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Author Topic: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?  (Read 18414 times)

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schadd

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Re: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?
« Reply #25 on: August 15, 2016, 04:24:31 pm »
0

I bet you $x that I can bump my Fairgr
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trivialknot

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Re: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?
« Reply #26 on: August 15, 2016, 08:27:41 pm »
0

Dominion has both a lot of luck and a lot of skill. Is there enough skill relative to luck that the best players tend to come out on top? Well as it happens we have a lot of data there. For example you could look at the final standings in the league (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?board=60.0), which has had 16 seasons.
This strikes me as an interesting little data analysis problem.  The question I have though, are the full results of Dominion League stored anywhere in some sort of standard format?
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Qvist

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Re: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?
« Reply #27 on: August 15, 2016, 09:25:06 pm »
0

Dominion has both a lot of luck and a lot of skill. Is there enough skill relative to luck that the best players tend to come out on top? Well as it happens we have a lot of data there. For example you could look at the final standings in the league (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?board=60.0), which has had 16 seasons.
This strikes me as an interesting little data analysis problem.  The question I have though, are the full results of Dominion League stored anywhere in some sort of standard format?

It would be quite useful if someone could do that. Unfortunately the outcome of the Championship match was rarely documented in a thread, so it will be difficult to find out the winner of each season.

JW

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Re: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?
« Reply #28 on: August 15, 2016, 09:35:41 pm »
+1

Records for the first ten seasons are here: http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Dominion_League

Three more recent championship matches are recorded here.
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Qvist

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Re: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?
« Reply #29 on: August 15, 2016, 09:40:45 pm »
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Records for the first ten seasons are here: http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Dominion_League

Three more recent championship matches are recorded here.

Cool, thanks didn't know they were on the wiki. Makes sense.

pacovf

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Re: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?
« Reply #30 on: August 15, 2016, 11:04:49 pm »
+4

Accepting money to play Dominion with people you don't know is disgusting. You should wait until after you're married to do it.
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Seprix

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Re: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?
« Reply #31 on: August 15, 2016, 11:07:01 pm »
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Accepting money to play Dominion with people you don't know is disgusting. You should wait until after you're married to do it.

To the strangers? Are you advocating for polygamy?
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trivialknot

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Re: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?
« Reply #32 on: August 15, 2016, 11:19:00 pm »
+1

Records for the first ten seasons are here: http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Dominion_League

Three more recent championship matches are recorded here.
The championship matches aren't that important for doing statistics.  I think for a basic analysis, I'd just take a bunch of tournament games, and then strip out the identities of any of the players.

Using the wiki article linked, I can figure out the outcomes of the matches for the first ten seasons and make a histogram.  There have been [11,  28,  44,  84,  44,  28,  11] matches with scores [0-6, 1-5, 2-4, 3-3, 4-2, 5-1, 6-0].  Not sure how my histogram code is handling ties but that's not too important.  My first attempt to fit to a binomial distribution shows that Dominion is 112% luck.

I think what this shows is that I need to account for the 1st player advantage in my model.
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trivialknot

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Re: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?
« Reply #33 on: August 15, 2016, 11:32:59 pm »
0

Never mind, I just figured out the problem with my math.

An individual game of Dominion is 88% chance.  That means that the more skilled player loses 44% of their games (ignoring ties).  In a 6-game match, the more skilled player wins 47% of the time, and ties 30% of the time.

Caveats: this is only true of the A division of the Dominion league in the first 10 seasons.  When players are more evenly matched (ie the Dominion League is doing its job well), the more chance is involved.  Also, my model doesn't account for the 1st player advantage, and it shows.  In the tournament, tied matches occur about 35% of the time, whereas my model predicted 30%.
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Seprix

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Re: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?
« Reply #34 on: August 15, 2016, 11:40:43 pm »
+5

Never mind, I just figured out the problem with my math.

An individual game of Dominion is 88% chance.

Without doing any research, I can tell you with absolute certainty that you are completely and utterly wrong.
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Donald X.

