Introducing the Burning open piles 1v1 draft

This post proposes a new way to draft cubes that are intended for 8 drafters, but in 1v1.

Disclaimer
I am not trying to re-invent the wheel, I am not claiming I just had a genius idea, I know there are tons of interesting ways to draft 1v1. I just like designing new ways to draft and I wanted to share one here.

Motivation
Sometimes, you own a cube designed to bee drafted in an environment where people see a lot of cards, but there are only 2 people at the table. This can result in a sad draft. For example, vintage cubes with combos loose a lot of interest in 1v1 because you don't see enough cards to justify picking a combo piece and hoping you will see the other piece.

As a result, the method proposed herein satisfies these three constraints:

• Each player sees 276 cards, as in regular 8 people drafts.
• Each player ends up with approximately 45 cards, as in regular 8 people drafts.
• The procedure must be uncomplicated and fast.

Burning open piles drafting

The method works with 6 face up piles cards. It start with one card in each pile. Player A picks a pile. A card is added to each pile. Player B picks a pile, then a card is added to each pile, then player A picks a pile, etc. Whenever a fourth card would be added to a pile, the pile is burned first, and the fourth card becomes the only card in the pile. Continue until 46 total picks have been made (23 by each player). The remaining content of the piles is burned.

Since 6 piles get a card added 46 times, the players will have seen 6*46=276 cards. Players pick piles of 1, 2 or 3 cards. The piles of 3 are interesting because they contain more cards, and the piles of 1 are interesting because they contain the newly revealed cards. Assuming that each player picks 2 cards at a time on average, and one less for their first pick (before the piles will have accumulated), they end up with 23*2-1=45 cards in the end. A player that only picks piles of 1 with 0 lands will still end up with a functional deck (23 spells and 17 basics). Since the piles are face up, both players think about their picks at the same time, there is no need to prepare packs and the procedure is really simple, making everything quick.

Conclusion

I am quite pleased that the numbers align perfectly with such an easy to apply procedure.

I have yet to try this out in person. What do you think of the method? Please share your ideas or existing 1v1 preferred methods!