#facebook thread

Haha, lettuce have a moment of silence...

Aaron Forsythe: The big problem wasn't FNM attendance but PTQ attendance. If we based it just off of FNM, we may not have banned anything, but this Standard PTQ season, which is typically our strongest, was really soft this time. I assume PTQers know what the actual good cards are and why they are good, and inevitably their attitude that the format sucks trickles down.

B [name removed for privacy]: I've been mauling this over in my head pretty much since I started playing. It's hard NOT to make it an us vs them thing because sometimes I get the feeling that's what men want. It's difficult to not say something, to not point out the blatent sexism in this game. Every time I sit down for a match random guy guyerson thinks he can take me down just because I have breasts, either that or they punt the match to me because he can't stop looking at my breasts. Its hard to get equal treatment when they don't view us as equals and I mean lets face it ladies, we're not equals, we don't drool all over them like some of them drool over us. This game is about luck and skill, and most men when they sit across that table from us, quickly start forgetting that we are formidable opponents capable of dream crushing them. Look, I'm not trying to be an angry feminist here but the fact of the matter is things need to start changing, they have to accept that they can't act like little boys around us, and it's worse when we can't even say that for fear of being the girl that cries too much.

B: Men don't realize that as female magic players we have to walk a fine line of either acting like a dude or being the bitch of the group, because well, really talk to the magic players in your home store group and you'll find that even if it isn't you, there's a token bitch of the group unless there are no girls in the group. It sucks, it's not fair that they can say whatever they want but if we complain one time we get labeled, and it's certainly not fair that we're objectified before we even utter a word.

B: I don't think anything can be done, and if there is something, they won't do it. To them we are foreigners on their home turf that need to suck it up and get over it.

Lauren Lee: It's easy to make it an us vs. them thing, but we can't. No one wins in that case. Literal no one. :/

Lauren Lee: But everything you say is true and often what women "in the field" experience in the game. In a lot of places, though, there are at least judges, store owners, and TOs that you can go to when people act inappropriately. It's also their responsibility to foster a welcoming environment for women. Although there are occasional times when they are either no help or actively detrimental :/ But they SHOULD be helping.

Lauren Lee: It's definitely not out of the question, though, to try to get really bad offenders banned from stores and tournaments. If they're actively being hateful or harrassing people, it definitely seems like the right course of action to just kick them out.

B: I agree that banning a repeat offender is the least people can do but at the same time thats when it does become an us vs them thing. You can't have zero tolerance for sexism and claim it's not. I've tried to figure out if there's a grey area I'm missing here, that maybe there's a step above what we're already doing but below having zero tolerance for it and I just can't find it. The sad thing is, if we keep just giving warnings it's not going to get any better, action needs to be taken. There needs to be game loses and match loses and bannings for this.

B: The major problem is that none of this stuff really happens at our home stores, at the places that we've already earned respect from our opponents, it happens at tournaments where we're literally one on one with our opponent. No one is going to be looking out for your interest only theirs, so then we run into the he said she said problem and even if you are lucky enough to get a witness, the punishment doesn't seem severe enough to deter people away from doing it.

Lauren Lee: It seems impossible to have zero tolerance for sexism and still have normal conversations with people. I let most things blow over. But there are definitely cases where speaking up becomes necessary, such as when people's feelings are hurt or people feel actively uncomfortable / unwanted because of how people are acting around them.

Lauren Lee: In general, if you try to approach people and tell them they're being sexist, they just become super defensive about it, and you have to try to argue with them about how they are sexist. Rather, it's more effective to say that they're actively hurting people or making them uncomfortable.

Lauren Lee: It doesn't work on complete dickheads however. ;P

Zaiem Beg: I've used the term "the Cedric Phillips principle" for a while now. Basically just because a person does well with an archetype (CP with Kithkin) doesn't mean the archetype itself is good.

Zaiem Beg: When you have a lot of tournament data and one (or a very small number of people) are beating the odds with what is likely an inferior archetype, it doesn't mean the archetype itself is not, in fact, inferior. Matt Landstrom's success with Vamps in Caw-Blade Standard was the point of discussion last night - and I awkwardly had to explain the Cedric Phillips principle to, well, Cedric Phillips.

Zaiem Beg: ‎(Weirdly, he didn't agree. "I didn't think Kithkin was a bad deck." Yeah, this is going to be a hard sell, and using you as an example of why I think you're wrong is probably not going to work.)

Daniel Duterte: What's the point in telling Cedric that his deck is "bad"?

