The Hall of Fame cannot both be squeaky clean and embody the history of competitive Magic. You have to pick one.
Dom Camus
And what a pick it has been.
Ever since the Hall’s creation, every year I have followed along, thinking about who I would vote for if I ever had the opportunity. I tumbled over ideas and thoughts in my head like a child rolling down a grassy knoll. Ultimately, though, I never came to a final ballot. It was always too hard to figure out the last person or two to vote for. What morals I felt were in play. What I thought mattered in the qualities of a Hall of Fame player. But I never had to follow through and finish my ballot in the past years.
This year, I do.
When I found out over a month ago that I was going to be given the opportunity to vote for the Hall of Fame, I was both honored and humbled. For better or worse, I almost always take every decision seriously, and for something as major as the Hall of Fame, that is especially true. I am treating this as a high responsibility, as if my ballot actually would determine who is going to receive those encrusted rings. As if my ballot determined whose life was going to change forever and who would be relegated to thinking, “well, maybe next year.”
Every. Vote. Matters.
The gravity of the situation has been lurking in my mind, delving into my thoughts, and even appearing in my dreams. No matter what I have done for the past month, whenever my mind is idle, whether on the bus, lying in bed, or making dinner, it fills the gaps in its consciousness with images of the Hall. One particular night I even dreamt about a wrestling match between Pikula and Saito; another, an image of the Hall of Fame induction ceremony, as I watched indistinguishable apparitions in suits walk onto the stage, each with a haunting, empty face.
Perhaps I need to consult my psychiatrist.
Just when I thought I could end the endless dreams and decisions, just when I finally had a ballot I was satisfied sending in, my world was shattered.
As usual, Dom Camus, a.k.a. Bateleur, a.k.a. one of the best Limited players to never qualify for a Pro Tour, completely broke my perspective by saying something so eloquent, correct, and profound that the world bent in toward his words as if he had enchanted them. That quote now sits atop this article, as it rightfully should. It forced me to reconsider everything.
Which path do I walk down? Is it history or integrity that should drive the hall of fame?
But let’s back up a little.
Regardless of what happened in past years, I view each year as a tabula rasa. Especially because I have never voted for the Hall before, all previous choices are behind me. I don’t feel there is some lingering precedent. These decisions are unique from last year’s decisions, and those decisions are unique from the year before that, and so on. We can create some comparisons, sure, but I think we have to look within this year before contextualizing the rest of the Hall.
My goal is to vote for the five players who I feel deserve to be in the most. I don’t want to game the system. I don’t want to come with some complex plan for years down the line. I don’t want to draw nationalistic lines. I simply want the five people I think are the best candidates to have my votes.
There are many, many players who have the resume to at least earn consideration of my vote. That’s difficult enough to parse through on your own. However, what makes it even more difficult is that everybody wants their own favorite person to make it in. In a world where social media outlets are the driving force behind information, the loudest voices echo in waves which endlessly reverberate. The truth of the matter is that it’s easy to put enough spin on anybody to make them seem worthwhile.
Let me tell you about a guy named Mike Thompson. He’s consistently played on the Pro Tour for years, and almost never had to PTQ. He played in some ridiculous number of consecutive Pro Tours — somewhere in the 20s — and consistently makes Top 50 so he can chain them over and over. He is naturally extremely skilled with a kind of talent people who have won Pro Tours don’t even have. He can go to an event, design a deck the morning of, never having played it, and make Top 8. Even more impressive is to this day he can still do the same thing in Limited, where he goes in never having had seen the cards.
One year, I handed him my B/W hand in hand deck for Pro Tour: Honolulu — very similar to what Olivier Ruel piloted to the Top 8 at the same event — and he made Top 50. Then, six months later, after the metagame has evolved far past that, he shows up to Nationals with the same deck, changes two cards… and goes undefeated in Standard. Furthermore, he’s been a Northwest community staple, pushing events, inspiring younger players, and showing up to PTQs for encouragement.
He fell off the train last year because an unfortunate string of personal events left him unable to compete in most of the Pro Tours — and he promptly came back and won the first PTQ he played in, absolutely cold, with no Standard testing, and is headed out toward Amsterdam. To top it all off, he’s a great guy to be around, staunchly anti-cheating, and has a personality that shows he has a lot of fun and cares about the game.
