Planeswalker Points

Earlier this week Wizards implemented a massive change to their sanctioned play rating system. They'd established the old system, I believe, 15 years ago. They've been tinkering with it recently but I guess it became clear to them that it simply wasn't accomplishing what they now wanted it to accomplish.

The old system was a standard ELO system like they use in chess. Each player has a rating and when two players face each other you can work out the odds of each player winning. Then after the match you see what actually happened and adjust each player's rating accordingly. The winner would always trend upwards but if he as expected to win the gain would be smaller than if he pulled off an 'upset'. The loser would always loss the opposite amount which kept the system zero-sum.

The system works really well for chess which is entirely skill based and where working out the odds of success seems like something that could actually be done reasonably. With Magic it doesn't really work that way. Over the long run the randomness would even out but the problem was your rating could swing wildly one way or the other with a particularly lucky or unlucky event. There was just too much volatility involved to make ratings a true indicator of skill the way it can be in chess.

Another issue with the old system is the way event invitations and byes were handled. I kept getting invited to Nationals based on rating year after year because my rating ended up being pretty high when I pretty much stopped playing Magic 6 years ago. Maybe my rating is where it should be and I deserved to be considered one of the top players in Canada still. More likely my true rating should have been substantially lower but it never got a chance to fall since I didn't play anymore. I'd like to think if I still played a lot and put in a lot of practice that I could be a top player but realistically World of Warcraft took that away.

Even if I had been playing a lot of Magic (on Magic Online, say, or just testing constructed with a team) I wouldn't have wanted to play in events. I was close to the Nationals invite mark as it was (tied for last place invitation in 2011, 2009, and 2007 I think?) and couldn't afford to lose even a single rating point. Playing random sanctioned matches simply couldn't help and could really hurt a lot. It was a high risk, low reward scenario. Maybe playing in a PTQ would be worth the risk, but maybe not. Certainly something like FNM or a random GP trial would be right out.


The new system is designed to deal with both of those problems. It no longer even claims to measure player skill, instead tracking participation as a primary factor. You can no longer lose anything by playing a match against anyone at all. How did they do this?

Each event type gets assigned a multiplier (x1 for a prerelease, x3 for FNM, x8 for Nationals, x12 for the Pro Tour, etc...) and then you earn 3 times the multiplier for each win and 1 times the multiplier for each draw. You also get some extra points just for showing up based on the number of entrants. You can't lose points in any way, shape, or form other than when a season resets (at which point everyone loses everything).

It doesn't matter how much better I may be than Joe Schmoe. As long as he actually shows up and plays in tournaments he's going to have more points than I do if I just sit at home and play WoW. If I want to get points I need to actually go out and play too. (And then presumably I'll earn more than he does since I'll get more winning points to go with the participating points.) Not playing to sit on your rating is a thing of the past for sure!


How does qualifying for events go now? What do I need to do to make sure I can keep getting invited to Nationals? It turns out they're making a few different buckets for these points.

You have a lifetime total which gets accumulated over your entire career. It's retroactive and will include all forms of sanctioned play. It will even include casual pick-up games if you bother to get them reported in. Want some points? Have some! They're free! They also don't seem to do anything at all except make a number bigger. (I'm level 38 out of a maximum of 50!)

You have a competitive total which gets reset every 4 months. Everything you play in except casual matches and Worlds contributes to this number. After the 4 months are up they lock in the totals, use those to hand out invitations and byes to any Pro Tours, Grand Prix, or Nationals in the next 4 months, and then wipe the slate clean. For the PT they give the top 5 uninvited finishers in each region an invite and flight, and then they give the top 65 uninvited finishers in the world an invite and flight. You can also get an invite by winning a PTQ, having a high Pro Club level, or by being in the Hall of Fame. Grand Prix byes are simpler. Top 300 in the world get 3 byes. Top 2000 get 2 byes. Top 15000 get 1 bye. Nationals invitation rules are actually not yet determined, but will care about the season which takes place from Dec 26th, 2011 to Apr 1st, 2012. (Which is actually not 4 months... I guess the seasons run 4 months, 3 months, 5 months?)

You have a Friday Night Magic total which seems to reset once a year. Only points earned at FNM go in this bucket. Wizards is going to hold an FNM championship for 100 people based on this point total (top 48 from North America) which I believe comes with a flight to wherever they end up holding it which seems pretty neat.

You have a professional total which only counts points earned at PT, GP, and Worlds. It resets once a year and is used solely to invite players to Worlds. Exactly how that works has yet to be determined just like the Nationals info.


How does this impact me and qualifying for Nationals? Well, it seems like if I want to play in Nationals again I need to start playing Magic 8 months before the event instead of 2 weeks before the event. This certainly will cause me to be better prepared for the constructed portion! I also like how you get a free flight if you qualify for the Pro Tour on planeswalker points. It certainly makes me want to at least look into when different events are held in the Toronto area. It's entirely possible I could find some sort of tournament after work each day which seems like it would give quite an advantage to someone living in a big city. Though I suppose a smaller town could just have one store run an event every day if there was demand for it. The multiplier on a random sanctioned tournament is low (x1) but it could really add up.

I really like the look of the cards being spoiled for the new set. Maybe I'll play some Magic this season and see what kind of numbers get put up...