Hollie V. Beg: So he feels bad. Obv.

Daniel Duterte: I mean, replace Cedric/Kithkin with Patrick Sullivan/Mountains.

Zaiem Beg: Yes, that's an effective application of the Cedric Phillips principle. Or possibly Tom Ross and Wild Nacatl.

Kyle Boddy: Cedric probably would have won a few GP/PTs had he known how to play Magic when Armageddon was legal, aka the last time WW was good.

Cedric Phillips: Probably would have done well at Amsterdam if I knew WW was a good deck as well. Frowntown.

Cedric Phillips: For the record Zaiem, I'm not sure I agree/disagree with your assessment, but I need a way to articulate it. Truth be told, I am an above average Magic player who worked very hard at the game to have the moderate success that I did have. I don't expect many to work as hard as I did. That being said, if they had/do, I think the "tier two" archtypes that I played to success (Chittering Rats + Vial deck many moons ago, Kithkin, Dredge around GP Oakland, and who knows what else) would have seen the same degree of success if not more. The decks certainly are not bad decks, because I would not have played them or won with them. The major issue is that people do not know how to playtest or identify what is important in both game states as well as matchups. That alone accounted for a ton of my success.

Luis Scott-Vargas: WW lol

Robin Alberg: I've heard Zaiem make variations of this argument (to me) on many occasions, and I'll admit it would have carried less weight had I actually won anything with the deck in question. In other words, good players who win with mediocre decks are a bad example for the rest of us ;)

Zaiem Beg: And Cedric, I want to be clear. I am in no way intending this to be a backhanded compliment or an insult to your abilities. Rather, it's the contrary. It really is "you are not as good at playing this deck as Cedric/Sullivan/Landstrom is, and you do not have the skills to overcome the disadvantage of playing a worse deck because you are not as good at Magic as those people."

Zaiem Beg: Essentially, my stance is when there's a deck that is consistently underperforming, but there's an outlier where a single person (or a very very small number of people) is performing well where the others have not, it is not an indication that the deck is the best choice for a tournament unless MAYBE if you are that outlier. The shorthand for this is "The Cedric Phillips principle."

Zaiem Beg: We have a lot of tournament data from that Standard season, and Kithkin badly underperformed for everyone who wasn't Cedric Phillips. Contrast that to someone like Sam Black and Faeries, where he did well with the deck, but so did scores of other people. When you see that kind of pattern, it's reasonable to conclude that Faeries was a stronger deck than Kithkin. If Kithkin was underplayed and we just didn't have a lot of data, then it would be harder to make that point, but plenty of people played it - they just, for the most part, didn't do very well. I played against it many times that season, and I only lost once to it (to you). The deck was pretty well-represented.

Zaiem Beg: And it's absolutely not a given that you wouldn't have been successful had you played a different deck. You are an above average Magic player who worked very hard at the game in order to achieve (moderate) success. Those are, I think, much more important factors. What if you had instead taken that time and worked hard at playing Faeries?

Zaiem Beg: We don't have an alternate universe generator, but if we did, I'd bet on the other universe where you choose a different, probably better deck and all other things are equal. I think "Cedric works hard -> Faeries" has a higher EV than "Cedric works hard -> Kithkin." Sure, "Cedric doesn't work hard -> Faeries" is going to have a lower EV than "Cedric works hard -> ham sandwich."

Zaiem Beg: In my opinion, you were successful because you're good at Magic and you work hard, and your deck choice was ultimately a handicap. The fact that you were able to overcome the handicap you gave yourself makes me think more highly of your abilities, not less.

Daniel Hanson: I would propose that most better players are drawn to decks that allow for more interaction. Given that, the players playing Kithkin may have been worse than the players playing Faeries on average. If that's the case then your Kithkin < Faeries reasoning could be flawed. I don't think it is but this use of statistics is fallible.

Zaiem Beg: Yeah, I considered that, but we have enough examples of players eschewing the more interactive decks in favor of what they believe is the best deck. I think it's safe to say PV didn't play mono-white at the PT because it was his first choice. If Faeries < Kithkin, I'm pretty certain we would have seen a lot more Goldmeadow Stalwarts and fewer Spellstutter Sprites piloted by the best players.

Noah Weil: Someone playing an average deck perfectly will probably do better than someone playing a great deck badly.

Ari Michael Lax: Having put a fair amount of work into both Fae and Kithkin, I would tend to agree with Zaiem. Kithkin was definitely good, but not playing Cryptic Command was already more than enough of a handicap to make this point, let alone everything else Fae did.