City of Traders

The Maybe-A-Few-Hundred-Dollars Question

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By: Travis Allen

Think back to last March. If you were in school, it probably involved a spring break. Exams and the subsequent vacation were visible on the horizon. The weather was breaking and the color seemed to be seeping back into the world. Spring was just barely upon us, and with it the promise of another vital summer. Summer Bloom

Come June, the sun was finally up before you were. Warm rays on your face stirred you out of bed. Your Facebook calendar seemed more alive. Weekends were spent at beaches and on bike rides. Friday and Saturday nights were spent on dates, at house parties, or lounging on patios during cocktail hour. Vacations were taken, camping trips embarked on, picnics eaten.

Or maybe you played Call of Duty all summer in an air-conditioned basement because you hate living life.

Either way, the summer is spent doing a lot of things. One thing it is frequently not spent doing is playing Magic. Making time for PTQs and IQs is easy in the dreary February months when there’s four hours of sunlight and a total lack of desire to be outside. But when it’s light until 9pm and it seems like every weekend there’s a thrilling activity to partake in, those three and four hour car rides to sit in a convention hall seem much less appealing.

The reason I’m waxing poetically about the exploits of summer is that they will have a bearing on card prices this year, and to what extent I’m still trying to come to understand. This year marks the first time since the summer of 2008, six years ago, that we will not have a Standard PTQ through the warmest months of the year.

Typically, the Standard PTQ season has occurred throughout the majority of the summer. Cards in the spring set were immediately Standard relevant, as PTQs began shortly after their release. As the fall season and the rotation of the senior set drew near, soon-to-rotate cards held value a little better than one would expect due to this continued demand. The grinder wasn’t happy about having to hold onto playsets of Thragtusk or Geist of Saint Traft or Huntmaster of the Fells, but as they were needed to play in PTQs, he or she bit the bullet and held onto them while they slowly slipped in value. The truly dedicated may have even kept more than one or two decks available, choosing to have access to most playsets of constructed staples as opposed to only a single deck.

Huntmaster of the Fells

This constructed demand helps ease the senior set out amidst a majority of players beginning to divest from rotating staples. Once March and April roll around, many players are aware of the fact that their senior block cards will soon be leaving the format. They begin selling and trading any additional cards they don’t absolutely need, so as to reduce the impact of rotation to their collection’s value. This guaranteed loss in value of cards is mitigated by a group of players continuing to need them to play in PTQs. Stores still have some number of players they can sell rotating cards to and players figure they can find someone, somewhere that will trade for them.

With the changing of the schedule, come March the Standard PTQ season is over. What’s left to keep RtR cards afloat? A quick glance at the GP schedule shows a whopping seven Standard Grand Prixs between March 9th and September, only three of which are in the US. It also appears there will be roughly twenty SCG opens, and then whatever IQs they happen to hold. Most players will be unable to attend a single one of those GPs, and there will be maybe one to two opens close enough to reasonably travel to.

Imagine it’s March 9th. Between now and September, there are no Standard GPs for you to attend, and a single open. The only other Standard events are your local FNM. What’s your incentive to hold onto Rav block staples?

When I started writing this article, I wasn’t sure what to expect to happen to the demand. Sure you were losing the PTQ season, but there would be enough events to mostly keep prices on a slow slide downwards, not an abject plummet, right? I’m not as convinced anymore. The only place the average player is going to be playing Standard is at FNM, and with all the alternatives to Magic the summer brings with it, even weekly attendance there is suspect. On top of that, why hold a $40 playset of Desecration Demons just to goof around at FNM? There’s a strong incentive to sell them off for booze money and play a janky nearly-block deck until rotation occurs. Huntmaster of the Fells

It’s hard not to see the closest thing possible to a freefall of RtR prices in March. With barely anything left to support demand for the cards, I doubt most players will consider it worth holding onto cards like Nightveil Specter and Blood Baron. With thousands on thousands of players ready to ditch playsets, prices will drop like a lead weight. March 9th won’t be all doom and gloom, though. Theros cards won’t be subject to this, and with the block Pro Tour around the same time, there may even be a slight uptick in demand. Players shifting RtR cards will want to trade them into something, and Theros will be a good choice. Additionally, Modern staples won’t be quite as vulnerable to the drop. Voice of Resurgence, while probably not a $35-$40 card anymore. will hold value along with the shocks. Those of us with long-term aspirations can treat this as an opportunity to score Modern and Casual growers on the cheap, especially if people are willing to trade them at below-market value just to get rid of them.