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Re: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?
« Reply #35 on: August 15, 2016, 11:43:07 pm »
+8

Never mind, I just figured out the problem with my math.

An individual game of Dominion is 88% chance.  That means that the more skilled player loses 44% of their games (ignoring ties).  In a 6-game match, the more skilled player wins 47% of the time, and ties 30% of the time.

Caveats: this is only true of the A division of the Dominion league in the first 10 seasons.  When players are more evenly matched (ie the Dominion League is doing its job well), the more chance is involved.  Also, my model doesn't account for the 1st player advantage, and it shows.  In the tournament, tied matches occur about 35% of the time, whereas my model predicted 30%.
I think what you've got here is a statement about the A league and not a statement about Dominion.

Two equally matched players of Foo split the games 50-50. Some people point at that and say "Foo is all luck." But in fact Foo could be chess or whatever. Once you subtract skill, luck is what's left.

By looking at just matches between A division players, you are subtracting lots of skill. (Yes I suggested looking at that data.)
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trivialknot

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Re: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?
« Reply #36 on: August 15, 2016, 11:48:33 pm »
0

Never mind, I just figured out the problem with my math.

An individual game of Dominion is 88% chance.  That means that the more skilled player loses 44% of their games (ignoring ties).  In a 6-game match, the more skilled player wins 47% of the time, and ties 30% of the time.

Caveats: this is only true of the A division of the Dominion league in the first 10 seasons.  When players are more evenly matched (ie the Dominion League is doing its job well), the more chance is involved.  Also, my model doesn't account for the 1st player advantage, and it shows.  In the tournament, tied matches occur about 35% of the time, whereas my model predicted 30%.
I think what you've got here is a statement about the A league and not a statement about Dominion.

Two equally matched players of Foo split the games 50-50. Some people point at that and say "Foo is all luck." But in fact Foo could be chess or whatever. Once you subtract skill, luck is what's left.

By looking at just matches between A division players, you are subtracting lots of skill. (Yes I suggested looking at that data.)
Yeah pretty much.  I think it goes to show that in a competitive game, you actually want lots of luck.  Because what you want is people who are equally matched, and when people are equally matched, luck is what you have.
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Qvist

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Re: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?
« Reply #37 on: August 16, 2016, 12:06:23 am »
+1

Records for the first ten seasons are here: http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Dominion_League

Three more recent championship matches are recorded here.

I couldn't sleep, so I updated the data for the last 6 seasons. But not the Head-to-head Records, I don't think it's worth it to keep that updated because it's very cumbersome and the table gets way too big if we include every player who was in A. Maybe it would make sense for like the Top 10 players with the most games in A.

Titandrake

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Re: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?
« Reply #38 on: August 16, 2016, 12:18:21 am »
+3

Never mind, I just figured out the problem with my math.

An individual game of Dominion is 88% chance.  That means that the more skilled player loses 44% of their games (ignoring ties).  In a 6-game match, the more skilled player wins 47% of the time, and ties 30% of the time.

Caveats: this is only true of the A division of the Dominion league in the first 10 seasons.  When players are more evenly matched (ie the Dominion League is doing its job well), the more chance is involved.  Also, my model doesn't account for the 1st player advantage, and it shows.  In the tournament, tied matches occur about 35% of the time, whereas my model predicted 30%.
I think what you've got here is a statement about the A league and not a statement about Dominion.

Two equally matched players of Foo split the games 50-50. Some people point at that and say "Foo is all luck." But in fact Foo could be chess or whatever. Once you subtract skill, luck is what's left.

By looking at just matches between A division players, you are subtracting lots of skill. (Yes I suggested looking at that data.)
Yeah pretty much.  I think it goes to show that in a competitive game, you actually want lots of luck.  Because what you want is people who are equally matched, and when people are equally matched, luck is what you have.

I don't see how that follows at all.

I feel like you have some misconceptions that are very obvious from my end. Like, conflating the competitive value of a game with how easy it is to pair up people in 50/50 matches. Or, that there is some fixed amount of skill + luck, and since the skill "cancels out", if you have lots of luck you have lots of "game" left over.

