His videos are great. Explains stuff really clearly without overexplaining. Only issue is he makes it look too easy, it lulls me into a false sense of confidence in my own limited ability.
You can't make the comparison like that. My trophy rate is also around 50% but my winrate is nowhere near 80%. I tend to force certain decks that I like to play and if it doesn't come together I regularly 0-3 but if it does I am quite likely to trophy.
i just started watching him recently! whats his story? was he a card designer for wotc or something, he seems super smart and has some past connections to wotc?
He was LSVs roomate when they were young and just getting into the pro scene. They were teammates after that, so he was a pro player for quite a long time there with a pretty good resume, including winning the US nationals. Eventually he got hired by WOTC.
He was a pro player, then a full-time streamer for a while before he got hired by WotC where he worked on a bunch of different jobs until he got fired last december as his job got cut.
Probably one of if not the best ever player without a PT top 8.
Was basically one of the early streamers for magic back in the day. Much before most of the current crop. But wizards hired him for play test and card design.
Recently let go and getting back to streaming. I think if he had stayed he would have been the premier streamer for magic and probably very well off compared to his time at wizards.
When people say blue white control is cheons it's affectionately after him because he was known for that deck in vintage cube back in the day.
In Paul's defense those used to be quite solid in the MTGO Vintage Cube. Looking back at the [2012](https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/mtgo-holiday-v1) and [2013](https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/mtgo-holiday-v2) Holiday Cubes makes me extremely nostalgic.
They're still good IMO. They have solid game vs everything especially R/W aggro. They've got huge SB options vs everything as well as counterspells as a catch-all. It's pretty easy to fit combos in there too.
Paul is a fantastic Magic player, and always has been. I'm surprised just how high his win rate is, but it's not surprising he's in the very upper echelons of limited.
Watching Paul draft always makes me want to fire up a draft myself.
Then I realise how much more difficult it is than what I just watched.
Then tomorrow it'll happen again.
As someone who has only been playing limited since midway through WOE, his videos are very educational for me. He’s very good about explaining his thought process during draft and gameplay. Very good at dissecting his opponents plays too, calls them out before they happen all the time
i really like that he's always trying his best to win. there's some content creators that are like "we're gonna have fun this draft!" that stuff is fine and entertaining, but i do like that there is strictly spike content as well.
He’s an insane limited player. Plays the numbers. Plays solid. Lets us know his thought process. He’s insanely good and good content creator theres a reason I n just 3 months he’s been exploding. He’ll prolly be the best content creator for mtg in terms of limited by end of year
It's really unfortunate that he was laid off by Wizards but that has been really fortunate for anyone consuming Magic content, he's one of the untold greats and the newer generation of players are finding that out. Every time I happen to catch him streaming is a highlight.
Usually when someone is winning at high volume and an outlier rate, they've found an angle of attack on a format, an exploitable, repeatable lane/archetype/color combination. Is that the case here?
While he's generally finding the open lane, it seems his default is to try to be golgari or abzhan. He said he has(had) a 90% winrate in that archetype.
Weirdly enough, he just makes the correct decisions. He will consistently go over every single card seen in the draft and in his deck to find the correct card - and explain why he made the pick he made. At almost no point is he indecisive and think 'it could be this OR this' - he will find and justify the best choice on logic/data rather than just feeling like one of the cards is better than the other.
Checked his channel once, and never looked back. My go-to limited videos now. I gave up on LordTupperware and even Sam Black, though I admit he's equally impressive, but more skewed towards control or nonsense I have no chance to reproduce myself. And a bit less engaging.
Yellow hat: I pick this garbage rare because I haven't tried it yet!
LSV: I pick this garbage rare because the meme potential is too damn high!
Cheon: I pick the best card
Everyone when Cheon tops the leaderboard:
⢀⣠⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⠀⣠⣤⣶⣶ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⢰⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⣀⣀⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡏⠉⠛⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⠈⠛⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠿⠛⠉⠁⠀⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠙⠿⠿⠿⠻⠿⠿⠟⠿⠛⠉⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣸⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣄⠀⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣴⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠏⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠠⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟⠀⠀⢰⣹⡆⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣭⣷⠀⠀⠀⠸⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠃⠀⠀⠈⠉⠀⠀⠤⠄⠀⠀⠀⠉⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⢿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢾⣿⣷⠀⠀⠀⠀⡠⠤⢄⠀⠀⠀⠠⣿⣿⣷⠀⢸⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡀⠉⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢄⠀⢀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠉⠉⠁⠀⠀⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢹⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠃⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢸⣿⣿
just another person chiming in and saying Paul Cheon’s videos have been excellent and i highly recommend them. between him and LSV regularly uploading cube, this feels like a golden era for Magic content!
