 - SCG Open: Legacy
46:40 - PT: Barcelona! This weekend!
1:12:30 - MODO Cube
1:36:00 - Extremely long-winded and tearful goodbyes interspersed amongst old-man Magic stories.

Relevant links:
Starcitygames Open Decklists: http://www.starcitygames.com/pages/decklists/
Until that page updates, the decklists from last weekend can be found here: http://bit.ly/JsINYI
The MODO Cube: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/927
PT: Barcenlona:

This weeks episode got beat up by technical issues a little. I had a terrible connection which led to some very choppy audio and a dropping webcam, audio levels were too high for Adam compared to the rest of us, and Adam wasn't able to get our powerful overlay working. We were able to fix most of this after the first few minutes of the cast, immense apologies, please bear with us as we work through these growing pains.

Given them, the best choice is probably the audio-only version for this episode. I was able to level the volume out a little so that Adam isn't overshadowing the rest of us by nearly as much. Download the audio here.

You can also, as always, watch the full video, but you'll have to deal with some more audio issues.

Let's Play UFO: Enemy Unknown

This is an awful lot of videos guys!

Not quite finished yet. Not sure if I will.

Gamestate 4/30/2012

People in this episode:
Adam Ragsdale - @aWinnarIsYou, www.twitch.tv/awiy
Stephen Flavall - @931243732, www.twitch.tv/joinrbs, www.youtube.com/joinrbs, www.gainmes.com
Jarvis Yu - @jkyu06, www.gatheringmagic.com
Cedric Phillips - @CedricAPhillips, www.twitch.tv/ceddyp

Topics covered:
PT: Barcelona
Avacyn Restored prerelease
MODO Cube
MODO PTQ
MOCS



Download just the audio here.

Few problems with the video sync recording this episode towards the end, sorry.

Cool interviews/panels on e-sports

Just felt like dropping a couple of these here.

Gamestate 4/23/2012

Topics covered:

SCG Standard and Legacy tournaments, MTGO PTQ
Avacyn Restored Spoiler
"Pity" PT Invites

You can download the audio here.



You can tune in to Adam's stream at www.twitch.tv/awiy. He streams around 6-8 hours a day, seven days a week.
Adam on Twitter: @Awinnarisyou

Jarvis is an exceptionally powerful magician who wins a lot of PTQs and builds a lot of great decks. He also writes articles which you can find at gatheringmagic.com.
Jarvis on Twitter: @jkyu06

Stephen is Stephen! You are at his website.
Stephen on Twitter: @931243732

Cedric is the most powerful wizard. You can follow Cedric's stream at www.twitch.tv/ceddyp, and find him on twitter @ceddyp.

Gamestate 4/17/2012

You can download the audio at this link.

You can tune in to Adam's stream at www.twitch.tv/awiy. He streams around 6-8 hours a day, seven days a week.
Adam on Twitter: @Awinnarisyou

Jarvis is an exceptionally powerful magician who wins a lot of PTQs and builds a lot of great decks. He also writes articles which you can find at gatheringmagic.com.
Jarvis on Twitter: @jkyu06

Stephen is Stephen! You are at his website.
Stephen on Twitter: @931243732

Cedric and Bing are the most powerful wizards. You can follow Cedric's stream at www.twitch.tv/ceddyp, and follow Bing on Twitter @prolepsis9. Both write articles for starcitygames.com.

$0.99: Zoom Poker Pt 5

The fifth installment of my zoom poker series is now live on my ppv page.

$0.99: Zoom Poker Pt 4

The fourth installment of my zoom poker series is now live on my ppv page.

Gamestate 4/10/2012

Click here to download just the audio. You'll miss out on some of the action in Adam's matches.

