Speculation? That's a bit of an odd choice of word for the title this week, wouldn't you say? Shouldn't I have been writing about the Hall of Fame three weeks ago, when my views could have contributed to the debate, and maybe influenced some people to my way of thinking? Rest assured, the decision to take a back seat is entirely deliberate. I consider the Hall of Fame to be the ultimate accolade anyone can have bestowed on them in the world of Magic. Whether it's players, judges, commentators, members of R&D, and more, the committee that votes on the Hall of Fame is made up of people who care hugely about the game, and the ongoing success of Magic moving forward. To be voted into the Hall by that group is an indication of recognition that goes beyond simply 'liking Magic' or 'being good at card games.'

So why, given that I care deeply about Magic, haven't I raised my head above the parapet to attempt to shape this year's ballot? Simply, I regard the Hall of Fame season as a great opportunity for me not to talk, but to listen. Although I've been playing the game continuously since 1997, there are plenty of star names who vanished from the Pro Tour scene before I started working with Wizards on Event Coverage. It's one of the great truths of life that when you're talking, you're not learning. I talk a lot, and I like to learn, so this is the time of year when I shut the hell up, listen, and learn. Listen carefully, and you'll hear echoes of the greats of the game, whispering down the years.

As Pro Tour Statistician, of course I'm interested in the numbers people put up during their time in the game. That information, however, is readily available to anyone who wants it. What's harder to unearth is the character of those players. What do their local communities think of them? Were they the Arrogant Pro, Too Important to talk to Scrubs? Did they nurture and build their community, using their own success to bring the fun and thrill of Magic to others? Yes, they have Top 8s, but were they getting super-lucky along the way, or just the little boost we all need to get over the hump, whatever our level of play?

Many influential voices have spoken over the last few weeks, not least because this year appears to have one of the most open ballots for a while. Now the votes have been cast, and the winners will be announced at Pro Tour: Amsterdam. So, now that I can't influence anybody, rather than tell you who I voted for (although I might mention that along the way), I'm going to tell you what I think is going to happen next week when all the votes have been tallied.

To begin, I went through the list of candidates, and narrowed it down to what looks to me like the most obvious twenty names:

From the United States – Chris Benafel, Patrick Chapin, Antonino de Rosa, Justin Gary, Eugene Harvey, William Jensen, Scott Johns, Brian Kibler, Dan O'Mahoney-Schwartz, Steve O'Mahoney-Schwartz, Chris Pikula, Alex Shvartsman

From Europe – Marco Blume, Anton Jonsson, Gabriel Nassif, Bram Snepvangers, Guillaume Wafo-Tapa

From Japan – Osamu Fujita, Tsuyoshi Ikeda, Masashiro Kuroda, Katsuhiro Mori, Tomoharu Saito, Shouta Yasooka

From Brazil – Willy Edel

Of course, everyone on the list of candidates has done something profoundly tough to do – break 100 lifetime Pro Points. Still, the Hall of Fame is about the cream of the cream, so let's see which of these twenty might make it in.

Chris Benafel had two Pro Tour Top 8s, and eight Grand Prix Top 8s, with two Team and one individual victory. However, two PT Top 8s puts him quite a way down the list, so I'd be surprised if he made it in.

Patrick Chapin is obviously someone about whom many people feel very strongly. He's a folk hero to many. He willingly gives of his time to almost anyone who asks for it, and his writing has given many an insight into the world of high-level deckbuilding. It doesn't do any harm, either, that many of these decks have been propelled to major success.

Statistically, he's somewhere in the middle of the pack, with three PT Top 8s. That's good, and there's little doubt in my mind that if he, rather than Uri Peleg, had won Worlds in 2007, we wouldn't be having this discussion. As it is, he finished a worthy runner-up, but that means that he still has yet to raise a trophy at a Premier Event. On his contribution to the Magic community, he obviously scores incredibly highly, and his decks also lend weight, but the results themselves would see him as one of the weaker members of the Hall. Although he's probably only one championship away from it, I can't see it this time.

Antonino de Rosa is a smart man, and there was a reason that he was so keen to get into the Hall on a previous ballot. Ten GP Top 8s is a notable achievement, and his three successive U.S. Nationals Top 8s, including being champion in 2005, are also worthy of record. Still, just one PT Top 8 means he's probably out of the running this year.

