From Alejandro:

After a full day of exams and interviews we now have six new members in our family. We would like to welcome Luis Ribeiro (Portugal), Vitaly Bogdanov (Ukraine), Frida Betti (Italy), Ulf G. Simonsen (Denmark), Arturo Garcia (Spain), and Matthew Johnson (UK) to Level 1.

Special congratulations to Ulf G. Simonsen and Matthew Jonhson, who scored a 96% on their exam, and extra special congratulations to Vitaly Bogdanov, who scored an outstanding 100% on his exam.

Also two we have two judges that advanced to Level 2: Diogo Santos (Portugal), and Javier Alvarez (Spain), who also did a great job by scoring an almost perfect 98% on his exam.

Congratulations!!!

Once upon a time, there was a format that (almost) no-one remembers now. Few have played it on Pro Tour level and those who did, admit it was one of the most difficult formats they’ve ever experienced. Ladies and gentleman, that format is Team Rochester Draft.

Everyone knows how the draft looks like. It’s quite easy, you pick cards you like and build a powerful deck to beat your opponents in three rounds of competition. How different can it be? Believe me it can.

Instead of drafting one generic deck, you’re drafting three as a team AND you see what your opponents are picking. In that environment some cards rise dramatically in value, some… not so much. If the player across drafts vampires tribal, that Wooden Stake can be a first pick!

Draft procedure is also quite different. Teams roll a die (or otherwise decide randomly) which team will open pack first, and then that team’s player B does so. The draft proceeds in a horseshoe pattern both for cards and for packs. There is 20 seconds review period when the pack is opened and then 5 seconds per pick. “It’s very skill sensitive format” – said Oliver Bird, L3 judge who has played in Team Trios Pro Tour few years ago. He’s mentioned that you can “level” your opponents by counterdrafting or drafting hate-decks to beat certain strategies your opponents plan to use – like the aforementioned Wooden Stake to beat vampires (which really happened in one of the drafts).

Players who participated in today’s event had great fun, playing primeval Magic and like two different games: the draft and the games of Magic itself, in limited format where you know what your opponent picked. Still, there are unexpected plays and interactions, which make that event great fun – for both players and judges alike.

I’ve never played Team Rochester Draft, but now I know I’d love to.

During the year Regional Coordinators work with lot of people (judges, TOs, WotC, distributors) to sort out all the situations that happen, help players and judges to improve and achieve their goals. The most of this job is done by email or by phone. But once a year they have the chance to meet all those people in person: The GP. After many months of coordination an RC goes to the GP with a schedule of meetings longer than the Comprehensive Rules.

It’s also important spending some time with the judges from your region (unscheduled meetings), be available to them to both help them with the problems they may have but didn’t put in an email during the year AND to learn from them. For a human being it’s impossible to be aware of what’s going on in every city of the region. We need the help of all our judges (TOs and players too) to have the full picture of it. Basically gather all that information that is not relevant enough to put it in an email, but very useful for us to know.

This morning, as any Sunday GP morning, saw a couple of last minute changes to the schedule. With Head Judge Nico Glik moving into the Judge Booth, Italian Level 2 Gianluca Bonacchi found himself in the driver’s seat. And this was a the driver’s seat of a very large bus! With 248 players, the Standard Championship (paying out an amazing one display of each set currently in Standard for first place) was the biggest event of the day.

Ginaluca did not let this intimidate him. He collected his fractured team and after pulling in reinforcements got everyone playing. But that was not the end of the troubles (or Troubles as they call them in Haven). Round 1 was nearing the end, but still a large pile of decklists faced the deck check team. Fortunately, this is one task, where you can throw more bodies at to speed it up and by the time we had pairings, all the decklists were counted.

The next problem facing the team was 30+ decklist issues. A timely investigation by the Head Judge narrowed it down to a manageable 12 (with a number of decklists just containing Spanish names).

As the tournament finishes up round 3 (of 9) it looks like we’ve found our groove and with the ‘timely reinforcements’ showing up, we can consider starting to rotate lunch breaks.

