In many ways, this was my favorite Pro Tour event in a long long time. In many other ways, it was one of my greatest disappointments. PT LA V was like a class reunion of sorts. It marked the first time since US Nationals in 1998 that Pete Leiher, Mike Long, Derek Rank and I have all played in the same tournament. It saw a good friend of mine, Andrew Nishioka, make top eight for the first time in his career. Furthermore, it saw a VERY good friend of mine, Bruce Cowley, in only his third Pro Tour event also make his first top eight. What this tournament did not do is ring in the new year of total Gallitz domination of the Pro Tour. Oh it started off that way. But if you are only the best drafter at 3 of your 4 tables its just another 40th place finish, thanks but check your coat at the door.

I'm bitter, upset, confused, happy, and completely unsatisfied with my Pro Tour results this year. 24th in Pro Tour London, 21st in Pro Tour Chicago, and now 40th in PT LA. That's roughly 5k over three tournaments… know what, I average over 1k a tournament for my career on the Pro Tour, know what else? You can stick all those finishes and all the money right up the old arse because I'd trade them all for one top eight. I've been a member of the greatest team in the history of the game, Tongo Nation, I've won the limited event at Worlds in 97, I've been ranked in the top 25 composite according to the DCI for over 3 years running, I've made over 20k in career winnings, gotten top 16 three times in major events, had a major hand in two of the most dominant decks EVER in the Pro Tour, and can still boast a 20-8-1 record in Rosewater feature matches. Yes, Magic has been good to me. It just hasn't been great to me. I'm ready for Magic to be great to me. I feel like the Corey Pavin of Magic, always a front-runner, always in the money, never the winner. When I'm playing well, I'm as good as anyone in the game in any format at any time. I continue to be my own worst enemy. Take this year. First it was the Turian attack phase debacle, secondly it was the Finkel Giant Growth fiasco, this time who did I make my major play mistake against you ask…I'll tell you who CHEF BOYARFRIGGENDEE! That's right LUNCH beat me at this Pro Tour…I showed up late for a match…boom game loss…a mulligan later and my top eight aspirations were gone again. Sigh, this is the story of how it happened.

I arrive on the boat at 11:00am on Sunday morning, having shared a cab/well a limo really with Brad Swan and his father. I thought for sure the man said that he'd take us to the boat for 15$, I just didn't realize it was 15$ apiece. The Queen Mary, there she was, a huge monstrosity of an ocean liner. I remember the year that the movie Titanic came out, I still can't imagine a ship that big sinking into the deep blue sea. Laugh, but then again neither did Capt. Edward John Smith, eh? In any event, I luck out and run into Bruce as he is leaving our room to go look for some drafts. We drop off my one bag (Pro Tour tech - avoid checking bags at all costs) and head up to the fourth floor of the boat and draft with Steve OMS, David Williams, Nikolai Herzog, Jack Stanton and many others. I win the first practice draft with a solid u/w deck. Second draft I get out teched by Bob Maher and his Rock Badger x2 beatings. In any event, I feel that I'm ready for the PT and stop drafting to go register. Bruce in the meantime has drafted r/g twice and I'm a bit worried for him come the morrow. Wizards put out a Year FIVE Pro Tour poster for this event, it's actually rather cool, I'm in the thing three times, though it was during the goatee days it seems that WOTC liked to take the most pictures of me. It might not seem like much to the other players on Tour, but I think that it is important that WOTC continue to promote the history of the Pro Tour as it gives us something from which to build on for future events. That being said, the prize money is in need of a major overhaul. It's been the 1 million dollar Pro Tour for four years running now… I think they spent almost 1 million on the opening ceremonies of this years Worlds… come on WOTC add a zero to all the prizes being given and see if Magic doesn't more than triple in participation in the next 6 months. At that level, you really COULD have guys who did magic for a living.

My first draft pod contained Shawn Keller, and a bunch of people whom I did not know and myself.

