Dear Wizards,

Today I moseyed on over to your website, as I often do. I found that the following announcement had been posted on it:

Because of potential delays in tournament reporting due to the recent Wizards Event Reporter (WER) upgrade, Wizards of the Coast is changing the invitation policy for 2011 National Championships. Effective immediately, the date on which Total Rating–based invitations to 2011 Closed National Championships will be determined and announced is changed from May 18 to June 1, 2011. Tournament uploads must be received by May 30, 2011 in order to be included in the June 1 ratings publish.

I have been considering writing a letter like this for some time, but have not gotten around to doing it before now. While I feel that your ratings system is currently deeply flawed, I did not consider it a serious enough issue to take action. Now, it seems pertinent.

First Things First: Magic Vs. Chess

To start off, there is the issue of the Magic ratings system itself. I am sure you are aware that many players have issues with the rating system as it currently stands (many articles have been written on the subject). I understand why it was initially based off the chess ratings system, as there are very few systems like it in mentally-based competition. The major issue with using such a system is that luck is an important factor in Magic, whereas it is negligible in chess. The better player in a chess game should win, while there is much more variability involved in Magic. Mulligans and other such things help to negate this (but can also magnify this), but the reality is that even extremely skilled players can and do lose matches to inferior players on a relatively frequent basis. This means that no matter the skill level of the player, there is a possibility that one can lose a great deal of rating in any given tournament, and once one’s rating is far enough above the ratings cutoff for another tournament, it no longer makes much sense to play in smaller sanctioned events, as the potential loss far outweighs the potential gain.

I’m sure you know everything above though Wizards, as it is your system after all. This is an open letter, however, and I am sure some readers may enjoy the explanation.  To further illustrate my issue, I would like to use the example of the predicament that a good friend of mine finds himself in.

He has worked hard over the past year or so to ensure that his rating stays over the cutoff for Canadian Nationals, as it is one of his goals to play in it and do well. His rating currently places him in and around 70th in Canada, although he is only actually a few points above the Nationals’ cutoff.  He has effectively been unable to play in any sanctioned events since he played in our National Qualifier tournament here in Alberta. In this tournament, he went 3-0, and then dropped, as he was certain his rating would be over the cutoff, and he did not want to take slots away from others who he felt deserved them, since he was qualified anyways and didn’t want to risk losing his invite with a loss. In my opinion, he ‘did the right thing,’ not only in giving himself the best chance to qualify under the invite system you had implemented, but also in helping the larger Magic community in Alberta get a shot. Since then, he has not played a sanctioned match of Magic, skipping out on three other National Qualifier tournaments.

This is another one of my issues with the current system.

Why Play When You Can Sit On Your Rating?

Basically, the ratings system as it currently works means that the best players in a given area should not play tournament Magic for several months around the National Qualifier season. I am not sure that’s the best business model, WoTC. Don’t you want as many people as possible playing? Don’t you want the up-and-comers to be able to take shots at the top 100 people in the country? Isn’t Magic like most any other game, where the best thing you can do to improve at it is to be exposed to, and play with players better than yourself? Is that not important to the growth of the game?

Concessions And What They Really Mean…

Perhaps worse than discouraging players from playing, the swinginess of the ratings system creates an environment that encourages frequent concessions at tournament-level play for those who choose to play.  How often have we players heard the words “would you consider scooping to me because of x, y or z?”  A single loss can be crippling, sure, but is it more crippling to the integrity of the game to create an environment in which wins and losses aren’t always about who won a game of Magic?  It has become a near-institutionalized part of the game (whereas the mere mention of a win/loss not being determined by the outcome of a game seems completely foreign to most competitors outside the world of Magic), one that many think is now “the right thing to do” in certain situations. This has led to various other problems.

01 – Ratings inflation: one problem with players getting ‘scooped’ to, to protect their rating or to qualify for a tournament, is that it is a very real possibility that DCI ratings are no longer a measure of a player’s skill in the first place.

02 – Bribery: this has been a hot topic in Magic recently, with Michael Pozsgay, a high-level tournament player, recently being banned for it.  While his case might not be specifically related to the DCI Ratings system, he is not the only one to have offered something in return for a concession.  I can’t help but question a game wherein a single loss can be so crippling to a player’s rating, current level, or chances in a single tournament that it encourages such bribery.  Magic: the Gathering is still struggling to be seen as a legitimate competitive skill-based game capable of supporting a professional network of players.  Any and all connections to bribery, at any level of the game, seriously damage the game’s reputation.

03 – Tournament fraud: an ugly side of Magic that isn’t talked about as widely as it probably should be, but let’s be honest, it happens. It is not uncommon for players to receive ratings bumps from completely fabricated tournament results.  While Wizards and the DCI obviously see this behaviour as illegal and a serious offense, they nevertheless operate a system which creates an environment within which this happens.  Points matter to players of high and low rating enough to engage in this behaviour.

