Articles
Keep or mulligan: the numbers
How many lands a 7-card hand holds and the chance to hit the third land by turn 3, computed from draw probabilities, with the London mulligan rule
London mulligan: shuffle and draw seven again, then put as many cards on the bottom as times you mulliganed. Every mulligan costs a card, so mulligan only hands that barely function.
Chance that a 7-card opening hand holds 0–7 lands, by the land count of a 60-card deck. Hands with 2–5 lands are the playable majority.
| Land | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22 | 3.3% | 15.7% | 30.0% | 29.4% | 16.0% | 4.8% | 0.7% | 0.0% |
| 24 | 2.2% | 12.1% | 26.9% | 30.9% | 19.6% | 6.9% | 1.3% | 0.1% |
| 26 | 1.4% | 9.1% | 23.4% | 31.2% | 23.2% | 9.6% | 2.0% | 0.2% |
If you keep 1–3 lands (24-land deck), this is the chance to have a third land by turn 3. Two-landers survive more often than people think when the hand is cheap; one-landers are mostly mulligans.
| Lands kept | On the play | On the draw |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 18% | 40% |
| 2 | 66% | 81% |
| 3 | 100% | 100% |