Game is completely rigged..
It's not just handsmoothing, it's the whole game. Every single match just feels staged.
From matchups to land ratios to draws in general, it's easily noticeable that it's all rigged.

As an experienced player it just makes me really, really sad. If you insist on manipulating every single game, then at least improve your algorithm so I won't notice.

I have been tracking the matches on Standard Event and it is statistically impossible that I get matched with so many experienced players with advanced decks. The cards they own are impossible to get. Your matching algorithm is absolutely flawed and the most disappointing part of the MTGA is that the whole concept of the game is pay-to-win based! You can only get powerful cards and participate in the events if you pay for cards.
As a game designer, you fail when your players feels that cannot progress in the game because you want them to pay you. It's bad design principles and extremely unfair treatment of the players.

I have been tracking the matches on Standard Event and it is statistically impossible that I get matched with so many experienced players with advanced decks. The cards they own are impossible to get. Your matching algorithm is absolutely flawed and the most disappointing part of the MTGA is that the whole concept of the game is pay-to-win based! You can only get powerful cards and participate in the event if you pay for cards.
As a game designer, you fail when your players feels that cannot progress in the game because you don't let them. It's bad design principles and extremely unfair treatment of the players.

FIX THE GAME!!! YOUR ALGORITHM IS FRUSTRATING!!! I HAVE 5 GAMES LOOSING STREAK WITH ZERO TO NO LANDS CONSIDERING I HAVE A HGH MANA COUNT!!!

FIX THE GAME!!! YOUR ALGORITHM IS FRUSTRATING!!! I HAVE 5 GAMES LOOSING STREAK WITH ZERO TO NO LANDS CONSIDERING I HAVE A HGH MANA COUNT!!!

Since you have avoided any discussion about hand smoothing, I am going to be pushy, I want compensation for being forced to use a modification that does not work, actually does the opposite of what it's supposed to do. I do not need it nor do I want to use it. It gives an advantage to mono colored decks and since it's implementation it has made the issues it is supposed to solve worse. I have been tracking your shuffler since I started playing, before hand smoothing mana *****/flood happened about 3 in 10 games, now it happens almost guaranteed 1 in 3 games and way too often it happens several games in a row. It does not do it's job and is an exploitable advantage for mono colored decks ( surely you guys have noticed the huge influx of mono colored decks from the pro level to amateur ) , It creates an unbalanced system and needs to be fixed. If it is truly for new players then keep it in casual but remove it from ranked and event games. If a new player can not accept that sometimes bad draws happen then being honest they will not stay with the game regardless of an exploit or not and hand smoothing is just a slap in the face to the players who made you what you are now. I used to spend quite a bit on MTG products but these days I just can't bring myself to pay for any products. I went from about a thousand a month to zero because I really don't see any future for MTG , especially in the tabletop field as I have seen many new players come out to FNM and realize that they don't do as well without hand smoothing and they are never seen again. Killing off one aspect of your business to feed another just is not good business sense and as such it has made a few of us veteran players gun shy about making purchases.

FIX THE GAME!!! YOUR ALGORITHM IS FRUSTRATING!!!

Stop looking for counters against a deck i made.
Make a mill deck, well all your opponents now have 200+ cards in their deck.

Ulgamon deck, welp you guessed it, all my opponents also have the same deck.
Also your shuffler is a joke.

I will stop buying your ****

Can you not see the volume of users who hate your matchmaking algorithm? There is no meta; there's just what matchmaker decides to put you against. Mono white is 60% of current top decks? Oh, so if I build a deck to compete against mono white, I should do ok, right? Except I'll never face mono-white with that deck.
Oh, so matchmaker is going to put me against reb/blue control? Ok, I guess I'll switch to aggro... except then I'll never face blue/red again, just lifegain.
Fix
Your
Matchmaking

Listen to your user base.

If it is working as designed, hire better designers

Over the last 100 bo1 games I've tracked I've been on the play 17 times. It's so unlikely one can only draw the conclusion that it's not a coinflip. Considering how utterly garbage the rest of MtG: Arena performs with constant crashes, and insane load time for a card game, one can only assume it is because of incomptetence or malice. If you are not intentionally favouring some players, who are maybe paying more in the store. I suggest you hire a consultant to take a look at your algorithms

I too have this issue. Is it tied to an account number or something like that? I re-installed about a week ago because a friend wanted to play and I'd estimate that over 90% of my games are "go second".

This morning I counted. I have played 15 games so far. 14 I have gone second in. Maybe I and the OP are just super unlucky, but I've been playing 20-30 games per day for 10 days and it has been consistent. I almost never go first.

(Which really sucks in this **** life game tempo meta for historic.)

The shuffling algorithm is bad. Fix it please.

Matchmaking is really broken or everyone I play against is playing the same decks. I'm being matched up against all the free casting decks that I have very little chance of actually playing never mind winning the game. It's just easier to concede and go to the next game. Bur loe and behold I'm matched up with the same deck yet again. For example: I'm playing a Heliod lifegain deck in Historic Brawl (which I've started so many times trying to overcome the ****** decks I come up against). I've played 604 games with my current deck with a 39% win rate. Out of all those games someone has conceded to me 38 times at draw. I've conceded 291 times. 291 time, really!!! That's 54.5%, well over half my games not played at all; and it's only going up because I'm being matched against the same decks ALL THE TIME! See my Untapped.gg screenshot attached.

And it looks like I'm not the only 1 that's facing this problem.

I was playing in MTGA and my opponent didn't always have it. For three games in a row things were working properly and they 1,000% always had, to their very last card, exactly the card that countered me, but then I had a game where somehow they didn't have it and I won once. Please fix ASAP so I can go back to the authentic MTGA experience.

This site is manipulation bs , opponent goes first 72/100 and 69/100 in the two blocks i kept track of. The only thing i have found to advance into mythic is alternate decks and single game and traditional. Idk why this helps , maybe it can not get a lock on me lol , I noticed when doing this you will find a day here and there where you are nearly unbeatable.

Same thing , but not 95% wow , in two blocks of 100 games , opponent goes first 72/100 and 69/100 , that was a cpl months ago I kept track with pen and paper , it has not changed , now when I go first it feels weird. Recently I keep track of land of opponents playing the top 5 decks , they are rarely land screwed or flooded and have many very balanced hands = they are smoothed. One example is the white deck is land screwed 1/26 games. (does not drop land four (not even three lol) on round four 1/26) = bs manipulation site.

Your matchmaking is horrendous. Your balance is horrendous. The shuffle algorithm is ****. Just lost a game in 5 turns because my draws were so bad and the opponent had the perfect hand. I used one of the Wizards premade decks too. This game has turned to **** and you all refuse to fix it. And you refuse to refund everyone who has put money into the game and had to deal with this *********.

can you please take care of the algorithm of the card draws. you always have double or triple everything in your hand or in the top 10 cards.

I just played a game where I got 3 lands after 14 draws. I am having this experience quite often and it’s really annoying. What can you tell about that? There is some sort of algorithm to do that for some reason? It’s not possible this thing is random. Can someone give me some information regarding that?

This is currently happening to me as well