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Author Topic: NO NO NO NO NO!  (Read 9201 times)

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Elanchana

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NO NO NO NO NO!
« on: November 19, 2014, 01:18:19 am »
0

Okay, I swear, Goko had it in for me today. Every single time I opened two terminals, they collided. Every time I opened a combo, they wouldn't appear together until maybe the fifth shuffle. Terminal draws drew villages. Trashers were hardly useful. Buy phase was always one coin short of the good cards. Basically nothing went right and my rating dropped 400 points.

Has this happened to anybody else? Are there just days when all your decks are losers?

Edit: Adam, don't you dare drop your catch phrase.
« Last Edit: November 19, 2014, 01:32:37 am by Elanchana »
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enfynet

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Re: NO NO NO NO NO!
« Reply #1 on: November 19, 2014, 01:55:04 am »
0

My rating isn't good enough to drop 400 points. Otherwise, that sounds like most of my Dominion games.
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Re: NO NO NO NO NO!
« Reply #2 on: November 19, 2014, 07:39:19 am »
+1

I have had phases where I went from a goko rating of about 6200 down to a 5200 because I was on such a glorious losing streak.  Have no fear!  You can eventually build back up.  Just keep trusting yourself with the strategy that you are playing.  If you find that strategy seems to be losing a lot of games, post some logs in the help! section.  You will improve, the world won't end, and your rating will go back up.
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Re: NO NO NO NO NO!
« Reply #3 on: November 19, 2014, 07:58:21 am »
+1

400. hah. nothing. I had drops of about 1500 before

AdamH

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Re: NO NO NO NO NO!
« Reply #4 on: November 19, 2014, 08:12:47 am »
+3

Ahem.

YMYOSL.

<3

But seriously, yeah losing streaks happen. You have two options, you can cry to RNGesus that he has betrayed you, or you can take a good hard look at what you did and try to find what you could have done better. That's kinda why I say that all the time, you know?

Could you have reacted better to your bad draws? Probably. Could you have played to decrease the chances of your bad draws? Probably. Thinning is HWinning and this is why, so when you say

Trashers were hardly useful.

maybe that was the issue, or at least part of it? If you post some game logs and/or videos you'll get way more advice than you could possibly want.
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silverspawn

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Re: NO NO NO NO NO!
« Reply #5 on: November 19, 2014, 08:34:04 am »
+2

well I firmly disagree with the "always search for your mistakes, never blame the RMG god" mentality, because sometimes you just lose because of draws. could you have played better? well yeah, but you could have also played better in the last 20 games where you won.

if you have bad luck, it's because you have bad luck, not because you played poorly.

KingZog3

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Re: NO NO NO NO NO!
« Reply #6 on: November 19, 2014, 09:02:54 am »
+1

well I firmly disagree with the "always search for your mistakes, never blame the RMG god" mentality, because sometimes you just lose because of draws. could you have played better? well yeah, but you could have also played better in the last 20 games where you won.

if you have bad luck, it's because you have bad luck, not because you played poorly.

It's more a mentality than the truth. I remember Awaclus posted a screenshot of E-E-E-Moneylender-Terminal action card. Like, that's not supposed to happen. But sitting there saying everything is because of luck is what a lot of players do and they get into the habit of not realizing when it actually isn't because of their luck.

That being said, when it is luck, blame it. As long as you can know that you played well and aren't just using luck as an excuse for the loss.
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AdamH

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Re: NO NO NO NO NO!
« Reply #7 on: November 19, 2014, 09:13:40 am »
0

if you have bad luck, it's because you have bad luck, not because you played poorly.

Yeah I get this a lot; the past can hurt, but the way I see it, you can either run from it or learn from it.

It's a really easy thing to do to just say that you got bad luck and you lost because of it. And sometimes that happens. But in the heat of the moment that's the first thing my mind jumps to, and I feel like one is only ever logically justified in saying you lost *only* because you got unlucky after taking a closer look at their decisions that game.

