Nice article Pete. I think you're right on the money on this one. When you break things down, it's just not worth it to cheat. Even if you created some elaborate untraceable strategy, you would still need a variety of things to happen (No one waiting for a match, etc.) in order to earn some marginal profit. It was worth it because it was spread over a few individual.
It was a small group of 2-4 people. 10 people were DQed from the league, but in reality I suspect 13-14 should have been DQed. I suspect the reason they were not was because CS was able to connect the 10 accounts to each other, while the other three accounts were a little more difficult.
I doubt league collusion will happen anytime in the near future. In the last MED league I was in, 2 people were DQed. I suspect it was on account that they were two accounts registered to the same individual- so they are taking a much tougher stance on the issue.
i loved the screenshot "the use of caps in not necessary" and everyone in the room is like "yeah whatever".. i loved it.. good times.. this should be on the tournament center at the mothership.
Thanks for the PDC plug and great article as always; very informative. www.pdcmagic.com has essentially ursurped www.paupermagic.com as the PDC hangout, so please make your start there if you are interested in participating in our exciting and fun format.
Ham is right, we play a variety of formats with a tournament every day of the week (sometimes 2!). We have two events in Classic, Future Extended and Standard along with an alternate format event and an event for Block Constructed (We are going into Ravnica block soon). Come check us out!
Magic + Booze = good times. I can't think of a Premier Event that I've played in where I wasn't drinking something to help me relax. Maybe that's why my rating is so low.
Agreed. We don't know how many previous "smart" cheaters there may have been, but this is a clear example of dumb ones.
I think the method in the article is unlikely to give false positives. You can get a confidence interval for the rate of going 5-0 given random pairings. 10% might be a strong outlier, but still believable. I doubt that 18 or 23% would be. But yeah...all would-be cheaters will have to be smarter now. Shouldn't people clever/dedicated enough to run this kind of shenanigans being playing, I don't know, blackjack?
PDC is always going to have a soft spot for me as it was my first Constructed competitive format that I really got in to. It's an amazing format and a great way to get people into competitive events. Hopefully I can spend more time actually playing it instead of just watching it from the sidelines like I do now. :)
Yeah, it feels very strange to only run 1 Korlash... Another Urborg is definitely worth looking into, but for week two I'll have no problem getting my urborg out. :)
The main problem with this whole approach is that it is completly useless in any specific case.
Take, for example, the leagues you bolded and called shenanigans on. From a statistical point of view, there seems to be a problem. What if you look in the league and all the counting matches of 5-0s were played against a wide variety of opponents? Wizards can't ban accounts here. In fact, this situation is way less suspicious than a league with an average number of 5-0s but where all these played their counting matches against the same 5 players.
Smart cheaters could wait near the end of leagues with a low number of 5-0s for example, and cheat in those and avoid being detected by your methods. I cant think of lots other workaround.
In conclusion: I think counting 5-0s in a league can too easily have too many false positive and false negatives to be a useful method.
Looking for pattern in opponents in counting matches of 5-0s is much stronger.
I remember reading about something like this happening a long time ago in 7th edition leagues in the WotC Boards archive. They did something similar to what the people in the Coldsnap leagues did, but eventually they got caught. So something like this probably will happen again, but not for a while.
Yep, that's where the term came from ("187 on a :censored: cop" - Snoop). However, once people started calling Nekrataal a '187 creature' those who didn't know the reason started applying the term to all creatures with a 'comes into play' ability, which has become the de facto definition now, as more people in Magic recognize 187 as CITP than CIPT: Destroy now a days.
Lol I enjoyed the article... Even though it left me with this major headache (or maybe the headache is from me being sick..?)
Still a nice take on the article! One thing I'd like to say is that I always thought 187 creatures were creatures that killed other creatures as they came into play (Named as such because 187 is the code for murder in the Los Angeles Police Dept. and the Visions Nekrataal's set number was 187)
I like the warning too but DONKEYOT gives him the burn in the same screen shot. Priceless! Nice article
You are an inspiration to us all.
Also, props for the cameo. Now I too can share the your illegitimate fame.
Ack! (Sorry for the blank post)
Nice article Pete. I think you're right on the money on this one. When you break things down, it's just not worth it to cheat. Even if you created some elaborate untraceable strategy, you would still need a variety of things to happen (No one waiting for a match, etc.) in order to earn some marginal profit. It was worth it because it was spread over a few individual.
It was a small group of 2-4 people. 10 people were DQed from the league, but in reality I suspect 13-14 should have been DQed. I suspect the reason they were not was because CS was able to connect the 10 accounts to each other, while the other three accounts were a little more difficult.