I can’t say for certain that prices will react this way, as this is all just an educated guess at this point. Perhaps FNM demand will prove itself quite worthy, and cards will hang on longer than anticipated. That’s not where I’d be putting my money though.

One last note before I go: The recent counterfeit news has been all over the mtgverse, from Reddit to Rosewater’s Tumblr to SCG. Most with a pulpit have been proclaiming that these are bad news across the board for Magic players. The long and short of it is that while counterfeits make cards cheap in the short term, they also mean the only place you’ll be able to play Magic a year later is at home, since every store will have closed shop.

However, there seems to be a vocal group on the internet that are championing these facsimiles as some sort of Robin Hood, rescuing the oppressed proletariat from the bourgeoisie WOTC and their ostentatious cardboard. I firmly reiterate that there is nothing further from the truth. Everyone needs to set their frustrations with the cost of Magic aside, both legitimate and illegitimate, for the good of the game and the community. Magic is full of self-professed geniuses. It’s time for all of you that consider yourselves bastions of free thinking and enlightenment to put your ideals into practice and be willing to consider information that may force you to reevaluate your worldview.

Counterfeits are bad for Magic. If you don’t believe me, go read the numerous articles that have been written about it. If you do believe me, go tell someone that doesn’t.

The Gilded Goblin

Weekly News and Highlights

Instead of focusing my article on one topic this week, I am going to focus on recent announcements from Wizards and what that means for all of us.

M15 Preliminary News

There were some interesting revelations released about the upcoming M15 core set. The biggest piece of news from this announcement was that they were adding 20 extra cards to the set. This was discovered by taking the card count that Wizards provides with a set announcement (for M15 this was 269) and comparing it to M14’s 249 total cards.

Before Mark Rosewater explained that the 20 extra cards were going to be uncommons, wild theories were being thrown around like candy. For example, that Wizards was finally making room for Zendikar fetchlands or some other such nonsense. Now that the outlandish theories can be put to rest, lets discuss the impact that 20 new uncommons will have on the set and for Standard in general.

This is a great idea for from a limited perspective because it will allow them to print more powerful cards at the uncommon level. A major comparison was made with the M14 rare Domestication, which was previously an uncommon in Rise of the Eldrazi, and then was upgraded to rare in M14 so that it would not kill limited. If Domestication is reprinted again in M15 I would be 99% sure it would be an uncommon due to this announcement.

From a financial perspective this could allow for certain uncommons in M15 to spike higher than usual if they are played heavily in a future Standard archetype. It would not surprise me to see $5 uncommons that reach the popularity of Young Pyromancer, Burning-Tree Emissary, or Boros Charm once M15 becomes scarce. Keep this mind when drafting or trading – getting a few chase M15 uncommons as a throw in could be a good strategy in the future.

Some are other tidbits were that the Magic card face was being redesigned and that Garruk is making a reappearance in M15. I don’t think the card face change is going to do anything negative for the game – as the saying goes, even if you put $100 bills in Magic packs players will complain about the way you folded them. Garruk reappearing is interesting though because many players noticed that the artwork depicted that he was still veil cursed – which lead to theories about a Garruk Relentless reprint. While nothing is out of the realm of possibility, I doubt that this will happen unless double faced cards start popping up in spoilers for M15. Double faced cards need a special type of print run in order to produce them in a cost efficient manner so unless there are double faced cards being spoiled in the future at all rarity levels you can count out a Garruk Relentless reprint.

Coming Up – Born of the Gods

Since BNG is on the horizon and spoiler season will soon be starting, let’s revisit my article about picking up multicolored cards for missing temples to see if anything is still relevant based on the spoiled U/W, G/W, and B/R temples:

U/W – I did not predict that this temple would make any existing cards more powerful and  instead would reinforce existing U/W control archetypes and make Esper more viable. Cards in these colors have already spiked or reached their peaks – though there is always chance for the double spike before the season is over. Unfortunately capitalizing on a second spike would be very difficult, as many players will not buy into a card at such a high price that also has such a short life.

