Article - To EXCEL in Magic - Part 1

[Maqi]

Hi fellows!

Those of you who do an office job will certainly know: MS Excel is everywhere. And it is great!

At least that's my opinion... And because I like this little piece of software so much I often find myself tinkering around with it during my breaks... recently for things related to our beloved cardgame: Magic: the Gathering, of course.

So, I made a little calculator that let's you know the specific probabilities and expected numbers of certain cards drawn, depending on the size of your deck, the total number of these specific cards in your deck and the number of cards drawn.

Here's the link btw: Probability.xls (@Stephan: Couldn't attach it to the post. Is this function even working?)

One thing the calculator can accomplish for you is to tell you the right amount of lands you will want to run in your deck.

Of course, you can also use it for other types of cards and answer questions like "How likely is it to draw a 2-drop with that Ponder I have?" or "What's the probability of having 1cc removal in my starting hand?" etc.

Feel free to play around with this tool. You might want to add formula so you can calculate more complex scenarios.

Have fun and please let me know if this was helpful to you!

Maqi

[Tabris]

One question did you use the binomial coefficient to calculate the probability to draw 3 lands with a seven card hand ?

[Maqi]

Yes, I did. You can check the formula to the right on the sheet. It should be correct.

[Tabris]

Yea I thought its incorrect but recalculated it.

appreciate the document so you dont have to type it manually all the time

So the spoil mulligan is implemented in the coefficent by simply change the drawn cards and the residual lands/nonland cards ?

[Maqi]

This calculator doesn't automatically integrate the spoils mulligan.

To get an idea of what the spoils mulligan does, you need to take 2 steps actually.

Like, what's my land/nonland-ratio in the initial 7, then change librarysize and cards drawn appropriately.

A "dirty" spoils mulligan calculation could be like, "draw 12". Approximately simulating what happens, when you keep 2 cards and take 5 new ones.

[Tabris]

that was my point,

in the case were we got a 33 land 67 non-land deck we have a 4/3 ratio for the case we want to know the probability for 3 lands on the starting hand (7 cards drawn)

If we want now to know how the probab. for drawing a third land on a 2 land hand is (by spoiling one card), we have to adjust the coefficent by modifying 67 / 33 - 4/3 (7 drawn) to 62 / 31 - 5/2 (draw 1) so we have to multiply the probability from step a and b.

[Maqi]

Exactly.