Let’s cut straight to the chase – I believe the average Limited player mulligans in Limited far too often, causing them to take substantial hits to their win percentage and lose more games than they otherwise should. I would even go as far as to say the majority of above average Limited players mulligan more than they should. Does that mean you – yes you! – mulligan too much? I won’t point fingers, but I also wouldn’t doubt it!

When I started writing this article a few days ago, my original idea for it was to gather a bunch of interesting mulligan decisions from Twitter users and talk about how likely I was to mulligan each hand. The ultimate goal of the article was going to be to paint a picture of the my approach to mulligans in Limited and the types of hands I’d consider acceptable keeps.

I’m writing an article about mulligans in limited (I promise the article isn’t just the word “don’t”)

Send over some tricky mulligan decisions you’ve had! The more info the better (play draw/deck list/game number)

— Alex Nikolic (@Chord_O_Calls) January 26, 2022

I see your promise, but is the article just all the pictures people submit individually followed by "Don't"?

— Ari Lax (@armlx) January 26, 2022

While I think that looking over a bunch of mulligan examples is a useful exercise, I soon realized that the article was going to come far too close to what my original Tweet promised it wouldn’t be, and would in fact be an article dangerously close to the one Ari jokes about here.

So how about something a bit more direct? As tempting as it is to publish an article that just says “don’t mulligan” in big letters, we’re not quite close enough to April Fools for that, so instead, we’ll get as “don’t mulligan” adjacent as we possibly can instead. Today, I want to dive into why mulligans are so detrimental to your winrate, why I believe the range of keepable hands is wider than most players think, and why I, and so many pro players advocate for not taking a mulligan in limited unless you really have to.

I truly believe that the average player would perform better if the option were taken away from them.

— Sam Pardee (@Smdster) January 26, 2022