Recently, in his article Good Beats: Mind Sports, Aaron Forsythe compared tournament Magic to the top-level competitions in various other games. In that article, he mentioned chess, go, bridge, poker, Scrabble(tm), and backgammon as other "mind sports" whose World Championship-caliber events could be considered potential peers of Magic's Pro Tours. Of these activities, by far the most lucrative in terms of popularity, available prize money, and frequency of events is tournament poker. The comparison between these two games is intriguing, and there are many lessons that tournament Magic players can learn from their poker-playing brethren.

(All actual poker examples will be relegated to footnotes, for those uninterested in poker content).

Lesson #1: Structure Determines Strategy.

Poker tournaments generally begin with all players receiving a fixed amount of non cash-value tournament chips. Play begins, with the antes or blinds and limits rising at fixed time intervals. Prize payouts are based on a fixed schedule, which is usually fairly top-heavy. For example, many tournaments pay out 40% to 1st place, 20% to 2nd place, and 10% to 3rd place, with the rest of the pool spread among the rest of the top finishers.

The increasing blind structure affects the correct strategy to take in tournaments because it changes the time horizon of the game, slowly creating action and creating situations where players cannot afford to be patient and wait for strong hands. In a ring game, that is, regular-old poker played for cash-value chips, where players can buy more chips at any time and leave at any time, it is correct to play in whatever manner will generate the highest EV (expected value) for each hand. However, in a tournament, because buying more chips is not an option, oftentimes the play that yields the highest EV ON THIS HAND turns out to be incorrect, because the tournament structure takes precedence. *

Let's see how this concept might apply to Magic. An easy example is the following:

You're playing Stasis in the elimination stage of an extended tournament. You're playing against a Sligh deck, and the first two games end up taking up all the time in the round. Time is called as you're shuffling up for game 3, and the game will be decided by the first change in life totals. How should you sideboard and how should you play? You'll be going first.

Well, at first glance, you're in a tight spot here. Sligh decks are notorious for generating lots of quick damage; you're vulnerable to first-turn burn, a first-turn Jackal Pup, a second turn attack, and possibly some other things (the random Cave-In?). One possibility that suggests itself is mulliganing to a Misdirection and a blue card and attempting to Misdirect burn back to the Sligh player. (Note that Force of Will is useless in this situation, because it involves the payment of life.) However, the superior play is probably to try to mulligan to Claws of Gix and play Claws, Island, sac Island to gain one life.

Obviously, here's a situation where the correct play is extremely strange, but very obvious; however, this is only an extreme example. Decisions where conditions external to the match are important occur in practically every Magic tournament game, and even (perhaps especially) deck construction and selection. Factors about the structure of a tournament will influence every decision you make, to some extent, and sometimes will dictate a totally different play than might be otherwise indicated.

Two of the key factors of tournament structure:

The Clock

Each round of a poker tournament lasts for a fixed interval (usually twenty to forty minutes, although larger buyin tournaments sometimes have rounds of over an hour). After this period is over, the blinds rise. Expert tournament players are always conscious of the time left in a round, and often are able to subtly manipulate events in their favor. At each new limit, the player whose turn it is to take the blind has to pay the increased blind, and if a poker player can arrange to have just passed through the blinds when the limits rise, he has gained an advantage. In the same way, clock manipulation can be a critical part of Magic at any level where there are time limits.

A player who tends to play slowly should question the wisdom of playing a controlling, enchantment-heavy deck with excellent sideboard tech that often loses game 1, but rolls in games 2 and 3. It could still be correct, but the slow play makes a 3-1-3 result in the Swiss more likely than it would otherwise be, even though the result might be 6-1 if the rounds were longer. Players who draw a lot should consider trying to pick up the pace of their game. More on this under "The Scoring System."

By the same token, players who play quickly ought to consider slowing down their whole game. Stalling, of course, is illegal under DCI rules, but it's not required that you play QUICKLY, either. Players who play deliberately will often have an advantage, particularly after winning a long game 1, as there will be additional pressure on their opponent to play quickly, possibly causing them to make a fatal mistake.

The Scoring System

Magic uses a hybrid scoring system, with a Swiss for several rounds, and then the top finishers from that portion play single elimination to determine a winner. I clearly understand why this structure has been adopted, though I think it dramatically increases the incentives for collusion. It creates a mano a mano feel and the accompanying drama in determining the winner, but still allows players who have no realistic hope of winning to play quite a few matches and get their entry fee's worth. Poker tournaments, on the other hand, are a continuous structure; even though tables get consolidated and players bust out, the game remains the same and there is no real cutoff point where players with chips are eliminated.

One of the important results of the Swiss scoring system is that there are three points available in each round, but only two get awarded in case of a draw. Another way of looking at it is that wins are three times as valuable as draws. How does this change strategy? Well, firstly, decks that play slowly and tend to draw often are much weaker than they might otherwise be, simply because their Swiss points per match will be lower than correspondingly strong decks that play faster and therefore achieve more wins and less draws. This is an often overlooked reality in playtesting - that if you play Deck A against Decks B, C, D, and E 250 times (yes, statistics are often cruel in high-variance activities) and it wins 40%, draws 30%, and loses 30%, it's not a 57.1% matchup, as many players would think. In fact, it's effectively a FIFTY percent matchup because that's the % of available Swiss points it garners. Secondly, it's a partial refutation of many of the complaints that come from people who rail that intentional draws are unfair - as a result of the intentional draw, there are less points awarded overall, which makes every point earned so far in the tournament worth more.

To mock a certain well-known Canadian cartoon, "Draws are bad, m'kay?"

Using This Information

So that brings the discussion to the final point, and, as always, the most important one: How can the reader use this? Considering the structure of a tournament is essential to having success.

• When playtesting, playtest matches. Play two out of three games, sideboarding appropriately, with a clock and a time limit. Practice manipulating the clock to gain advantage. Find out how often your deck will draw. If it draws too often, look for ways to improve your win percentage. Measure playtesting results in Swiss points to better understand how the deck performs in a multi-round event.
  
• When selecting a deck, keep in mind your speed of play and your comfort level of playing at other speeds. Mike Flores says that deck "style" shouldn't be a concern, and certainly we'd all like to be able to play quickly or deliberately and be effective. But if you play slowly, and you tend to make mistakes playing quickly, you're simply giving away points by playing decks that tend to utilize the entire round a priori.
  
• One of the most important things that most players can do to improve their Swiss results is to avoid drawing matches that they have the advantage in. Call the judge on slow play, if you think your opponent is stalling. Those three points belong to YOU. Don't let your opponent take them away from you by breaking the rules.

I'd appreciate your thoughts and/or feedback.

Jerrod Ankenman

* - Example: In a ten-handed no-limit holdem ring game with blinds approximately 1/100 of the stack size, it is generally correct to fold KQs if you're the first to act after the blinds, except in a very tight or very loose game. However, once the blinds have escalated a few times in most mid-level no-limit tournaments, it is hardly ever correct to fold this hand, preferring to raise as a steal.