Online poker is illegal where I live, so I play Magic Online. My deck contains 26 lands. I was dealt three one-landers in a row. The odds of this happening are, according to my calculations, 0.000729%. Do you think this shuffler is legit, or should I cash out? I'm pretty sure this is worse than literally any bad beat in any game ever.

If 2+2 could double-check my math, that would be great. Thanks




https://imgur.com/W5RXSgZ

I've never played, so to check your math I'd need more context: how many one-landers were in the deck, how large was the deck (or portion you were drawing from), and were the draws with or without replacement?

Regarding the magnitude of the bad beat, was that the only way you could lose? Because in Poker someone might be 40% to lose, but lose in a particular way that was 1/20000 and point to how unlikely it was, ignoring that it was simply part of the 40%.

60 card deck. You can fold and shuffle your hand back in to draw a new seven cards, but then you put one on the bottom for each time you folded. Usually once you start the game with five cards in your hand or fewer, it becomes impossible to win. Sample size is 120 best two of three matches with this 26 land version of the deck, so at most 360 games. That is being generous, since matches usually end 2-0 one way or the other.

I just need two or three lands in the opening hand since once I hit three lands, I can cast "Fable of the Mirror-Breaker" that generates additional mana for me regardless of whether or not I draw a fourth land.

What I think is also suspicious is that although I was forced to fold down to four cards, my opponent kept his initial seven, which implies that this was a forced loss. If I had started the game with four cards and my opponent had five, it would be conceivable that I could still win.

My winrate with the various versions of this deck, Rakdos Midrange, is 51.2%. Interestingly, after I cashed in a big event and my ELO spiked to about 1830, I immediately went on a major loss streak (2/3, 2/3, 2/3, 2/3, 2/3, 2/3, 0/4 Drop). It's not as though I was playing badly either, because I sideboard the same way every time according to a spreadsheet I keep for every matchup, and this is arguably the most consistent deck in the format, running 26 lands and only needing three or four to win.

I checked out this bad beat as a comparison, allegedly the worst in any poker game in history. https://www.pgt.com/news/worst-bad-b...favorite-loses What happened to me was not as bad, 0.000729% compared to the 2-7 triple draw's 0.0006%. His is also a worse beat because there were decisions involved and the order of his cards mattered.

Honestly, I'm just curious how the backend of MTGO works. Is there a doomswitch, do they rig the matches based on a Player Value Index (PVI)? Or does the game just not randomize cards properly?

I should also mention that I am "infinite," meaning I'm entering leagues and tournaments with play points I've accumulated (think chips) instead of money (usually $10 to $30). I imagine that if you make deposits into your account, bad beats like in OP will mysteriously become less frequent.

Upon further inspection, the math appears to work out to 1/1350, which still strikes me as an outlier, though less egregious than originally supposed

I actually have a worse poker bad beat than the one in the link. I was playing a tourney and I had AK and was all in vs a player with 77. Flop was 733. The only way I could win was running aces, kings or threes. By my math there were 45 cards unknown. On the turn I had three that would keep me alive and assuming I hit one of them I had one out otr. Therefore my winning chances were 3/45 x 1/44 = 0.151515%. My opponent had 99.848485% equity, just a bit higher than the linked hand.

Turn was a 3. I actually got up to leave, not realizing I was still alive. I was shocked to get the pot pushed my way after the river 3.

That's a sick story. Hellmuth has taken some beats like that too, but I've never run the numbers on just how bad they were. Obviously, I'm not good at math to begin with, or I wouldn't have posted here asking for help.

Is there an exact percentage of how unlikely a runout can be before it raises questions about the integrity of the dealer/RNG? I can't find anything about a confidence threshold or how regulators audit this sort of thing.

I only noticed the bad draws in the original post because it reminded me of playing XCOM, though interestingly XCOM rigs its RNG in favor of the player.

