Talk:List of professional Magic: The Gathering players

Pro point cutoff

Just for the record, my intention was to have a list that includes all players with at least a 100 pro points. Of course the cutoff is arbitrary, but 100 is a nice round number, the list will be manageable at just over 200 players, and everybody will have some meaningful stats. A lower cutoff would most likely be at 50 and then there would be over 500 players, many of those not having any interesting stats at all. A higher cutoff would naturally be 200 pro points, but then the list is just identical to the players we have articles about anyway. While this is not really a strong argument against using that value, to me a 100 still feels natural. OdinFK (talk) 13:12, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

100 seems perfectly fine to me. Given that it's also the cut-off to vote for and elected to the Hall of Fame, it's actually not quite as arbitrary as your making out to be. I would however suggest changing the to List of professional Magic: The Gathering players. Sir Sputnik (talk) 18:22, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Measure of activity

Comparable lists usually have some way of displaying during which time players were active. Although being active is not quite as set in stone for a Magic player as it for a professional athlete, it seems reasonable to me to have an indicator of this anyway. Something like Pro Tour debut, and most recent Pro Tour played maybe? Also, when doing something like that I always wonder were this stuff starts to be original research. Everyone can just go to Wizards, and just look up all the Pro Tours, but aggregating these stats? Is that OR? What do you think? OdinFK (talk) 15:44, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

I definitely like the idea, though it does tell the wrong tale about active years; Hall of Famers in particular can freely attend Pro Tours despite being in reality inactive, so I'm not sure how useful that stat would be. Additionally, some players, such as Craig Wescoe and Brian Kibler, have had two stints on the Pro Tour. Personally, I think it makes more sense to just include the season of Pro Tour debut, if anything, even though the last PT would also be interesting in a few cases (in particular for old-school players who didn't make it into the Hall of Fame). Hahahopp (talk) 17:27, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Great update SirSputnik! If I find the time I will add dates with a sort template, and look for the debut of other players. OdinFK (talk) 12:01, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Do any of you have access to the standings of Pro Tour Chicago (Sep. 25-27, 1998), Pro Tour Rome (Nov. 13-15, 1998) , Pro Tour London (Oct. 15-17, 1999), Pro Tour New York (May 30-Jun. 1, 1999)? To accurately figure out the Pro Tour debut for all players we'd need at least the attendance list for these Pro Tours. They are missing from the coverage archive. Hahahopp (talk) 12:12, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Chicago RomeLondon New York OdinFK (talk) 12:24, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Fantastic, thanks! Hahahopp (talk) 12:29, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the sources. I've incorporated them into the list. While we're on the subject, does anyone have an alternative to the Planeswaker Points System for citing lifetime pro points? Their list has some pretty glaring errors in it (Craig Wescoe has about 100 points less than he should, Jelger Wiegersma and Olle Rade are missing altogether), so I'd rather not rely on it if we don't have to. Sir Sputnik (talk) 19:08, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Furthermore, the Planeswalker Points site is actually inaccurate; it has not updated to show the additional Pro Points retroactively awarded after the changes announced in October, I'm pretty sure. Unfortunately, WotC stopped maintaining a list of players with the most Pro Points elsewhere sometime after the launch of the Planeswalker Points site. WotC have said that they expect to have fixed the issue with the retroactive points by the end of the year; we'll see if that happens, and if that also fixes the other errors. In any case, we may just have to wait, and when things get fixed, we might want to create a Google docs file or something similar to keep track of the points independently on the highly unreliable/buggy Planeswalker Points site. Hahahopp (talk) 19:44, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

On-topic, I like the PT Debut column, but I personally prefer left-alignment rather than centered, and I'm wondering if it's better to start with the year rather than the location. Though the column can't be sorted by year even then; the PTs won't appear in order if we do that. I suggest just assigning Pro Tours numbers for sorting purposes, where 1 is PT New York 1996, and 94 is PT Khans of Tarkir (I think that's where we are). Or do you have a better method? Hahahopp (talk) 14:26, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

I think the best way to do this is to use the sort template in a way analogous to how it is used for names. I have just changed the debut for Arita accordingly. The most sensible format to sort them by is yyyy-mm in my opinion. The exact day of the PT is pretty much irrelevant as no two PTs have ever been held in the same month. OdinFK (talk) 14:40, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

