Today, we’re picking up where we left off last time, with rules six through ten of my 10 rules for profit. Check out last week’s post for rules one through five.

Rule #6 – Understand Estimated Value (Don’t Play 4-3-2-2)

When it comes to prizes, the 4-3-2-2 format has the very worst payout for the cost. While it feels like it is a small step up from Swiss, it is actually a step down. In Swiss, three of the four players that lose the first round will get prizes. If you are confident that this won’t be you, then you should be playing 8-4s. In an 8-4, if you get to the finals, you’ll pull down a significant number of packs. If you can’t make it to the finals on a regular basis, you’ll do better in Swiss. There are only 11 prize packs in a 4-3-2-2 as opposed to 12 in both Swiss and 8-4. If you’re good enough to get into the top 50%, you’re better off competing over 12 packs than 11.

It is the Limited community’s hope that someday 4-3-2-2s will become 5-3-2-2s (we now see this in Constructed queues), which would be awesome. But until this happens, friends don’t let friends play 4-3-2-2s. Each time you do, you are giving up about .37 tix. This means that instead of paying 11 tix to play you’re paying 11.37 tix. It adds up the more you play, but the most important reason not to play 4-3-2-2s is that if people stop playing, WOTC will have to make the prize structure worth it – some day.

Rule #7 – Selling Cards in Multiples is Easier

With the exception of really expensive cards, playsets of cards worth .25 to four tix are far easier to sell than single cards. A player looking for an [card]Imposing Sovereign[/card] is more likely to need four. Many would rather pay six tix for the playset than try to work out deals with multiple dealers to end up paying 1.25 tix each. After all, if you pay 1.25 from four different bots, it will end up costing you eight tix and you’ll be stuck with .75 credit at four different stores. Better to buy and sell in multiples. It tends to take less time and draw more interest from buyers. Plus, if someone needs one of a card you’re selling as a playset, they are still likely to contact you.

Selling multiples also gives you more control over the price of your cards. If I’m trying to sell off my playset of [card]Heliod, God of the Sun[/card], I can price the cards at 2.5 each by selling the set for 10 tix, or I can set the price at 2.75 and sell the set for 11 tix. If I’m trying to sell cards individually, my only real options are two or three tix, because trying to work out trades for .25 tix can be a real pain.

Rule #8 – Understand How Bots Work

The MTGO classfied ads are filled with a large number of automated stores called bots. Most bots offer buying, selling, and trading functions. If you purchase a card worth .5 tix, a bot will save your leftover credit for a later purchase or to pay you back on a future sale. I’ve learned the hard way that .25 tix in credit stored on four different bots is not the same thing as having a ticket in your hand.

It is important to pay attention to how much you’re paying a bot for a card. Bots will sometimes price cards at odd numbers like 1.002, .667, or .502 tix. This means if you want to purchase cards, even multiples from them, you’ll end up having to pay an additional ticket and get something like .992 credit. Sometimes this isn’t a big deal, as you can spin off a handful of commons to make up the difference. But sometimes the “great deal” you just found ends up costing you more than you intended to pay. If you’re purchasing at prices like this, you’re better off doing so at more established stores such as MTGO Traders or Supernova Bots, because you’re likely to find a good use for the credit.

Don’t forget to add any bot that owes you credit as a buddy. I don’t know how many times I’ve traded with a random bot and found credit I’d forgotten about. It is also probably worth keeping a log of how much credit bots owe you. Once you start trading with bots, it’s almost impossible to get your credit down to zero. If I find myself close to a full ticket in value on a bot I’ll generally open up my entire collection as tradeable and see if there’s anything I can let go for a couple cents to bring the balance up and get a ticket.

If you ever have a full ticket in credit, take a ticket instead of leaving the credit. Also, be weary of bots with good prices and no tickets available to trade. It doesn’t matter if you get 25 credits for a 10-ticket card if the bot charges one credit for commons.

Rule #9 – Learn What Bulk Means

Bulk rares on MTGO generally cost around .05 tix, but can only be sold for around .01. Sometimes bulk rares will take off and gain some value, but these are the exceptions. This means that you can put together a very playable non-net deck for just a couple of tix. But those values won’t go anywhere – most of the time. When they do, you’ll see massive profits, but this can be very difficult to predict. I suggest listening to Marcel and the other guys on the Brainstorm Brewery Podcast for ideas about what bulk rares have the potential to go off. But otherwise, be very careful about dropping money into bulk rares.