G/W – I’ve been a fan of Advent of the Wurm for a long time and the G/W temple could make it finally take off. I would definitely hold on to any copies of Advent you picked up in the previous months to see if the G/W temple can make it take off. Fleecemane Lion has taken a nosedive in price as I predicted, and can be had for as cheap as $2 from several vendors. I think this is the floor for Watchwolf+ because it still has a lot of casual appeal in addition to potentially being relevant in Standard over the next year. Loxodon Smiter is already being played pretty extensively so I don’t think the G/W temple will boost the price much. Any gains it might see would be marginal compared to the current price. I don’t think Armada Wurm is going anywhere; it is too pricy for Standard, though Trostani could definitely spike if a Populate deck is established during Standard season. In summary, watch Advent of the Wurm and Trostani the closest for price spikes.

B/R – Exava is dirt cheap right now and the right deck could really make her take off. I don’t foresee her going over $4 due to the intro pack inclusion. This is still a juicy pay off if you can hold your copies. Rakdos’s Return is already $5, but it could go up before the end of the season. Tymaret and Underworld Cerberus are very cheap for a rare and mythic respectively, but they’ll need additional help from BNG to be relevant in Standard. All in all, watch these B/R cards over the next few weeks.

Modern Announcement – Event Deck

Last week I discussed some trending cards in Modern and little did I know that Wizards was planning on releasing a Modern event deck! For $75 this certainly ain’t cheap, which means pricey format staples are being reprinted. Which staples remains to be seen yet there has been a lot of speculation as to what these might be based on the revelation that there will be double sided tokens included with the Modern event deck.

One popular theory is that it could be Mono Blue Tron. This makes sense because we could see Wurmcoil Engine tokens, and also gives Wizards a way to release more copies of Remand into the market. At the same time, they can also reprint staples like Karn that have been getting outrageously expensive since Modern has become more popular. Other potential reprints for Mono Blue Tron include Spellskite, Oblivion Stone, All is Dust, and Eye of Ugin which have been steadily going up in price over the years. Unfortunately Mono Blue and other Tron decks do not usually run fetch lands which are a sorely needed reprint in the format.

This leads into another major theory, which is that it is a B/W tokens list. This would allow Wizards to reprint Marsh Flats and/or Arid Mesa along with cards like Auriok Champion, Hero of Bladehold, Thoughtseize, Inquisition of Kozliek, and Windbrisk Heights. You can read more about the community’s speculation at http://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/1urx5j/wizards_announces_modern_event_deck.

Again, let me reiterate that this is all pure speculation at this time. I wanted to highlight this information to make a point, which is that Modern speculation targets should never be held for the long term (1 year or more). With this announcement, and in addition to last year’s Modern Masters, Wizards has made it clear they have no qualms with offering regular reprints of Modern staples. Not to put the reprint fear into you, but plan your Modern acquisitions accordingly and realize that there is a time limit when holding a Modern card.

Counterfeits and the Community’s Reaction

After being discovered by others at the Quiet Speculation and Twitter communities, a post surfaced on Reddit describing a company in China that is making near-perfect counterfeit Magic cards (http://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/1uoccf/beware_very_accurate_fake_cards_from_china_and/). If you check out the album of samples that the company offers you can see that they have the technology to reprint not only just Standard or Modern staples, they also can make Legacy staples like dual lands, Onslaught Fetchlands, Wasteland, and Force of Will. Personally, I haven’t seen the fakes myself to verify how accurate they are. Regardless, they offer a startling insight into the power of printers today and the efforts that someone will take to make a quick buck off of Magic copyright infringement.

A lot of people on Reddit were concerned that once the technology was perfected there would be no easy way to tell the difference between a real and fake, and thus these counterfeits would crash the secondary market for Magic singles. While I agree that this is a concern, I believe that ultimately these counterfeit cards will be of little consequence to the game at large.