Justin Gary is an interesting contender. I had a conversation with someone who was going to vote for Marco Blume, who said that they couldn't really imagine Kai and Dirk (Budde and Baberowski) in the Hall without the third team member. I asked if he didn't feel the same way about Justin Gary, and his negative response suggested that people don't think of YMG as a specific team, more an amorphous testing group of individuals who were really, really good. Phoenix Foundation, on the other hand, meant Kai, Marco, Dirk.

Like Chapin, Gary has three PT Top 8s. However, Gary managed to convert one of those into victory, winning the incredible Houston 2002 PT, where it was all Your Move Games everywhere you looked at the top of the standings. While I'm sure he would be delighted with the honor, the Hall of Fame isn't something Gary needs right now to make 2010 go with a swing, since he's part of the former/current Magic brains trust behind the runaway hit Ascension, a sort-of-Dominion-style card game that has really grabbed the gaming headlines over the last few months. I don't think Gary will get the champagne and the girl, and will probably have to settle for global gaming recognition via Ascension, at least for this year.

Eugene Harvey is up next. Four PT Top 8s sees him into contention, although those four events led to three instant eliminations. By far the cruellest of these was the Two-Headed Giant Pro Tour at San Diego in 2007. In the event forever to be associated with Chris Lachmann and Jacob van Lunen, Harvey teamed up with John Fiorillo to make the final four. With the semi finals being decided over a single game, Fiorillo first mulliganed, then mulliganed again, and then remained hopelessly color screwed through the remainder of a very short game. Interestingly, the U.S. pair probably had the best hope of derailing the Sliver Kids from their route to victory, since Harvey's deck in particular was packed with removal. Still, what might have been, etc. It wouldn't come as a total surprise to see the softly-spoken Harvey in the Hall, and as a fully paid-up member of the Piano Player Union I'd like to see it, but I still don't think it will happen this year.

William Jensen is someone I was actively encouraged to look at a couple of years ago when he first came on the ballot. It's not hard to see why. Ten Grand Prix Top 8s resulted in three titles, and he adds to that impressive tally with four PT Top 8s. As part of 'The Brockafellars,' he lifted the title at Pro Tour: Boston 2003, and all in all he has an impressive list of accomplishments. I can't altogether put my finger on why I suspect he won't get in, unless it's that there seems to be some 'mood music' pointing in other directions, but I don't expect to see him inducted in Chiba. One of these years, though, enough people are going to think about him to see him in.

Scott Johns is a real puzzle to me. I've heard very little talk about him this year, and this seems to me to be absurd. Making a PT Top 8 is a real accomplishment, regardless of era, or standard of opposition, or what part of what team you are, and so on. Top 8 = good news. Johns has five of them. In 1996, he made the Top 8 of the Pro Tour three times. In a year. Yes, all the stuff about the early days is at least partially true, but three times is still monstrous. He added another Top 8 at Worlds 1998, and then sat down with Gary Wise and Mike Turian to win Pro Tour: New York in 2000.

It will not, I think, have escaped your attention that both his team mates are in the Hall. Johns wasn't reading 'OK' Magazine and painting his nails while the other two got on with winning the PT. He was really good. Add in plenty of years working within Wizards, and you have, to my mind, an obvious candidate. Will he make it in this year? Almost certainly not. Should he? In my view, yes.

From a real blast from the past in Johns, to the three-ring circus that is the modern-day mercurial Brian Kibler. Few names evoke more interest and excitement than this talented American, who continues to display an extraordinary zest for the game, coupled with no mean ability to get the best out of any situation. Three Grand Prix wins are spread across more than a decade, with the latest just a few weeks ago in Sendai. Couple that with his spectacular victory in Pro Tour: Austin 2009, and his run to the Top 8 of Honolulu only one event previously, and, on the face of it, Kibler's case is rock-solid.

