The sample size for any of these articles is very small. They are not in any way statistically significant and therefore these are just for fun.

For reference, please see the official Pro Tour Dragon's Maze invite list and final standings.

After Pro Tour Dragon’s Maze (#PTDGM), I decided to revisit this article and this article and examine how people did at #PTDGM based on how they qualified. Just like Pro Tour Return to Ravnica (#PTRTR), another important aspect going into #PTDGM was the formation of a number of teams, and I decided to look into how the various teams performed as well.

Multiple Invite Hierarchy (with Changes)

For this analysis, each player could only be counted for one invitation category, which necessitated the creation of a hierarchy to deal with players who had earned multiple invitations to the event. The goal of my hierarchy was to count the primary way the player was invited and avoid counting invitations gained incidentally. The hierarchy I ended up with (after consultation with a few other people) was:

• Pro Player Club (PPC) Gold or Platinum
• Pro Tour Top 25
• Grand Prix Top 4
• Pro Tour Hall of Fame
• Pro Tour Qualifier Wins (both online and paper)
• Transfer Invites, Special Invite, and Sponsor’s Exemption

Legend to the Charts

Before the charts are presented, here is a legend for them:

Pro Tour Dragon’s Maze

Year: 2013

Pro Tour Qualifier Format: Modern

Constructed Format: Return to Ravnica Block Constructed

Limited Format: Return to Ravnica Block Draft

Once again, the Platinum level of the Pro Players Club performed extremely well along with the members of the Magic Hall of Fame. Over 90% of Platinum players along with every Hall of Famer who played made Day 2 of the event, and almost 50% of the combined group cashed the events. They finished almost one whole match up in Constructed and two thirds of a matchup in Limited compared to any other group, which gave them their dominance. This dominance also extended to the amount of money won by the group, as they took over a third of the total prize pool from #PTDM home with them while representing just a little more than 8% of the field. A large amount of the success of these players is due to the networks they have developed through the formation of three “super” teams (Channel Fireball, StarCityGames, and the European Union) and you will see their results in the next section.

On the other side of the results coin, PTQ winners, people who Top 25’d the previous Pro Tour, and those who qualified by Top 4’ing a Grand Prix showed poorly, having less than an average number of match points and failing to re-earn their qualifications. Of the twenty-five invitations #PTDM gave out, only thirteen (with one of those being for someone who received a special invite) of those went to people not qualified for the next Pro Tour before this event. The chance to “train” has been greatly diminished and is out of reach of most PTQ winners without either a significant network or significant amount of luck. Magic Online PTQ winners continue to do marginally better than their live counterparts, showcasing the difficulty of winning a GP-sized PTQ, but other than that, there are basically two tiers of players in any given PT: those who are in the PPC and PTQ winners with the transition from one group to the other being extremely difficult. This makes the PT a much better experience for both the spectators (they now are able to see more matches between the best players in the world) and the PTQ winners (since they are able to play against their favorite pros). Sadly, the invites to Silver PPC players will only serve to dilute the player pool further (and in the past, most Silver players performed about as well as just a PTQ winner).

Team rosters can be found on Lauren Lee’s blog.

There are now three definite “super” teams: CFB, SCG (which contain mostly American players), and the European Union (which is not an official team name, but it’s what Lauren called them, so I’m just going with it). These three teams took 26% of the total prize pool and nine of the Top 25 slots for #PTDM, which is significant given they only represent forty-three players in total. Being on a team does not necessarily lead to success, however, as a number of teams failed to beat the average of all players in the event. With the exception of Team TCGplayer and Team Legit, almost all the small teams did worse, on average, than a random player in the event. It’s important to have a team that has both high-quality players and a high quantity of players as well.

I made some predictions about team performance before the PT (you can find them here), and I did pretty well overall—except for Team Legit over-performing considerably, but I don’t think that performance will be repeated in the next event.

Conclusions

Once again, the results show the importance of networking. Players on teams made up five of the Top 8 slots, and fewer than twelve people not on teams qualified for the next PT. (There are some teams who didn’t mail their rosters to Lauren—please remember to send your Pro Tour Theros roster to her.) The hopes of a random PTQ win turning into more qualifications has continued to grow slimmer as well, so those who are going into the event need to keep their goals in line with the reality of the situation.

The one invite per season for Silver players will serve to further dilute the PT, leading to fewer “feature-quality” matches and less interaction between PTQ winners and top pros for basically no net gain besides making some second-tier players feel better about their Pro Points. The shrinking of the PT has led to a much higher number of memorable matches and the highest viewership in the history of the game, and I hope this doesn’t hurt the trend.

Chris Mascioli

@dieplstks on Twitter

I also stream: http://www.twitch.tv/dieplstks