If I'm honest, I actually don't understand your conclusion at all.
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trivialknot

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Re: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?
« Reply #39 on: August 16, 2016, 12:38:41 am »
+1

I feel like you have some misconceptions that are very obvious from my end. Like, conflating the competitive value of a game with how easy it is to pair up people in 50/50 matches. Or, that there is some fixed amount of skill + luck, and since the skill "cancels out", if you have lots of luck you have lots of "game" left over.

If I'm honest, I actually don't understand your conclusion at all.
Yeah, it's hard to understand.  Fundamentally, the problem is that "How much luck is there in Dominion?" is an ill-posed question.  Philosophers disagree on whether this kind of question makes sense at all.

So as a data analyst, I ask a similar but distinct question: What percent of the total variance comes from luck, and what percent comes from the players?  And that's why skill + luck adds up to 100%.  When both players have equally matched skill, the skill difference doesn't account for anything and then it's just 100% luck.
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Ratsia

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Re: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?
« Reply #40 on: August 16, 2016, 01:47:15 am »
+1

it seems like in this world, luck elements are the only way designers have managed to prevent games from getting old after extensive play. 
Adding variance also allows players of a larger range of skill levels to play together and feel like they have a chance to win which usually makes it more fun for everyone.
I was about to write the same reply before seeing yours. The main target audience for typical eurogames does not play any individual title for more than perhaps 5-10 times (*), and hence the issue of extensive play is probably not very high on the priority list of most designers. The somewhat high luck factor is indeed more because it is an easy and accepted way of evening out the crowd while the game is still new, whereas for extreme longevity the design space of low-luck games might actually have more to offer. In fact, the eurogames often played competitively have little (TtA, Agricola) or practically no (Terra Mystica, Puerto Rico) random elements besides initial setup. Dominion, clearly designed for repeated play, sits somewhere in between those and classical card games that are intended for extreme repeated play while still having high luck factor.

I've also played Dominion for money in the sense that I did pay a small entrance fee to a national championships and won somewhat larger monetary price after winning the title (like seven years ago -- no chance of doing that today), but I wouldn't say money played any role here.


(*) Some stats on this would be nice to see. I bet the mean is clearly higher than median, and the latter might be as low as 3-4 for typical games.
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trivialknot

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Re: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?
« Reply #41 on: August 16, 2016, 02:48:15 am »
+3

I just added a 1st player advantage to my model.  Now the best fit says that luck determines about negative 12% of games .  Not sure why you're all doubting the mathematical model, it is obviously 100% accurate and has no problems whatsoever. :P

Now show me a data set consisting entirely of games between Stef and Lord Bottington and I will show you how little luck is involved there.
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Davio

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Re: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?
« Reply #42 on: August 16, 2016, 03:51:16 am »
0

Doesn't Magic have a lot of variance too? And Hearthstone?
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Re: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?
« Reply #43 on: August 16, 2016, 07:51:05 am »
+3

Dominion is a probability management game. "You Make Your Own Shuffle Luck" might be intended as a joke or something, but that is actually what you are trying to do really. Playing with and through the luck, and trying to manipulate your deck for the best odds of success, really is what the game of Dominion fundamentally is, and it is totally a competitive game even if the most skilled player doesn't win every individual game.

The important thing in games like Dominion is to not put excessive weight into a single game. There is a reason every good online tournament is best of 6-7. This allows for natural variance to occur, and requires players to demonstrate proficiency in a variety of game states. This is also the reason the competitive ladder works well - large numbers of games trend toward predicting success.

Having variance doesn't make a game non-competitive, unless it's like Mario Party or something where it's totally out of whack. Humans have natural variance in skill and rationality that rivals the placement of cards in a shuffle.
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Re: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?
« Reply #44 on: August 16, 2016, 09:08:31 am »
0

Records for the first ten seasons are here: http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Dominion_League

Three more recent championship matches are recorded here.

I couldn't sleep, so I updated the data for the last 6 seasons. But not the Head-to-head Records, I don't think it's worth it to keep that updated because it's very cumbersome and the table gets way too big if we include every player who was in A. Maybe it would make sense for like the Top 10 players with the most games in A.

