Your chance of getting exactly a 6-4 record with a deck that has a probablitiy one fifth of winning any particular game is going to be:

P(6 wins out of 10) = (1/5)^6 * (4/5)^4 * (10 choose 6).

Where the expression (10 choose 6) means 10!/(6! * 4!).

So, P(6-4 record) = .00551

Similarly, P(7-3) = .000786
P(8-2) = .0000737
P(9-1) = .0000041
P(10-0) = .000000102

So, if your idea of a decent showing is to make day 2, then the probability of making a decent showing is the sum of the above probabilities, or about .00637. That's a 0.6% chance of making day 2. About a 1 in 157 odds.

The question is, if you give yourself a 2 in 10 shot of beating a 'top' deck ... what kind of average do you give yourself against "different random jank".

Because you are pretty much looking for a Day 2 I would assume ... because then it's on to the draft where the Multi-men won't help you [although Infernal Minions can of course ...]

And, in all likelihood ... day 3 would require a perfect draft ... which may not even make up for a sub par day 1 ...

So, statistics aside, assuming that non-'top tier' decks will give you a 50/50 shot ... you need to get paired against big names early on to (a) give you some nice tiebreakers and (b) Get you into the 'jank league' area ... then you need to get lucky and avoid the "pros having a bad day" who have been losing to other top decks ... and instead dominate the other jankmasters with your mere presence. [In fact, I'd probably say it's a 60 to 40 in your favor against other jank decks just because someone playing Jank at a PC would likely become flustered at playing against a "Jankmaster"]

I remember studying that at one time! Nice work Alton!

Oh, and it anyone cares, that's just a Binomial distribution with n = 10 and p = 1/5.

I'll second that motion. Really cool, thanks. But then I need to take those 150-1 odds and add the fact that I have not practiced nearly enough, and I am not very good to begin with. It would be like Canada beating the United States in baseball or something. Not a prayer in the world.

Or football for that matter. There should be a Super Bowl champs versus Grey Cup champs game.

Too bad you can't use Longshot (1-drop) or you might be able to improve that to 145-1. :p

However, that assumption is that he's going to be playing against top tier stuff all day long. The problem was that he didn't account for how he'd do against non-top tier stuff.

Assuming it's a 50/50 dice roll would slightly improve the odds ... but then it becomes a very odd conditional thing because you'd have to figure out the odds he gets paired against a 'good' deck vs. a 'bad' deck in the first few rounds.

And at that point you'd need to basically calculate the odds of deck types going up and down in the brackets to determine the 'new' odds of Stu fighting those types of decks, etc ...

It would be very crazy.

But basically Stu, try to figure out a way to make the deck have a winning record against an archetype ... if you can do that, you can luck your way into day 2 ...

Tee hee ...

Anyone else see the Colbert Report last night?

"He hit a .133 last season. For those of you who don't follow baseball, hitting a .133 is like not being good at baseball ..."

Baseball stats are interesting, particularly batting average. Basically you can fail to get on base via a hit 70% of the time and still be considered one of the best hitters in the game.

It would not be as crazy as Canada beating the USA when the Ugly Americans are posing with Jeter and A-dud in the line-up:

http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Baseball/W...478844-cp.html

That thing gives me hope.

For blondes, I'll take Cameron Diaz. Scarlett doesn't do much for me.

As for odds, you have to take into account that stu's opponents will momentarily be mesmerized by his good looks. By the time they wake up, there might be 10 jamies on the board and GG.

And he is a math teacher folks. I guess that's that.

For your example to work in the first place you would need to know the 'top' decks or at least what the 'pros' think are the top decks. That way you can tune your crazy Multiple Man deck to beat them.

It would be amusing to see a Multiple Man deck in the top 8 or go 10-0 day 1...

To get a better calculation wouldn't the math wizards have to know your playtesting records against the top decks?

Well, we did start with the (loose) assumption that my Madroxi could win 20% of the time against all the top decks. Whether that was true or not is a different story. It's too close to "Winning Time" (Magic Johnson rocks!) for me to give out any real stats, don't you know.

We did find some great bare bones for me to work with, and we had a damn fine party to boot. I am so proud of us, it has not been this much pure fun in a great long while.

School's out, and we have hockey tickets. I love you all, especially little Jessica. Thanks for sharing.

Stu