Project Die Roll

Wizards has recently decided to extend the implementation of the Pro Tour play/draw rule (for those of you who don't know what this is, in the T8 the higher seeded player gets to decide to play or draw without a die roll) to GPs and PTQs.  This naturally brings up the question (or should):  "How important is winning the die roll?" (more formally:  What is P(winning the match|winning the die roll)).  In order to find the answer to this question (unless @mtgonline or @lee_sharpe decides to perform a divine intervention and just tell us) I'm going to start a little research project.  I'm asking for volunteers to fill out the following Excel Sheet for various daily events:

Put the following expression in column B to save time:  =IF(A7=1,2,IF(A7=0,2," "))

The most efficient way to fill out the sheet:
1)  Wait for the round of the DE to be over.

2)  Record the records of the round, as you can see above I just recorded each match as it appears in the DE results.
3)  Open a match to watch the replay.  If the player on the top of the screen wins the roll, assign a B in the third column.  If the player on the bottom of the screen wins the role assign an A.  Repeat for each match

4)  Repeat for the other three rounds.

So I'm looking for volunteers to help collect this data, if you're interested (and can commit to doing one whole DE) e-mail me at chrism315 at gmail dot com.

Chris Mascioli
@dieplstks on twitter

MODO Tracking Tool

I was bored and created a spreadsheet to track results and profits (or losses) on modo. You can download it here.  You can also look at my oldish article on the EV of various events on Starcity.

Use


The document is pretty simple to use, all it requires is that you input each event you play in, the date of the event, and your record in that event. The following screen capture shows the information required.

Date:  The date of the event (3/14)
Event:  The event type (allowable values are 2M (for a constructed 2-man), 8M (for a constructed 8M), DE (for a constructed DE), sDE (for a sealed DE), Swiss (for a swiss draft), 4322 (for a 4-3-2-2 draft), and 84 (for an 8-4 draft).  Please note that the limited event tracking does not account for the value of cards opened, but feel free to add that to your profit if you'd like.
Format:  The format of the event (for constructed:  T2, Block, Momir, Pauper; for limited:  M12 and ISD).
Wins:  The number of wins you got in the event.
Losses:  Number of losses you got in the event.

Since the Spreadsheet takes care of pricing, the only other thing you have to update is in a second included sheet which can be accessed by clicking on the tab on the bottom of Excel.

Once selected the sheet will look like this

All you have to do is put in the date (under Date) and the buying price for ISD, DKA, and M12.  If you do not put in the price for a date the tracking functionality will not track profits correctly.


I present this for free (and just give the raw sheets so they can be customized to your liking), but if you feel like you got any particular value out of this (or you just <3 me), feel free to donate (which will inspire me to make more/better/useful tools in the future):

Chris Mascioli
@dieplstks on Twitter

#MOCSGate

Two known players have decided to have other people play in the MOCS for them today.  While this is usually impossible to detect, these two players decided to play in real life events (an SCGOpen and a GP) that are occurring at the SAME TIME as said MOCS.  It's time to make some call outs:

1)  Stephen G. Mann, smann on modo:

2)  Andrejs Prost, baconator5000 on modo

Chris Mascioli
@dieplstks on Twitter (follow me!  Please)

#dieplstksCotD

Apparently twitter doesn't save tweets very long, here's the original three posts from my Stupid Fucking Magic Article Comment of the Day:

Scott Seaver

This comment was about Edgar Flores being banned

John Crutcher

This was about the playmat art