Now, I’m not going to vote for Mike. He’s not even close to receiving a vote from me, let alone anybody else. But it’s really easy to make him sound good. Now, if I can do that with Mike in three paragraphs, a guy who has never made Top 8 of a Pro Tour and only has a single GP Top 8 to his name, how easy do you think it is to do that to people who have the numbers anyway?
As a result, I made a conscious decision to look into everybody myself and to vote based on my own beliefs. I would still listen to what others have to say — it’s hard not to — but I was careful to not let what they said hold too much sway over me.
Where it seems natural to go next, though, is numbers. However, I have a problem with numbers. Not just here, but in anything, whether baseball, football, Magic, or any other sport. Maybe it’s just the writer in me, but I don’t believe numbers don’t tell the whole story. Figuring out who to vote for in the Hall of Fame isn’t some algebraic equation, or figuring out the circumference of a building, or even a simple comparison of numbers. Why? Because there are people involved!
People are the greatest variable you can possibly imagine. They do things so incredible, so ridiculous, so mind-boggling that no statistic can possibly account for all of them. If we just wanted the “Hall of Pro Tour Top 8s,” or the “Hall of Pro Points,” or even the “Hall of Best Median Finishes,” we could just take the five people with the highest stats every year, throw them in, and make it easy. But stats aren’t what make a good Magic player. Stats don’t represent that player’s image on the Pro Tour. They’re something you can look at and admire, and use in certain situations. But they in no way, shape, or form tell the whole story.
Numbers have a particular problem in that, over time, the structure of events has changed. Different numbers of Pro Points are given out now, there are more incentives for pros to make it to every Grand Prix, and, thanks to the players club, it has become a lot more feasible to do so. There are so many changes and variables between ten years ago and now that it becomes impossible to create any kind of perfect modernizing equation. You have to just make very rough ballpark estimates for most of the numbers. That takes away the main advantage of numbers — accuracy.
And then there’s the other side of the coin. The intangibles.
The intangibles of a player are crucial to consider. Zvi’s articles. Buehler’s work inside Wizards of the Coast. Ruel’s cheating offenses. These are the kind of things that can make or break a career; the kind of actions that either put you down as a legend or let the current of time erode you away. The problem is they are equally hard to rank.
Think back a moment to when you were 16 and trying to figure out who to ask to prom. You might have made a list for each of them of attributes you liked. Your plan was to see which had overall better qualities. When you were done, you would look down at the lists — and all you saw were two equally good candidates. They were impossible to rank! How can you choose between flowing gold hair to a bubbly giggle? How do you weigh a perfectly white smile against a soothing gaze?
How can you even begin to compare Pikula’s crusade against cheating versus Bram’s ability to create an entire Magic playing nation?
It’s impossible to know by anything other than pure feel.
So when the intangibles seem so incomparable and the numbers seem to blend together, where do you even start?
I started with the only place I knew I could trust: my own personal thoughts. I started with what I knew, with what I felt, and, most importantly, what I cared about in a Hall of Fame member, and worked from there.
This is what I found.
I would just say he’s an automatic vote and I don’t need to talk about how he deserves to be on everyone’s ballot, but so many people have done this already that somebody needs to boast about how awesome Gabe is or nobody will.
Nassif is the one person I automatically knew would have my vote this year. Neither Finkel nor Kai were unanimous, and I doubt Gabe will be either, but the people who don’t vote for him are only doing so because either they are trying to game the system or Gabe spit in their coffee on multiple different occasions. I know everybody is talking about great he is, but seriously, have you looked at his stats!? 46 Pro Tours and nine Top 8s. 401 Pro Points with 6 Grand Prix Top 8s. But get this. After 46 Pro Tours, you know what his average median finish and his 3-year median is? 46. Forty. Six. If Nassif kept these stats until the end of time and always made his median finish, he would be qualified for every Pro Tour ever, and money all of them.
That’s just absurd.
Yeah, I know it’s ironic of me to delve into stats considering I just said I wasn’t a numbers person, but the good news is that The Bluffmaster has insane intangibles as well. He has succeeded in both the pre- and post-MTGO era (which is a big deal to me,) is at almost every event, is very likable, and puts a good face on the game.
Much like Katy Perry, Gabe has it on lock.
Patrick is a likable guy, and that’s a good start. In fact, I would say that Patrick has been a driving force behind Magic for the last couple of years. When you think of “household” Magic names people know and care about, Patrick Chapin is up there with people like Luis Scott-Vargas. Everyone clamors for his decks, and he even wrote Next Level Magic which, regardless of how you felt about the content, is a major undertaking that deserves recognition.