The only question mark I have is that Magic isn't a world exactly packed full of showmen, and there can be something quite daunting in a room of calm to be close to the maelstrom that is Kibler on full power. While clearly good for the game in my view, there are going to be those with a vote who don't see things that way. This may impact his vote slightly, but this isn't a year where there are four stone-cold certainties about to be Inducted, leaving six or seven battling for one last spot. On that basis, I'm pretty sure he'll make it in.

Now we have the two brothers O'Mahoney-Schwartz, and right there is the awkwardness. The Ruel brothers neatly avoided being picked in the same year, and there's almost certainly room for either one or none this year. If he didn't have the same surname, six Grand Prix Top 8s and a Pro Tour Top 8 would look perfectly good for Dan, though still struggling. As it is, ten Grand Prix Top 8s and three PT Top 8s from brother Steve comfortably leave Dan in the shade. I spoke of 'mood music' earlier, and there's plenty of noise, from the U.S. and to a lesser extent elsewhere, for Steve to make it in this time. He has a Pro Tour win to his name, from Pro Tour: Los Angeles 1999, but the groundswell of support seems to be more about his community contributions. Magic may be a global game, but there are an awful lot of American voters for the Hall (and I don't mean 'awful' in a bad way), so it wouldn't surprise me at all if Steve OMS makes it in.

Chris Pikula is someone I've heard talked about, but he is another who has no career titles at GP or PT level. That feels like a reasonably large hurdle to me, and I suspect it's enough of a hurdle to keep him out.

That leaves Alex Shvartsman, and once again I'm conflicted. Alex was a big part of my early interest in the game, because he was the Face Of Trading, bringing you all the latest news in Duelist, and so on. Twenty one Grand Prix Top 8s is stupendous, and it took Olivier Ruel a ton of events to overhaul him to become the lifetime leader in this category. BDM amongst others has voiced the idea that Alex isn't worthy on the basis of his one PT Top 8. Whilst it is indeed the Magic Pro Tour Hall of Fame, the Pro Tour happens twelve days a year, the Grand Prix circuit almost four times that amount. It's easy to fly round the world when a company is paying you to do so, but much less so when you're praying for a good Sealed Deck pool to help you through to Day 2 of a Grand Prix. There's no way Alex makes it in this year, or probably any other now, but I think the Hall is a poorer place without him. He blazed a trail.

Our European section opens with Marco Blume. Whereas Scott Johns and Justin Gary can both point to records away from their teams, the same can't be said for Marco. All three of his PT Top 8s were achieved alongside Dirk Baberowski and Kai Budde, and it's noticeable that both of those had individual achievements to go alongside Phoenix Foundation. I can imagine nostalgic Europeans voting for him, but I can't believe that will be enough. Not in.

Anton Jonsson is going to be an interesting case of just how much of a popularity contest the voting is this year. Brian Kibler has all the pizazz you could want, and maybe he got some of Anton's share, because Jonsson is not your guy for razzmatazz. I'm not suggesting for a moment that he should be, by the way, but it does mean that the more recent Japanese players, for example, don't know much about Jonsson, who was fading from the Magic scene round about 2006/7. If the voting had still been open, events in Gothenburg this past weekend might have made a difference, where Jonsson reached the final of the Grand Prix, to much home satisfaction.

I'm happy to say I voted for him, if for no other reason than he was one of those players that other perfectly good Pros didn't want to play. As one well above average Pro told me at the weekend, 'You saw Jonsson as your opponent on the pairings board, and you basically knew you'd lost.' That's the sort of thing people said about Kai, or Jon Finkel, and while Jonsson doesn't have their numbers, it says a lot that he has that kind of hold over very successful Pros in their own right. This is one of the toughest ones to call, but I have a sneaking suspicion that he may not quite have enough votes.

Gabriel Nassif – I'm very careful about what I write these days, so I'll start with a few disclaimers, like 'assuming he's alive,' 'assuming he didn't assassinate a world leader between now and the weekend,' and 'as long as he didn't refuse on the basis that the Hall was a symbol of a weak and discredited capitalist experiment on the people of the Earth.' With these out of the way, let me say this: If Gabriel Nassif fails to be Inducted into the Hall of Fame this year, I will host the Pro Tour Webcast naked.