That's fine. The advantage with that method is that you don't have to look up the PT #, so arguably lower upkeep. Hahahopp (talk) 14:42, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, Sir Sputnik, for doing the tedious work of adding the sort templates! As to the naming of the debut PT, I think season+city/name would be optimal. Year in front seems to be the American naming convention anyway, but it also puts the most relevant part up front. I agree with Hahahopp that the table would look a little nicer when left-aligned, especially if we were to put the season in front. OdinFK (talk) 11:44, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

PT Median Finish

I know that strictly speaking, this doesn't concern this particular list, but I feel like it's the best place to bring it up regardless. I've taken it upon myself to figure out the median finish on the Pro Tour for each player with an article. There are a couple of things that I'd like your thoughts on, however:

• Team Pro Tours. My formula here is Finish × 3 + 2, meaning if a team finishes 2nd at a Team Pro Tour, it counts as a 4th place finish towards the median. I think this is a fair method, but after comparing my calculations with WotC's, I'm pretty sure that they don't do any such conversion at all.
• Early Pro Tours. For the first three Pro Tours, exact final standings have been omitted for all but the top 64 competitors; the rest of the players are merely listed as having participated in the event. Right now I'm using this formula for all 65+ finishing players in these events: (65 + Attendance) / 2) I'm not really happy with this method, though; I think it's slightly biased against those early players. Do you have a better idea? Or will OdinFK magically conjure up the exact standings for all competitors, solving the problem?

Hahahopp (talk) 22:39, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

I would love to, but I fear I must disappoint you. As far as I know the exact standings cannot be found on the internet.

You are right, that Wizards doesn't use any way of normalizing the results. Generally I normalize the results to a Pro Tour size of 400. This way A 175th place in a 175 people Pro Tour is the same as a 450th in a 450 person Pro Tour. I wrote a bit about that here. I have the stats for about 100 of the players, but unfortunately I never used the normalized Median in an article. I could give you the data, but even if you think that is the correct way of doing it, then there is the problem of original research. Actually I am worried that even your calculations of the median would be considered original research as you cannot point to any published source, that says: This is the median of the following players. OdinFK (talk) 06:51, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm aware of your method, and I think a weighted median is generally the more useful stat in this case, but also less intuitive and therefore less easy to grasp for the average reader. So I prefer a regular median simply for that reason. As for original research, I was hoping that it was sufficient to point towards the event coverage archive, and no different from information regarding debut PT. Granted, it's more work to figure out the median than to figure out the debut PT of a player, but in principle it's the same thing... I thought. But I'll certainly defer to you guys; I'm relatively new to editing Wikipedia. In any case, I do agree that my normalizing of Team Pro Tours, et cetera, would constitute original research, and although it skews the data slightly in favor of the players who participated in those events, I should probably use the results as they appear in the coverage archive.

Also, I've contacted WotC about the first three Pro Tours; they said they'll try to track that info down (if it exists). Also that they were going to add those PTs I inquired about earlier to the archive once more pressing issues have been resolved, which should be good for coverage aficionados less crafty than yourself! Hahahopp (talk) 08:28, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

I am not that firm in Wikipedia policies either. In most cases I use common sense and add what I think might be useful. I am probably too liberal when it comes to original research, but I think calculating the median yourself is going too far: "you must be able to cite reliable, published sources that aredirectly related to the topic of the article, and directly support the material being presented". There is just no such thing for the median. With a liberal interpretation, giving the debut might be borderline, but okay. You can cite a source, that supports your claim: The coverage says he was there, and everybody can check that. Sure, if it was not their first PT, the claim can be invalidated, but then a different coverage can be cited, and again there is a source that supports their claim. It is not ideal, but taking into account that Wikipedia is a fluid medium this is a process that will eventually terminate with the correct information for all players. Could be worse. OdinFK (talk) 10:19, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

You are probably right. I'll most likely just work on improving the stubs going forward, and stop adding median finishes. Hahahopp (talk) 11:25, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

