Bots?? Sorry my focus was on paper magic, not MTGO. I believe Sebastian’s article was EV with regards to MTGO, though I don’t think he did a per pack analysis. If you’re wanting to do an EV per pack based on buylist (or in your case bot buy prices) you’re pretty much NEVER going to find +EV, otherwise the bots/store owners would just crack all the packs themselves.

Zendikar (as zendikar doesn’t have too many highly desirably uncommons..and a lot of bulk ones I won’t factor them)

Avg Mythic-5.91

Avg Rare-3.91

Weighted average calculation;

0.125*5.91+0.875*3.91=$4.16

So your average rare value is $4.16 per pack of Zendikar. It’s important to remember that this does not include foils AND does not include the “Hidden Treasures” available in the first wave of product (should you have that available to you)

Nice box…and ya, that’s the idea. It’s typically why more competitive players don’t buy boxes (except maybe pre-orders).

confess I love opening packs but hate sorting. so for dragons maze I’ve only bought one box and lucked out with voice,ral,2 shocks, and 4 other mythics.

You can see the calculations on the forum here.

To answer the “extra value due to land slot” question

– Maze’s End is a Mythic, so that means 1 in every 121 packs

– We know that the shocks are 1/4 as likely to end up (said by WOTC) and there were 2×5 on the print run for RTR/GTC (~6/box), so I believe there are 2 print runs with each 5 shocks, leading to 10/242 (~1.5/box)

I used the following formula to calculate the extra land slot value:

1/121 x Maze’s End + 1/242 x Total Shock Value

For today, this would lead according to TCGPlayer prices to

LOW = 1/121 x 0.50 + 1/242 x 74.15 ~ $0.31

MED = 1/121 x 1.64 + 1/242 x 94.46 ~ $0.40

If there are more questions, drop them in the forum 😉

WeQu came actually came up with the calculation to include the land, however, given the rate of shocks per box being around 1 and maze’s end being around 0.75 per box (though my own results are more like 0.33 per box), and my desire to keep it simplified, the land was not accounted for in the original equation. If you’d like to include the land spot you can add the probability of a shock 1/36 (or so)* the average value of a shock ($8.50) and you get another $0.24 per pack (for a rough estimate). However, I believe the main purpose of these types of calculations is to determine 1) if cracking packs is a worthwhile endeavor, 2) to compare various standard legal packs to determine which have the best EV (say if you have to choose prize packs), thus you’re sample quantity is likely to remain low enough that you’re unlikely to pull a shock or maze’s end…I like to consider this in the same boat as foil rare…they are possible, but unlikely in a small sample size.

in the end, if the Ev without foil is -EV well don’t count on foil to make it +EV and stay away from it. If it’s already +EV well things can just go better than expected because of foil!

Thanks. I agree with the foil issue. I’m sure it’s do-able, but the probability is low enough compared to the value added that if we were to do all the calculations, I honestly believe it’d be a miniscule bonus “per pack”. Given most of the foils I seem to get are common and barely worth anything. If you wanted to add a “rough” calculation you might be able to do something like this

1x Foil rare per 36 packs (take avg rare value x2 then divide by 36) and add this to your overall pack value.

3-4x Foil uncommons (take the avg uncommon value x2 then divide by 36 and multiply by 3 or 4)

But doing that you’ll see that the foil rare adds maybe 10 cents to a packs value. And the uncommons add about 5 cents…

Ya…I didn’t calculate the EV for each booster mainly because I wasn’t sure how people would want to cover it (i.e. include uncommons or not) so I put in the equations and gave people the numbers and figured they could calculate it based on how they wanted to. I feel that including uncommons is sort of “lying” to yourself because the avg uncommon is $0.25 to $0.3 and since you get 3 of them that’s basically an extra $0.75 to $0.9, which is almost 25% of your pack cost; yet the demand for any but a few of the uncommons is usually non-existant and you’ll have a very difficult time unloading them.

First, when you say that we must not factor the commons and the uncummons (or that it’s optional) really depends on the set you are calculating your EV. My example was based on a call from Matt Lewis about Urza’s Legacy boosters on mtgo. Cloud of faeries is one of the common in this set and is worth 8$. Some other commons are 2-3$ in this set too (a lot of pauper is played on mtgo). So here, the EV of the pack is almost exclusivly driven by the price of the commons and not the rares!!!

Second, one of the biggest mistake about EV (and I’ll talk about it tomorow) is exactly what you mentionned about needing a big sample. Poeple think that because they have +EV that they will make money for sure. In the long run, if you always buy +EV packs, you will make money. Sill, if you have the chance to buy +EV packs, even if it’s a small sample, you should do it! Since by doing so you are doing money in the long run…

Finally, I had some issues with foil calculation too. you’ll have one foil every 63 or 64 cards (I don’t remember wich one) and it’s the only time you can have 2 times the same card in the pack (the foil and the regular one). I think that counting that has a bonus is a really really good idea and works well for an approximation!

good article

I do see them as a bonus when I calculate EV 🙂

Considering the ones being worth money are much more rare compared to their non-foil versions, will only make the spread from the sample mean too far away.

Small example = 9x $5 + $100 makes $14.5 average, but only 10% actually has value above $14.5 and 90% way under it…

-> Working with averages can make you feel disappointed if you take foils into account.

FYI – I noticed the actual EV of booster packs were missing in this article, so I’ll be listing the EV values based upon today’s TCGPlayer values somewhere in the forum today (I’ll provide a link here)