  • The barrier of entry for counterfeiting Magic cards that are facsimiles of the real versions is very costly. There are several methods used already to create counterfeit cards (P9 counterfeits have always been an issue in the market). To make a good one takes a lot of trial and error, as I’m sure we’ve all seen some pretty comical fakes in our time. The printing equipment and distribution of cards are costly (though I admit, these business processes could decrease in cost over time as technology gets better,) which is evident because the vendor requires a minimum order of about $500. Only dedicated scammers will be able to purchase fakes en masse, which means that once the scammer is found out the community can be alerted to them and shut them down by having law enforcement intervene.

  • Even if counterfeits become a huge problem online, buyers will just rely more on big name stores like Starcity, Channelfireball, etc. to purchase their cards because they will be a reputable source. Lucky for Magic, collectability of the cards usually comes in second to players wanting and needing them for formats like Standard.

  • It won’t affect the sales of Magic cards at brick and mortar establishments because store owners are typically experienced at distinguishing between a fake and real card because they have seen hundreds of thousands of Magic cards over their lifetime. Buying directly from stores shouldn’t be an issue either.

  • Even the more experienced players will be able to tell the difference because there will always be little signs that indicate that the card is fake, since the printing process is so hard to replicate exactly.

  • Wizards is working on changing the way cards are designed to help counter the fakes entering the market (one reason I suspect the card frame change in M15)

Of course, there are concerns especially for older formats like Legacy and Vintage. If a card is double sleeved and sitting across from you at a table would you be able to tell it is a fake? I would elaborate a bit more on this concern, but I feel user whatmakesyouhappy at Reddit did a good job explaining this in the mtgfinance subreddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/mtgfinance/comments/1uv7ng/analysis_of_potential_impact_of_chinese/).

To summarize their analysis, the main concern is Modern, which is on the cusp of becoming eternal and still has crazy prices on more recently printed cards like Tarmogoyf and Dark Confidant. Again, like I discussed in my Modern section above, Wizards is all about the reprint in Modern – they can stay ahead of the counterfeits by making sure they have regular reprints which the Modern event deck all but ensures. The other formats are less affected because Standard needs must be fulfilled immediately (can’t wait 2 weeks for a card from overseas) while Legacy is more established (most players have the cards) and Vintage has always had proxies.

The counterfeits will exist, they have always existed, and Wizards and the community will ride this wave of counterfeits like every other wave before it. The security of purchasing from reputable sources, along with the effort to make high-demand cards available will help alleviate the impact of counterfeits on the market.

Wrap Up

That wraps up my introspection of last week’s news and my analysis on what it all means. I will leave you with some cards that I’ve noticed have been trending upward on the MTGPrice 50 Biggest Gainers page:

Kami of the Crescent Moon – Another Nekusar related spike? Yawn. At least this one may have Modern applications.

Reflecting Pool – Appearing across a smattering of Modern decks, Reflecting Pool has slowly been ticking up in price over the past week. Will this be the next land to break $20? Probably not, as Jund prefers not to play the land and Pool is mainly played in Tier 2 three-color-or-more builds. I don’t believe this card has enough of a profit potential to start grabbing copies.

Omnath, Locus of Mana – Did not expect this guy to appear near the top of the list. Apparently he can occasionally be found for $5 from several vendors on TCGPlayer. A popular EDH general, his demand is driven by the casual market. Expect Omanth to continue his steady rise into the future.

Damnation – I sort of saw this coming, though did not expect that it would break $30 and keep going. I guess Grixis and gifts control in Modern are becoming more popular, in addition to the casual appeal of the card. However, unless you need these for a deck, I would recommend staying away because the reprint potential here is quite high. (They did reprint Wrath of God in the latest Commander precons). The price really can’t go much higher so the potential for profits are slim at this point.

Tectonic Edge – Another expected rise. What could be the final price on Tec Edge? I think it might hit the highs of Inquisition of Kozilek , which is around $6-$7. The buy-in price is currently pretty high at $3, yet a rise to $6 is not out of the question come Modern season. Pick up your Tec Edges now before they get loony.

Casual Fridays

What is Patience Worth?

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By: Cliff Daigle

With Born of the Gods spoilers on the horizon, I’d like to take a look back at some of the cards that have slowly gone down in price, and point out that I am a big advocate of patience.

