Yeah, I fat-fingered the number and reused 18 instead of doing the 45 correct the first time. I've spoken with AM about it, and it changes the difference they showed in card earnings from ~18% to ~3%.
I'll have to check how Splex calculates the value and where those numbers come from ($6.2 in fees to AM feels higher than I'd expect). I was happy with how I calculated the numbers which was what I had stated from the start. I didn't want to change any of the calculations after specifying the experiment for exactly this reason: if I change it and the results change, it would look like I was favoring one bot over the other.
Regardless, I think the point stands that the two services are pretty much neck and neck.
And I find it a bit amusing both services are trying to spin the results here as a big win for them. The answer is, and I know things that aren't black-and-white are hard, but in this case it's the truth: the two services are really comparable and people should decide for themselves.
If there was like a 10%+ difference in net earnings, I'd happily endorse one service over the other. But there just isn't. And while 350+ is a really good sample size, 1-2% is certainly within the margin of error. I'm not worried about maybe missing out on $0.05/day if I choose the wrong service. At that point it comes down to other, smaller things like I mentioned at the bottom. In this case, I really like paying fewer fees, as I keep more SPS, which is the most important type of reward to me right now. So XBOT wins that regardless of whether it's netting 1% more or less than AM might be.
Haha yeah, both sides are trying to interpret the data in their favour.
What I will say though, and I promise I'll stop after this, battle performance is very dependent on the collection. Some collections will do better with XBOT, some better with AM. In this case AM was slightly stronger, but that's certainly not the case on average. Also, you didn't use XBOT's boost mode, which is designed to improve battle performance.
In cases where AM performs better, you're paying more in fees, which negates the difference. (Like in your example)
In cases where XBOT performs better, the difference in net earnings is huge. (Because of more earnings AND less fees)
Also if you care about extra features, like automatic SB combining, card rentals, SPS rentals, in-depth analysis, liquid rewards, XBOT beats AM by a landslide.
I love the xtra features of xbot! That's part of what made me go that route at the end of the day. I like the interface better. I like the charts and analysis. I like the daily check in rewards which I can use to rent sps.
And yeah, the "bots perform differently with different accounts" was basically the impetus for doing this at all, since all I can publicly obviously see is how they perform for the leaderboard. If my account ever gets a solid enough deck to fight for leaderboard spots, I'll have to rerun the experiment, where I imagine XBOT will come up nicely ahead.
As a final thought, I am a bit pleased with myself that this experiment and the write-up yielded well-thought-out responses from the folks on both bots. I'm pretty sure like 3 people read my articles on Hive, so it's nice to have some legit engagement. So thanks :)