When I was a kid, I used to ask my dad to crunch numbers in his head for me when I was thinking about dumb questions and needed actual quantification. He would say, "I do mathematics, I don't do arithmetic."... then he'd make me go do it myself. Usually badly.
So what I have, is a Mathematics question. Do you consider all plays that increases your winning chances by some amount, to be equally good, regardless of where the percent to win ends up, so long as the amount the chance to win has increased is the same?... If you are about to lose, then you make a play that saves you and sets the game state at one where you're 25% to win... is that just as good as if you are at 75% to win and you make a play that just sets your chances at 100% and you win..?
(What the hell is he talking about?... ok examples.) Exhibit A: You are about to die to Storm combo. They have a lot of mana out and cards in hand. You play Git Probe and see that when they untap you are just going to die. So you tap out and play Time Twister, which is normally a bad play, but it's your only play now since you know you are about to die. (Lets pretend that we can somehow know that you have exactly a 25% chance of winning after the Twister.)... You can maybe hit a broken 7 off your Twister and win. Or you can hope that your opponent just draws total garbo and you can win the game later.... so winning chances went from 0% to 25% with your line. +25
Exhibit B: You are locked in the dreaded Vintage mono-red burn mirror, and each player is in full topdeck mode at 3 life with 2 cards left in their deck. Each player has 1 bolt left in deck and 1 land and your turn is starting. So you are at 75% to win from here. And you topdeck your Bolt and kill the opponent. (Other than this not being a choice, your odds of winning went from 75% to 100%...) +25
Are plays that take you from 0% winning, to unlikely to win but not dead, just as valuable mathematically as plays that take you from very likely to win to actual, consummated victory?