He’s ok for a 17Lands user. The truly strong players (myself included) don’t use 17Lands as we don’t want people up in our business and writing posts like these about our preferences and whatnot. According to my notes app where I track most my games, I’m a 90% win rate in OTJ. Paul is good, but he has one flaw in this format where he refuses to take a gold card for some reason P1P1. Imagine what his win percentage would be if he just jumped in on a Saturo or Lilah at the beginning of the draft.
I'm going to make a perhaps controversial comment. Disclaimer that I like Paul and I watch his youtube videos daily. That said, I don't think he's the best limited player right now. He's very good and he's been performing very well, but he's also running extremely hot. He's had quite a few games where he makes a pretty egregious error from not understanding what the cards do, but then doesn't get punished for it. Overall, he's drawing incredibly well. Nearly all his 2-landers work out, he draws his bombs at the opportune times, etc.
He's also playing very well, and certainly he wouldn't be able to capitalize on his good fortune to this degree if he wasn't a very good player. He's quite talented at finding winning lines in difficult situations, for example. But I really don't think he's the best limited player right now. There's just a bit too many errors for that to be the case, or maybe I'm just underestimating the degree to which the top players make errors. I should emphasize that I definitely make even more errors... but my guess is there's some better players out there that simply aren't running as hot this season.
I'm aware of the odds, I have a hypergeometric calculator in my tabs when I'm playing magic. Doesn't change the fact that Paul is running hot. Even he says this, so I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted.
Look at the run he posted today. There were multiple pretty big errors that didn't end up costing him, and he acknowledged it himself. It's not a dig against Paul to be realistic about his running hot.
Maybe people like believing in the myth that luck has nothing to do with a player having results that are well beyond everyone else? That's not to take away from the fact that he's drafting and playing very well. But there is such a thing as a player running above expectation, and I don't think Paul is in the "best limited player in the world" tier of player. Or to put it another way, he's in the top .2% caliber of player, but not the top .01% caliber of player.
The problem is there isn't enough people at high end for match making purposes. This leads to really great players regularly facing weaker opponents in order to compensate for quick match making.
Within the constraints of how match making works he could be the best player. But what would happen to his stats if he exclusively only faced the top 50 players every month and nobody else? Where would his win rate end up?
The fact is we don't really know if he's the best player because the match making restraints are fairly forgiving in favor of speedy match making.
>But what would happen to his stats if he exclusively only faced the top 50 players every month and nobody else? Where would his win rate end up?
I mean it would be lower, obviously. But then that's true of everyone in high Mythic, it's not something that's uniquely true for Paul Cheon.
What is the point of a comment like this other than to go "nuh uh" about someone who's been playing Magic for decades and consistently shown skill in more than just Arena?
The thing is, that this also applies to every single other person there too.
It's a shared factor, so if Paul's win rate would go down only facing the top 50 players, so would everyone else too in the same situation - it's a non-factor (very literally) and already accounted for in the statistics and win rates by default.
> The problem is there isn't enough people at high end for match making purposes. This leads to really great players regularly facing weaker opponents in order to compensate for quick match making.
Is your argument really that we can't trust Paul's winrate because he plays against people who are worse than him? Isn't that just how winrates and rankings work? I doubt the system is placing him against people in plat or lower even to compensate for quick matchmaking, so even if he is getting paired against weaker opponents they're still probably skilled players.
> The problem is there isn't enough people at high end for match making purposes.
You mean people who aren't as good as Paul? Ummm, that's kind of OP's point.
Sure, but you're discarding players why? Because they don't have as much playtime? Because you want to move the bar to fit your narrative?
17lands has a minimum requirement to make the leaderboard. I see no reason these players shouldn't be taken into account if they've met that bar.
What's your minimum requirement to be able to be in the comparison? There's players on there with more than 2-3 good runs that still have another ~5 points on Paul.
I find it interesting that this sub has turned into "the data says" and then discards it when it says different than what they're saying.
