Ah MTG, the original pay to win game.
It would be pay-to-win if you could do stuff like, pay a fee to take a second card at once during a draft, or tutor a card from your collection during a game, etc...
Similarly with F1 after the cost caps. If you had 135M you could compete with no monetary disadvantage.
But using this description, then the only truly pay-to-win game would be one where the win condition is literally an auction selling a “you win!” token.
While mtg is not cheap, I would say that only older cards get crazy expensive and sometimes are straight out overpowered.
Obviously, I'm not articulating my perspective very persuasively. Here's some additional flavor that might help (probably won't:)
1. In Magic: The Gathering, the most expensive deck is not always (or even ever, really) the best.
2. Is Golf pay-to-win? I can spend more on a set of clubs that have bigger sweet spots & will give me more distance with the same swing than my opponent's set.
3. The term "pay-to-win" comes from free-to-play MMOs.
I think most people that claim MTG is pay-to-win are just frustrated by how expensive it is. I agree. Don't play it!
2. No, because the people writing the rules of Golf aren't the ones that sell you clubs (as far as I know. Maybe there's some devious stuff going on behind the scenes).
3. Correct.
While I don't think "money is the only thing that determines the winner", Magic is absolutely is pay-to-win. It would not be pay-to-win if people could print their own cards (following a set of standards, of course), even though printing costs money.
Competitive Magic is a tiny tiny fraction of the overall market. It's also totally possible and reasonable to build competitive decks on Arena with a pure F2P account, if you're into that.
There's always a genetic component that influences your min and max levels at any given skill.
You might not beat Gary Kasparov, but if you retired, hired a coach, and devoted yourself to chess, you would be better than your counterfactual equivalent who doesn't.
Pay-to-win doesn't mean you only win if you pay. It just gives you an edge if you do, and it's shitty. This is why I used to like DotA 2, to the extent that someone can like DotA 2, because all purchases were purely cosmetic and didn't affect gameplay at all.
For instance, in Modern due to a strong mana base and other expensive staples you can easily reach $500 for a midtier deck. One can argue this is “pay to play”, but there is no logical reason for these costs. It’s cardboard. Typically decade old cardboard. Wizards is playing with what is called “reprint equity” so they never make a set “too” good and “burn through” their backlog too quickly. To me its an excuse to profit off the secondary market.
Legacy is even worse, as the P2W is that at any decent level you are required to have the consistency of Dual Lands and various other strong pieces of mana to be competitive. It’s why decks typically cost a few grand on average. This is due to the Reserved List making it impossible to get such important cards via reprints.
And finally, on the extreme end you have Vintage, where the decks are primarily built around the most expensive and powerful cards in the entire game. Including the Power Nine. Decks here typically cost as much as a car regardless of level.
Trying to be competitive in Modern or Standard or even EDH requires spending at least $500+ per deck unfortunately (Vintage & Legacy even more I'm guessing). Though if you have a group of friends who play casually, it can be fun.
There was still some metagaming. Getting ahold of mythics had a greater degree of randomness, and if you had a buddy that was running a separate color deck you could effectively pool cards.