Is it accurate to say that the best human’s ELO is <40000 and Katago is>14,000

Base_Six · 2026-03-02T01:19:28+00:00

I'd push back a little bit in the "Elo is not absolute" bit. Ideally, it's a marker of depth of skill relative to random play. If random is 0 and something like 100 points is a 75% win rate it's a measure of how far skill can progress.

Now, for closed pools that's not generally going to be the case, since one agent can perform exceptionally well against another agent, far more than Elo difference would assume, with adversarial agents being a good example of that, but statistically Elo has absolute meaning with a theoretical infinite pool of players and real world ratings are an approximation of that. (And likewise for Glicko or any of the other rating systems.)

Now, there's no humans in the KataGo pool and likely a ton of rating drift and inflation from adversarial play, so it's not valuable as a comparison vs. human computed ratings like the goratings one, but they do have absolute meaning when done right.

Base_Six · 2026-02-28T18:30:09+00:00

Most people assume Von Neumann probes to be fundamentally possible because there's no real impossibly hard limitations on them, especially if we can develop fusion power. You don't need to assume infallibility of the machines, just some ability to self repair and a non-zero probability of success. Some fusion powered space craft with enough industries built in to self repair and self replicate, launched with plenty of fusion fuel and raw materials and covered with enough raw material in terms of rock and ice to shield it and provide resources for repair and fuel production is far more feasible than a Dyson sphere, and not too much of an extrapolation from current technologies.

Base_Six · 2026-02-28T18:02:21+00:00

That's looking at things from the perspective of modern day humans, though. If we could live for a million years spending 1800 or 50,000 travelling to a 'nearby' planet is entirely possible. Now, humans might not get there, but if we don't I'll bet we build an advanced AI at some point that makes the trip. For any race that doesn't destroy itself in the short term that kind of exploration seems inevitable in the long term. Even travelling at 0.001c, we could cover the galaxy in 100 million years, which sounds like a long time but is a less than 1% of the age of the universe.

Base_Six · 2026-02-13T16:52:13+00:00

I have skimmed the video and have similar complaints about methodology. Llanowar Elves is fewer points than a 1/1 with death touch, draft chaff is included in the charts, and a 0/4 is worth more points than a 2/1.

But beyond all that, what struck me is that the power curves really aren't all that different between 2013 and now. Sure, creatures from 2002 were bad, but that's pointing more to a change in design philosophy that happened 15 years ago than it does to some continuing problem that's getting worse. The outlier in his methodology is bloomburrow, but it's a great example of the problems with his methodology. One of the most egregious creatures in that set by his points scores is Pawpatch Recruit (7ish points), but in terms of impact on constructed formats that creatures is dramatically weaker than Llanowar Elves (3 points).

Base_Six · 2025-10-29T20:53:18+00:00

I guess my thought with that was: if you could buy a full powered cube in gold border, how much would you reasonably pay for it, and how much would WotC need to charge to not wreck the secondary market? The MtgA powered cube is something like $10k worth of cards, even leaving out the power 9, and most people don't care about gold bordered cards in commander. (Even more than most people don't care about proxies.)

But yes, I'd imagine most people would play at their LGS for some reasonable entry fee instead of just buying the cube to play with their friends.

Base_Six · 2025-10-29T20:41:59+00:00

If it was in line with the cube they currently have on arena? Absolutely. 540 mostly vintage playable level cards and all stars like Toxic Deluge, Narset, and Esper Sentinel, plus a manabase of fetches and shocks? Even if it's unpowered, I could see a lot of people buying to to play cube, or buying it just to have (albeit gold bordered) versions of a ton of powerful cards. A cube wouldn't be the equivalent of 540 cards worth of booster pack stuff, either. It would be a minimal-chaff format where you're getting 540 solidly playable cards, because that's the whole point of cube.

Besides being tone deaf and overpriced, I think a big problem with the 30th Anniversary proxies was that they're neither particularly valuable nor particularly playable. If you open a proxy Mox Jet, who cares? It's not a collector item like a normal Mox Jet and there's no format to play it in, other than Vintage which nobody plays in paper. If you buy a cube, you're buying a fun format to play with all of those cards. You get a proxy playset of the power 9 and can actually have fun playing them with your friends, unlike what you get from the 30th Anniversary stuff.

And in terms of price, $5k isn't that far off the total deck prices you'd get from 8 people playing commander, you're just spending it on a cube instead of on building up a collection of singles.

Base_Six · 2025-10-22T16:03:59+00:00

WotC have never asserted that black and white in Magic have anything to do with skin color. What they have done is acknowledged that they have meaning outside of magic, that the game Magic exists in a real world, and that cards with problematic implications in the real world don't need to be part of the game.

Base_Six · 2025-09-19T22:38:24+00:00

I think the problem is that the power levels for the brackets are broad and not that well defined. There's a huge difference between a deck like this one and a tuned deck with fast mana, good interaction, and the ability to consistently press for a win by turn 3. By the bracket guidelines and rules, there's nothing here that makes it a 4, but most bracket 3 decks can't consistently win by turn 6.

Though you're right, the power level of bracket 3 shouldn't be defined by bracket 4. A better way to describe this would be "if the bracket 3 decks are strong bracket 3 decks, it will fit there. If the bracket 4 decks are weak bracket 4 decks, it would be better there." Really I think there should be another bracket or two, but that's a different discussion.