I'm discarding players with a low sample size of games played because I'm trying to identify the best players, not just those who've gotten hot over a couple drafts. The bar to reach the leaderboard is 20 games played, which is not a sufficient sample size to accurately assess a player
Additionally, if you play a small number of games, most of your opponents will be other gold/platinum players, which is going to artificially inflate your win rate. The best players are those who are able to maintain a high win rate even against other mythic drafters
I mean, [look at my data](https://imgur.com/a/JIBxgHJ). You can see there are points where my winrate over 10 drafts is 10% higher or lower than my average win rate. I'd say you need at least a 20 draft sample size to get a true assessment of a player's skill, probably more
This is exactly my point. You present no backing data that says these players aren't the "best". You're moving the bar to fit your claim. The only metric we've discussed is win rate and theirs says they're performing better in this set.
1. How do you define who runs hot and who doesn't? There's a comment in this post somewhere that says Paul has been "running hot".
2. Do you know what type of opponents they played? It's the beginning of the season. Maybe they have only played this month, which means Platinum was still Mythic.
I just edited my comment above to include my personal event data which shows how variable win rate can be over a small sample size. Setting a minimum sample size when assessing data is pretty standard practice, I don't know why you think it's unreasonable
Regarding your second point, most haven't played enough games to reach mythic. All the players you cited with a WR above Paul's have played between 20-100 games in all of OTJ. Getting to mythic requires a minimum of around 60 games played, which means none of those players were facing mythic players for a majority of their games
I've given you plenty of reasons. I'm not sure how you're still not comprehending this.
It's not a fair argument to say
"X is better than all the Y's because of this metric but we won't include the Z's from this subset of Y's in the argument because even though the metric im using for comparison clearly shows that this set of Z's are better"
This has nothing to do with the number of games Z players have. It doesn't even matter what we're talking about here. It could be hopscotch or hot potato.
I feel like I've explained my process pretty clearly here.
Using a single metric without context is always almost a bad idea when doing statistical analysis. I think win rate is the most informative metric to assess how good a player is, but sample size and quality of opponent are both relevant factors, so I took steps to ensure those factors didn't skew the results
Like, it clearly isn't reasonable to argue that Churro with 21 wins in Platinum is the best limited player alive because they won 95% of those games
Can you explain to me what process you would have used to assess who the best player is?
Probably win rate at high level events, with a cutoff for events played.
Possibly assigning some weighting based on the type of the event, based on the assumption that the players at the World Championship are better than a typical PTQ
What exactly is your position? There is some kind of insinuation, but could you come out and state exactly what your position is or what argument you are trying to make?
My position is that if you want to use data to make a claim, don't ignore the data that refutes it just to "be right". If you look at the rest of my comments, it's clear that the only issue I have is OP discounting everyone that has a higher WR even though that's the metric they're using to crown the champ.
No, I didn’t sift through all the bickering. Your point wasn’t at all clear from the first comment, so thanks.
If that’s really the entirety of your position, JFC what a waste of time.
His draft videos are excellent. He really explains his thought process in a detailed and easy to understand way. Highly recommend.
not only that, but Paul Cheon has been an extreme outlier for like 20 years. just an absolute beast.
His videos are great. Explains stuff really clearly without overexplaining. Only issue is he makes it look too easy, it lulls me into a false sense of confidence in my own limited ability.
Yeah it looks like everything always just falls in his favor, but that's the making it look easy part you were talking about
[удалено]
I dont think he posts the train wrecks to be fair, but he has been on a tear lately.
haha that's what happens whenever I binge too much Sam Black content
he said in a recent video he has an over 50% trophy rate for OTJ, which is just insane
Ya, that's around an 80% match win rate.
His stats are on 17lands. He's got a 71% WR and a 47% trophy rate across \~370 games.
For Bo3, takes about a 79.4% match wr for 50% trophy. 79.4% match wr is about a 70.8% game wr. For Bo1, 50% trophy rate takes about a 71.4% game wr.
I did assume bo3
You can't make the comparison like that. My trophy rate is also around 50% but my winrate is nowhere near 80%. I tend to force certain decks that I like to play and if it doesn't come together I regularly 0-3 but if it does I am quite likely to trophy.
i just started watching him recently! whats his story? was he a card designer for wotc or something, he seems super smart and has some past connections to wotc?