You can tune in to Adam's stream at www.twitch.tv/awiy. He streams around 6-8 hours a day, seven days a week.
Adam on Twitter: @Awinnarisyou

Jarvis is an exceptionally powerful magician who wins a lot of PTQs and builds a lot of great decks. He also writes articles which you can find at gatheringmagic.com.
Jarvis on Twitter: @jkyu06

Stephen is Stephen! You are at his website.
Stephen on Twitter: @931243732

Dave Crewe is our special guest for the episode, AanAllein00 on MODO, a powerful Australian magician who just won GP Melbourne!
Dave on Twitter: @AanAllein00

NLHE Crash Course Pt 9: $1.00/2.00

Gamestate 4/3/2012

Click here to download the audio. Fair warning: We talk about Adam's match a little towards the end.

You can tune in to Adam's stream at www.twitch.tv/awiy. He streams around 6-8 hours a day, seven days a week.
Adam on Twitter: @Awinnarisyou

Jarvis is an exceptionally powerful magician who wins a lot of PTQs and builds a lot of great decks. He also writes articles which you can find at gatheringmagic.com: http://www.gatheringmagic.com/jarvisyu-040212-delver/
Jarvis on Twitter: @jkyu06

Stephen is Stephen! You are at his website.
Stephen on Twitter: @931243732

$0.99: Zoom Poker Pt 3

The third installment of my zoom poker series is now live on my ppv page.

MODO with Adam Ragsdale

$0.99: River Nuts or Nothing Math

My first theory vid, covering the ins and outs of this basic theory spot to start to build towards more complex calculations, is now available on my ppv page.

NLHE Crash Course Pt 8: $0.50/1.00

$0.99: Zoom Poker Pt 2

Video is now posted on my pay-per-view page.

$0.99: Zoom Poker Pt 1

Video is now live over on my Pay-Per-View Awesome page!

NLHE Crash Course Pt 7: $0.25/0.50

NLHE Crash Course Pt 6: $0.10/0.25

NLHE Crash Course Pt 5: Tools of the Game

NLHE Crash Course Pt 4: $0.05/0.10

NLHE Crash Course Pt 3: $0.02/0.05

NLHE Crash Course Pt 2: $0.01/0.02

NLHE Crash Course Pt 1

I offer private coaching at $100/hr, with prices negotiable to accommodate for lower stakes players. Get in touch via Twitter, a comment, w/e if you're interested! (I'm 931243732 on Stars, by the way).

DKA Draft and Rant!

Recommend skipping to 31:00 for my rant.

Theory: Hidden Games and What They Tell Us

Here's a thought experiment for you. Imagine a game. It can be a sport, card game, if you're imaginative enough you could even imagine doing homework or advancing in the business world as a modeled game. Now, for whatever you're imagining, imagine how a perfect robot with 100% comprehension of the game would play in order to maximize its chances to win.

If you are like me you are not actually stopping to think right now, and I want you to, so I am going to include a couple of pictures to break up the text and try to make your brain think!

The reason that I find this so fascinating is that when you look at games at the highest level with the toughest players they are often so different as to become different games. Take Scrabble as an obvious example. A beginning scrabble player is going to spend all their time and energy trying to find the best words. The entire game is "make words worth lots of points". For quite a while progress is going to be down this path, learning that you can make words like "QI" and "ZA" to take advantage of the high-scoring letters, learning all the two-letter words to help with making long words down the sides of other words to score extra points, etc.

If you have two computers play Scrabble against each other the process of discovering every possible word that they can play takes less than a second, but the game is far far from over. When you set two computers against each other in such a way (or two extremely talented Scrabble-playing humans) the game stops being about playing the best word right now and the massive massive strategical element of the game shines through. Scrabble turns out to actually be almost impossibly tactically and strategically complex. If you have access to every available word for your turn you are still going to get outplayed by a better player over and over again, because there is so much more that you need to know to play the game excellently.