His dedication is unwavering. If you want to play it by stats, though, Chapin leaves some room to be desired in comparison to others. While he is a genius at building decks in the past few years, he doesn’t always perform with them — though he has certainly done a much better job at that ever since Pro Tour: San Diego. Furthermore, I would be willing to say that Chapin’s contributions outweigh a lot of people who only have stats backing them up. But is it enough to beat out people who have both the stats and contributions?
Though there wasn’t a lot of clamor around Anton to begin with for some reason, after Ted Knutson brought him up the clamor around him hasn’t died down yet. With five Pro Tour Top 8 performances to back him up, plus eight Grand Prix Top 8 performances, Anton was certainly no slouch. In fact, he was one of the scariest players you could have sit across from you during his reign. I think a lot of people forgot about him, but Anton is very impressive.
The fact that he was able to succeed in Magic, and especially Limited, both pre- and post-MTGO is a big deal few have mentioned. While his contributions to the community seem to be lacking in general, everyone I have talked to about him has told me that Anton is a blast to be around, and that he is a great guy. That counts for a little, at least, though not as much for me as others. This isn’t the “Hall of Good ‘Ol Boys.” This is a hall of famous players, and the fact so many people forgot about him until Ted brought it back up is a big strike against him.
As someone who has followed along in past years, I am still at a loss for how Johns was never voted in. Unfortunately, I think a lot of it has to do with his former work at Wizards meaning he couldn’t use his invite — but other than that, his resume is very strong. In a very short period of time he stepped up and dominated with 5 Pro Tour Top 8s between 1996-2001.
We never got to see how Johns would have done post Magic Online because he was pulled into Wizards. He was playing in an entirely different era of Magic from today, where not everyone was as refined. However, he definitely has a community edge thanks to all of the stuff he did for the game while working at Wizards.
Brian doesn’t have the most insane statistical resume out of everyone. 3 Pro Tour Top 8s plus a Masters Top 8, and 10 Grand Prix Top 8s to back it up is solid, but doesn’t beat out a lot of other candidates.
What he does have, though, are a couple major things I look for. First of all, he loves Magic. He has succeeded on both ends of the spectrum, more so than any player who took such a long break. After five years of rust he just went out, won a PTQ, then made Top 8 of a Pro Tour, and then won a Pro Tour later that year. He even picked up some GP finishes. Furthermore, Brian is an incredible person for the game to have. He is very likable, and has done a lot of community work for the game with coverage broadcasts and articles alike.
One knock a lot of people have against Brian is the Hypergenesis situation in his semifinal match at the Pro Tour. That is a very unfortunate situation, and it is too bad how that turned out. The arguments have been hashed out and reargued over and over about all of this, and I don’t want to bring it all up again. However, the short version is that I don’t think there is reasonable proof to believe Kibler cheated at all. That’s the only major thing I have ever heard of him doing, and I have personally seen him remind his opponents of triggers at a Grand Prix, both before and after the Pro Tour. I do not believe he cheated. The situation could have been handled a lot better. But I don’t think this one blip in his career should keep him out of the Hall.
Mike Long
After Ted’s article this year, Long seems to have resurfaced as a candidate. I can agree with almost all of his arguments. But there are a few things I want to bring up.
First of all, I love playing against good players. Some players may quake at the idea of sitting across from somebody like Kibler or Johnsson or Chapin. I thrive on it. Playing the best game of Magic you can against the best players in the world is what the game is all about.
However, if I played against Long, I would hate every moment of it.
Why? The reason is that we are not actually playing Magic. We are playing some weird subgame where I have to play Magic while constantly worrying about him cheating. He might be great for spectators, but I think every player in the room would loathe him being there.
But let’s set that aside. That’s something between the players and Long. The people at home don’t have to deal with it, so adding Long still seems good for promotional purposes. So what gives?
I can think of few larger travesties for the Pro Tour than somebody already in the Hall being disqualified and suspended for flagrantly cheating. That would be a PR disaster and an embarrassment to the game.
Given infinite tournaments, sure, it might happen eventually with the people we have. But I guarantee Long would be disqualified at least once within two years after consistently playing, and that’s being generous.
You can argue Long would clean up his game. But he won’t. I’ve talked to people who have known him, played with him, played against him. He cheats compulsively. He doesn’t even need to cheat to win most of his games because he is good enough, yet he still cheats anyway just to get away with it.
