Might be a 1/10 chance for hitting two copper, but there's also the chance of hitting one copper which also isn't that great. You have 24% chance of hitting two Estates. But hey, this is assuming you open 5/2. What if you open 2/5? You'll be an additional turn behind if you skip the $2 hand, or you'll drop the percentages for a good Doctor overpay if you buy something.
I would rarely open doctor with 2/5, and certainly not if there's chapel. 5/2 doctor is extremely strong, but man, one turn difference is huge.
Again, Doctor is a good opening. I am not arguing against that. But silerspawn said that $5 Doctor is the BEST opening, better than any Chapel opening and "as good as it gets". I am saying that it isn't at all clear that Doctor is the very best, and that there are certainly boards where Chapel would be the better choice.
Well, it's only the best if you want to trash down quickly. If you go for a garden rush, it's a terrible opening. You can compare it to chapel because you generally want to do the same thing with both. Are there boards where chapel is better? Yea, every shelter board. Trashing shelters with doctor is such a pain. Aside from that though, I don't think it really depends on the board. Maybe the importance of hitting 5$ is a factor, but generally they will behave similar on most boards, since you want to do the same thing with both of them. I just feel like 5$ doctor kills junk faster than chapel and has more buying power, so it's just better no matter what the rest of the board looks like. I'm not certain, even though I've played quite a lot of games with both, it's possible that I was lucky with doctor in most of them. This is actually something simulations could give answers to.
Can't believe this is the second time I'm defending a $3 trasher. Uh, but overall chapel is defintely better. 5$ doctor opening is great, but you only open with 5$ in... *doing maths* 8,3% of all games. Doctor is like trading post, very good early but loses strength really fast.
It seems you are backing off of your earlier claims, so I'm not so much in disagreement. Again, all I was saying is that $5 Doctor opening is not always the best, and that Chapel can win out sometimes and it isn't always clear which one has the adantage. You say that the two can be fairly similar, and I can agree with that.
On a specific points, you say that Doctor trashes faster and has more buying power. I don't think this is completely accurate. Doctor is
initially faster, whereas Chapel is faster overall. That initial speed can be very important, but Chapel is more reliable against junking attacks as well as against bad shuffle luck, while still being almost as fast. In the specific case of 5/2 opening hands, Chapel has much higher initial buying power (since you get to use that $5 hand to buy something awesome) while Doctor allows for more buying power on the hands when it is played.