1 Nick Page
2 Paco/Franci Llopis Martinez
3 Shawn Keller
4 Joel Unger
5 Daniel Mukka
6 Camille Gleizes
7 Donald Gallitz
8 Jesse Pitz
(not exactly your collection of household Pro Tour players eh?)

I felt good about my chances to get off to a fast start for this Pro Tour. I had determined early on that my best chance to do well in this Pro Tour lay in the drafting of white. So when my first pack contained a Thermal Glider it was easy to pass along a Sever Soul and a Lunge. I was rewarded with a Lieutenant in my next pack, followed up with another solid white card. I continued to cut white hard the rest of the way. Along the line I picked up a Lunge and a couple of my‘key' cards for this deck, Flaming Sword. We had a play test session in Virginia one weekend, Mike Kryzwicki and Matt Guinn came up from Carolina, peace pipe in hand, Bruce flew down from Boston and Kyle Rose, Matt Linde and Brock Parker all showed up over at Mike Katz and Steve Cowleys' place to form a real solid test group. During that I draft, I became enamored with the Flaming Sword of death; the format was all about Grizzly Bears and Flaming Swords. My philosophy was that while others were picking Lieutenants I would be picking 2/2 for 2 white guys and Disenchant chicks. Ramosian rally was a 1 or 2 pick in this deck and Flaming Sword covered a lot of the gaps. I won 3‘warm-up' drafts with this deck and was very happy as I saw the draft deck I'd drafted before coming together in the first round of the PT. Coming back around I got another Glider, Kyren Negotiations, and a Thunderclap.

Now the ONLY problem was that every time I picked a red card, I shipped two other quality cards with it. For example, I get Negotiations but pass Shock Troops and Lunge, I get Nightwing Glider I pass Shock Troops and Lunge, I get Thunderclap and pass Warmonger. So I was a bit leery about my chances at quality red in the last pack, but was still able to snaggle a Lightning Hound or two.

If I'd have made top eight I would do the entire round by round synopsis but instead I'll just touch on the highlights. I won my first round match with Gliders basically. **note I have never lost the first or last round at a Pro Tour even** ( I have drawn three times however to end an event) The next round was vs. Shawn Keller. Oh my how I wish 50 minutes was 51 minutes! Never in my life have I seen a PT finalist play quite as badly as Keller was playing. At one point in game one the board is pretty much as follows, I have a Muzzled Nightwing Glider, 3 Grizzly Bears, a Kris Mage, a Charm Peddler and some other stick like creature. He has Silverglade Elemental x2 Snorting Garr x2 and a Dragonfly in play. The game is taking FOREVER and the only reason I haven't conceded the first game (I mulliganed to 5 to begin) was because at any point and time I could draw Kyren Negotiations and win the match outright. Keller winds up and HERE'S the pitch, he slams LURE down on the table and commits to an all out assault. I get ready to scoop my cards and then realize that he has put the lure on his DRAGONFLY!!! I don't know which pissed me off more, that he was dumb enough to Lure the Fly or that I couldn't kill him on my turn, I manage my blocks to the point were I kill both his Silverglades and attack him back to where the Garrs become 3/3 walls again. 4 land draws later I lose to the Dragonfly…sigh. I roll game two with rebel progression followed by Kyren Negotiations. Game three, Keller amazes me once again by not once but TWICE sacking his Giant Caterpiller in order to make a butterfly token and then attempting to cast a spell. Uhm hello end of turn phase effects eh? Extra time is called and it is clear beyond the shadow of a doubt that I'm going to win this game, but this didn't stop Shawn from attempting to use his summoning sickness Charm Peddler to keep a creature alive… mize well burn for one and make the game REALLY special. Keller needs to stop playing 30/60 at the Bellagio and crack open a sealed deck from time to time. I wind up going 2-1-1 at the table. MY loss coming at the hands of the only guy at the table to draft black???? Nightwing Gliders made poor blocks when he cast Lens? Who does that?

