Live Draft View

The Live Draft view (/draft/live) is a real-time pick assistant that runs alongside MTG Arena. It reads your draft as you play and shows card grades and pick recommendations for every pack you open.

Before You Start

The Hollowmark daemon must be installed and connected (green dot in the app header). If it is not, see the daemon installation guide.
You must be signed in to Hollowmark at app.hollowmark.app.
MTG Arena must be running on the same computer as the daemon.

How to Open the Live Draft View

The Live Draft view is designed to run in a second browser window or on a second monitor next to MTG Arena.

Step 1 — Open the Live Draft view

Go to app.hollowmark.app in your browser.
Click Draft in the left navigation, then choose Live Draft from the submenu.
- Direct URL: app.hollowmark.app/draft/live

Step 2 — Move it to a second window or monitor (recommended)

Two-monitor setup:

With the Live Draft tab open, right-click the tab in your browser and choose Move tab to new window.
Drag the new window to your second monitor.
Resize it to fit next to Arena.

Single-monitor setup:

Use windowed or borderless windowed mode in MTG Arena (not fullscreen exclusive) so you can alt-tab without losing focus.
Open the Live Draft view in a second browser window and snap it to half your screen.
Alt-tab between Arena and the browser when you need to check grades.

The Live Draft view works in any modern browser (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari). No extension is required.

Step 3 — Start a draft in Arena

Once you enter a draft in MTG Arena, the Live Draft view will automatically detect it and switch from the waiting screen to the active draft display. No button needs to be clicked.

What the Live Draft View Shows

Element	What it means
Set code (e.g. `BLB`)	The set being drafted, detected automatically from the pack
Format (e.g. `Premier Draft`, `Quick Draft`)	The draft format, detected automatically
Pack X · Pick Y	Your current position in the draft
Stream status	Connection state: `open` (connected), `connecting` (reconnecting), `error`

Current Pack

Each card in the current pack is listed with:

Element	What it means
Card name	The card's name pulled from Hollowmark's ratings database
Grade (A+, A, A−, B+, … F)	Letter grade derived from the card's Game-In-Hand Win Rate (GIHWR) as sourced from 17Lands
GIHWR %	The raw win-rate number behind the grade
Top Pick badge	Shown on whichever card in the pack has the highest GIHWR

Grade scale:

Grade	GIHWR
A+	65% or higher
A	62–64.9%
A−	59–61.9%
B+	57–58.9%
B	55–56.9%
B−	53–54.9%
C+	51–52.9%
C	49–50.9%
C−	47–48.9%
D	45–46.9%
F	Below 45%

Cards with no rating data show — for the grade. This is normal for new cards or sets that 17Lands has not yet fully sampled.

Pick History

Below the current pack, the Picks panel shows every card you have selected this draft, in order, with its name and grade. This is useful for reviewing your pool between picks.

Draft complete

When your draft ends, the page shows a confirmation message. Your full pick history is available in Draft History after the session closes.

Supported Draft Formats

The Live Draft view works with any draft format that the daemon reports:

Premier Draft — traditional 8-player booster draft
Quick Draft — bot draft
Traditional Draft — best-of-three premier draft

Sealed and other non-draft formats are not supported and will not trigger the live view.

Troubleshooting

Grades are not appearing / all cards show `—`

Most likely cause: The card ratings for the current set have not loaded yet.

Check the stream status indicator in the header. If it shows connecting or error, the daemon is not sending events — see below.
Ratings load automatically when the first pack is detected. If the pack is displayed but all grades are —, the set may not yet have ratings data on 17Lands. Ratings become available after a set has been in the wild for a week or two.
If ratings loaded for a previous set but not the current one, try refreshing the page after the first pack appears.

The page says "No active draft"

Possible causes:

The daemon is not running or not connected. Check the health indicator on app.hollowmark.app. A gray or red dot means the daemon is offline. See daemon troubleshooting.
You have not entered a draft in Arena yet. The page waits for a draft.started event and will activate automatically when you join a pod or start a bot draft.
You are running a Sealed event, which is not supported.

The stream status shows `error` or `connecting`

The Live Draft view reconnects automatically with exponential backoff (up to 30 seconds between attempts). If it stays in error for more than a minute:

Confirm the daemon is running (menu bar icon on macOS, system tray icon on Windows).
Confirm the daemon status dot in Hollowmark is green.
Refresh the Live Draft page.
If the problem persists, restart the daemon and refresh.

A card in my pack is missing its name

If a card shows as #<number> instead of its name, the card's Arena ID is not yet in Hollowmark's ratings database. This is rare and typically resolves with the next ratings update. The grade will show — for the same reason. The card is still shown in the pack grid so you can see your full options.

The pick history is empty even though I have made picks

The pick history is populated from live events. If you opened the Live Draft view after making picks, earlier picks in the session will not appear — the view only captures events received while the page is open. For a full pick log, use Draft History after the session ends.

Tips

Open the Live Draft view before you queue for a draft so it is ready when the first pack drops.
On a single monitor, use borderless windowed mode in Arena. Fullscreen exclusive mode may lose focus when you alt-tab.
The Top Pick badge highlights the statistically strongest card in the pack based on win-rate data, but it does not account for your current pool or archetype. Use it as a starting point, not a final answer.
Grades update as soon as a new pack event arrives — you do not need to refresh.