A lot of really high-level players really like to do this, good for them. I'm going to continue to try and get better at the game this way even when I'm the top player in the world.
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Awaclus

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Re: NO NO NO NO NO!
« Reply #8 on: November 19, 2014, 09:22:11 am »
+3

I remember Awaclus posted a screenshot of E-E-E-Moneylender-Terminal action card.

You remember wrong, because it wasn't a terminal Action, it was a Silver. I opened Moneylender/Silver for the purpose of avoiding terminal collision, and then this happened.
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Re: NO NO NO NO NO!
« Reply #9 on: November 19, 2014, 09:40:46 am »
+1

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Re: NO NO NO NO NO!
« Reply #10 on: November 19, 2014, 10:32:14 am »
+1

If I could coin a companion to Adam's catchphrase, it'd be "shuffle happens."  You can play perfect and still get streaks like this.  I've had them happen in league matches (not the perfect play, I'm FAR from that, but the streaks of collisions and shuffle-misses).  You can also get streaks the other way, where any strategy, no matter how unconventional, seems to work.  I've gained 5 levels in a day and lost them all the next, and I suspect half the thread has too.  That might be one of the reasons we like Adam's stream; we all relate to "thanks deck," in both earnest and sarcastic forms. 

So what to do about it?  Either switch to chess, or just keep making the best choices you can, and pay attention to what works more often than not (you have to try things several times because shuffles can make bad ideas seem good and vice versa).  Reading articles and watching streams helps, but I think mostly you get better by playing more.
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silverspawn

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Re: NO NO NO NO NO!
« Reply #11 on: November 19, 2014, 10:34:06 am »
+2

if you have bad luck, it's because you have bad luck, not because you played poorly.

Yeah I get this a lot; the past can hurt, but the way I see it, you can either run from it or learn from it.

It's a really easy thing to do to just say that you got bad luck and you lost because of it. And sometimes that happens. But in the heat of the moment that's the first thing my mind jumps to, and I feel like one is only ever logically justified in saying you lost *only* because you got unlucky after taking a closer look at their decisions that game.

A lot of really high-level players really like to do this, good for them. I'm going to continue to try and get better at the game this way even when I'm the top player in the world.

elanchana is not a high level player though. I think without offending anyone, it's a safe bet that she (and really 99% of all players) make significant misplays in the majority of games. if she opened a thread "hey I just won 30 games in a row" instead, would you also have said "you should look at these games, I'm sure you misplayed them here and here"? I'm pretty sure you wouldn't, but you might aswell, because it's not really a different case.

playing better increases the chance you win. if you are still an a neutral winrate, you might (and these are completely arbitrary numbers without any significance other than to make my point) get 60% chance if you play well, and 40% if you play bad, relative to your average skill. for a huge number of games, that will make a significant difference. but a small losing streak (or winning streak, really) is almost as (un)likely with 60% per game as it is with 40%. so, saying "you could have played better" is correct here, but it's completely pointless, because you can always play better.

and really, it's not what you want to hear when you make a thread like this. trust me.

soulnet

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Re: NO NO NO NO NO!
« Reply #12 on: November 19, 2014, 10:41:27 am »
0

I think the point can be summed up to be: Dominion has luck. Lots of luck. You can easily win or lose purely based on luck. However, saying "I had shitty luck" is a good way to eventually circumvent your responsibility on losing. Since we are humans, we will always see our luck as shittier and the opponent's luck as better, even when trying not to. Using an axiom like "never blame luck" will still make you err on the diagnosis, but at least not err in the bad way that makes you not learn.

BTW, I also had an awful streak yesterday, and I have lost games when the opponent made clear mistakes in the opening, and I felt unlucky. However, I am sure that it was not *all* unlucky and I was not really focused. I could probable have squeezed some extra wins if I stayed focus after a bad split.
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jomini

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Re: NO NO NO NO NO!
« Reply #13 on: November 20, 2014, 10:27:57 pm »
0

if you have bad luck, it's because you have bad luck, not because you played poorly.

Yeah I get this a lot; the past can hurt, but the way I see it, you can either run from it or learn from it.