To save on time, Head Judge Riccardo is going to try a tricky bit of business. For the last round we will move all the players from the green side (Tables 1+) to the tail end of the blue side (801+). This will allow us to build tomorrow’s play area during the last round.

If we can get players in the seats

What’s your favorite part of being a GP Head Judge?

When you are the head judge, you have the possibility to see the entire weekend as a single entity: assigning roles accordingly to requests, organizing travel advice (or airport pickup too), looking for people to present their favorite seminars, taking care of social activities…. in general, taking care of people who choose to dedicate their free time to judging and come to the GP.

Is being Head Judge your favorite role or do you prefer doing something else?

Being the HJ is very rewarding and it’s also extremely time consuming. The preparation starts more than one month before the tournament and the followup takes dozens of hours in the weeks after the tournament (an event is much more than a tournament). A balance between the role of Head Judge (with bigger challenges and bigger rewards) and the role of Floor Judge (enjoying my time more and focusing more on having fun with friends) is the best. A ratio? HJing once every four GPs looks perfect.

Which GPs will we see you at?

The next GPs for me will be Lille, Indianapolis, Turin, Manchester, Manila, Yokohama, Ghent, Shanghai (waiting to make plans for the last part of 2012, whose GPs were just announced)….. yes, 2012 is a year of growth of Magic, of number of GPs…. and therefore of travels. Judge the game, see the World and make many friends!!

What’s the hardest part of being a Grand Prix Head Judge?

Maintaining a balance between optimizing tournament efficiency and caring for individuals, be they staff or players. I still have room for improvement in the latter category, but I try

It seems that French Commander players prefer 1:1 than multiplayer. Is this true and why?

There are players playing multiplayer Commander, but there’s a huge community of tournament players who prefer the more competitive approach. Additionally, we’ve developed a series of tournaments and a Commander National Championship.

What Commander deck(s) are you playing these days? 

Jenara, Asura of War. It’s like playing Bant in Legacy and the match-up vs Edric is decent

On Friday, February 24th, on a cold winter morning, GP Madrid ’12 Judge Conference started with 20 people attending the morning shift. The beginning was quite a mess, with no power available in the venue and a lot of things to set up for the seminars.

At 10:15 we can finally sat down and started with the Innistrad Block mechanics. With no electricity for the laptops & plasma screens, we had to stop this seminar and prepare the next one, that could be held without anything, but lights, chairs and a few judges interested in learning and having a good time together: DCI and Magic judges Present and Future, with Riccardo Tessitori, Kevin Desprez, and Richard Drijvers answering all attending judges questions, and hearing to all their suggestions to improve our Judge Program. I always love this kind of seminars

At 12:15 we finally got power for our electronic devices and start with Matteo Callegari’s conferences about L1, L2 & L3 definitions, and how to develop as a judge. It took the rest of the morning and half an hour more to finish this complete and detailed seminar, with different parts and very interesting chats about judge levels and requirements for promoting. One of the most complete seminars I’ve attend to.

After that, we had our parallel activities time, with Thomas Ralph’s seminar on how to manage 8-mans and Public Events, a Policy discussion round table and a few individual Role Play Games to check how judges react to a few interesting situations.

And finally, last but not least, we could learn and enjoy the seminar “Cheating, how to deal with it, investigations and lies” with a professional Spanish Magician, winner of 2009 Worlds Championship of Magic (not Magic the Gathering, “real” magic :p), Jorge Luengo. At this moment, there were 35 judges attending. We lost a few of them who had to work on GP Trials during the day, but we get new faces during the afternoon, as they were arriving from the airport.

At 19:30 we finished Judge Conferences, with 41 different judges attending during the whole day, and a large GP to work on a few hours.

A tip for next conferences: try to have a couple of seminars with no electricity requirements as back up, just in case you have logistics problems at the beginning. Always it is better to have people enjoying a good seminar than waiting for it

Cheers,

Sergio Perez

Magic Judge L2, Madrid, Spain