Giving Your Opponents Choices: PV's Rule

Greetings, sorcerers! Have you ever heard of a card player named Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa, also known as PV? He is one of the most accomplished Magic: The Gathering players and holds the record for the most prize money won at the professional level. In this article, I would like to share some of PV’s insights and how they translate into Sorcery: Contested Realm.

Originally published in December of 2017, “PV’s Rule” says:

“At a high level of play, it is better to force a poor outcome than to give your opponent a choice that includes that outcome.”

What does that mean? Let’s break it down.

First, the simplest example I can think of. You have a big minion you want to attack with, but it can only reach an opponent’s site with an untapped skeleton token ready to defend. You’d like to pressure your opponent’s life total, so it seems like a poor outcome if the skeleton dies and your opponent takes no damage. But if you attack their site and offer them the choice to defend or not, how could it play out?

Your opponent might defend, leaving you with the same outcome as attacking their skeleton directly. Or your opponent might not defend, take damage, and save their skeleton. They might have {Gift of the Serpent} in hand to trade the skeleton with your big minion. Or they might have some burn spells that are one damage short of killing your minion, so they decline to defend and then use their skeleton in combination with the burn spells.

In this simple scenario, the correct play is for you to attack their skeleton directly instead of attacking their site and giving them a choice. As you can see, they will only decline to defend with the skeleton when it benefits them. This is the core of PV’s rule: even if the outcome is something you’re not happy with, it’s better to force it than to leave it up to your opponent. PV says,

“This is not intuitive, and it often feels bad to make a play that you know is bad for you, but it’s what you should do anyway, because the alternative is worse. [...] Your opponent is only going to make the ‘bad’ choice if it’s actually even better for them.”

If your opponent agrees to let the damage go through, keeping their skeleton around for some purpose, you’ll wish they hadn’t had the choice!

Let’s add another layer of complexity now. As PV put it,

“Sometimes, you have information that your opponent doesn’t, which turns their ‘better play’ into a bad play.”

For instance, if you have an unexpected amount of direct damage in hand, like {Saracen Raiders} and {Firebolts}, you might be able to get a surprise Death’s Door if your opponent doesn’t defend your big minion with their skeleton token. They may be likely to defend, but when they think they have a good reason to save their defender are the times when you get them to Death’s Door out of nowhere. Upon recognizing that your hidden information changes the dynamic, it becomes correct to offer your opponent a choice in defending.

A clever opponent will recognize that you have deliberately given them a choice when you could have forced the outcome instead. This is the other side of PV’s rule:

“If your opponent could have forced a certain outcome and didn’t, that’s because this is not the best outcome for them. Therefore, if you have the option of selecting that outcome, you should.”

The opponent with the skeleton sees that you could have attacked it directly, but instead you created a situation where something else might happen. Therefore, you’re representing that you’d rather your opponent take the damage, and PV’s rule says your opponent should defend (selecting the outcome you could have forced but didn’t).

Again, you must factor in hidden information. When your opponent is considering that you offered them a choice, they could potentially deduce the correct play. PV says, “In this spot, you have to weigh the information and judge who you think knows more, and whose knowledge is more relevant to the situation.” You could have attacked the skeleton directly, but you didn’t.

This represents that you believe getting damage through is better for you. But your opponent knows that you know that they would only take the damage if they think it’s actually better for them! This means you’re representing that you have more impactful hidden information than your opponent does. So, they may figure out if their hidden information ({Gift of the Serpent}, etc.) isn’t enough to justify saving their skeleton and taking the damage.

Okay, that’s a lot to take in. If you just remember one thing from this article, it should be the first part of PV’s rule (it’s better to force a poor outcome than to give your opponent a choice that includes that outcome). Now that we’ve covered the big minion vs. skeleton scenario, let’s explore some more situations where PV’s rule comes up in Sorcery.

Suppose you have a 3-power minion and the next site over has two of your opponent’s minions. They both have 3 power; one is tapped, and the other is untapped. You can attack either of their minions, but if you attack the tapped minion, they can defend with the untapped minion. To deny them the choice, attack the untapped minion, because they will only let the tapped minion die when it’s advantageous to them.

Consider if the roles are reversed and your opponent attacks your tapped 3-power minion when they could have attacked your untapped 3-power minion. This suggests they didn’t want to kill the untapped minion, so you should always defend with the untapped minion unless you have hidden information that gives you a good reason to let the other minion go.

Suppose you and your opponent each have a minion of the same size on adjacent sites. If you have the opportunity to act before your opponent does, you can deny them the choice between trading or not. You could accomplish this by making the trade yourself or by moving your minion out of range of theirs (or other possibilities if there are more cards involved, of course). Consider who would be favored by an even trade like this, or what might be lost by tapping your minion to move it away. But regardless, you probably want to deny your opponent the choice instead of leaving your minion’s fate up to them.

Suppose that you’re playing Battlemage and you’re on an opponent’s site with their {Root Spider} under it. You could attack that site, giving them the option to defend with the spider, or attack the next site over, guaranteeing your avatar connects. Even if you’d rather kill the spider, the choice was never yours. Your opponent will only block with the spider when they believe it is advantageous to do so.

If you’re holding a lot of minions, that’s hidden information, which makes your opponent’s potential spider chump-block much worse than it would otherwise be. In that case, you could offer to let them block with the spider, but remember they’ll only do it if they believe it favors them.

Perhaps your opponent recently drew a spell that they need more mana to cast, so having a choice to block with the spider means they can preserve their life total enough to cast their big spell. In that case, giving them the choice could be very costly.

You may be wondering: what if I don't know whether my opponent is good enough to make their decisions rationally? To answer this, I can’t put it any better than Nicolai Dolinar, who summarized PV’s rule in a YouTube video. Here is Nicolai’s answer that I found in the YouTube comments:

“My advice is to play as if all of your opponents are good. It helps you build the best habits possible for when you do play against a strong player, and against a weaker player you'll have an advantage anyway.

You can certainly adapt your play based on your specific opponent, but even against weak players, I don’t like to give them choices because there is still the risk that I don’t have all the information, and giving them a choice lets them do something that is worse for me.

Basically, don’t try to get fancy by taking advantage of players that you perceive to be weak, and instead make the best play possible whenever you can!”

Thanks for taking the time to read my article. I hope that it’s given you some ideas for new ways to play Sorcery. Till next time!

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Featured image: {Tawny} by Bryon Wackwitz