If you're looking for some specific guidance on the subject, WP:SYNTH and WP:SYNTHNOT are the relevant guidelines. In particular the last paragraph of the latter says pretty clearly we can't use any sort statistical analysis unless its published somewhere else first. So using the numbers from the CFB article or WotC's unadjusted numbers for the Hall of Fame is fine, but trying to calculate it yourself isn't. Debuts on the other hand fall loosely under WP:CALC. Determining which event is first in a sequence is about a routine as a calculation can get. That being said, for verifiability purposes (and because I'm curious to know who you found some of the debuts I missed) I think we should probably explain somewhere how we determined debuts. I'll post mine below. Sir Sputnik (talk) 23:23, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Sourcing for PT Debuts

In the interest of verifiability here is an explanation of how I worked out which player debuted when. Sir Sputnik (talk) 23:23, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

1. For every player in these edits plus Masashiro Kuroda, Patrick Mello, Matthias Kettil, and Jan Rueß, I used either the Hall of Fame year-by-year eligibility, past Hall of Fame ballots or Rookie of the Year standings to determine in which season they debuted and then checked the final standings of Pro Tours from that season to see in which ones they played.

2. For Tamas Nagy, Denniz Rachid, Joel Larsson, and Thomas Holzinger a top eight player profile (PT Avacyn Restored for Holzinger and Rachid, PT Gatecrash for Larsson, the 2012 WMC for Nagy) listed how many Pro Tours they had played, so I simply checked final standings of PT's prior to that event until I had found all their appearances.

3. For Pat Cox conveniently enough his top 8 profile for PT M15 explicitly says when he debuted.

4. For Josh Ravitz, Jon Stern and Wessel Oomens it was a simple question for brute force. I checked final standings starting at Pro Tour 1 until I found one they appeared in. (I knew all of them had PT appearances relatively early on.)

5. For Junya Iyanaga, his appearance in the 2005 RoY standings with only one Pro Point told me he had not played a Pro Tour during or before that year, so I start with the first Pro Tour in 2006 and worked my way forward until I found one he appeared in.

Sure. For Dan Jordan and Ben Friedman I used the same brute force approach as you did (though I knew they must have debuted late due to their young age). For Tsuyoshi Ikeda and Jens Thoren I used the year-by-year eligibility to determine debut season, then checked those one at a time. As for Jeremy Dezani, he qualified for his first PT by top 8'ing GP Paris '09. However, he did not attend Pro Tour San Diego (which the GP fed), but instead his first PT was San Juan '10, which he qualified for via rating. Ben Lundquist's debut was one I already knew, as I remembered it from Randy Buehler's podcast some years ago; Lundquist was interviewed on the podcast at PT Honolulu '06, and he said it was his first PT. Checking the 2006 RoY race (as well as the PT Honolulu attendance list just to make sure I didn't misremember) confirmed that. Hahahopp (talk) 00:28, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm curious, how do you know that GP Paris was the first time Dezani qualified for the Pro Tour? Sir Sputnik (talk) 02:04, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

In the top 8 questionnaire at GP Paris, he writes "3 PTQ top 8s" under Accomplishments, which makes it pretty clear to me that he hasn't won one (or made the top 16 of a GP). His 2014 WC profile tells the same story, though it does not literally say anywhere that he hadn't played on the PT prior. Hahahopp (talk) 07:37, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

I just checked all the PTs four years before Paris '09 just to make sure. Hahahopp (talk) 08:28, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Updating the article

There are a few things to discuss with respect to this table:

It's been a while since Pro Points stopped being a thing, more than five years actually. So it would make sense to switch to a different cutoff for eligibility for this table. The 100 Pro Points were really convenient as this was tied to Hall of Fame eligibility, but this stopped being a thing, too. So what would make sense? Pro Tours are still the cornerstone of Magic competitive play. Sensible criteria in my opinion would be to have all winners in the table and players who managed to Top 8 at least twice. Maybe two times Top 8 is too inclusive, though? With all winners and everyone with at least three Top 8s the table would have around 150 entries, with two Top 8s as a cutoff it probably jumps to around 300. Either way it's a bit arbitrary, but I wouldn't know what a non-arbitrary criterium would be.

Grand Prix stopped being a thing at the same time that Pro Points went away. I think at this point it doesn't make a lot of sense to include these anymore.

The transition period of Mythic Championships should be mentioned and tabletop Mythic Championships should probably be counted just as if they were Pro Tours.

