It would be interesting to consider how many people this could have happened that would trigger outcries of 'rigged!' and how many times a sequence of "potential unlikely events" have occurred in the past year... Would certainly show that something like this was inevitably going to happen at some point.
I think the biggest issue with Top Shot is the unfair advantages that continue to flow for early adopters and those with cash to splash. Once you are in this group, the system is set up to continue providing advantage after advantage. Top Shot promotes these users as legit collectors; however, what makes someone with a collector score less than 5000 less of a collector. And no run of the mill collector is able to splash $2800+ for all of the Cool Cats moments. I think many of the users with tons of rare or legendary moments are actually less valid collectors, they are in it more for the cash. If the queues were open to all and challenges more accessible (collect 8 Holo Icon to win another one, yeah sure, unless you have tons of cash...) Top Shot might find less people accusing them of rigging the system. Sure, the user in your story had a low probability of pulling a #1 moment and winning the competition, though the odds would be much greater if everyone had equal odds to score a pack and Top Shot quit looking after their own - mostly their mates who were in on the game early on...
The 'rigged' aspect is just what people emotionally like to jump to, especially on social media when things happen really fast. How do you feel that there's some bias or bug in the randomizer? That seems like the most likely possibility 'if' there was something off.
The probability of this is actually much higher than you’re calculating here. The odds of being chosen for the Finals game is actually not important. We didn’t ask before that event “what are the chances of person X having A, B and C happen?” Twitterverse would be equally shocked if anyone who won the Finals game had then gotten the #1. So the unlikeliness of the first event isn’t part of the math. Actually, it makes it even *more* likely because there are 8 people that this could have happened to. What we should calculate is “what are the odds that any one of the 8 people that were selected for the Finals game would then pull a #1?”
A good read on this topic: The Improbability Principle by David Hand. This should be required reading for everyone. But then the Internet would probably be a lot less exciting.
I don’t think pulling the #1 CP3 card was rigged at all. I do believe in their randomness. But I could be talked into only the Suns Suite being “responsibly rigged”. Some vetting in the selection of the Suite Winners before they announced them
Great article, just being a bit annoying here but when calculating the probability of landing a rare pack while being in all 3 queues you can't just add them, it's 1-probability not getting any packs. Doesn't really matter here as the number is similar, but just thought I'd be picky since you're one of the analytical guys in the community!
I heard that the 8 suite winners were given access to the first 8 ATTW4 packs, so they didn’t really have to go through the queues. Is there any truth to this? Or did you confirm that he actually purchased the pack through the queues before including that probability for us to factor in?
It's important to note that the queue is a third-party provider. So in that scenario, TS would also need to somehow convince engineers at this provider to rig it so those 8 are guaranteed the first 8 packs?
It would be interesting to consider how many people this could have happened that would trigger outcries of 'rigged!' and how many times a sequence of "potential unlikely events" have occurred in the past year... Would certainly show that something like this was inevitably going to happen at some point.
Lest we forget that random is NOT truly random https://medium.com/code-yoga/random-numbers-are-not-random-701dd2fbc2b8, i.e., "lucky" in this case means the guy was n the right place at the right time based on the algorithm's notion of random.
I think the biggest issue with Top Shot is the unfair advantages that continue to flow for early adopters and those with cash to splash. Once you are in this group, the system is set up to continue providing advantage after advantage. Top Shot promotes these users as legit collectors; however, what makes someone with a collector score less than 5000 less of a collector. And no run of the mill collector is able to splash $2800+ for all of the Cool Cats moments. I think many of the users with tons of rare or legendary moments are actually less valid collectors, they are in it more for the cash. If the queues were open to all and challenges more accessible (collect 8 Holo Icon to win another one, yeah sure, unless you have tons of cash...) Top Shot might find less people accusing them of rigging the system. Sure, the user in your story had a low probability of pulling a #1 moment and winning the competition, though the odds would be much greater if everyone had equal odds to score a pack and Top Shot quit looking after their own - mostly their mates who were in on the game early on...
The 'rigged' aspect is just what people emotionally like to jump to, especially on social media when things happen really fast. How do you feel that there's some bias or bug in the randomizer? That seems like the most likely possibility 'if' there was something off.
The probability of this is actually much higher than you’re calculating here. The odds of being chosen for the Finals game is actually not important. We didn’t ask before that event “what are the chances of person X having A, B and C happen?” Twitterverse would be equally shocked if anyone who won the Finals game had then gotten the #1. So the unlikeliness of the first event isn’t part of the math. Actually, it makes it even *more* likely because there are 8 people that this could have happened to. What we should calculate is “what are the odds that any one of the 8 people that were selected for the Finals game would then pull a #1?”
A good read on this topic: The Improbability Principle by David Hand. This should be required reading for everyone. But then the Internet would probably be a lot less exciting.
I don’t think pulling the #1 CP3 card was rigged at all. I do believe in their randomness. But I could be talked into only the Suns Suite being “responsibly rigged”. Some vetting in the selection of the Suite Winners before they announced them
Well said, plus DemonX (me) pulled #3 Chris Paul rare in the first queue 😁 tweeted it
Great article, just being a bit annoying here but when calculating the probability of landing a rare pack while being in all 3 queues you can't just add them, it's 1-probability not getting any packs. Doesn't really matter here as the number is similar, but just thought I'd be picky since you're one of the analytical guys in the community!
Ah, good call - thanks for the reminder
I heard that the 8 suite winners were given access to the first 8 ATTW4 packs, so they didn’t really have to go through the queues. Is there any truth to this? Or did you confirm that he actually purchased the pack through the queues before including that probability for us to factor in?
It's important to note that the queue is a third-party provider. So in that scenario, TS would also need to somehow convince engineers at this provider to rig it so those 8 are guaranteed the first 8 packs?