What tiles does your opponent hold? You need to calculate what her best moves on the next turn are likely to be, and work out if scoring fewer points yourself is worth it to hinder her ability to score points next turn. You can theoretically gather an awful lot of information towards what tiles your opponent could have, in much the same way that you can gather information about what might be in your opponent's hand in Magic - how long did she take to play her last turn, how many tiles did she use, did she miss any obvious possibilities (say, playing "TILE" in one place when if she had an "S" she could've played "TILES" in another, much better place), what tiles are already on the board or on your rack, etc.

What possibilities will you have next turn? If your opponent is likely to play a word which opens up high-scoring opportunities perhaps you should hold letters like "S", "T", and "E" this turn so that you will have a better chance of having a long word available next turn, or perhaps you should hold letters like "Z" and "Q" because next turn there will be a higher chance of placing them on a Triple Letter tile.

The list of variables goes on for a long long time and, in Scrabble, little effort seems to have been put into developing algorithms to address those further variables. It's easy to program a computer to quickly see two different possibilities which will score it 50 points, but very very difficult to program it to understand which of those would be better for it to play.

I think Scrabble is an example of a game which is hidden by entry-barrier. That is to say, if all people had spent two years learning to recognize word possibilities on a Scrabble board, I think the way the game was played and understood would be unrecognizable to how it is approached right now. Many other games are hidden in such a way, as are many processes in the everyday world. Understanding of games in politics - political campaigns, passing legislation, etc. - is often hindered by a lack of knowledge of how such things work, what the exact goal is, who the politicians involved are and what their motivations are. Investment is heavily underdeveloped (in my opinion) because so much of it depends simply on having enough money to start investing, which is usually either unattainable or so difficult that it takes up too much time to dedicate much energy to actually understanding investment.

Next let's talk about Chess. Chess is a game which is certainly hidden by entry-barrier. I am a terrible chess player, and there are lines that even I know up to move 20. That is to say, against certain moves by my opponents, I know the (well, a. There are often multiple possible responses) theoretically correct response move, and in some games my opponent and I trade theoretically correct moves for 20 moves before either of us actually thinks for himself. The reason that I find Chess particularly interesting is that even with the entry-barrier out of the way playing Chess is still very very very difficult. In Scrabble a slight oversight could give your opponent an extra few points. In Chess failing to see one move which could be played ten moves from now could instantly end the game in your opponent's favor. In yesterday's action at the Tata Steel supertournament, which features fourteen of the best players in the world, David Navara fell from a technically winning position to an almost losing one by missing one such seemingly innocuous move that was only two moves away.

The game of chess, I would argue, is hidden by complexity, or perhaps hidden by lack of confidence. This seems odd to say, because the point of the game, as with many other games, is that it is elegantly complex. That is what makes it a compelling game. What I am trying to say more specifically is that, were two extremely powerful computers to play each other (or even two of the world's current best players) they would quite rarely fail to see something which would allow the game to suddenly swing from winning to losing in one move. However, even for those two extremely powerful players, the lack of clarity in many positions is going to drive the game. It isn't possible to check every variation for every move, and so a potentially weaker move which contains less chance of failure will often be the one chosen.

Perfectly played chess would be impossibly beautiful, but even the best players in the world are forced to admit their imperfection with "safe" decisions, and face their imperfection against unsound attacks. The game becomes about preparing perfectly for the opening, studying rigorously for the end game, and doing as well as you can in the middle game. The most exciting games are ones in which a player studies a new move which, while not the best move, may not have been extensively prepared for by their opponent, leading to dangerous improvisational play in which one player backs their preparation at home against their opponent's ability to exploit a theoretically incorrect move.

When the best computers play there are no such crutches, and the game becomes purely about positional understanding and, well, Chess. A perfect computer will never play a weaker move just because it has calculated that it can't be extremely bad for it - it will play the strongest move and leverage any advantage it has as quickly and savagely as possible. And it will never shy away from a piece sacrifice or a dangerous tactical line because it finds the consequences unclear - it will play that move because its heuristics say it is best and trust itself to survive the explosions that follow. Basically, Chess is a game where playing the best move is often so difficult and risky to understand that it is not worth it to try, and players settle for moves which they think are simply "good enough".