I doubt league collusion will happen anytime in the near future. In the last MED league I was in, 2 people were DQed. I suspect it was on account that they were two accounts registered to the same individual- so they are taking a much tougher stance on the issue.
LOL, please write more.
This was the greatset article of all time. It deserves a peabody. Yes I'm drunk.
i loved the screenshot "the use of caps in not necessary" and everyone in the room is like "yeah whatever".. i loved it.. good times.. this should be on the tournament center at the mothership.
Thanks for the PDC plug and great article as always; very informative. www.pdcmagic.com has essentially ursurped www.paupermagic.com as the PDC hangout, so please make your start there if you are interested in participating in our exciting and fun format.
Ham is right, we play a variety of formats with a tournament every day of the week (sometimes 2!). We have two events in Classic, Future Extended and Standard along with an alternate format event and an event for Block Constructed (We are going into Ravnica block soon). Come check us out!
Magic + Booze = good times. I can't think of a Premier Event that I've played in where I wasn't drinking something to help me relax. Maybe that's why my rating is so low.
Great job Mirromage.
I don't advocate drinking either but holy crap that was funny. Grats on placing 2nd while drunk.
Agreed. We don't know how many previous "smart" cheaters there may have been, but this is a clear example of dumb ones.
I think the method in the article is unlikely to give false positives. You can get a confidence interval for the rate of going 5-0 given random pairings. 10% might be a strong outlier, but still believable. I doubt that 18 or 23% would be. But yeah...all would-be cheaters will have to be smarter now. Shouldn't people clever/dedicated enough to run this kind of shenanigans being playing, I don't know, blackjack?
PDC is always going to have a soft spot for me as it was my first Constructed competitive format that I really got in to. It's an amazing format and a great way to get people into competitive events. Hopefully I can spend more time actually playing it instead of just watching it from the sidelines like I do now. :)
Yeah, it feels very strange to only run 1 Korlash... Another Urborg is definitely worth looking into, but for week two I'll have no problem getting my urborg out. :)
Thanks for the feedback!
~Erik
"That means they played for 25 hours – or for an hourly wage of about $3.00 an hour.
I think this article slightly missed the point.
The main problem with this whole approach is that it is completly useless in any specific case.
Take, for example, the leagues you bolded and called shenanigans on. From a statistical point of view, there seems to be a problem. What if you look in the league and all the counting matches of 5-0s were played against a wide variety of opponents? Wizards can't ban accounts here. In fact, this situation is way less suspicious than a league with an average number of 5-0s but where all these played their counting matches against the same 5 players.
Smart cheaters could wait near the end of leagues with a low number of 5-0s for example, and cheat in those and avoid being detected by your methods. I cant think of lots other workaround.
In conclusion: I think counting 5-0s in a league can too easily have too many false positive and false negatives to be a useful method.
Looking for pattern in opponents in counting matches of 5-0s is much stronger.
Nice article Hamtastic, I didn't realise that Tharion's blog was that active.
Wish I could play more pdc, but it's difficult in my time zone.
I remember reading about something like this happening a long time ago in 7th edition leagues in the WotC Boards archive. They did something similar to what the people in the Coldsnap leagues did, but eventually they got caught. So something like this probably will happen again, but not for a while.
As a Math Grad (2002) i can say that this article was so fun to read. Thanks for the precise analysis on the topic :)
Another great article as usual.
Your deck really needs 4 korlash, and another urborg. Playing with only 1 korlash is blasphemy!
Why have all the Doran decklist dropped Profane Command?! It's a completely sick card that WINS GAMES especially when combined with witness....
He asked me to read it before it went live and I must admit it was very good, the only regret I have was the seziure that came with it.
weird aggro flow decklist -_-
You know, I am not entirely sure. I did not build these decks, I just found examples of them throughout the internet
Why on earth would the T&N deck play 2 vine trellis over Wall of roots? And there really should be 4 wall of roots...
Yep, that's where the term came from ("187 on a :censored: cop" - Snoop). However, once people started calling Nekrataal a '187 creature' those who didn't know the reason started applying the term to all creatures with a 'comes into play' ability, which has become the de facto definition now, as more people in Magic recognize 187 as CITP than CIPT: Destroy now a days.
/end old guy rant
Lol I enjoyed the article... Even though it left me with this major headache (or maybe the headache is from me being sick..?)
Still a nice take on the article! One thing I'd like to say is that I always thought 187 creatures were creatures that killed other creatures as they came into play (Named as such because 187 is the code for murder in the Los Angeles Police Dept. and the Visions Nekrataal's set number was 187)
Still a lovely article.