I agree that including everyone who's ever been in A would be an eyesore. As far as cumbersome to update, I believe pubby originally created all the tables and had scripts to automate updating them. He's not been around in some time but if someone intends to keep that page updated, it might be useful to contact him.
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DG

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Re: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?
« Reply #45 on: August 16, 2016, 09:52:21 am »
+2

I suspect that a specialist online game viewer would be a big help in promoting Dominion as a spectator event. This would probably show card play at a pace dictated by the viewer (rather than use the actual game timings), have a voice recording or commentary added with timing adjusted to fit the card play, and include deck tracking.

If people do start playing Dominion for money then we'll all probably have to become less amateur and start doing boring things like card counting. We'll have to worry about people using automated deck trackers, instant simulators, and other tools for online play as well. Players could even get together and secretly play as a team.
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Infthitbox

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Re: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?
« Reply #46 on: August 16, 2016, 10:01:58 am »
0

Players could even get together and secretly play as a team.

This hasn't destroyed the Magic: The Gathering Online mostly because the big prize for online events is qualification for invitation-only "paper" tournaments. A similar model could work well for Dominion if it was big enough. It'd be a long time before we had to worry about that though.

I will admit to thinking about running simulators at the beginning of online matches, but I've never actually done it. If I had, I probably wouldn't have tried to play Beggar/Gardens against MegaGoons last league season. As for card counting, I don't use any aids to do this while playing online, which would be pretty trivial to do, but I don't think it would ruin the game if people did so. They'd get better results in Dominion Online, but they'd probably cap their paper performance because they'd never get used to doing it mentally.
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Re: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?
« Reply #47 on: August 16, 2016, 12:50:47 pm »
0

it seems like in this world, luck elements are the only way designers have managed to prevent games from getting old after extensive play.

Well, there's Chess. And if you mean modern games, there are lots of abstracts in the same vein as Chess. There are non-abstracts with zero or low luck too. Kemet and Puerto Rico come to mind.
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Re: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?
« Reply #48 on: August 16, 2016, 01:22:46 pm »
0

it seems like in this world, luck elements are the only way designers have managed to prevent games from getting old after extensive play.

Well, there's Chess. And if you mean modern games, there are lots of abstracts in the same vein as Chess. There are non-abstracts with zero or low luck too. Kemet and Puerto Rico come to mind.

Puerto Rico has a small but significant amount of luck (plantation cards).

Terra Mystica has zero luck after the initial setup, though.
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Re: could you ever see yourself playing Dominion for money?
« Reply #49 on: August 16, 2016, 02:29:27 pm »
+1

On-topic, though:  Yes, I could see myself playing for money.  I wouldn't expect to win without much more practice than I currently get, obviously.

This then leads to the question:  can we turn Dominion into a more-popular spectator sport?

It's obvious why DOTA, for instance, or Starcraft, are a spectator sports: they have excitement similar to football, with accessibility similar to football.  Anyone can set up two goals and kick a football around on a nearby field, anyone can play DOTA or Starcraft.  In both cases becoming very good takes tons of practice, but only one requires running for 90 minutes.

It's less obvious why Chess, MTG, and Hearthstone are spectator sports.  Both have similar accessibility to football, but the excitement is all mental.  (Does chess actually count as a spectator sport?  There are large tournaments, there are heaps of cash on the line, but I've no idea who sponsors that cash.  We all know where the cash for MTG and HS come from.)  MTG, I think, was in this unique place in time, and picked up a huge amount of steam because it was unique.  HS, of course, has the weight of Blizzard behind it.

And Dominion is missing, I think, one key element:  there's just about zero incentive for a FLGS to sponsor a Dominion tournament, much less one every week.

My FLGS runs Friday Night Magic, like just about every other FLGS.  Assuming they get 24 people to show up, they take in $360 in entry fees, and "spend" 120 boosters on the draft itself and prizes.  They turn a small profit on the tournament itself.  You can't do that with Dominion.
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