The real-world "game" which strikes me as most hidden by lack of confidence or complexity is dating. The stakes are high, the rules complex, and consequences impossible to fully understand. I don't mean to say that relationships are simply a game, or that they are anything like a game, really. My point, rather, is that relationships often fail to reach their fullest, most beautiful potential, simply because the two (or more) people involved often settle into a rut of safety. How many relationships do you think suffer compared to their most ideal form because they follow basic norms instead of being the best they could possibly be at every moment? I feel that all must. It could be that one person is afraid of embarrassing themselves dancing and so the couple never tries to dance when they could have enjoyed dancing greatly if they had only given it a chance, or it could be something much more serious. Perhaps a relationship could be enhanced by open-status but neither person is willing to risk dealing with the emotions that will follow if they attempt to do so.

The last game I want to talk about is Poker. Poker is so misunderstood that people often call it gambling instead of calling it a game, or argue that it is a "game of chance" instead of a "game of skill". This is because Poker is a game which is hidden by variance. If I went to play at a casino for a few hours I might play 200 hands. If I look at any random collection of 200 hands from my Poker career the results could be just about anything. Maybe I win $200, maybe I lose $4,000. If I look at a large sample of hands though my Poker career (and that of other winning cash-game players) looks like this:

That Poker is so hidden by variance is actually a main reason that it can be so profitable. If players knew from the second they sat down at a table that they were going to lose $200 they would probably just choose not to sit down, but when players are expected to lose $200 they not only have no way to calculate that fact for sure, but there's also a chance they'll win money instead, so it can still be fun for them, and they sit down at the table, and on average they lose $200, some of which ends up in the pockets of people who are using Poker to make a living.

Unfortunately, hiding results due to variance also makes Poker hugely misunderstood. One thing that variance does is damage the way that the game is played; people make bad plays over and over again because they have no way of actually knowing that they are bad.

Whether Poker is played perfectly or not (or even well or not) is not a crucial point for humanity, but the stakes in the real world in situations hidden by variance can be much much much higher. What if instead of a hand of Poker, game theory was being applied to a war? Misunderstanding the actual consequences of actions because you are basing your understanding of them on past results which were in fact unlikely could cost countless lives. On a smaller scale, what if you have massive potential that you are not realizing because you've misread results of your actions? Maybe the girl you were meant to marry was busy the two times you called her and you thought she wasn't interested and never spoke with her again, or maybe you had a bad experience traveling to Fiji and because of it you don't travel much anymore. Humans are massively predisposed towards linking results to their actions causally and strictly, and they give far too great a weight to negative results compared to positive results in most situations. When our brains were evolving, way back when we were hunter-gatherers, a bad outcome could easily mean being eaten by a tiger, while a good outcome only meant eating for a day. In modern society we can much more easily afford to fail and don't have to suffer such absurdly heavy consequences if we do, so we should be willing to take greater risks.

As you go about your life, keep in mind that you are imperfect, and that, for whatever you are doing, even the best person in the world would be imperfect. Try to keep in mind how that might hold you back, and do your best to understand how you can maximize your potential and enjoyment of the world. Games are great fun, but life is always the most important thing, and if you're not applying what you learn from games and about game playing to your life in general you're missing out on a great source of inspiration, intuition, and wisdom.

Draft #39: RGD 4-3-2-2

Technical problems with the last video, sorry. (I ended up losing).

Let's Play: Blood Bowl

You can see my walkthrough of a couple of Blood Bowl matches (the PC port by Cyanide) via the navigation link at the top-left of the page!

PuzzleJuice Gameplay Video

PuzzleJuice!!!

Draft #38: ISD 8-4

Let's Play: Colonization

I just did a full walkthrough of Civilization IV: Colonization. It was good fun. Check it out!