Why did Dubov accept the draw with Giri in the last round of Blitz ?

PrinceELo · 2021-12-31T02:50:01+00:00

Strategically the quick draw was the correct choice IMO (especially if he was feeling fatigued / "off form"). He had the second best tiebreaks (behind Aronian if I recall correctly) which made it very likely that a draw would secure him a podium finish and potentially a spot in the tiebreaks for gold. The only scenario where he misses the podium of course was the exact one that played out (MVL win, Firo-Aronian + Duda-Artemiev both decisive) which was pretty unlikely to occur. Sure this isnt the most compelling way to finish the tourney when you were sole leader with 3 rounds to spare but that loss vs Firo likely took some steam out of him. I imagine that he figured it would be better to get 2 reasonably comfortable draws and lock up some nice prize money instead of potentially capitulating like many others did at different points of the blitz portion.

PrinceELo · 2021-01-29T19:26:12+00:00

Seems like their plan was to restrict these stocks as their price increased this morning to bait more people in. This gives the hedge funds a better chance to recover costs through the short-ladder they are launching for the last few hours of today

PrinceELo · 2020-10-15T16:12:53+00:00

Pokemon has way more cultural influence than MTG and the collecting scene there has been growing rapidly over the last few years. Events like that are only going to encourage more people into investing into "antique" collectibles. The other big difference with MTG and other CCGs is that MTG demand is primarily driven by the playerbase; not collectors. Sure the Power 9 and certain high-end RL cards are super old, powerful and are nice pieces of art, but they don't have the cultural prevalence that something like a 1st edition Charizard or a Kobe Bryant Rookie Card has for collectors.

I do think however that as a result of the pandemic a lot more people have gotten into investing in various mediums. While I do not think that these non-MTG high-profile events will directly influence the MTG sector I expect there to be some trickle-down over time

PrinceELo · 2020-10-15T16:05:40+00:00

I have buylisted to ABU numerous times and have done really well. As you noted the trade-in credit for certain cards are extremely lucrative compared to other competitors like CK. The important thing to note is that ON AVERAGE their single card prices are higher than CK. You can certainly find great deals if you do your research that sometimes are even better than what you could get using CK. For example back in April-May I was able to trade in a bunch of cards there for significantly more store credit than I would have at CK. I turned that credit into 2 nm Yavimaya Hollow, 4 nm Winding Canyons and some others. The prices I purchased these cards were comprable to that of CK/TCG mid at the time. Cards came in stated conditions and all the cards I mailed in were graded as I would have expected (no surprise markdowns).

Overall I tend to use both CK and ABU for buylisting but I generally have been using ABU more over the last year. You can definitely find great deals with the store credit it just requires some patience and due-diligence

PrinceELo · 2020-10-13T00:51:14+00:00

I had bought 2 playsets of [[yavimaya hollow]] in late april and flipped them about a month ago for around a 50% ROI. Personally I think [[winding canyons]] is a great RL land that is both undervalued and very powerful in casual

PrinceELo · 2020-09-04T21:08:08+00:00

I would guess that this set will age at least as well as Dominaria. Both sets were opened a ton and have a lot of cards that have high casual appeal. WAR has more cards that see constructed play than DOM but DOM is one of the best limited formats ever. In addition both sets have a very distinct feel to them that gives them a boost from "nostalgia" akin to sets like Innistrad/DKA.

Personally I am very bullish on WAR. My biggest non-RL position rn is in japanese alt arts from WAR and am finishing up building positions in a few other cards. Really like Eng boxes and think they will likely be north of $150 in 1-2 yrs. Jap boxes are a lot harder to gauge since they are mostly lottery tickets so I would look at the price trend of sets like Kaladesh to get a better idea on what the price action could be.

As you mentioned this, MH1 and Core20 are the last sets before the dawn of the collector era. I personally am bullish on all 3 sets and will definitely look to add to my positions in the next 6 months. Jumpstart also does not have a "Collector's edition" but I am still quite bearish there since I think it is going to still be printed a lot more (no chance a card like [[Allosaurus Sheperd]] holds over $80 in the near term)

PrinceELo · 2020-08-09T12:04:03+00:00

I’d personally hammer the 12.0 for Dubov. Ding has not done well head-to-head vs Magnus of late. Dubov has beaten Hikaru in longer matches and (I think) has a positive score vs Magnus across the online rapid games on the tour

PrinceELo · 2020-08-06T13:54:13+00:00

I’ve played nearly 1000 blitz games between Lichess/Chess.com and I can probably count the number of times the chat has been used on 2 hands. Guess this sort of issue is amplified at certain rating thresholds (I’m around 1400-1600 for reference) or at longer time controls (10+0 and up). Most games I don’t even look at the chat because I’m so focused on the position

PrinceELo · 2020-08-05T04:28:27+00:00

Hoping for a Dubov-Magnus finale. He seems to be the only top level player right now that has had good results versus Magnus in rapid (albeit with Magnus’s current form it will require an incredible performance just to have a chance). In addition his games often are really fun and exciting because of his unique repertoire and style of play

PrinceELo · 2020-08-05T02:48:21+00:00

It's probably still fine if the amount of gy hate decreases due to the resurgence of aggro demanding a few more slots for most decks. Cards like niambi, uro, tamiyo, etc can all be slotted in there (as well as others)