Rule #10 – Set a Goal

Having a goal really helps you reach for something. As a school teacher, I’ve noted that nothing drives a student to success as much as when he sets his own goals and then strives to reach them. My first goal on MTGO was to get enough money to play in a Draft. I started with an initial two tix, two packs, and a handful of mostly-worthless cards. To make a Draft happen, I needed to turn my starting set into another pack. With only two tickets this was a significant challenge. Some of the first trades I made included buying copies of Magic 2011 [card]Time Spiral[/card] for .9 tix from one bot and selling them for one ticket to another bot. The first bot had enough available that I was able to gain a ticket through buying and selling 10 copies of [card]Time Spiral[/card].

After I played in a few Drafts, I decided to set a new goal. I wanted a full set of Magic 2012. The idea of paying $5 for a full set of cards sounded great to me. So I began to work toward this goal. It took me over a year to complete, but without spending any additional cash, I was able to put together an entire set of Magic 2012 for redemption. After completing this set, I took a break.

My next goal was formed when I saw a Facebook post that my best friend and first Magic opponent from middle school, David Guskin, was the lead developer for Magic 2014. Given our history, I felt like I owed it to him to play the set that he could call his. I could see a number of elements included in the set that reminded me of how we used to play back in the day, so I decided I wanted to build a complete set. This was just before the prerelease and I had a glorious two tix in my account. I set the goal of playing a release sealed queue at a 26-ticket entry fee. It took me a couple weeks, but by selling off uncommons and commons, as well as buying and selling rare lands, I was able to get the tickets together. I managed to place second in the one I played. All in all, 26 tickets bought me a [card]Liliana of the Dark Realms[/card], an [card]Imposing Sovereign[/card], and a [card]Witchstalker[/card], as well as eight packs of M14. I was on my way to my goal.

When you have a goal, you have a reason to come back. By having something left incomplete, you will be drawn to return. If you don’t have a goal, you won’t have anything to do at a given time. Maybe you want to create a cool EDH deck or make your current one all foil. Maybe you want a playset of a 30-ticket card or you want to move in on that new Standard deck. Setting goals is what drives us to better ourselves. I can’t tell you what a good goal for you will be, but I know that without one you are much more likely to quit.

Conclusion

Many of these rules will surely end up with their own post at some future point, going into further detail of why and how they are best observed. However, rule #1 (pennies matter, don’t give them up) is the most important and will be a running theme in all my articles. In order to play infinitely, you can’t look at .5 tix and consider it nothing. It is half a ticket, 1/7th of a pack, 1/25th of a draft. If you can squeeze .33 tix out of a trade three times, it is money in the bank. Use these rules to help you play smarter and eek out an edge. Playing infinitely is all about not giving up free money and taking every advantage you can get.

Have comments? Please post below!

Below are the 10 rules that I follow to be able to play infinitely on Magic Online. Many of these rules will probably garner their own articles to fully explain the reasoning behind them and how I enact them. But the first step is to give tips that will help you to stop making decisions that work against you. If you’ve already made bad choices before you have even entered a queue, you’re going to have a rough road ahead of you. Avoid the blunders and follow the rules below, even if you have extra cash to throw around.

Rule #1 – Pennies Matter, Don’t Give Them Up

I play Magic, I collect Magic, I trade and sell Magic, and I think about Magic as a hobby. I much prefer when my hobbies don’t cost me money or, better yet, make me money. However, I’m not in the business of Magic. I’m not trying to cover the cost of a vacation with my Magic cards (again). I enjoy getting good deals, spinning them around for tickets, and building my collection without throwing more money at it. I’m a school teacher with a house, a wife, and two kids. I just don’t have a lot of money to spend on my hobbies.

This is not how many people play Magic. Some people look at $15 and see that as a totally fair price to spend for a night of drafting. I’d actually agree that $15 is indeed a pretty good price for a night’s entertainment – if I find myself off my island for a Limited release event, I’d love to give it a try. However, I do live on an island and I don’t want to spend $15 every time I want to draft in order to keep up my game. I’d rather spend some time working good deals and try to make the 15 tix I need to play.

I get more thrills from making a good trade than I do from winning a casual game. So if the option is between trading and playing without a prize, I’d rather trade. If you’re one of those players for whom money isn’t really a factor with regards to playing Magic, then we approach the game very differently. While much of what I say is still relevant to managing your collection, it probably isn’t worth 30 minutes of trading for you to come out two or four tix ahead. But for me, that’s my definition of a good time.

Rule #2 – Never Buy Booster Packs from the Store

Booster packs from the store cost retail price – $3.99. Living in Washington, I pay tax on that, too. Almost every bot seller will sell boosters for less than retail price in tickets. If you’re going to pay cash, buy tickets and then buy packs from bots. Boosters can easily fall under three tix for many sets, especially core sets and third sets in a block. If you can save almost $1 per booster by buying from a bot in tickets, you should never buy from the store.