04 – Discourages new blood from gaining traction: In a bigger picture way, I feel that concessions can seriously hold new players down.  If Magic is played in an environment which encourages players to concede to protect higher players’ ratings, first of all, that creates an environment which also prevents many players from rising through the DCI ranks because they are artificially losing matches and points.  More troubling though, because most tournaments are run in the Swiss format, any time a player concedes before the final round, they are decreasing their chances of playing against the best players playing the best decks in the room.  I would much prefer to see a ratings system which encourages the best players to play against, lead by example, and maybe even mentor brand new players.  Sure, this happens too, but I think it happens in spite of the DCI system.

Now in no way am I saying that the ratings system approves of this behaviour, but I do think that the behaviour results from a frustration with the system.

Finding Enjoyment in the Game of Magic

Additionally, I personally have found the last several months of playing Magic to be some of the most frustrating of my life. I was attempting to grind rating.  Going 3-1 at my local store would cause me to either break even or lose 1-2 points. I would have to go 4-0 or 3-0-1 for even a minute gain. Every week that I went 3-1 (and it happened a couple times), I would feel discouraged. Now, since the National Qualifier tournament in which I did quite poorly, my rating has fallen to the point where I stand no chance of making Nationals, and Magic has become fun to play again. It is as though a weight has been lifted, honestly.  I can only imagine that the friends of mine who have a high enough rating to have earned an invite to Nationals already feel this to an even greater degree: of Magic turning into worrying about protecting their rating more than enjoying the game.

Again, I am not saying the ratings system was created with this intention, but it is a very real by product of it.

Now, I have set out my issues with the ratings system in general, though there are no doubt other valid arguments against it. I feel as though today’s announcement is a further mishandling of this system and is completely unacceptable.

What Extending the Cutoff Deadline Really Means

Because of your error in updating your systems and properly testing them, WoTC, you have made another error in making this announcement.

01 – As above, players close to the ratings cutoff will have no incentive to play Magic for yet another two weeks.  This may seem like a small price to pay, but it is frustrating nonetheless.

02 – What is worse about this, in my eyes, is that the timing of the announcement is such that it has been made after all of the National Qualifier tournaments are over, and players that were hoping to qualify on rating now have no other option. Simply, some of the players who should have had the best chance to qualify for Nationals (stopped playing when they hit an acceptable rating) now might find themselves out of luck.

03 – However, the worst part about this announcement is that it extends the ratings cutoff until after GP Providence (so long as GP Providence is uploaded by before the Tuesday of the cutoff week). This is a slap in the face to the players who want to attend Nationals, but also have made travel plans for Providence.  This includes my friend who I wrote about earlier.  True, this is likely only a small group of players, but it is likely making all of them reconsider their travel arrangements. If I had a flight booked for Providence, I would now reconsider going even if I were 30 points above the cap. Playing in a GP can seriously swing a player’s DCI rating, as you are well aware.  My friend has to essentially choose between playing at GP Providence and playing at Nationals…the same friend who thought he was clear to play in both up until today’s sudden and seemingly random announcement from you.

I just simply can’t imagine that an announcement which causes players to consider not playing in a Grand-Prix to be a good decision for the game.

Also, there are likely players who have – perhaps foolishly, or perhaps because booking this far in advance was the only way the could afford to (read: pay money to) attend your tournaments – booked flights for both tournaments already, and are now under a tremendous amount of pressure to perform in Providence. A lot of hard work and money could go down the drain if they were to get unlucky a couple of times in Providence, preventing them from playing in another tournament that they’ve already booked a flight to get to.

Most frustrating of all, this sudden change – a change which has a major effect on some of the best players in the country – was made to compensate for a software bug which is only tangentially related to the cutoff for Nationals, whereas your solution has a far more direct influence on that cutoff and the players who had worked for many months to meet it.  It feels like you are missing the forest for the trees here.

How to Fix the Nationals Cutoff Problem?

As this most recent announcement has to do with a software error on your part which made uploading tournament results a problem, I see some other solutions which seem more fair, and arguably better for the game:

01 – Only events that occurred before the 18th should count towards the cutoff. Tournament organizers should have until the new date to submit their results, but events occurring after the 18th shouldn’t count towards cutoff rating. This doesn’t suddenly “change the rules” for potential National competitors, and it seems, to me, to be a solution to the actual problem your software caused (read: not allowing organizers to upload the results of tournaments they hosted). Perhaps you aren’t equipped to calculate the cutoff in this way?  It’s the only way this makes sense…

02 – Have two cutoff dates; top 100 on the 18th is qualified for Nationals and top 100 on the 1st is qualified as well. While this would increase the number of Nationals competitors, it would not hurt those who have been dilligently working towards Nationals under the assumptions that your ratings system brought with it.

Honestly, anything other than these two solutions just feels wrong.

I understand that this is a difficult issue. Not just this specific case relating to Nationals, but also the larger ratings system. I don’t really have all the answers to the problems that I am discussing. I love your game, Wizards, and that is why I am writing this. I want it to grow. I want people to be able to play in GP Providence as well as Nationals. I want the best players in Canada to be the ones that play in Nationals. I am just hoping that by writing this letter, I will cause you to consider revamping your ratings system, and make the game that we all enjoy even better.

Thank you for your time,

Ian “The Doctor” Baker