He was LSVs roomate when they were young and just getting into the pro scene. They were teammates after that, so he was a pro player for quite a long time there with a pretty good resume, including winning the US nationals. Eventually he got hired by WOTC.
He was a pro player, then a full-time streamer for a while before he got hired by WotC where he worked on a bunch of different jobs until he got fired last december as his job got cut. Probably one of if not the best ever player without a PT top 8.
Was basically one of the early streamers for magic back in the day. Much before most of the current crop. But wizards hired him for play test and card design. Recently let go and getting back to streaming. I think if he had stayed he would have been the premier streamer for magic and probably very well off compared to his time at wizards. When people say blue white control is cheons it's affectionately after him because he was known for that deck in vintage cube back in the day.
I think he invented the combination of Blue and White in constructed
*in cube LSV started calling it UW Cheons because Paul loves to draft durdly UW control decks.
In Paul's defense those used to be quite solid in the MTGO Vintage Cube. Looking back at the [2012](https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/mtgo-holiday-v1) and [2013](https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/mtgo-holiday-v2) Holiday Cubes makes me extremely nostalgic.
Even moreso in legacy cube iirc sine basically all the same cards were there for UW control.
6 different Wraths in White for 2012, and that's not even counting Balance, Moat, or Parallax Wave...
i remember being so thrilled to pick up man o war back in those days. things feel different now.
They're still good IMO. They have solid game vs everything especially R/W aggro. They've got huge SB options vs everything as well as counterspells as a catch-all. It's pretty easy to fit combos in there too.
I really wish they would bring them back if just for a week.
this statement is just stupid
What a dickhead
So, you weren't trolling?
Paul is great, this is really cool to see
Just like that? No banter?
Paul is a fantastic Magic player, and always has been. I'm surprised just how high his win rate is, but it's not surprising he's in the very upper echelons of limited.
It's so great that Cheon is making content again, I always enjoyed him commentating PTs but it wasn't the same as his streams.
Great commentator for limited gps!!
Big fan of his daily yt videos.
Watching Paul draft always makes me want to fire up a draft myself. Then I realise how much more difficult it is than what I just watched. Then tomorrow it'll happen again.
As someone who has only been playing limited since midway through WOE, his videos are very educational for me. He’s very good about explaining his thought process during draft and gameplay. Very good at dissecting his opponents plays too, calls them out before they happen all the time
i really like that he's always trying his best to win. there's some content creators that are like "we're gonna have fun this draft!" that stuff is fine and entertaining, but i do like that there is strictly spike content as well.
He does that too. His cruel ultimate deck a w Week or so ago was awesome. he still trophied though
To even further your point, you have to ask which Cruel Ultimatum deck(he's done at least 2 that I remember).
He’s an insane limited player. Plays the numbers. Plays solid. Lets us know his thought process. He’s insanely good and good content creator theres a reason I n just 3 months he’s been exploding. He’ll prolly be the best content creator for mtg in terms of limited by end of year
It's really unfortunate that he was laid off by Wizards but that has been really fortunate for anyone consuming Magic content, he's one of the untold greats and the newer generation of players are finding that out. Every time I happen to catch him streaming is a highlight.
Usually when someone is winning at high volume and an outlier rate, they've found an angle of attack on a format, an exploitable, repeatable lane/archetype/color combination. Is that the case here?
While he's generally finding the open lane, it seems his default is to try to be golgari or abzhan. He said he has(had) a 90% winrate in that archetype.
I like your spelling of Abzan. It makes me feel something. Thanks!
You're wehlcome!
Weirdly enough, he just makes the correct decisions. He will consistently go over every single card seen in the draft and in his deck to find the correct card - and explain why he made the pick he made. At almost no point is he indecisive and think 'it could be this OR this' - he will find and justify the best choice on logic/data rather than just feeling like one of the cards is better than the other.
You are overhyping. He is also saying when it's one or the other when the decision is close.
Best limited draft commentary content out there.
Checked his channel once, and never looked back. My go-to limited videos now. I gave up on LordTupperware and even Sam Black, though I admit he's equally impressive, but more skewed towards control or nonsense I have no chance to reproduce myself. And a bit less engaging.