It's a really easy thing to do to just say that you got bad luck and you lost because of it. And sometimes that happens. But in the heat of the moment that's the first thing my mind jumps to, and I feel like one is only ever logically justified in saying you lost *only* because you got unlucky after taking a closer look at their decisions that game.

A lot of really high-level players really like to do this, good for them. I'm going to continue to try and get better at the game this way even when I'm the top player in the world.

Oh please, there are plenty of setups where you can tell offhand that some high variance strategies will win when poor choices are made. For instance, Chapel/Market Square is massively stronger than virtually all possible Fortune teller openings. However, there is a non-zero possibility that you will flip Chap two or three times with Ft and lose from that. Likewise when the opponent goes Tmap without support, you know a quite sizeable minority of games will break towards the opponent due to luck. Of course there are other obvious luck games - opponent gets 5/2 opening with Mountebank and your best option is Silver/Silver.

For most games, I see nothing from the best players on the board coming remotely close to a statistical workup to show how much of a game was decided by "luck". For reliable error bars, you need vastly larger sample sizes than most people play. I mean think about it - am I playing [random card] well? Good luck, with full random you see it so infrequently against so many different opponents with so many possible permutations you can't hope to begin to quantify the amount due to random variation and that due to decisions.
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Beyond Awesome

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Re: NO NO NO NO NO!
« Reply #14 on: November 20, 2014, 10:56:37 pm »
0

if you have bad luck, it's because you have bad luck, not because you played poorly.

Yeah I get this a lot; the past can hurt, but the way I see it, you can either run from it or learn from it.

It's a really easy thing to do to just say that you got bad luck and you lost because of it. And sometimes that happens. But in the heat of the moment that's the first thing my mind jumps to, and I feel like one is only ever logically justified in saying you lost *only* because you got unlucky after taking a closer look at their decisions that game.

A lot of really high-level players really like to do this, good for them. I'm going to continue to try and get better at the game this way even when I'm the top player in the world.

Oh please, there are plenty of setups where you can tell offhand that some high variance strategies will win when poor choices are made. For instance, Chapel/Market Square is massively stronger than virtually all possible Fortune teller openings. However, there is a non-zero possibility that you will flip Chap two or three times with Ft and lose from that. Likewise when the opponent goes Tmap without support, you know a quite sizeable minority of games will break towards the opponent due to luck. Of course there are other obvious luck games - opponent gets 5/2 opening with Mountebank and your best option is Silver/Silver.

For most games, I see nothing from the best players on the board coming remotely close to a statistical workup to show how much of a game was decided by "luck". For reliable error bars, you need vastly larger sample sizes than most people play. I mean think about it - am I playing [random card] well? Good luck, with full random you see it so infrequently against so many different opponents with so many possible permutations you can't hope to begin to quantify the amount due to random variation and that due to decisions.

Opening chapel/fortune teller is probably bad. but, I don't think Chapel/Market Square is a good opening either. I would rather trash first with chapel then buy a MS.
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2.71828.....

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Re: NO NO NO NO NO!
« Reply #15 on: November 20, 2014, 11:00:38 pm »
+3

Opening chapel/fortune teller is probably bad. but, I don't think Chapel/Market Square is a good opening either. I would rather trash first with chapel then buy a MS.

chapel/MS is very good.  because you are almost guaranteed to trash 4 cards with your chapel on t3/t4, and then buy another MS (or other useful card) on your other hand.  If you draw MS/chapel together on t3/t4 you should play market square first, then trash 4 cards.  You don't want to gain the gold yet.  You can do that later.
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Re: NO NO NO NO NO!
« Reply #16 on: November 21, 2014, 02:00:47 am »
+3

For me the big thing is, as much as Adam is right about there always being room to improve in your losses even if you get unlucky, the same holds true for your wins. There is always room to improve your play, period. No need to bring shuffle luck into it, that's a separate issue.