Bram Snepvangers – I'm pulling a face as I type those two words. Why? Because I really, really want Bram to make it in, and I'm not at all sure that he's going to. Seven Grand Prix Top 8s is good, and four PT Top 8s is really good, but neither screams Hall of Fame. Once you remember that those eleven Top 8s have yet to produce a win, and his position is undermined further. He has over 600 matches at Pro Tour level, which is interplanetary distances ahead of anyone (Antoine Ruel, as a comparison, has less than half that number).

And yet, longevity isn't something I believe is particularly valued. It's almost as if the attitude is 'well, he just had to sit there, and rack up the matches.' But he earned the right to sit there. Most people don't earn the right to sit there for nine matches, going home on Day 1 of the only PT they ever qualify for. That's before we even begin to talk about his truly monumental contribution to Dutch Magic. The only consolation I can offer if he doesn't get in is that there's still time. A fifth Pro Tour Top 8 will probably come along at some point, and a sixth would make him impossible to ignore, regardless of how long they took to accumulate. I would like to think the voters appreciate what a giant of the community Bram is, but I'm not sure they do.

My last shortlist European is Guillaume Wafo-Tapa, but there's a difference between a shortlist and a list, and I don't believe GWT will make the leap from one to the other. His Pro Tour win in Yokohama, while masterful, is fading into the history books, and the last couple of years have been relatively barren. It's entirely possible that he could win a second Pro Tour, and I certainly have him on another shortlist, this time of potential winners of Pro Tour: Amsterdam this weekend, but he's simply not going to get enough votes.

Let's turn now to Japan. Despite nine Grand Prix Top 8s, including a win in Taipei 2005, I don't see Osamu Fujita becoming the second player with that surname to enter the Hall, after Tsuyoshi Fujita made it two years ago. However, there's another link with the 2008 entrant, this time his first name, since Tsuyoshi Ikeda is on the ballot, and a live contender. Coming into 2009, Ikeda had five GP top 8s, and three PT Top 8s. By the end of 2009, he'd added a Grand Prix title from Niigata, and reached the final of Pro Tour: Austin before losing to Brian Kibler. The cowboy hat-wearing Ikeda is a breath of fresh air, someone who adores the game, playing it, and being sanguine about it win or lose. In some ways, I think he's the most likely Japanese player to make it in this year, since he may well benefit from voters who have issues with some of the other candidates, but don't want to submit a ballot that's tilted towards four Americans plus Nassif.

Masashiro Kuroda has seven GP Top 8s, but that isn't why you'd vote for him. He has two PT Top 8s, but you wouldn't vote for him for that reason either, even though one of them was a win. No, you'd vote for Kuroda because of his place in Japanese Magic history, as the man who broke their Pro Tour duck by winning Pro Tour: Kobe in 2004. Trouble is, however much you know that this means something to a particular group of people, when it doesn't resonate with you, it makes it harder to take that leap of imagination that makes it A Big Deal. I don't think that gap has been bridged this year.

Katsuhiro Mori – I like to see the good in everyone, and I tend to flinch when I see uncompromising views in print or in conversation. To me, the world is generally a much more rounded place than the black and white view sometimes professed, and I like to avoid making blanket statements unless I'm really sure where I'm going. A close friend described the final of Grand Prix: Yokohama earlier this year between Masashiro Kuroda and Katsuhiro Mori as 'Good versus Evil,' and I frankly thought that was, as they say, a bit harsh. Likewise, Sheldon Menery's one sentence dismissal of the 2005 World Champion, who also repeated Worlds Top 8s in 2006 and 2007.

All that said, let's see if I can actually force myself to type a full-on opinion:

Mori cheats. All the time. As far as I can see, in every turn of every game of every match of every tournament, he's either cheating, or working out how to cheat. At Grand Prix: Gothenburg this past weekend, I saw Mori play three matches. He got a Warning in EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. One of these was certainly plausibly an error (a card had been flipped face-up during the pre-game shuffling, and neither player had noticed. Result, when the card arrived mid-way through the game face-up on top of Mori's deck: Looking At Extra Cards. Fine.)

