#zaiem beg

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The Wizards I Know

The Wizards I Know June 8, 2020 My name is Zaiem Beg. I was a contributing editor, then editor-in-chief for major Magic: The Gathering retailer and strategy website Channelfireball.com. Before that, I was a regular contributor for TCGPlayer.com. I’ve covered several Grand Prix events for officia...

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Written by Zaiem Beg. I only learned who he was today, so I don’t feel I can provide a proper introduction. Suffice to say, he is a prominent member of the MTG community, particularly in Seattle, with experience as a contributing editor and editor-in-chief of ChannelFireball and providing coverage for several Grand Prixs. He has provided a powerful statement on the systemic racism that he has observed in Wizards of the Coast over the span of his career, and the efforts to quell those voices that have sought to stand up against it.

Please know that I have no affiliation with Zaiem Beg or WoTC, and that I take no ownership or credit for any of the material presented.

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The Cedric Phillips Principle

Zaiem Beg: I've used the term "the Cedric Phillips principle" for a while now. Basically just because a person does well with an archetype (CP with Kithkin) doesn't mean the archetype itself is good.

Zaiem Beg: When you have a lot of tournament data and one (or a very small number of people) are beating the odds with what is likely an inferior archetype, it doesn't mean the archetype itself is not, in fact, inferior. Matt Landstrom's success with Vamps in Caw-Blade Standard was the point of discussion last night - and I awkwardly had to explain the Cedric Phillips principle to, well, Cedric Phillips.

Zaiem Beg: ‎(Weirdly, he didn't agree. "I didn't think Kithkin was a bad deck." Yeah, this is going to be a hard sell, and using you as an example of why I think you're wrong is probably not going to work.)

Daniel Duterte: What's the point in telling Cedric that his deck is "bad"?

Hollie V. Beg: So he feels bad. Obv.

Daniel Duterte: I mean, replace Cedric/Kithkin with Patrick Sullivan/Mountains.

Zaiem Beg: Yes, that's an effective application of the Cedric Phillips principle. Or possibly Tom Ross and Wild Nacatl.

Kyle Boddy: Cedric probably would have won a few GP/PTs had he known how to play Magic when Armageddon was legal, aka the last time WW was good.

Cedric Phillips: Probably would have done well at Amsterdam if I knew WW was a good deck as well. Frowntown.

Cedric Phillips: For the record Zaiem, I'm not sure I agree/disagree with your assessment, but I need a way to articulate it. Truth be told, I am an above average Magic player who worked very hard at the game to have the moderate success that I did have. I don't expect many to work as hard as I did. That being said, if they had/do, I think the "tier two" archtypes that I played to success (Chittering Rats + Vial deck many moons ago, Kithkin, Dredge around GP Oakland, and who knows what else) would have seen the same degree of success if not more. The decks certainly are not bad decks, because I would not have played them or won with them. The major issue is that people do not know how to playtest or identify what is important in both game states as well as matchups. That alone accounted for a ton of my success.

Luis Scott-Vargas: WW lol

Robin Alberg: I've heard Zaiem make variations of this argument (to me) on many occasions, and I'll admit it would have carried less weight had I actually won anything with the deck in question. In other words, good players who win with mediocre decks are a bad example for the rest of us ;)

Zaiem Beg: And Cedric, I want to be clear. I am in no way intending this to be a backhanded compliment or an insult to your abilities. Rather, it's the contrary. It really is "you are not as good at playing this deck as Cedric/Sullivan/Landstrom is, and you do not have the skills to overcome the disadvantage of playing a worse deck because you are not as good at Magic as those people."

Zaiem Beg: Essentially, my stance is when there's a deck that is consistently underperforming, but there's an outlier where a single person (or a very very small number of people) is performing well where the others have not, it is not an indication that the deck is the best choice for a tournament unless MAYBE if you are that outlier. The shorthand for this is "The Cedric Phillips principle."

Zaiem Beg: We have a lot of tournament data from that Standard season, and Kithkin badly underperformed for everyone who wasn't Cedric Phillips. Contrast that to someone like Sam Black and Faeries, where he did well with the deck, but so did scores of other people. When you see that kind of pattern, it's reasonable to conclude that Faeries was a stronger deck than Kithkin. If Kithkin was underplayed and we just didn't have a lot of data, then it would be harder to make that point, but plenty of people played it - they just, for the most part, didn't do very well. I played against it many times that season, and I only lost once to it (to you). The deck was pretty well-represented.

Zaiem Beg: And it's absolutely not a given that you wouldn't have been successful had you played a different deck. You are an above average Magic player who worked very hard at the game in order to achieve (moderate) success. Those are, I think, much more important factors. What if you had instead taken that time and worked hard at playing Faeries?

Zaiem Beg: We don't have an alternate universe generator, but if we did, I'd bet on the other universe where you choose a different, probably better deck and all other things are equal. I think "Cedric works hard -> Faeries" has a higher EV than "Cedric works hard -> Kithkin." Sure, "Cedric doesn't work hard -> Faeries" is going to have a lower EV than "Cedric works hard -> ham sandwich."

Zaiem Beg: In my opinion, you were successful because you're good at Magic and you work hard, and your deck choice was ultimately a handicap. The fact that you were able to overcome the handicap you gave yourself makes me think more highly of your abilities, not less.

Daniel Hanson: I would propose that most better players are drawn to decks that allow for more interaction. Given that, the players playing Kithkin may have been worse than the players playing Faeries on average. If that's the case then your Kithkin < Faeries reasoning could be flawed. I don't think it is but this use of statistics is fallible.

Zaiem Beg: Yeah, I considered that, but we have enough examples of players eschewing the more interactive decks in favor of what they believe is the best deck. I think it's safe to say PV didn't play mono-white at the PT because it was his first choice. If Faeries < Kithkin, I'm pretty certain we would have seen a lot more Goldmeadow Stalwarts and fewer Spellstutter Sprites piloted by the best players.

Noah Weil: Someone playing an average deck perfectly will probably do better than someone playing a great deck badly.

Ari Michael Lax: Having put a fair amount of work into both Fae and Kithkin, I would tend to agree with Zaiem. Kithkin was definitely good, but not playing Cryptic Command was already more than enough of a handicap to make this point, let alone everything else Fae did.

Adam Prosak: I completely agree with Zaiem. I've deluded myself into thinking that inferior decks are playable simply because I played them enough to get to the same level I would be at if I just switched to the good deck from the start. I realized this with CawBlade just a few weeks ago, but it was a powerful feeling playing a better deck and practicing that.