Today’s topic is what is known in Magic: The Gathering parlance as ‘inevitability’, a game-state wherein-barring some truly improbable development-victory is virtually certain to result for one player of a competitive game, and loss is virtually certain for the other(s)Reid Duke has made a slightly different use of the term in his article on the subject, but his definition suffers from the queer problematic that more than one player can claim to have ‘inevitability’ at the same time, even before any actual game starts. See: Inevitability. As this term has previously been employed in rather loose manner, before we begin our discussion on the topic a distinction is in order. My position is that there are actually two types of inevitability: (1) perceived inevitability; i.e., you believe that you’re going to lose no matter what, and (2) actual inevitability, wherein you will lose no matter what, regardless of your beliefs. Making this important distinction and learning how to apply it can have a tangible influence on the outcome of many games.

To illustrate, let’s imagine a friendly game of Battleship: so far, you’ve been incredibly unlucky with your guesses, and you’re down to one undamaged sub, while your friend is sitting pretty with three undiscovered ships somewhere on his board. The odds are definitely against you. Should you give up? Remember:

• You have one undamaged ship left, and your opponent has three undamaged ships left.

In this case, victory is still possible for you. Granted, it’s unlikely that you’ll find and dispatch all of your opponent’s ships before he seeks and destroys yours, but it’s not out of the question. I call this game-state one of perceived inevitability-that is, both you and your opponent know the odds of your victory are extremely poor. Compare it with this similar, but crucially different game-state:

• You have one damaged ship left, and your opponent has three undamaged ships left.

Here, luck has been taken out of the equation, as your opponent has already found your sub. If your opponent is minimally competent at the game, and isn’t interested in toying with you, then they will methodically aim their shots at all the possible board positions the rest of your sub could possibly inhabit, destroying you with their higher number of shots before you have any chance of finding and killing them. The only way you can win is if something happens to your opponent outside of the game: for example, they have to leave the table to attend to a family emergency, or they decide to concede to you on a whim. This is actual inevitability.

Allow me to indulge in a quick self-congratulatory anecdote, which I promise to relate back to the topic of perceived inevitability. The other day, I was playing a game of Magic with my wife, Joanie. I was down to one life, and had accumulated nine poison counters. In other words, any kind of hit with anything at all would be enough to end the game in her advantage. She had over 30 life points, and a [card]Sporeback Troll[/card] in play with a [card]Rogue’s Passage[/card], with sufficient mana available to activate both of their abilities.

As far as Joanie was concerned, the game was already over. Eager to finish, she tapped all of her Forests and targeted her Troll with the ability of her Passage. “Game?”, she inquired. Then, with my final remaining card, I dealt five damage to her Troll, which she could now no longer afford to regenerate. Over the course of the next few turns I was able to generate 30+ damage and swing the game from an utter rout into a win for me. I’m awesome like that. Here’s my point:

Mistaking perceived inevitability for actual inevitability is a danger for both players. Winners stop winning because they think they’ve already won; losers keep losing because they think they’ve already lost. A good player is able to see the truth of the situation: that poor odds of victory can be overcome by their own wise decisions, or their opponent’s unwise ones. The best players do this on a regular basis, with finesse, and that’s why their games are the most interesting to watch. The #1-ranked Magic player in the world as of January 8th, 2015, Owen Turtenwald, had this to say on the subject in a recent article:

“Nobody gets a free win when they play against me, I play with all my heart and I’m trying to win with every fiber of my being. I play to win and I never give up. No matter what my record is no matter the game score or my life total, even when I only have 1 out. I don’t concede to anyone, if you want to beat me you’re going to have to take every legal and final game actionSee: Owen’s a Win – Lessons of 2014.”

So when, if ever, is it okay for non-pros to give up on a game that we think is unwinnable? The easy answer to that question depends on how good you are at accurately distinguishing the difference between perceived and actual inevitability in game-states. If you’re not 100% confident in your powers of deduction and data interpretation, then you should play like a Turtenwald and fight it out until the end, just in case you’re wrong. You’ll surprise yourself with the unlikely victories you start to generate.

The slightly more complicated answer to when you should quit depends on who you are. The values and goals you take with you to the match will determine how far you’re willing to persevere through a boring or depressing game. Take a look at the following table to see what I’m talking about:

As casual players are a known quantity, let’s talk about extrinsic players. You know them and I know them: they wear their hard-earned Game Day mats as loincloths; they smile when they’re winning; they sulk when they’re losing. They have no particular love of any game, because they’re only after the prizes they win by excelling, and the social status that comes with being a ‘winner’. If they’re not winning, they’d rather not be playing at all. These are the guys that give up as soon as they think that they can’t win, because they don’t see the point of prolonging a game if there’s nothing to be gained from it.

Compare this to the intrinsic player: someone who just loves the game itself, win or lose. An intrinsic player might even play through a position of actual inevitability, prolonging that sinking feeling of loss, just so they can learn what losing badly in their favorite game feels like, or as a lesson for future matches. An intrinsic player is actually much more difficult to defeat than an extrinsic player, because they don’t fear a loss, and might even enjoy it. The intrinsic player thus poses a problem for the extrinsic player, because unlike the casual player, they are unlikely to fold when the going gets rough.

Imagine a toy game that is inevitable in its design: let’s call it AlamoA game like this actually exists! See: The Alamo Remembered 2nd Edition. Because of its asymmetrical set-up, the defending player is always bound to lose this game, and the attacking player is always bound to win. The only question that the game poses is: ‘On what turn will the defender be defeated?’ I believe that only intrinsic players would enjoy such a game, and not out of perverse masochism, but because of appreciation of the mechanics, or the components, or similar considerations. The joy for the intrinsic player is in aesthetically appreciating the manner in which the game unfolds.

Intrinsic players are unwilling to quit, because to quit ends the game, which ends their enjoyment of it. Extrinsic players are willing to quit as soon as things look bad for them, because they see a game they’re losing as one not worth playing. Assuming a rough equivalence of skill level, which of these characters would you rather face off against in a tournament? It’s more or less clear that the tenacity of the intrinsic player gives them the opportunity to stick around and pull off improbable wins, which increases their skills over time, which leads to better extrinsic results. For the same reason that a true patriot is typically a tougher fighter than a mercenary, extrinsic players would win even more of their coveted prizes if only they could somehow tap into powerful intrinsic sites of motivation.

Turtenwald plays from an intrinsic base, even if he contingently enjoys winning rather than losing, and he’s as dangerous an opponent as they come. For my part, I’d play through the game of Battleship I discussed at the beginning of this article, just because I’d want to see how the story ended, regardless of the result. As long as there is any possibility for victory, I would encourage everyone to play their hearts out, and let the commentators discuss ‘inevitability’ from the sidelines. Perceived inevitability is only that: a perception, or prediction of what will happen. Ultimately, one person’s guess about the outcome of a match is worth as much or as little as another’s, in the absence of a tangible result. Using the term in its more general sense, however, I believe it is fair to say that intrinsic players typically have inevitability over non-intrinsic players.