Hammie’s The State of the Program for January 11th

I do like that you can build a tier 1 deck almost instantly online (provided you can afford it), but I don't like the functionality of the program. Nor do I necessarily enjoy the lack of format diversity in paper. Neither one fits me quite right...

Your 5 differences between MTG and MTGO are interesting. But I believe they are mostly a "why TOURNAMENT COMPETITIVE MTG is different from TOURNAMENT COMPETITIVE MTGO". "The game" and "the game played at a tournament competitive level" are two very different things already. Outside assistance, intentional draws, judges, and chess clocks only matter in a tournament competitive environment. They're not inherently part of the game, they're part of the game as it's usually played within that environment.

Now, the infinite rule affects all instances of the game, instead. My opinion on that is similar to my opinion on the chess clocks: the MTGO way is the way that should be, but that the paper world can't apply or afford. In this sense, MTGO is MTG in an ideal universe. In our imperfect universe, we can't have chess clocks at every Magic table (which would include your kitchen table). Also, in our imperfect universe, we need to find an answer to the question, "How many tokens do you create?" When, for the sake of convenience, we allow a player to say, "One million", that's an approximation. And it's a very bad one, because it affects the game in so many ways (including the trending of combo decks). It's also irritating to me, because, no, there's no way you could create one million tokens. It's like pretending you have a superpower that lets you stop time and, worse, perfectly handle a number of objects that the human mind can't possibly handle. Even just saying out loud "I create a token" one million times while tapping and untapping your contraption would take more than one month of time. It's preposterous. Worse: it takes out the strategic choice of deciding how many of those damn tokens you need (I experience this any time I go for a Kiki-Jiki infinite endgame, for instance: he's at 20 life, are 7 Restoration Angels enough? Or is he going to kill one? And so on.) This becomes time management when playing with the clock, a skill you don't need to have on MTG.

There's also a simple proof that the MTGO way is the correct way that the paper universe just can't sustain: they never tried or planned to program into MTGO a dialog box where the client asks you how many times do you want to use an infinitely recursive effect. It wouldn't be that hard to create. But it would be wrong. Ironically, MTGO works within the boundaries of the real life more than MTG in this case.

My 5 differences between MTG and MTGO, overall, competitive play be damned, are these:

1. When you play MTG, you need to move your cards between decks, put them into sleeves, shuffle them, and physically interact with them in several ways. There's not an equivalent for this on MTGO, for better (cards don't deteriotate, you don't need more than 4 copies of any of them) or worse (you don't really own and "feel" a physical object).
2. When you play MTG, you need to manually keep track of life, turns, and counters; do the math on combat damage; flip transformers back and forth; fetch tokens; and whatnot. When you play MTGO, the client takes care of all this stuff, sparing you some brain power, reducing brain exhaustion, and letting you focus on your game choices rather than on accounting work.
3. When you play MTGO, you see the material representation of the rules, the always elusive stack, and even what the rules define as "the game" checking for the status of things. Barring bugs, you don't have to argue with the opponent about a rule, or call for a judge every third turn: the game is your supreme judge. (Of course, as said, bugs permitting.) All this makes you understand the game a lot better than when playing MTG, improving your MTG play too.
4. When you play MTG, you can read your opponent's face, like in a (real life) poker game. When you play MTGO, this aspect is completely lost (if not for some weak stuff like tapping yor mana to bluff an answer or pausing for a miracle). On the same lines, when you play MTG, you're playing a board game, and board games improve your social skills. When you play MTGO, you're playing a videogame, and videogames aren't as good for your social life.

And of course, the most important difference:

5. When you play MTG in public, you need to have your pants on. When you play MTGO, you don't.

Just noticed - the second deck I listed under Modern is actually Legacy. The part about winning the GP is right, but the GP was Legacy.

Paul said, "I guess there are judges who let sloppy play slide but I can't imagine that happening at the highest level all the time without comment."
Check out the video sometime during a Star City tournament. Supposedly top-tier players make a lot of
sloppy mistakes and there are no judges rushing in to correct it. You'd be surprised by some of the stuff
these guys do and get away with. Not necessarily cheating so much as it is just not playing correctly.
It's funny when you read viewer comments and they all seem to say variations of the same thing: "I can't believe no one caught that!"