For those of you who don’t want to re-read something, the short version is that if you can wait on acquiring a card, the price will almost always go down, especially for cards that have very high initial prices. As a primarily casual player, I’m more than happy to be patient on picking up cards for decks or cubes at 50% (or less) of the price than the card debuts for.

As always, if you require a card immediately, it’ll usually cost you more. There’s a different art required for determining when a card will go up, and that’s something we will discuss soon.

Let’s start with the poster children for initially high prices that almost always go down over time: Planeswalkers.

Capture

Elspeth, Sun’s Champion: Look at this graph. She was over $40 at the beginning! I personally opened two early on and sold them each for $25 to buylists. She shows up occasionally as a one-or-two-of in some control lists, and while she’s fantastic at that, she doesn’t see enough play to keep her over $20 in the long term.

Where she does see play is all over the place in casual formats, and this being her third incarnation, I imagine there are some all-Elspeth decks running around. (Chandra and Jace have her beat at four each.) She’s consistently good in token decks, board-wipe decks, etc. I like her long-term chances. I doubt she’s hit bottom yet though, and I’m going to wait till she does before picking up what I need. 

Xenagos, the Reveler

Xenagos, the Reveler: Once $30, now pushing $10, he looked like he’d slide right into G/R Domri decks with an endless stream of tokens and mana acceleration. Again, though, he’s seeing just a smidgeon of play and has fallen faster than Elspeth, since he’s best in a creature-heavy deck. Where he’s really going to shine is in casual decks that love creatures. His ability is an upgrade over Gaea’s Cradle! You can abuse/re-use Cradle easier, but this level of mana ability is a rare and wonderful thing.

Xenagos is pretty affordable at this point, and I think we’ve found his floor. It’s difficult to have a planeswalker stay cheap. Tibalt is the exception–even Chandra Ablaze has found her price climbing upwards.

Master of Waves: An interesting case. He was not very expensive, and then the blue devotion deck blew up, and now he’s creeping back downward. I really like it as a pickup in the $10 range, since I believe that the devotion deck will get some fun tools with Born of the Gods and Journey into Nyx.

As an aside, I don’t believe that devotion decks will be big in a year. I think there will be another mutlicolor block, since that seems to be the pattern set. Return to Alara? Nonetheless, I’m looking to pick up devotion cards now at a low point, waiting for it to blow up again.

Thoughtseize: Wow. This was a $70 card! The new printing was around $30 at release, and now is $15 or less. There is HEAVY speculation that this price will go up in Modern PTQ season, but I’m not convinced. The printing of this at rare means that there are swarms of copies out there, not to mention the Modern players who already have their playset.

I’m always going to preach the long game. There’s money to be made in short-term transactions, but an approach to most cards, especially at the beginning, should be “Sell now, buy later.”

City of Traders, ProTrader

Bayesian Statistics: You Should Probably Read This Article

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By: Travis Allen

Over this past summer, I read Nate Silver’s book, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – but Some Don’t. I mentioned it in an article previously as being an excellent book for anyone who is interested in the type of content that appears here weekly. I’m not the only one who enjoyed it either; multiple people on my Twitter feed proclaimed fascination with it upon release. Chas Andres (@chasandres) was a particularly vocal supporter, and ended up writing a piece or two over on SCG about some of the book’s content shortly after it came out.

Possibility Storm

Today I want to discuss what was to me one of the most interesting, informative, useful, world-view-altering portions of the book. The Bayesian Theorem, and specifically Bayesian interpretation, is so broadly applicable to every aspect of our lives (MTG included) that it’s difficult not to consider every day occurrences through its lens.

The theorem was developed by Thomas Bayes, a statistician and minister from the early 18th century. The work was published posthumously, and received a pretty lukewarm reception initially. It wasn’t until the topic was revisited some time later that it became considerably more popular, and is now a major component of statistics.

Here’s the basic idea: Everything is a probability. Nothing – nothing – is 100% guaranteed. New information we obtain allows us to more accurately predict what will happen, but we’ll never be completely, unquestionably certain.

