Over the weekend, during a Hearthstone tournament, one player lucked into a killer combination not once, not twice, but three damn times in a row, beating the odds in extraordinary fashion.
This happened during week 8 of the ESL Hearthstone Legendary Series. Video here:
Some context: The player who starts on top, Kitkatz, has a Sneed’s Old Shredder, a legendary minion that, when killed, summons another random legendary minion. When the bottom player, Thijs, kills Kitkatz’s Shredder, it winds up summoning Kel’thuzad, a legendary minion with the ability to revive dead friendly creatures at the end of each turn. When those two cards are combined, some insane things can happen — the Kel’thuzad will just keep reviving the Sneed’s, which can just keep dying and spawning new legendary minions.
Fortunately, Thijs was able to take out that second Sneed’s Old Shredder, which turned into… another Kel’thuzad. At that point, Thijs just gave up and left.
OK. Onto the next match…
Unbelievable. Given that the odds of getting a Kel’thuzad are 1/62, the odds of doing this three times in a row are 1/238,328, or 0.00041 per cent. Maybe it was a bug… or maybe we should get Kitkatz to a casino, stat.
Comments
4 responses to “Winning Hearthstone Play Had A 0.00041% Chance Of Happening”
Well, I guess that puts the nail in the coffin of any arguments about Hearthstone being a “skill-based game”…
And this is coming from someone who LIKES the game…
Well not really, an individual game can have high variance as long as the more skilled player is likely to win over time.
Poker is of course the obvious example, it’s entirely possible for me to beat a world champion by lucking out and always getting better cards, but even in the unlikely event that happened, I’d still probably lose to him the next *large number* times we play.
Magic: The Gathering is a closer example, in both games you try to stack your deck and play optimally to give you the most chance of winning. Sometimes things won’t go your way, but if you’re a better player you’ll win more often than not.
I’d imagine Hearthstone tournaments would be best of 3 vs each opponent anyway right? In order to eliminate some of the randomness?
Also: at odds of 1/238,328, then with the number of games happening every day I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s actually a fairly regular occurrance.
Weak! He should have seen the match through.
Really? Why? Why is conceding defeat seen as such a negative thing now? There is nothing wrong with conceding. There was no coming back. To drag the game out is just wasting everyone’s time.