About this episode

The episode features a discussion with Jess Williams and Zev Goldhaber-Gordon about their research on mulligan rates and opening hands in Magic.

This week we are trying something new. A journal club. And the reason for it is very simple - there are not that many Magic-related scientific papers out there. But last week Jess Williams and Zev Goldhaber-Gordon released a very interesting paper on opening hands, land percentages, mulliganing and mana flood. I invited both authors to talk about their findings and what implications they have for Magic players. We will be talking about BO3 mulligan rates, links between player win rate and mulligan rate, causes for any trends in that. We will also look at a neat method of estimating optimal land composition, and impact of both mana screw and flood. Jess and Zev are both PhD students with impressive scientific pedigree, but also Magic players with notable successes under their belts, so they combine the rigour needed for those sorts of analyses with understanding of the game. You can follow them here: Jess Williams: https://x.com/mtg_jess Zev Goldhaber-Gordon: https://bsky.app/profile/zergog.bsky.social And - most importantly find the paper here in its simplified version (the link to the full paper can be found in there too)…

People in this episode

Host: Sierkovitz

Guests: Jess Williams, Zev Goldhaber-Gordon

Topics covered

• journal club
• Magic-related research
• mulligan rates
• player win rate
• land composition
• mana screw
• mana flood

Keywords

• mulligan
• opening hand data
• land percentages
• mana flood
• player win rate
• Magic research
• journal club

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Magic, Discord

Books & works: opening hands, land percentages, mulliganing, mana flood

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