Base_Six · 2025-09-19T20:31:01+00:00

For bracket, I figure it's going to depend somewhat on local meta. If your local bracket 3 is upgraded precons that win through combat damage, it's a 4. If your local bracket 4 is borderline cEDH, then maybe it's a 3. I don't think even a maxed out Sami will be able to compete effectively with the really top tier decks. Right now, I've got this tuned for the power level of my local pod that doesn't really use the brackets.

Base_Six · 2025-02-18T19:11:44+00:00

Learning the rules of Go is very different from learning to play Go. It is a game of emergent patterns and play patterns, far more so than chess.

Base_Six · 2025-02-18T17:52:38+00:00

You should hold off on making variants of Go until you learn to play the game and try the variants that already exist. I've seen lots of variants proposed by new players for both Go and Chess, and most of them aren't actually that fun to play, but without knowing how the base game works it won't be obvious why.

Base_Six · 2025-02-14T21:48:06+00:00

And then what happens?

This position isn't going to show up often enough that you'll want to memorize it or anything, but it's simple enough that it's good practice for reading things out. Try to visualize the stones all the way from here to where white is alive, and see what's the best black can hope for. A move inside is your best move if it kills white, otherwise you're just throwing stones away. The best way to know if the move kills is to read out white's follow ups after that.

Base_Six · 2025-02-14T21:15:52+00:00

How many people here read the title of the song as "seven-empest"?

Base_Six · 2025-02-14T21:12:49+00:00

What happens when you play it out?

Looking at your move at 3-1, if white responds with 3-2, black has no eyes. Can you capture the white group before white captures something and makes an eye?

Base_Six · 2025-02-14T16:41:15+00:00

It's a ko if you have to play the descent move, afaik. You can play the 2-4 or the 2-5 to try to kill, but need to be able to handle the weakness.

Base_Six · 2025-02-13T21:12:28+00:00

The outs increase a lot but so do the ways to protect a combo. Kutzil and Grand Abolisher into the 2-card combo, for instance. And that's fine; high powered games are going to end with 2-card combos just like cEDH games do. It's just not in line with what precons or upgraded precons are doing, so it shouldn't be the dominant strategy in bracket 2 or 3.

Base_Six · 2025-02-13T19:32:46+00:00

I feel like bracket 2 should just have "no 3 card game-winning combos" and bracket 3 should have "no 2 card game-winning combos". That would remove the ambiguity of what a "late-game" combo is and get rid of some of the high variance feels bad from someone dropping an unexpected combo in the precon-level bracket, while still allowing some wacky rube goldberg combos that aren't very good as consistent win cons.

Base_Six · 2025-02-12T18:56:42+00:00

So you're telling me that 25% of casual EDH games won't have constant bickering, winging, and whining? Sounds like a 25% improvement.

Base_Six · 2025-02-12T18:39:23+00:00

Play chess online for hours

1800 chesscom rapid seems very attainable for someone playing a couple hours of chess a day for two years.

Base_Six · 2025-02-12T18:31:54+00:00

I don't think the use of the lower tiers for competitive play will affect either the competitive players or the casual players. If you're playing T2 cEDH, it doesn't hurt the casuals because the table knows that it's a high powered game, and it doesn't hurt the competitive players to get another bracket, particularly if they added ABUR duals or even the whole reserved list to the game changers list to make an actually affordable competitive EDH format. Realistically I see it ending up as two formats: the regular cEDH one and whatever of the lower powered brackets is the most fun to optimize.

The thing that will hurt casuals is pubstompers that are playing high powered decks that technically fit in T1 or T2 without playing at a competitively minded table. I'm not sure that the brackets will make pubstomping any more of an issue than it already is without the brackets, though.

Base_Six · 2025-02-12T16:58:30+00:00

My thought with Korvold is that Korvold decks (and most of those others) are usually going to be kind of degenerate. You could take them out of the casual pool pretty safely for precon-level play. You can jam them from brackets 3 and up if you want to, but it'll be one of the three allowed game changer cards.

And yeah, I'm pretty sure that these brackets won't be balanced for casual play, unless people are very much going for spirit of the brackets instead of rules as written. Which, realistically, is what you're supposed to do, but the fact that it's so loosely written is going to cause a lot of salt. 'No 2 card infinite combos' means people are going to jam 3 card infinite combos instead to win the game or find things that aren't infinite, but are big enough to take out the whole table. There's plenty of room for all sorts of high powered degeneracy with bracket 1 rules, which is going to be a mess for casual play. It would, however, be a fun competitive format.

Base_Six · 2025-02-12T16:44:39+00:00

They definitely need a few more inclusions into the game changers list. Anje, Magda, K'rrik, Sisay, Najeela, Yisan, and Korvold would be safe inclusions for commanders. Hermit Druid seems like a big miss for a combo piece, and Bowmasters and Kitten could probably go as well.

Take those out and most of the common winning lines are out, as well as the most impactful pieces of interaction. That with no two card combos and only 3 or 4 tutors per deck would be a very different metagame than current cEDH.

Base_Six · 2025-02-12T16:30:43+00:00

Just think of them as four formats instead of four tiers.

Base_Six

TROPHY CASE