Let me show you the equation in its simplest form. Don’t be terrified.

d92e290c66d423e4798a22a3690cbd31

That isn’t so bad, is it? It’s just three simple letters a few times. (The book uses a slightly different equation, but the results are the same.) I’m not even going to force you to figure it out. I’m going to point you to the Wikipedia page, and if you’re curious about the math, it will do a far better job explaining it than I could. Instead, I’m going to explain it with some examples.

This first example I stole right out of Nate’s book. Imagine a woman going through a dresser drawer, and she finds a pair of panties that aren’t hers. Her first instinct is to assume her husband is cheating on her. That’s a pretty severe leap to make without any additional evidence though, isn’t it? If this woman had no reason to suspect her husband before, is it really appropriate to condemn him already? Someone without Bayesian interpretation may do that, but not this woman. She’s going to approach this with ~math~.

In order to get some numbers to plug in, she needs to do some guesstimating. The first thing she has to put a number on is what she thought the probability of her husband cheating on her was before she found the panties. This can be difficult, especially if you’re holding incriminating evidence in your hand. But she thinks rationally, and decides she had no reason to suspect him before this. She also happens to know that 4% of married spouses cheat each year. That seems like a good number to start with. So her prior expectation of her husband cheating on her – her “prior” – is 4%.

Next, she has to figure out the probability of the underwear being there assuming her husband is actually cheating on her. Basically she says to herself “If my husband is cheating on me, what are the odds I would have found this underwear?” He would probably be trying to cover his tracks if he was having an affair, so she wouldn’t expect to always find this incriminating evidence even if he was cheating. She decides to go with a coin flip – 50%. If he’s cheating on me, there’s a 50% chance I would find evidence like this.

Finally, what are the odds that this underwear is there if he isn’t cheating? Well, the number of reasons for strange panties in your house is pretty limited, and many of them are going to be quite suspect. Maybe he bought the panties for her as a gift, or received them as some promotional giveaway whilst walking through the mall, and forgot he put them there. Perhaps they’re his (no judgments.) Regardless of why, the chances of this underwear being there if he isn’t cheating are pretty small. She decides it’s maybe a 5% chance the underwear would show up if he isn’t cheating on her.

She then takes her three numbers and runs them through the equation. Her prior expectation of his cheating, 4%, the probability of finding the underwear if he is indeed cheating, 50%, and the probability of the underwear being there if he isn’t cheating, 5%. It spits out an answer of 29%. Her new expectation of his infidelity is 29%.

In a vacuum, that seems kind of low. She finds this women’s underwear, and it’s barely more than 25% likely that he’s cheating on her? How is that possible? It stems from the fact that she really didn’t expect he was cheating on her at all beforehand. If that prior expectation was higher, perhaps because he was working late all the time or being overly protective of his phone, then the end result would have been a lot higher than 29%.

Let’s try this out with a more on-theme example. Let’s try and figure out what the chances are that True-Name Nemesis is getting banned at the next B&R update in light of a new piece of information. 

True-Name Nemesis

We’ll begin with our prior. Right now, without any additional knowledge, what do we think the odds are he’ll get banned? Well, they don’t ban cards in Legacy very often. We could just look at the total number of banned non-ante cards in the format as a percentage, but I feel that is a bit misleading in this context. People have reasonable suspicion TNN may get the axe, but nobody is eyeballing Lightning Bolt in the same way. Let’s say that right now, TNN is maybe 5% to get banned. 5% is a much greater chance than any random Legacy card, and simultaneously reflects Wizard’s proclaimed hands-off approach.

Now, we consider new information. How about this tumblr post from one Mr. Mark Rosewater? Hmm, that’s pretty damning. Look at the language he uses. “Well aware of the public’s feelings” and “will impact how we act in the future.” Make no mistake – that is severe word choice. He easily could have said something along the lines of “TNN is new and we want to give a resilient format like Legacy a chance to try to solve the problem first.” Instead, he made no attempt to indicate they are giving the format time to shake out. He acknowledged people hated it, and said they would react.

So, what’s the chances that Mark would say this if they are planning on banning the card? I would put it pretty high, say, 80%. There is really no stronger answer he could give here.

