Hearthstone has been blamed more and more by its large fan base of becoming increasingly RNG-based and not rewarding skilled players, with wins relying almost solely on drawing the right card at the right time or having the random events go in your favor. So why would someone feel any different when playing Hearthstone or playing in online casinos?

Seeing an ex-professional poker player such as the German self-proclaimed ‘Lifecoach’ be successful with his analytical casino-like approach over the game of Hearthstone raises the question if Blizzard’s game is still a turn-based strategy game or merely a game of chance and calculations of such chances.

Born in 1981, Adrian ‘Lifecoach’ Koy had been playing professional poker since 2006 and his winnings from doing so raise to a total of ~$134,000. He started playing Hearthstone in late 2013 and already his winnings from the latter are more than half of what he has earned through poker playing.

Adrian streams daily for hours on his Twitch channel and always has a very analytical approach on the game, calculating percentages of chances and debating with his friends or with the online chat whether the decision he took was the right one and seeking the possible outcomes had he made another decision at a crucial point in the game. But even with this level of devotion and standardization that one tries to put in their Hearthstone strategy, it seems that having a winrate larger than 60% is difficult, if not impossible at higher rank levels due to the pure random nature of the game events.

So is there really a difference in playing a game of Roulette on Roxy Palace Online Casino or queueing up to an opponent in rank mode on Battle.Net?

Notorious Hearthstone players (what could go as ‘influencers’ in the game’s world), such as Octavian ‘Kripparian’ Morosanu (photo) have been calling more and more for a change in the core of the game from its main developers, warning of its casino-like nature not rewarding skillful plays and making it difficult for an important part of the population to enjoy. However, Ben Brode & co. have been sustaining the idea that one of the game’s main appeal is the fact that, due to the high RNG importance, anyone can beat anyone at any point and there is no set of predetermined moves that one can follow religiously (as there is in chess, for instance).

The current Hearthstone meta is being promised a swift change coming with the following adventure, rotation of card sets and announced nerfs, but whilst Blizzard is focusing on making things interesting and fun for new players, perhaps some of the old players who have quit out of RNG frustration in the past months are never coming back to experience the changes. We’ll just have to wait and see. Your call, Blizzard!

Photos from here and here.