This was what someone commented on the math:

I know that I was 9% for a one-lander just from using a hypergeometric calculator, but I wasn't sure how to calculate three in a row. Looks like it's approximately .0729%. The original post wrongly has a percentage sign that I was unable to remove because I passed the editing window, but the fact remains that this is a very weird result, and I would not be surprised if there were prop players or other crookedness involved. It's not like that would matter because obviously MTGO is unregulated, though it interests me intellectually just what exactly is going on here.

Also the comparison to the 2-7 hand is clearly wrong on multiple levels beyond the games being completely different and my math being incorrect, but I do think something is up with MTGO.

The runout of any one hand should never raise questions about the RNG. Strangely enough, every runout in Holdem has an exactly equal probability. Look at the 733 flop - what is the probability that the turn and river are 3s 3c? Exactly the same probability as it coming Ts 9d. Or 6c6h. Just like the probability of the full board running out AsKsQsJsTs is the same as it coming out 4c9dKsQs2c.

The big difference is that certain runouts seem to us to be very unusual, while others seem very normal. Sort of like the Powerball - the probability of picking all the numbers with one ticket is about 1 in 292 million. So when they do pick the numbers, the probability of that exact set of numbers had been 1 out of 292 million. But you wouldn't question the randomness of this result because it was very unlikely, because any result that happened was equally unlikely.

To question the RNG or dealer, you need to have a lot more than one data point. Unfortunately, lots of players see one or two things that seem "wonky" and they are convinced it is rigged against them. They say " x x x always happens" - when in fact it probably happens with about the same frequency that it should happen, but they tend to only remember the times it happened and forget all the times that it didn't.

I agree that one hand is not a large enough sample size. That's why I was curious if other people have noticed the same weirdness I have.

At any rate, MTGO is certainly more fair than Magic Arena, which is notorious for forcing better players to be on the draw and rigging starting hands. Some people have told me that they, too, have noticed that their opponents immediately draw the same card that is discarded by Thoughtseize, but whether or not the client does this intentionally is unclear.

In my experience, Yorion decks seem to disproportionately topdeck out of unwinnable situations, which should be less likely because their deck size is above average. I also think that programming house bots to play Discover Combo or Mono Red would be trivial, but I don't think Wizards is actually doing that.

For the record, my current ELO rating is 1767. I took some bad beats when I was around 1820, notably from being too paranoid and trying not to play into sweepers, being too afraid to tap out against combo decks, stuff like that. If I loosened up a bit, I would probably stabilize around 1800.



These are all of my match results playing my current deck (win/loss): 4/1, 1/4, 2/3, 1/4, 3/2, 2/3, 2/3, 3/2, 4/1, 3/2, 5/0, 4/1, 3/2, 2/3, 2/3, 2/3, 3/2, 2/3, 4/1, 2/3, 4/1, 2/3, 2/3, 3/2, 0/4, 3/2, 3/2, 4/1, 8/2 Premier, 2/3, 2/3, 2/3, 2/3, 2/3, 2/3, 0/4 Drop, 3/2, 3/2, 3/2, 1/4, 2/3, 2/3, 5/0, 4/1, 3/2, 1/4, 3/2, 2/3, 2/3, 1/4, 1/4, 4/1, 3/2, 3/2, 2/3, 4/1, 2/3, 4/1, 2/3, 3/2, 2/3, 5/0

For what it's worth, I am in another league with 3 wins right now and 2 matches to go.

If anything else strange happens, I'll let you guys know.

After some people helped me run the numbers, I concluded OP was just a bad beat.

I switched formats, and my current record is 3/2, 3/2, 3/2, 3/2, 1/4, 3/2, 3/2, 3/2, 2/3, 2/3, 3/2, 4/1. Still +EV, though my ELO took a dive at first while I adjusted. Almost qualified for the next showcase using only the play points I earned from the previous one, meaning I've gone infinite.

There may be bot activity, however. I was one win off a trophy and got dumpstered by this player, who is not on the leaderboard and has no recorded data on any site I can find. I asked around if anyone had heard of him, and someone claimed it was a bot. Obviously it could just be someone who purposely made an account name that was almost impossible to Google so other people can't look him up and sideboard against him. I don't have any proof in either direction.



https://i.imgur.com/TzubqG6.png