I am willing to reconsider my rules a little. But I am not going to vote someone who I think would easily be suspended into the Hall of Fame, and I urge you to do the same.
Katsuhiro Mori
Mori has a solid resume. Three Top 8s, plus a national team finals and a bunch of great Grand Prix performances.
The bigger issue here for me is the cheating. Unlike someone like Saito, he was just suspended three years ago, and it was for pretty flagrantly cheating by extremely abusing miscommunication. Has he changed? I don’t know. I assume at least somewhat. Is he cheating other ways? I don’t know.
Is his above average resume coupled with his relatively recent antics enough for me to vote for him? That’s a hard question.
Steven O’Mahoney-Schwartz
Another person with a solid resume during an older period of time. He beats people like Katsuhiro out for me, just because for the small hit in resume (3 less Grand Prix Top 8s in a time when Grand Prix were less common), there aren’t any black marks on his play.
Tom Martell and I were able to get a hold of Steve’s full play history, and a lot of his Grand Prix statistics are fantastic if you’re interested in Grand Prix statistics. 39 individual Grand Prix with 7 Top 8s and 2 wins, 8 team Grand Prix with 2 Top 4s and one win, plus his 2HG victory(2 Top 4, 1 win) 1 2HG (1 Top 8, 1 win). However, he also has 6 individual Top 16s. That means Steve makes Top 16 in 13/39 Grand Prix… Or 33.3% of the time! Pretty impressive.
I’ve been told that Steve would play again if he was voted in. While this isn’t the “Hall of Free PTQ Wins,” that is good to know at least.
Ever since year one, I have wanted to vote for Chris Pikula. Each year the voting would turn up, and I would be saddened by the lack of Chris. He has always been one of my favorite players. He plays well, fought against cheating in a time it was prevalent, and was an amazing person to represent the game. I would love to have him back on the Tour. Can you imagine having him doing commentary again?
But, as has been established, this isn’t the “Hall of Good ‘Ol Boys,” nor is this the “Hall of Free PTQ Wins.” You have to look elsewhere. Chris’s stats do not stack up to a lot of other candidates, even if you nudge him some bonus points for a would-have teams Top 8 if it wasn’t for one misplay. Three (almost four!) Top 8s and four GP Top 8s. Chris came back for a stint in 2005, and I was hoping he would keep it up as a few more finishes would push him into the Hall. However, he stopped, perhaps due to work considerations.
On the other side, his contributions to the game are stellar. Is that enough to make up for his few missing statistics?
Tomoharu Saito
Oh Saito, Saito, Saito.
This is the slot that has flip-flopped around on my ballot the most.
He has been on and off, then on and off again. There was a point where I thought he was off for good, after I found out he had an 18 month suspension to his name. But then, of course, came the quote from the illustrious Dom Camus I mentioned above. Here’s the full thing:
“The thing about Saito is that from an outsider’s perspective he is no more sketchy than pro Magic as a whole. The Hall of Fame cannot both be squeaky clean and embody the history of competitive Magic. You have to pick one.”
Here are the facts.
Fact: Saito was disqualified twice in 2001.
Fact: One time was for Bribery which, if he honestly didn’t understand the case, is defendable.
Fact: The second time, however, is pretty clear cut cheating as he manipulates everything to try and pull out a game win.
Fact: Saito served an 18 month suspension, longer than Olivier Ruel and Bob Maher’s combined.
Fact: Saito had not been disqualified since that happened.
Now, that all happened nine years ago. You can argue that he has cleaned up, and that might be enough to put his past in the past. However, the problem is stuff keeps coming up. Most recently his ridiculous stall against Jason Ford, but every couple of events there’s always some murmur running across the hall. For example, here’s a favorite story to tell from around here. At a Shards of Alara Limited Grand Prix, on the play Saito draws a hand of Forest, Obelisk, removal spell, four-drop, and three five-plus-drops. Saito keeps, draws four straight lands, and easily takes the match. Did he feel he had to get lucky? Did he make a mistake? Both seem unlikely. I can’t see anybody keeping that hand in normal circumstances.
To add fuel to the fire, you can find videos of him shuffling in highly suspicious ways — including piling then presenting without shuffling afterward — which could easily allow him to stack his deck. However, it is worth noting these are a few years old, before insufficient randomization penalties became as enforced.
The problem is that there is a (highly unfortunate) stigma among some players that a lot of the Japanese players cheat, which makes it hard to actually figure out which stories are true. Aside from the stalling case, the Obelisk case, and his shuffling, it is hard for me to know what is true beyond the facts.