Besides wins and Top 8s money finishes might be a sensible number to have. It's reasonably easy to find (see below) and would be a measure of something like sustained competence. Most recent attendance might be another interesting factoid as a measure of activity.

Sources: gatheringstats should be a pretty good source to find out about most of the basic player data. First attendance, wins, and Top8s are trivial to find there. Number of money finishes would require counting them, but is easy enough, too. As I'm "advertising" using this as a source, I should mention that I maintain the site, so somebody else should be the judge whether this is as a reliable source. Another good source about player data –one that I'm not affiliated with– is mtgeloproject. In most regards this is a lot less convenient for researching player data (not because the site is bad in any way, just because their focus is different), but at least something like most recent attendance could be better sourced from there as their site gets updated much more frequently.

I wouldn't mind actually doing the work, but I'd like to hear what other people think before changing so much stuff. OdinFK (talk) 13:42, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

I've created a new version of the article in my sandbox: User:OdinFK/ProPlayers. Let me know what you think. OdinFK (talk) 07:41, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Just wanted to let you know that someone has seen your messages here, and while I don’t know nearly enough about competitive MTG to really comment properly, this all seems very reasonable. Some comments nonetheless:

Your rationale for the cutoff of 3 × top 8 makes sense, but that might need to be made clear to the reader?

Are pro points something readers might still want to be able to see in a table like this? We could easily change the cutoff for inclusion while including the statistic for older readers?

Minor point: I think the list should default order by wins, rather than alphabetical as both versions currently do.

On these I’ll happily defer to your judgement though. — HTGS (talk) 19:37, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

The cutoff of 3 Top 8s certainly begs justification, but I'm at a loss how to do it aside from the purely pragmatic arguments like the length of the list and the assumption that a player was probably very good for an extended period of time if they managed to Top 8 three times. Still feels very arbitrary. One Top 8 would be a clear, understandable cut, but I think this is out of the question for the number of players that would end up in this list.

In the end this comes down to the fact, that "professional" Magic player is not a category, that we can objectively define. In comparision a Tennis player becomes a professional when he gets a license from the ATP, which makes it an observable fact. Talking about Tennis List_of_male_singles_tennis_players doesn't even try to give a rationale for its criteria for inclusion...

Maybe we should just accept that this is never going to be a prime example of an encyclopedic list and just make it as "good" and helpful an overview over the most successful Magic players as we can.

About Pro Points I'm not sure. It's something that has not been used for five years now. It's bound to feel more and more out of place I'd think. I left out Grand Prix in my sandbox version for the same reason.

I also advocated using the number of money finishes, but I found that this actually has a similar problem. For five years now every participant at a PT has "won" money. Until 2018 the number of money finishes might have been a meaningful stat, but this is going to be diluted more and more over time, so we should probably leave it out as well.

Maybe we should just stick to the stuff that is going to stay meaningful? Wins, Top 8s, attendances, best result, debut and most recent attendance.

As to the default ordering of the list, I just tried to find out what other lists do, but apparently there is no general consensus on this. Reasonable candidates for this list seem to be last name, wins, Top 8s and PT debut. If we agree that a measure of success should be used for the default, then I'd argue to use Top 8s over wins. Top 8s have always been the gold standard in the community. This might seem a bit outlandish to outsiders, but while we certainly appreciate it very much in the moment when a deserved player takes a trophy, when measuring players success against each other talk is almost exclusively going to be about Top 8s. OdinFK (talk) 20:07, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Lists are certainly a sore point for Wikipedia. At least here you’re not fighting an uphill l battle of arguing with other editors.

As I read your thoughts—especially around the idea of being “pro” meaning “paid”—I realised that this is no longer really a “List of professional MTG players” so much as a list of the top players. And that’s not a bad thing. Once you’re done we should move the page though.

Other than that, I mostly just defer. My sense in general is that wins are what define the best of any competition, but if Top 8s are the standard for inclusion, then using them for default ranking is fine, and that can easily be changed later without a huge overhaul. Don’t feel like you have to please anyone but yourself at this point, because you’re the one who’s going to put in the effort and time to get it right haha. — HTGS (talk) 04:49, 25 June 2024 (UTC)