Skill vs. Luck

[raybomb]

This thread is for the discussion of the article "Skill vs. Luck" by Trey Hinton. You can find it here - http://www.duelyugioh.com/db/article.asp?id=1009

Discuss!

[jacksin8]

skill vs luck? a kid on my team has never beaten me before, first match, i kill him

second match, he starts with a mon and a s/t and delinquents me, i go, set 2 s/t, he heavys, flips mof, uses d.d again, im left with zero cards and no monsters in the g.y

i draw a cth, and followed by a mst, and i lose

next game, he wins with a snatch for my jinzo, brings bls out, and injection, i lose again

...is that skill or luck

[Retained]

I would say any game that involves a deck is mainly luck.

You can be the best yugioh player, but still lose if all your monsters are on the bottom of your deck and you can't do **** to draw them. Your opponent will just keep hitting you haha.

[JackOfAllDecks]

I think we can all take notice of this article and hopefully learn a lot by it, myself included, especially in some of the other areas of Yu-Gi-Oh. The one thing that everyone forgets, including Konami and Upperdeck who create this game and it's rulings is that it never teaches people how to duel. It tells them how to build a deck and how to play the game, but it never shows anything about strategy, timing and making good use of fortune and misfortune. Thats what a lot of players are lacking. The ability to make a strategy and to use it to good effect I know someone who knows every single ruling in the game, the player is practically an encyclopedia of Yu-Gi-Oh, yet only falls down at one thing, manipulating the game and using it to effect. You can teach all the deck building you want to people till your blue in the face, but at the end of the day, if the person has no idea on how to make a strategy, it's like giving a player a loaded gun and not telling them it's full of blanks. I would really like to see more articles on how to play the game strategically rather than just deck building, it will certainly improve a lot of players games and help them to become better duelists.

[TigerGHR]

In order to reach the top levels of Yu-Gi-Oh, a player must have basic deckbuilding skill and superior play skill. Once the top level players are separated from the rest, Yu-Gi-Oh is not able to distinguish which top level players are better than other top level players. This is because the cards are way too powerful and most of your Yu-Gi-Oh deck is made for you. Everyone is forced to play similar decks (because they can't afford not to*), so advanced deckbuilding skill is removed as a potential way to separate top level players from other top level players. And since Yu-Gi-Oh duels can swing so much on a two-card combo like Pot/Magician that solely relies on the person drawing the correct cards, luck is the primary determinant in figuring out which top players emerge to become champions. I would say that ANY of the top 20 or 30 players at US Nationals this year could have won the title with better luck than Max Suffridge. But Max is just as good as anyone else.

Fixing the luck problem is easy: ban all the overpowered cards. The problem is that Konami doesn't seem to mind luck being a huge factor: check out all the dice roll, coin flip, and random discard cards we have! In America, however, the idea of "figuring out who is better" is deeply ingrained in our society. We don't like luck to determine competitions. This concept is noted in the tremendous lack of luck-based cards in games like Magic and VS (there are some, just not many). "Retained" had a good comment regarding the inherent luck factor in a game involving drawing cards from a deck, and that factor will always be present. But by banning Pot of Greed and all its uncosted, overpowered cronies, we can open up the range of playable cards and decks, introduce deckbuilding as a skill to help separate top players, and eliminate luck-based swings in the game (like a duelist with a five-card disadvantage top-decking Chaos Emporer Dragon to equalize the situation...and that's just the most extreme example).

So, in conclusion...Go banned list! Get bigger! Down with luck! Give us a different banned list than Japan if Konami insists on letting its players "dust off" ridiculous cards like Dark Hole that never should have been made! Fix the game!

* Don't even start about how Turbo Mill is viable because it got second at Worlds. The only reason that deck went anywhere is because no one sidedecked for it. Chaos Control is the only consistent option for victory, assuming the player understands the metagame and prepares his sidedeck to beat rogue decks like Turbo Mill and Ben Kai. Turbo Mill is EASY to beat if you drop Neko Mane King in from your side deck. Look at U.S. Nats. Look at the Boston Shonen Jump. In large fields, where more players are going to have well-considered side decks, rogue decks get crushed by Chaos Control. Worlds was like 40 people, most of whom missed the boat on preparing for Turbo Mill.

[ensabehnur]

he kid who beats you with Pot, delinquent, sets MOF then grabs delinquent again has the skill to understand that thats a great combo. The kid who pulls it in the first hand is the luckier of the two. Hence why it is being banned.

The whole idea that turbo mill won is just like this dude above me said, no one had neko mane king mana king mako, whatever his name is in the side deck. Ben kei gets sacked by waboku or threatening roar or negate attack. Especially since they are waiting throughout the whole duel to get the key cads they need (Heavy or Trunade, Ben Kai, 2-3 good equips).

Luck is an important factor in almost every game, heart of the cards is just that, overpowered luck, you still need to have a well built deck, you need to be ready with all types of responses when certain decks come to battle you.The problem with that is that you hardly see a variation in decks. What beats chaos, a better chaos build, then its all about stopping BLS getting out, who will be the power house now, maybe phoenix to get rid of all the S/T and v-lord and kokki and maybe DMOC bc of his removal from game factor and spell recursion. Luck is not going to get those guys out quick, a good deck build and a good clear focus of how you are going to do it. The article said it well, research is so important. Thats why i love the ronin program from empyre group, i belive it is what the judges use also as no one is expected to remember rulings on 1000 cards.

Great article and great discussion.

[PmasterS]

In Yu-Gi-Oh! there is a certain amount of skill which is required for a player to achieve results or win against other players of certain skill level and in the first two lists (Asian 1 and 2) the maximum skill level had not been reached as there was a great potential. In fact i would go as far as to say there was no limit to the how skilled a player could be. This meant that skill decided about 70-75% of games and luck only 15% with other factors deciding the remainder.

In the current list however the maximum potential for skill is less than it was even in Traditional, more than half of all tournament goers probably reached this level over the last 5 months. this meant that the roles were reversed.

Hopefully next list will again reverse the roles. I hope that next list 80% of games are decided by skill and only 5-10% by luck.

[Neo+]

No, the list will not really effect the luck factor. It will, but not what Pmaster hopes it will. Let's be realistic....The new banlist isn't going to cut the luck factor in half.