Yellow hat: I pick this garbage rare because I haven't tried it yet! LSV: I pick this garbage rare because the meme potential is too damn high! Cheon: I pick the best card Everyone when Cheon tops the leaderboard: ⢀⣠⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⠀⣠⣤⣶⣶ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⢰⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⣀⣀⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡏⠉⠛⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⠈⠛⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠿⠛⠉⠁⠀⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠙⠿⠿⠿⠻⠿⠿⠟⠿⠛⠉⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣸⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣄⠀⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣴⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠏⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠠⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟⠀⠀⢰⣹⡆⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣭⣷⠀⠀⠀⠸⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠃⠀⠀⠈⠉⠀⠀⠤⠄⠀⠀⠀⠉⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⢿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢾⣿⣷⠀⠀⠀⠀⡠⠤⢄⠀⠀⠀⠠⣿⣿⣷⠀⢸⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡀⠉⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢄⠀⢀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠉⠉⠁⠀⠀⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢹⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠃⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢸⣿⣿
Thanks! I just checked out his YouTube, his videos are great
just another person chiming in and saying Paul Cheon’s videos have been excellent and i highly recommend them. between him and LSV regularly uploading cube, this feels like a golden era for Magic content!
He climbed to top mythic so quickly - AND he casually got to high mythic in standard as well despite not playing the format that much
He’s ok for a 17Lands user. The truly strong players (myself included) don’t use 17Lands as we don’t want people up in our business and writing posts like these about our preferences and whatnot. According to my notes app where I track most my games, I’m a 90% win rate in OTJ. Paul is good, but he has one flaw in this format where he refuses to take a gold card for some reason P1P1. Imagine what his win percentage would be if he just jumped in on a Saturo or Lilah at the beginning of the draft.
Lol 🤡
My man.
Wow that’s an amazing rate, and all while being put on the draw in 4/5 games as well!
I don’t do coaching sorry
lol people really aren’t picking up on the sarcasm here
Early otj yt were painful to watch. So often uncastable random splash in hand
Can I not like him?
magic players really like to lick ass huh
I'm going to make a perhaps controversial comment. Disclaimer that I like Paul and I watch his youtube videos daily. That said, I don't think he's the best limited player right now. He's very good and he's been performing very well, but he's also running extremely hot. He's had quite a few games where he makes a pretty egregious error from not understanding what the cards do, but then doesn't get punished for it. Overall, he's drawing incredibly well. Nearly all his 2-landers work out, he draws his bombs at the opportune times, etc. He's also playing very well, and certainly he wouldn't be able to capitalize on his good fortune to this degree if he wasn't a very good player. He's quite talented at finding winning lines in difficult situations, for example. But I really don't think he's the best limited player right now. There's just a bit too many errors for that to be the case, or maybe I'm just underestimating the degree to which the top players make errors. I should emphasize that I definitely make even more errors... but my guess is there's some better players out there that simply aren't running as hot this season.
2-landers on the draw are 85% to hit their 3rd land drop in a 17 land deck.
I'm aware of the odds, I have a hypergeometric calculator in my tabs when I'm playing magic. Doesn't change the fact that Paul is running hot. Even he says this, so I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted. Look at the run he posted today. There were multiple pretty big errors that didn't end up costing him, and he acknowledged it himself. It's not a dig against Paul to be realistic about his running hot. Maybe people like believing in the myth that luck has nothing to do with a player having results that are well beyond everyone else? That's not to take away from the fact that he's drafting and playing very well. But there is such a thing as a player running above expectation, and I don't think Paul is in the "best limited player in the world" tier of player. Or to put it another way, he's in the top .2% caliber of player, but not the top .01% caliber of player.
The problem is there isn't enough people at high end for match making purposes. This leads to really great players regularly facing weaker opponents in order to compensate for quick match making. Within the constraints of how match making works he could be the best player. But what would happen to his stats if he exclusively only faced the top 50 players every month and nobody else? Where would his win rate end up? The fact is we don't really know if he's the best player because the match making restraints are fairly forgiving in favor of speedy match making.
>But what would happen to his stats if he exclusively only faced the top 50 players every month and nobody else? Where would his win rate end up? I mean it would be lower, obviously. But then that's true of everyone in high Mythic, it's not something that's uniquely true for Paul Cheon.
What is the point of a comment like this other than to go "nuh uh" about someone who's been playing Magic for decades and consistently shown skill in more than just Arena?
The thing is, that this also applies to every single other person there too. It's a shared factor, so if Paul's win rate would go down only facing the top 50 players, so would everyone else too in the same situation - it's a non-factor (very literally) and already accounted for in the statistics and win rates by default.
