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Well...I would guess that T1, 2P is the hardest to win, since that's what the most people play.

Type 1, 2 player.

Nationals
1.type 1, 2 player
2.type 2,2 player
3.type 1, Multi
4.type 2, Multi

RNRS
This all depends on what you have for area tournament and what the people in your area pay.

All that needs to be said...

I think it depends on how good a player is.  It is almost impossible for a medium-level player to win Nationals in T1-2p because there are so many good players and the event is weighed so much by how people create their own decks.  Closed Deck on the other hand severely limits the changes that a person can make to a basic starter deck.  This creates more of an opportunity for a medium-level player to have just as good or better of a deck than a great player.  It also means that games will be much more predictable for less-experienced players.  These things combining together make Closed Deck the most winnable for a medium-level or below player.  The same is probably true for RNRS as a whole.

This really makes me feel good about myself...
Honestly, as I was one point short of winning Sealed Deck RNRS after only placing 1st at Nationals (and not going to ANY tournaments all year), I think that Sealed is probably one of the more difficult for any one person to win in RNRS.  It's so luck based that it's unlikely to see anyone sweep all the tournaments in their area.  In the open categories, you have people like Tim Maly and Justin Alstad winning consistently in tournaments and RNRS.  However, in Sealed Deck and Booster Draft, it's unlikely for any one person to win multiple tournaments, just because those categories are even more luck-based than the others.

I've always thought that whoever wins T1-2P at Nationals is just a good player who got lucky.  There is so much luck involved in each individual game of Redemption that there are probably around 25 top players at each Nationals who have about an equal chance of winning going into the tournament.  Granted, in the open categories the best players have a distinct advantage over the rest going into the tournament, but when you realize that any competent player can win Sealed Deck with enough luck, it seems much more unlikely that any one person will win.

In Sealed Deck, the things that determine how well you place are which starter deck you get, which packs you pick, what cards you get in them, how well you build your deck with the limited cards you have, how well you play your deck, and luck in individual games.  In T1-2P, assuming you have access to practically any cards you want (which the top players do), deck building, player skill, and luck are the main contributing factors to winning.  If you ask a top player who is entering both T1-2P and Sealed Deck, they most likely will say that they are just doing Sealed for fun, and are hoping to win T1.  This is because no one can really go into Sealed deck expecting to win consistently, but they believe they have a better-than-average chance of doing well in T1-2P.

Quote from: MichaelHue on February 06, 2009, 11:57:02 AM

I've always thought that whoever wins T1-2P at Nationals is just a good player who got lucky.

I think Tim Maly, having won the event so many times, would disagree.

And yet he doesn't win every time.  I'm not saying luck is the deciding factor, but it affects the outcome.  Redemption is, to some extent, a game of luck.  The best players can overcome that to some degree and win consistently, but no matter who placed first at Nationals any particular year, if that person had been unlucky, they would not have won.  There are often so many players close to placing, and so close together, that one game makes the difference between first and nothing.  No matter how good you are, you can lose to a bad draw.

I'm not going to try to say how much of a factor luck is compared to deckbuilding and player skill, because I don't know.  All I know is that it is a factor.

Quote from: MichaelHue on February 06, 2009, 01:30:45 PM

And yet he doesn't win every time.  I'm not saying luck is the deciding factor, but it affects the outcome.

I kind of agree with MH, after all, I finished higher than Maly this past nationals

Actually I don't believe in "luck" at all, but I will say that I think that winning at the top level of Redemption is extremely dependent on the draw.  At lower levels deck building and player skill are more of a factor.  You could trade decks with a noob and still beat them even if you had a terrible draw.  But when you get to the very top, those factors just cancel out.

I have extreme respect for Gabe, Arp, Maly, Kirk, Justin, and other 1st name recognizable players.  But is any one of them quantifiably a better deck builder than the others?  Is any one of them clearly more skilled at playing the game.  I don't think so.  They are all in the very top tier of players, and I think they all have about an equal chance of winning Nats each year.  So which one of them will win?  The one who runs into the right opponents (read not the opponent with a terrible deck overall, but which has something weird that kills their deck), and gets the better draws (read opponents don't have all their LSs on the bottom of their deck while TAS, Hopper, and HT are on the bottom of their own).

Yeah, when I say "luck" I just mean luck of the draw and in what opponents a player faces (and what kind of draw they get).  I don't believe in luck in the traditional sense either.

Hey,

Well...I would guess that T1, 2P is the hardest to win, since that's what the most people play.

Actually, the last couple years Booster Draft had the biggest field.

Quote from: MichaelHue on February 06, 2009, 11:57:02 AM

I've always thought that whoever wins T1-2P at Nationals is just a good player who got lucky.

I think Tim Maly, having won the event so many times, would disagree.

I've only won T1-2P twice (2004 and 2000). 

A couple of notes about winning T1-2P specifically...each year it gets "harder" to win the category.  The competition in T1-2P is improving every year.  So it's harder to win T1-2P now than it was in either of the years that I won it.  Also...

If you don't do everything right (in deck building and game play) you won't win nationals.  But doing everything right doesn't guarantee winning nationals (but it does almost guarantee a top 5 finish).

There's a reason magic counts "top 8's" as a more significant result than tournament wins.  And I think luck, or draws, or whatever you call the unpredictable element of Redemption gets a lot more credit and blame for tournament results than it deserves.

Back to the topic of the thread...

I don't play Booster or Sealed Deck very often, but I think Booster is the hardest to win at nationals.  The field is so huge, and there's so much that you can't control.  T1-2P is probably second hardest because the margin for error is so small.  I'll put T2-2P third hardest, but T2-2P is a different animal, because you control so much more of what happens than you do in any other category.  To the very, very best of players T2-2P should be the easiest category to win.  T2-MP and T1- MP are the easiest because the field is so small and the multi-player format bunches things up and leaves more margin for error.  I won't even list Sealed Deck because I have no idea (I think I've played it twice in 10 years).

Tschow,

Tim "Sir Nobody" Maly

Type one multi. I know a lot of people will disagree cause so many people play booster when it's going on. But there are so many factors that go into it:

1. Getting everyone else's hate(fa, aotl, cm)

Actually... that's about enough of a reason. 

i'd have to say booster, it is very random.