The situation with Saito seems very simple to me.
Either you think he cheated in the past and you want that to bar him from the Hall, you can forgive his past cheating but think he still cheats now and want that to bar him from the Hall, or you get past all of that and vote for him.
Some people want to wait a year, but what is that really accomplishing? Seeing if he gets suspended or not? That sounds ridiculous to me. Saito is easily qualified to be in the Hall. Either you care about his past/suspected cheating or you don’t. If you don’t want him to get in now, you should never vote for him, and if you don’t mind the cheating allegations, you should vote him in.
Furthermore, I think it is worth noting that one does not put up 5 Pro Tour Top 8s and 15 GP Top 8s by cheating through every single match. Even Mike Long himself was a incredibly skilled player — he just found the need to cheat all of the time. I am sure Saito is very, very skilled. On the other hand, it just takes a little bit of cheating to pick up the one or two extra match wins it can take to place well at a major event…
Finally, I have one note. And this note is for Tomoharu Saito himself.
Dear Tomoharu Saito,
I don’t know if you still cheat, or if you feel you have ever cheated, or anything of the sort. But I want to set all of that aside. You don’t have to admit anything, and I don’t want to look at the past. I just want to say this in looking toward the future.
If you make it into the Hall of Fame, which you likely will, I beg of you, if you are cheating, please stop. You have reached the highest honor this game has to offer. You have done something very few people will ever do. There is no reason to risk being caught and embarrass yourself as well as the entire game. If you have cheated in the past, I urge you to not continue in the future.
Bram Snepvangers
I don’t know who the Dad of the Pro Tour is, but the Grandpa of the Pro Tour is definitely Bram, right down to the couple of too-long nosehairs that always seem to poke out.
Bram has decent Pro Tour stats, with four Top 8s. But what really astounds me is the whopping 62 Pro Tours played. Bram is always there and is consistent, which means a lot to me. Furthermore, his work back home is unprecedented. We have essentially an entire nation of Magic players made possible by Bram. He took his success, and turned it into a gift for others. While he doesn’t have a win, if any man on this year’s ballot embodies the essence of Magic and the Pro Tour, I think it is Bram, even more so than Nassif.
With all of that in mind, and after making some of the hardest decisions of my life, this is my final ballot:
Gabriel Nassif
Brian Kibler
Bram Snepvangers
Anton Jonsson
Tomoharu Saito
Nassif, Bram, and Kibler are locks for me. Nassif I described above. Kibler has everything I want in a Hall member. He has succeeded in every way, at two totally different times and still contributes to the game today. Bram has been incredible in the community, and has a consistent and strong Pro Tour resume.
The other two, though, were much harder.
There are a lot of people I really wanted to see in the hall, and choosing to vote for Saito, someone who cheated, over all of them pains me personally. I feel especially bad leaving Steve OMS off the list after I did a bunch of research into his GP statistics. However, I just can’t argue with how good of a player Saito is despite what happened. He writes articles, has a good perspective on Magic, and has pervaded Magic culture to the point where the “Saito Slap” is an actual thing. People don’t know him as a cheater, they know him as an icon. He hasn’t been disqualified in nine years, and I am willing to accept his ability as a player. I feel it is the right decision to have it in the hall, even though it is not one I personally want to make.
Despite his lack of community contributions, Anton’s total dominance during his reign is incredible. Five Pro Tour Top 8s plus his ability to scare everybody else on the circuit when he is your opponent is enough to push him in for me. I really, really wanted to vote for Steve OMS here, but I just couldn’t. The one big problem for me was that Anton doesn’t seem to be a name everybody recognizes — but I also feel that’s because I live in America and he played before I followed events. If I had been following at the time I would likely have voted for him for sure. Once I was able to overlook that, Anton has two more Pro Tour Top 8s, both out and in of the MTGO era. Anton nudges over Steve by a nose.
Voting for the Hall of Fame has been an incredible process which has consumed my mind for over a month, and I am honored Scott Larabee gave me the opportunity to vote. Hopefully I’ll be able to vote again next year! I would love to hear your thoughts on all of this and on my rationale in the forums. You can also e-mail me at gavintriesagain at gmail dot com, and I’d be happy to respond to any tweets aimed at me.
See you next week!
Gavin Verhey
Rabon on Magic Online, GavinVerhey on Twitter, Lesurgo everywhere else