[alanfalcon]

There’s just enough luck involved that the risk-reward ratio was probably mostly right in those early days, especially as the game wasn’t designed with the expectation players would ever have perfect information about scarcity and relative power level of individual cards.

Even so, it wasn’t fun to play with ante, so most people didn’t do it; Magic smartly went with the flow rather than fight against it, and that’s a huge reason why the game persists successfully to this day.

(Details gleaned primarily from episodes of Mark Rosewater’s “Drive to Work” podcast, at least the best episodes of which are mandatory listening imo for any designer of any stripe, especially one who is also at all a fan of MtG. Yes, Garfield is the game’s creator, but Maro is the game’s central nervous system and has been for more than 15 years!)