It is also important to realize that when playing Limited events, there are multiple options for entry fees. You can pay with tickets or product plus tickets. Never pay in just tickets unless it is an event with no other options (like a prerelease, Sealed release event, or some flashback queues). Entering a Draft queue costs either 14 tix or three boosters plus two tix. If you buy the boosters for three tix each, it will only cost you a total of 11 tix to enter the draft. In a case like this, you’ve saved yourself three tix before you even started playing. Even if the boosters are just down to 3.66, you’re still saving yourself a ticket by buying from bots instead of the store.

Rule #3 – Don’t Open Your Booster Packs

Just opening your packs instead of playing them in Limited is a terrible idea. Current sets will occasionally reach the point where you can expect 1.5 tix of value from opening a pack. Considering you bought that pack for around three tix (not $3.99 from the store), you’re probably going to lose at least 1.5 tix of value by opening the booster. Also, packs that sell for three tix are generally worth less than one ticket in average value once opened. In general, you can expect to lose about two tix in value whenever you open a pack. That is, unless you open it in a queue.

Playing Limited queues of any type provides much better returns than just opening a pack. Playing a Swiss Draft (the easiest to get prizes), costs two tix and three packs. You still get to open three packs. However, those two additional tickets give you a good chance of winning more packs, which can be turned into more tickets. In Swiss, you play three games no matter what (unless you drop). Winning one game gives you one pack, two games gives you two packs, and three games gives you three packs. Only one person who enters a Swiss Draft will lose all three games and get no packs. So unless you’re that person, you’ll come out ahead by playing in a Draft. You may even win three packs, essentially paying two tix for three packs in addition to whatever you opened in the packs you drafted. Playing in a Swiss Limited queue is a far better option than just opening your packs.

Rule #4 – This Isn’t Paper

The MTGO economy doesn’t function like the paper Magic economy. Price fluctuations happen more quickly, bulk rares are worth much less, and some things that are rare in paper aren’t necessarily as rare online. In contrast with Limited print runs in paper, there is often infinite product available on MTGO. While a paper product may sell out before it ever hits the shelves, it may be available for months online, allowing for many more copies to be in circulation. Older sets can show up as a flashback queues in MTGO, allowing for more packs to be introduced to the market years after the set has gone out of print.

Redemption also plays a big part of card value online. Full sets can be redeemed for paper cards up to two years after the initial period following a set’s release. When redemption goes live, a large flood of cards moves out of MTGO and into the paper market. This can cause cards to spike when redemption goes live (and people are trying to complete their sets) or after redemption (when so many cards were redeemed that there may now be a shortage online). After two years, cards approaching the redemption cutoff tend to rise in value only to drop shortly afterwards. However, post redemption, valuable cards are likely to rise if they have a home in Modern. Some sets are not redeemable but this doesn’t mean they have no value. Also, Wizards recently raised set redemption prices from $5 to $25. It’s not entirely clear what this will do to the market, but it doesn’t seem to have thrown anything too far out of whack.

Overall, the paper market tends to lag behind the MTGO market. It is important to realize the effect this has. Cards seeing play during pro tour weekends will jump within hours, not days or weeks. Also, the MTGO market has immediate transactions between all players. You buy the card, you get it right away. Not within a week, not within a few weeks. Sellers can’t cancel orders, and once you’ve sold a card, you immediately get the tickets.

Rule #5 – Rare Draft

I actually stopped playing Draft in favor of Sealed because of this particular topic, but if you’re going to play non-phantom Drafts, you need to come up with a price point for rare drafting. When you rare draft you pick a card that is worth tickets instead of a card that goes in your deck. For example, back in a Magic 2012 Draft, in the third pack I picked a [card]Garruk, Primal Hunter[/card] without another green card in my deck. While I’d never try to move into green during the third pack for a 2GGG-cost card, the fact that it was worth 15 tix meant that it would pay for my entire Draft. I could have grabbed the [card]Doom Blade[/card] instead, but it wasn’t going to make as much of a difference as grabbing the 15-ticket planeswalker. By taking Garruk, I made sure that even if I lost the entire Draft, I’d still come out a couple of tickets ahead.

Finding your own price is important and comparing the cards you’d draft instead of the rare card also matters. For me, I’ll always grab a card that’s worth three tix or more. After the first pick of a pack, I’ll pretty much always grab a one-ticket card rather than let it pass. Once things get down to 10+ picks, I’ll generally grab an uncommon over commons that I won’t play, simply because I can sell it to a bulk buyer for .01 or .02 tix. There’s more danger rare drafting in larger tournaments and even in 8-4 Drafts than in Swiss. But regardless of what queue you’re drafting in, you need to know your price points and card values for the set(s) you’re drafting.

That’s all for this time. Join me next week for part two, where I will detail steps six through ten.