Mini Article - Utilized Card Advantage

In an ongoing duel we often claim one is winning and one is losing. Back when you (and perhaps I) completely sucked at this game (or the first similar game you played if yugioh is not your first) you would claim that the one with the more life points is winning. Thankfully you've grown up and know that is no way to judge a game's potential outcome. However how do you know who is winning? You can make a good judgment call while looking at a game, and you can even justify it based on the current circumstances, but often you need a simple, or at least defined way, to claim one is winning or losing. For example life points was as simple as the mathematical solution of figuring which number is the greater one.

Now if asked for a simple way to determine that, the first thing that comes to mind would probably be card advantage. However you must often come across circumstances where you can't say who has the advantage on a purely mathematical solution. Say for example player A has necrovalley, macrocosmos and a face down mystical space typhoon on the field while player B has a gadget in hand, with no gadgets used. It is true player A stands at a +2 on a pure card advantage perspective, however he is not winning. If none of his cards can be used against his opponent's then they are dead and useless, and might as well amount to a 0 in card presence, while the gadget his opponent holds is not only useful in bringing victory closer by direct attacks, but will also supply player B with a very relevant now +1 every turn. If player B is not affected by necrovalley, macrocosmos and mst, then he is winning even while being at -2.

So what do you do in such cases? You use your judgement perhaps and say who is winning. However if you needed to use your judgement often then it is no longer a simple and defined way. One may come to the conclusion "oh well, not everything can be explained", which on one hand is a way of life I will not try to oppose at this point but on the other it doesn't let new players simply learn without experience, and no way for those that have experience to verify whether they were correct.

Is card presence truly one of those mysteries of life that simply cannot be explained?
Of course not, there is nothing that complicated in all of yugioh and beyond. The issue here would be people's perception of card presence. Since in yugioh for most players the most thinking they do is the addition/substraction of life points they expect a similarly simple way to tell advantage, however card advantage has a couple more sides to it than that.

First of all in competitive play whenever we refer to card advantage/presence we refer to card advantage/presence with the potential to be utilized. We have a change in card presence not at any moment the number of cards changes, but whenever there is a result of any significance from it. You need to be able to cash your cards in for them to have presence. Let's take for example scapegoat. Scapegoat will use up its own spell card and in return give you 4 monsters. The question is, is scapegoat alone a +3? The answer is "of course not", the tokens are nothing but 0/0 meatshields, and meatshields in yugioh are -1s by definition, if they are all used up the scapegoats are a -1 instead of a +3. Now let's make another question, can scapegoat produce a +3?

To take the easy route on this let's take the September 2011 format. Your opponent has a Thunder King Rai-Oh face up, a dimensional prison face down with at least 1 card on his hand. You have Scapegoat face down, glow-up bulb and enemy controller in your hand. On his end phase you activate your Scapegoat. Then on your turn you tribute a sheep token for enemy controller to take control of thunder king rai-oh, normal summon glow-up bulb, make a T.G. Hyper Librarian with the TKRO, bring the bulb back, make a formula synchron with the second sheep token, draw 2 cards, make Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier with the formula synchron, T.G. Hyper Librarian and the 2 remaining Sheep Tokens, banishing one card from your opponent's hand, field and graveyard.
Your opponent lost 2 cards from his field, the Rai-Oh you synchro'd with and the Dimensional Prison Trishula banished, and one card from his hand. We know losing cards from your graveyard is not directly a loss of card presence. You lost 3 cards, Scapegoat, Enemy Controller and Glow-Up Bulb, gaining 3 cards in return, 2 from the draws of Formula and TGHL and Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier as a 2700 beater. Your card presence remained the same, your opponent's went at a -3, therefore you made a +3 utilizing your scapegoat, enemy controller and glow up bulb. Now your Scapegoat helped produce a +3. Of course not alone, enemy controller, which normally ranges from -2 (take control of an opponent's monster and give it back in the end phase) to 141 with the help of other cards like Caius the Shadow Monarch, which already is a 141 and simply extends that to Enemy Controller's capabilities to create a 242, and glow-up bulb, a seemingly +1 tuner, while however synchro summons are normally -1 therefore balancing the +1 of the tuner to a 141 under normal circumstances. The +3 you made does not belong to a specific card, nor is there any need to argue which card the +3 belongs to since it is not useful in any way to know, however you can claim that the 141 of enemy controller (remember that momentarily enemy controller is a 242 alone, as you lose 2 cards, the tributed monster and the spell card, gain one, your opponent's monster, and your opponent loses one, that monster) and 141 of bulb allowed you to utilize the +3 of Scapegoat.

So if we made a +3, is it the result of addition of card presences of those cards? No, adding 4 meatshields to a momentary change in control and an once reviving tuner does not result in a +3. The correct answer is that those cards did not have presence until they were utilized in that play. Just by holding your cards you did not have a +3, neither did any card hold that advantage hidden. The advantage only came into existance when you utilized it.

So first of all the difference in perspective comes in timing. One would believe you have a card advantage when you see more cards, while the truth is that those cards contribute to your card presence once they are able to have a result equivalent to that presence on the gamestate.

Here are some more examples on the matter to take things one step further and try to explain better what it means to utilize

Example 2:

Example 3:

Example 4:

So let's close this one by clearly stating the conclusion of today's article

Theorem of Utilized Card Presence wrote:

Cards contribute to a player's card presence by a certain value when they are able to have a result equivalent to that value on the gamestate.

And next time, if there is a next time soon, I'll try to go through the worth of a card and the worth of a gain in card advantage, for example how two +1s can be very different in importance and impact on the game. Concepts we more or less know, but which we don't have defined. And hopefully that would close the matter card presence/advantage for now.

Interesting article you have here Al, but with it in the head, it looks difficult to read the card advantage a card can generate by simply looking at it now.