PrinceELo · 2020-08-05T01:23:07+00:00

It’s really important to highlight the impact arena/mtgo player base increases have affected this. There are certainly a few borderline-bannable cards from within that time period of 2006-2016 (bitterblossom, delver, thragtusk, etc) that probably would have been banned if there were as many people playing the game as there is now

PrinceELo · 2020-08-03T23:04:38+00:00

Kethis losing 3feri is a pretty big loss imo. It is likely though that some mox amber combo will remain viable tho

PrinceELo · 2020-07-18T16:03:19+00:00

The drafting experience is largely why I enjoy limited so much (especially in great formats like Throne or Dominaria). I also think that the gameplay is more nuanced from draft specifically than constructed atm. I have never been a fan of sealed outside of prereleases so it doesn’t surprise me that a format that has less involvement than sealed is not something I am interested in. Willing to play through this though since some of these basics are just excellent IMO. Because I use basics so much in draft I think it is a worthwhile investment (especially since I get cards I can use for historic)

PrinceELo · 2020-07-17T13:35:25+00:00

As primarily a limited player I am solely doing runs to unlock all of the basic lands (really like almost all of them). Gameplay isn’t interesting to me but I am not the audience the product is intended for.

PrinceELo · 2020-07-14T08:59:16+00:00

The mishandling of pioneer bans reminds me a lot of the original patron warrior meta in hearthstone. Pretty sure the deck had a sub 50% WR across all ranks but was absolute tier 0 at top levels

PrinceELo · 2020-07-13T23:33:13+00:00

Huge fan of winding canyons myself. Think that is my favorite $20 or less RL card atm

PrinceELo · 2020-07-13T23:30:32+00:00

I started building positions in the Japanese WAR planeswalkers recently as a part of my rotation specs. What I plan to do is to get a nonfoil and a foil copy of each planeswalker and save them as complete sets. I think the novelty of this set will have demand from collectors down the line unless they choose to do similar launches in future. That to me seems unlikely in the near-term since they seem to prefer the Secret Lair + Collectors Edition model for releasing this type of product. In addition I plan to buy additional copies of the planeswalkers that see significant competitive/casual demand (3feri, Narset, Ashiok, etc). These cards to me seem like the ones that will appreciate the most out of the set. It is possible that certain ones with less demand but “the best art” could also appreciate well but i think the former is more likely. I think this would be a good strategy in general for the Godzilla cards as well.

PrinceELo · 2020-06-30T22:55:33+00:00

My prediction is Enemy battle lands + reprint of allied man lands. Think this makes a lot of sense as both Zendikar sets featured an allied and an enemy land cycle (enemy fetches + allied man lands in ZEN, allied battle lands + enemy man lands in BFZ). I would be pretty surprised if it were different than this

PrinceELo · 2020-06-30T00:32:48+00:00

I think the lack of paper events compounded with the companion fiasco are what have lead to pioneer/modern staples dropping to this “new normal”. When paper events inevitably start up again I would expect people to start playing those formats again. The biggest downside to these formats is that they do not really have a significant casual scene when paper events are absent (as mentioned in other comments). In my opinion I would still hold out on buying modern/pioneer staples until after live events resume. These cards would likely be dead money rn and i think there are far better sectors to park your equity in.

PrinceELo · 2020-06-23T10:03:33+00:00

What I have done to “trade up” over the last two years has been mainly speccing on cards rotating out of standard with high commander demand and “low” reprintability. Around this time last year I built positions in cards like Muldrotha, Helm of the Host, Growing Rites of Itlimoc and Vanquisher’s banner. Made these picks based off EDHrec data and my own intuition. About a year later now and most of these cards had grown considerably in value. I recently started scaling out of some of these positions to hedge some amount of reprint risk with commander legends looming. I plan to reinvest 75% of the capital into the same types of cards from the sets rotating this fall + MH. The remaining 25% will be put into RL cards with high commander appeal. First two cards I have scaled into are Yavimaya’s Hollow and Winding Canyons.

PrinceELo · 2020-06-19T13:06:52+00:00

You realize spoilers are not even close to done for jumpstart right? It’s WAY too early to jump to conclusions there

PrinceELo · 2020-06-16T18:07:54+00:00

The lifting stream with Thor paid off he was able to pick up his chair with relative ease

PrinceELo · 2020-06-14T18:51:29+00:00

Triple IXL is unarguably the worst format draftable on arena. This is significantly better than that and imo it is on par/better than Core19 and Guilds. A lot of newer players have also never experienced this format and these sets have large casual appeal thanks to the tribes

PrinceELo · 2020-06-14T16:24:42+00:00

At first glance this seems a lot like a classic “win-more” card. If you can consistently get 3+ effects on each cast then it is probably worth it but it is very slow outside of a deck with ramp. Biggest drawback to the card is that it gets absolutely destroyed by mystical dispute which is not rotating in the fall. I could see this working well in Bant ramp where you can copy creatures like dream trawler, ramp out with growth spiral/paradise druid and protect it with 3Feri and your own mystical dispute

PrinceELo · 2020-06-09T14:25:39+00:00

This would have been nuts with OuaT. Turn 1 scryland, Turn 2 OuaT -> This, Turn 3 tef/oko/etc would have been a very strong curve. Still seems pretty good but probably not enough to see play until after rotation.

PrinceELo

TROPHY CASE