The second Warning came for Insufficient Randomization. Most people who get this warning need to learn to shuffle better, but it's also a euphemism for Stacking Your Deck. Hearsay is a dangerous thing, but the deal from the other side of the table in this one involved Mori actively Not Shuffling (i.e. stacking), Lying To A Judge (that's a DQ and beheading right there), and attempting all this with Malicious Intent (which, without Penalty Guidelines to hand, I can only assume involves disembowelment).

Now, the third one I saw with my own eyes and ears, and how this ends up going down as an 'honest mistake,' I'll never know. Mori has Bloodthrone Vampire, another creature, and Magma Phoenix. You can probably see what's coming already. Sac other creature to Vampire, it's a 3/3. Sac Magma Phoenix to Bloodthrone Vampire, it's a 5/5, Phoenix deals three to everything, Vampire lives.

Except it doesn't. The three damage to everything trigger goes on the stack before the +2/+2 can resolve, the Vampire dies as a 3/3, and the +2/+2 bonus fizzles.

At FNM, you might not know this. At a Store Challenge, you might not know this. Maybe, just maybe, if it's one of your first PTQs, you might not know this. When you're one of the most successful players ever, making Worlds Top 8 three years in a row, and winning Grand Prix as recently as this year, there is precisely ZERO chance you don't know this. If you know this, and do something different, you're cheating. On purpose. A Warning for this? Please.

Mori got banned for accumulated warnings. He got three in twenty-four hours in Gothenburg. Maybe by the end of Amsterdam he'll be gone for good. Hall of Fame? Do you know - amazingly - I didn't vote for him.

The miserable conversation topic of cheating continues with Tomoharu Saito, who has openly admitted cheating in his earlier career. I know there are those of you reading this that have a zero tolerance for any kind of rule-breaking, and I admire that stance, I really do. I also know that when I say, as I do, that I voted for Saito and firmly believe he deserves to be in, that's going to make some of you cross. When I tell you that I'm going to be amazed if he doesn't actually get in, with or without my vote, and that Another Cheat will make it in, I know that too will make some of you very angry.

I simply cannot tell you what a different world Pro Magic was back when Saito started playing. If you talk to the Pros who have genuinely been around forever, the stories of the cheats that went on round by round are positively hair-curling (not that you'd notice on me). That's not to excuse it, but I think the parallels with the Steroid Era in baseball are relevant. There was a culture of cheating that plenty succumbed to, at all skill levels of the game, and it was broadly looked on as 'all part of the game.' It's been a long time since a Pro was Disqualified for actively trying to draw extra cards, but back in the day there were players drawing three, four, five cards a turn if they thought they could get away with it.

Meanwhile, Saito is a former Player of the Year. He may well be Player of the Year again this year. He's a Pro Tour Champion. He travels across the world in pursuit of Magical excellence. He is undoubtedly one of the finest players ever to come out of Japan, and he's probably one of the finest players ever to come out of anywhere. He should be in, and I'm pretty sure he will be.

Finally from Japan, we have Shouta Yasooka. The 2006 Player of the Year won't make it in, not least because there's little current recognition for online achievements in the game, and although there are few accounts more active and more successful than Yasooka's, that's not going to translate into votes.

And, really in the Honorable Mention category, comes Willy Edel of Brazil. He was perilously close to being a two-time Pro Tour Champion, rather than a two-time finalist, but Magic, like all competitive sport, is a game of inches. I can't wait to see Willy in action at Brazil Nationals in a couple of weeks time, and maybe that can be the start of a comeback that sees him return to the heights when he was one of the most feared opponents in the game.

Conclusion

I'm only absolutely certain about Gabriel Nassif. It's possible that Brian Kibler could miss out, but I think he's probably in. All I'm hearing suggests that Steve OMS is the second American most likely to get in, but I'm not at all sure he'll have enough. Dearly as I want to see it, I'm not convinced Bram Snepvangers will get quite enough votes. Saito, controversy or no, probably will. If I had to guess, I'd go with:

Gabriel Nassif
Tomoharu Saito
Brian Kibler
Bram Snepvangers
Steve O'Mahoney-Schwartz

In that order, but I'd be surprised if we need five rings come Worlds in Chiba.

In a few days, you can laugh at me in the forums at my woeful speculative powers of analysis, but in the meantime, as ever, thanks for reading.

R.