Finally, what are the odds he would say this if Wizards wasn’t planning on banning TNN? Well, Mark has been known to be purposefully misleading before. We’ll say there’s maybe a 15% chance he would use language this strong even if they weren’t thinking of banning it in the near future.

Given those three numbers – 5%, 80%, and 15% – our final probability of TNN being banned in the upcoming announcement is 22%. That may feel a little low, but remember our initial expectation of it being banned was only 5%. It jumped 17 percentage points after this announcement from Mark. That’s a big jump.

Perhaps you are more convinced Wizards is going to ban TNN, and your prior expectation without any additional information is not 5%, but 30%. With that single change in number, the odds TNN gets banned rises to 70%. That’s a pretty solid chance of him being banned.

These examples show you what happens when you utilize real numbers, but what I really want you to focus on is the underlying principle. When we discuss things that will happen in the Magic world, it’s always a probability. When someone says Genesis Wave or Threads of Disloyalty or Spellskite is going to jump in price, what they mean is “I believe, given the information I have, the probability of this card rising in price is high enough that I feel justified proclaiming it, and I’m betting that it will happen.”

Aside: Notice my use of the word “betting” there – speculation is really just informed gambling. You’re playing odds. They’re considerably better than casino odds, of course, but at the end of the day you’re putting money up against the chance of something happening. 

You may not be aware of it, but you are probably using this principle frequently when you play the game as well. Imagine you’re playing against a control deck, and the board is empty. You cast a reasonable threat that will kill your opponent in a turn or two. Your opponent lets it resolve. Well, before you cast the spell, you were pretty sure he had a counterspell in his hand. After he let this resolve though, you swing way the other way – why wouldn’t he counter it if he could? You now feel pretty confident that he doesn’t have a counter. Then you pass the turn, he plays a land and passes back. You go to declare attackers, and he Downfalls the creature. Suddenly, you have once again found yourself pretty sure he has the counterspell. The reason he didn’t counter the threat last turn was that he didn’t need to. Threads of Disloyalty

See how with each piece of information, you update your expectation of what your opponent is holding? All (decent) players do this. Recognize this, and try extending the practice into more areas of your life. Use the concept, and in situations where you feel you have good numbers, maybe even use the equation. You’ll find you rush to conclusions far less, are more equipped to plan for contingencies, and in general have more reasonable expectations of what may come.

All of the predictions in my article last week were formed based on frequent Bayesian interpretations. Every time new product is spoiled, an announcement is made (or not made,) or someone from Wizards says something, I factor that into my expectations of an event, and see how it influences the probability. I would be lying if I said I explicitly used numbers, but I definitely find myself mentally ballparking percentages all the time.

Holding to Bayesian interpretation will also help you be more objective. Say you hold some belief that you are very certain about, perhaps 99.99% sure of. A single piece of evidence to the contrary is not going to sway you far from that belief. But if you remove your personal prejudice from the issue and fairly factor in each new piece of information, you may find that your previous rock-solid belief is now considerably less so. Holding a firm belief is not foolish, but doing so in the face of bountiful evidence certainly is. Don’t be that guy. Be the guy willing to learn and grow.

There’s a lot more information about Bayesian statistics out there. If this tiny taste I’ve given you piques your interest, I highly encourage you to do some more reading. In the meantime, go forth and be probabilistic!

  • Genesis Wave spiked on Tuesday afternoon, and as I write this, the cheapest copy is $6 on TCGPlayer. If you have any, sell now. Yes, the card could end up more expensive, but it’s far more likely it doesn’t. (Probability and the Greater Fool Theory all in one!)
  • With Genesis Wave spiking, Primeval Titan is on the edge. There’s been chatter about him online lately, paired with a slow rise over the last few months. He’s going to be in any deck with Wave. It won’t take much to push him over the edge at this point. He’s not going to be $25, but $12-$18 seems pretty reasonable.
  • I don’t have any specific results to point to, but I like Threads of Disloyalty. It’s been rising for months, it’s always been floating around Modern, it only has one printing, and continues to get better in the face of awesome small creatures. I doubt it’s going to be bought out tomorrow, but I wouldn’t hesitate to grab copies where you can.

 

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