Of course, whining about bad shuffle luck does absolutely nothing for you either. Just play your draws to best of your ability. Playing well doesn't make you any luckier, but if your performance is better with a wide enough margin, you can win games even when luck is not on your side.
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silverspawn

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Re: NO NO NO NO NO!
« Reply #17 on: November 21, 2014, 06:02:08 am »
0

chapel/MS is very good.

jomini

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Re: NO NO NO NO NO!
« Reply #18 on: November 21, 2014, 12:34:49 pm »
0


Opening chapel/fortune teller is probably bad. but, I don't think Chapel/Market Square is a good opening either. I would rather trash first with chapel then buy a MS.

And why don't you trash first and buy a second Msqr? On T3/4 you buy a second MS and then on T5 you trash 4 cards, and then on T6 you can trash and get two golds. Two Msqr even let you play one for a +buy, trash a copper (discard for the gold), and then buy a replacement copper (or curse) to trash next go round. I mean honestly what are you going to buy instead? Surely not silver, not another terminal trasher, not terminal draw, and not most terminal action cash. A village? Likely not worth it. So some better cantrip ... which would be what? Caravan can be nice ... but you can pick it up later. An attack? Still seems really weak unless it is terminal and then you run the risk of collision.

Sure there are cards I might buy first - like Scheme or Iw. But that is a VERY short list I'd ever consider. And that is the point. Chapel Msqr is very, very powerful ... and you can completely hose it if you manage to get lucky with one of the weaker attacks. I could just as easily have said Spy. The point is really, obviously bad play with great luck can trump perfect play with poor luck.

There was a really fun puzzle a while back that asked folks to name a board where they could beat the Lucky Chancellor (played BM - Chancellor) who always drew whatever would be hardest for the player to surmount and the player drew their worst set of cards (e.g. if you opened Chapel/X, you'd not draw ChapX until T5). Not a single two or even seven card combo could overcome such extreme luck. And that is the point Msqr/Chap is highly reliable, very quick, and very strong ... but luck can overwhelm it.
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dondon151

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Re: NO NO NO NO NO!
« Reply #19 on: November 21, 2014, 02:05:49 pm »
+6

I honestly cannot tell if Msqr is supposed to be Market Square or Masquerade.
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Re: NO NO NO NO NO!
« Reply #20 on: November 21, 2014, 02:11:48 pm »
+1

I honestly cannot tell if Msqr is supposed to be Market Square or Masquerade.

Use of "MS" in addition adds to the confusion.
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dondon151

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Re: NO NO NO NO NO!
« Reply #21 on: November 21, 2014, 03:17:37 pm »
+1

Use of "MS" in addition adds to the confusion.

Who has multiple sclerosis?
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Re: NO NO NO NO NO!
« Reply #22 on: November 21, 2014, 04:06:30 pm »
0

Use of "MS" in addition adds to the confusion.

Who has multiple sclerosis?
My aunt, on my dad's side.
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Re: NO NO NO NO NO!
« Reply #23 on: November 21, 2014, 04:33:08 pm »
0

Use of "MS" in addition adds to the confusion.

Who has multiple sclerosis?

My grandma, on my dad's side (or more had).
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Titandrake

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Re: NO NO NO NO NO!
« Reply #24 on: November 21, 2014, 10:16:11 pm »
+5

My Dominion/general card game policy is that I'm only allowed to get annoyed at a game if I can't find a single moment where I made a mistake. I can't actually do this all the time because sometimes both your opening buys fall on turn 5 and that's why you lose. However, I can almost always find some mistake that I've made. It doesn't even have to be big, and often isn't. Say, you didn't order the cards revealed by Cartographer correctly on one turn in a 20 turn game. There's your mistake, and if you had played that right, maybe it would have propagated to giving you a better chance in that game.

I've definitely gotten mad about losing streaks - when Iso was still around, over the course of a few days I dropped from level 37 to level 22. However, if you're serious about getting better at something, your goal isn't to win. Your goal is to get better. Ideally, you abstract your thinking away from the "win/lose" from a specific game, and think more in terms of the big picture. What mistakes did I make, how do I fix those, have I tried this strategy before, etc. Streaks in luck will normalize over time, so as long as you focus on improvement things should work out.
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