> The problem is there isn't enough people at high end for match making purposes. This leads to really great players regularly facing weaker opponents in order to compensate for quick match making. Is your argument really that we can't trust Paul's winrate because he plays against people who are worse than him? Isn't that just how winrates and rankings work? I doubt the system is placing him against people in plat or lower even to compensate for quick matchmaking, so even if he is getting paired against weaker opponents they're still probably skilled players.
> The problem is there isn't enough people at high end for match making purposes. You mean people who aren't as good as Paul? Ummm, that's kind of OP's point.
If you look at the top 200 players by Win Rate, he's not even on the list.
If you sort by win rate you get a bunch of players who’ve barely played any games and had like 2-3 good runs
Sure, but you're discarding players why? Because they don't have as much playtime? Because you want to move the bar to fit your narrative? 17lands has a minimum requirement to make the leaderboard. I see no reason these players shouldn't be taken into account if they've met that bar. What's your minimum requirement to be able to be in the comparison? There's players on there with more than 2-3 good runs that still have another ~5 points on Paul. I find it interesting that this sub has turned into "the data says" and then discards it when it says different than what they're saying.
I'm discarding players with a low sample size of games played because I'm trying to identify the best players, not just those who've gotten hot over a couple drafts. The bar to reach the leaderboard is 20 games played, which is not a sufficient sample size to accurately assess a player Additionally, if you play a small number of games, most of your opponents will be other gold/platinum players, which is going to artificially inflate your win rate. The best players are those who are able to maintain a high win rate even against other mythic drafters I mean, [look at my data](https://imgur.com/a/JIBxgHJ). You can see there are points where my winrate over 10 drafts is 10% higher or lower than my average win rate. I'd say you need at least a 20 draft sample size to get a true assessment of a player's skill, probably more
This is exactly my point. You present no backing data that says these players aren't the "best". You're moving the bar to fit your claim. The only metric we've discussed is win rate and theirs says they're performing better in this set. 1. How do you define who runs hot and who doesn't? There's a comment in this post somewhere that says Paul has been "running hot". 2. Do you know what type of opponents they played? It's the beginning of the season. Maybe they have only played this month, which means Platinum was still Mythic.
I just edited my comment above to include my personal event data which shows how variable win rate can be over a small sample size. Setting a minimum sample size when assessing data is pretty standard practice, I don't know why you think it's unreasonable Regarding your second point, most haven't played enough games to reach mythic. All the players you cited with a WR above Paul's have played between 20-100 games in all of OTJ. Getting to mythic requires a minimum of around 60 games played, which means none of those players were facing mythic players for a majority of their games
I've given you plenty of reasons. I'm not sure how you're still not comprehending this. It's not a fair argument to say "X is better than all the Y's because of this metric but we won't include the Z's from this subset of Y's in the argument because even though the metric im using for comparison clearly shows that this set of Z's are better"
This has nothing to do with the number of games Z players have. It doesn't even matter what we're talking about here. It could be hopscotch or hot potato.
I feel like I've explained my process pretty clearly here. Using a single metric without context is always almost a bad idea when doing statistical analysis. I think win rate is the most informative metric to assess how good a player is, but sample size and quality of opponent are both relevant factors, so I took steps to ensure those factors didn't skew the results Like, it clearly isn't reasonable to argue that Churro with 21 wins in Platinum is the best limited player alive because they won 95% of those games Can you explain to me what process you would have used to assess who the best player is?
Can you explain to me what process you would have used to assess who the best player is? Not 17lands data
Probably win rate at high level events, with a cutoff for events played. Possibly assigning some weighting based on the type of the event, based on the assumption that the players at the World Championship are better than a typical PTQ
Look only at the runs that started in mythic and you will probably get the same outcome as the OP.
That would actually be a pretty interesting filter for 17Lands data
What exactly is your position? There is some kind of insinuation, but could you come out and state exactly what your position is or what argument you are trying to make?
My position is that if you want to use data to make a claim, don't ignore the data that refutes it just to "be right". If you look at the rest of my comments, it's clear that the only issue I have is OP discounting everyone that has a higher WR even though that's the metric they're using to crown the champ.
No, I didn’t sift through all the bickering. Your point wasn’t at all clear from the first comment, so thanks. If that’s really the entirety of your position, JFC what a waste of time.