You guys touch on the idea that you can usually construct a deck to prevent choking, and that some people choke themselves out by either building something unsustainable or screwing up their own shuffles.
However, here's an interesting proposition for you:
If two players of equal skill build the same deck, one of them building it to be 75% choke-proof and the other 99%, the 75% player will win 75% of games.
Chokeproofing often comes at the cost of building your deck below its potential. You sacrifice cash for consistency, which means you're sacrificing buys you could have had. It's important to balance chokeproofing with aggression to maximize your win potential... Dominion is played against an opponent, and the more aggressive player often wins.
You know, I really think this is misleading. Yes, choking is something that should be taken into account when the game starts because you need to consider what you can do about it and if there is anything, you want to build it into your deck accordingly.
But if not, if the answer to "what is my response to choking?" can only be "build more before you green" or maybe "build while you green" then I don't think the correct way to look at it is the way you're implying.
Don't be all: "my deck is 75% choke-resistant, time to green!" or "how do I get my deck to the point where it's able to green
as soon as possible?" Look at what your opponent is doing at the first time you could possibly consider greening (well, every turn because you should be doing that anyways)
Is it a mirror? Are you ahead? If you're ahead, play conservatively -- build more to deny your opponent components and give yourself more endgame control and reliability (and maybe stake out a small lead at the same time -- enough to prevent nasty surprise endings). Are you behind? You should probably put the pressure on now: get points and then either attack piles or just hope that your initiative on greening is enough to pull you through. Is it the same? Even tougher call and it depends more on the kingdom, but the kind of questions you should be asking yourself involve the payload of your engine (how many Provinces (or other green cards of your choice) do you want each turn?) How much does it hurt me to have one stall turn? Two stall turns? How do I win this game? How do I lose this game?
Is it not a mirror? Figure out how you're going to end the game and how long it's going to take and build your deck to last exactly that long.
Your percentages -- well it's clear that these are numbers you made up and that's OK, but I'd like to make my own numbers up in that case (though I think the numbers are completely irrelevant; at high levels games are won and lost through these endgame decisions and I think the cases where you are "playing the odds" at this point in the game are very rare. You make your own shuffle luck, remember?). One of the hallmarks of my play style is to overbuild sometimes and play more conservatively and I'd say that 75% of the time you shouldn't take the first opportunity to green, and rather you should build more. Yeah this is probably the other extreme of play style but I'd like to think I'm a successful Dominion player too and I think this advice, when taken without understanding the decisions being made, will not be helpful most of the time.
I mean, the person with the better deck gets more endgame control, so I would think the player who builds more gets and advantage that way unless they're falling too far behind on points.
I don't think you're wrong, ST, I just want to provide a counterpoint to your argument and bring up some points I think are being overlooked.