So, I think I’ve learned that I’m much more likely to succeed as a professional judge than as a professional Magic player. Jessi and I went to Grand Prix Richmond, and lost a lot, but had a good amount of fun. We headed down Friday, but it took a bit longer to get there than I (or AAA) had expected, and so we missed the Grand Prix Trial that evening. On Saturday, we played in the main event, and lost horribly. On Sunday, we played in the side-event Pro Tour Qualifier, where Jessi lost quite a bit. I had a very nice deck and was very much thinking I could do well, but in some very close matches I ended up losing 2 and drawing 1 in the first 4 rounds. So, we dropped, and went back to our hotel room where we played some more casually before going to bed and driving home on Monday.
Hey, don’t rule out chance. :) The marketing department for Wizards earns their keep by hyping up the winners as virtually having been predestined to win.
Still, assuming you know all the cards in the environment intimately and all the decks in the metagame, I wonder how much extra *oomph* can be gained by reading player reactions and playing mind games.
Well, this is limited, so the metagame is rather different from constructed… But since the same “pro” players tend to consistently show up at the top of the standings time after time, there’s got to be skill involved besides just what you managed to open.
Certainly there’s a lot of skill involved, but it just seems like full mastery would be readily attained by at least 50 people. [cynic]I’ll bet the consistent winners are just the ones who are good at slipping cards into the draft.[/cynic] I jest, I jest.
It would be interesting to compare the consistency of winning in meatspace to the consistency of winning in Magic Online. Assuming cheating is negligible, that should demonstrate the power of reading player reactions, as it controls for pure game-state strategy.
Well, they DQ’d 7 players (out of 561) for cheating, so perhaps you’re not giving judges enough credit. :)
Some players brought their own decklists, some just slips cards from their pocket into their hand, and there were more, too. I wasn’t really privvy to the details, since I wasn’t judging, but even if I were I probably couldn’t say much more than that (and there are now DCI investigations pending). They have many clever ways to catch all these people.
And that was just day 1. On day 2, for the drafting for top 64, each card is stamped and marked in particular ways ahead of time, so that players can’t add cards, and the entire draft can be reconstructed if needed.
There is a lot of work put into catching and preventing cheating.
Well, I could argue that the 7 were a symptom of a larger problem, but the stamping of the cards is pretty convincing. :)
The decklists were also “special”, which is how they caught players bringing their own pre-registered sealed pool and list.
When there’s $25,000 in prizes to be given out, there’s a bit more attention paid than your local store Saturday draft.
Also, check out BDM‘s interview with the head judge in today’s article.