In between drafts, I find myself encouraged by the fact Bruce went 3-1 at his first table and Kryzwicki went 3-1 as well. That table was a beating having Worth Wollpert, Rich Frangiosa, Jon Finkel and others. I was also heartened by the fact that Bruce went 3 colors which we knew we could do in this format especially with Green as Silverglade Elemental makes double green a cinch. In fact, we discovered early on that one of the strongest decks you could draft in the format was G/W with a splash for removal. I used this technique to win at least 2 drafts prior to PTLA (g/w with 2 Snuff Out being the best one). The other‘tech' deck that we discovered was courtesy of the Kryzwicki himself. U/W aggro with Cutpurse, Footpad beatings. Hence the deck that I drafted at my next table was chock full of 2 main deck Cutpurse, one in the board to bring in when going first, a couple of Footpads and some small w/u beats and the highlight a Noble Purpose.

[note] I've never lost a game in which I have cast Noble Purpose.
[note2] I was very relieved to pick up the late Orim's Cure.

I'll cut to my last round match. I was 2-0 to this point and I was playing Norman from MAINE! I like Norman, he and his buddy from Maine, can't quite remember his name, are both solid drafters, though a bit shady when drafting for money. Norman had a very solid r/b deck but this left him susceptible to my Gliders and Cho Manno's Blessing. But what he could NEVER have been ready for were the Cutpurses! I stole not only his land, his creatures but his dignity with these 1/1 beating sticks. At one game apiece, I found myself going first and drew 2 of my 3 Cutpurses followed by a Footpad. I knew things were good for me when he choose to save a land and sacrifice his Battle Rampart on turn three. Anther Cutpurse and a Footpad I was able to pull the match out under the time limit and win the draft table 3-0… thanks Kryzwickster!

So day one finds me 5-1-1, Bruce, after some ribbing, actually decided to play his final round when he was 4-2 and won the match! He had been hesitant due to the fact that he felt that his goal for the tournament had been to make day two and earn some respect from the guys in his play area, namely Darwin Kastle, Rob Daugherty and David Humphreys. This actually pissed me off. Who cares if you have those guys' respect? I'm pretty sure that I've never played a good match vs. Kastle (he HAS to wonder how I finish as well as I do), I don't really know Humphreys too well, though he seems nice, and what the hell has Daugherty done except the team event that Bruce should have to earn his respect? The fact of the matter is, there ARE players out there who can't commit a whole lot of time to Magic, they ARE good and dammit if I haven't seen Bruce play enough to know that the BIGGEST mistake Your Move Games could make would be to not try to wrap Bruce up in Christmas paper, mail him back to their store and make him their present… because his coming to Boston is a tremendous GIFT. As for playing, he should have, because he drafted the best deck at that table.

Pete Leiher, (god it was great to have Pete back on Pro Tour) people ask me all the time what it was like to be on Tongo Nation and why I put my reputation on the line with these guys. Simple fact of the matter is that I have more fun with Dominic Crapuchettes, Chris Bishop and Pete Leiher than I do with almost anybody else on Tour during a tournament. But more than that, away from the tournament these guys all rock! Mix in Bob Maher and Derek Rank and suddenly you have some of my favorite people both inside and outside the game, making this year's Pro Tour one I won't forget. Anyways, Pete, Bruce and I go out for pitchers of beer and wings. The wings were great, the beer was good and the service, well to call our waitress dumb would be an insult to Keller, so lets' just say the 5 cent piece that Leiher left her for a tip was 5 cents that would have been better spent on a gumball. I'm sorry, but I've waited tables, my wife has waited tables, my sister has waited tables… there are certain rules to waiting tables that simply must be obeyed at all times. Rule 1. When you are serving HOT wings please make sure there is always beer present, watching 3 grown men stare at there rapidly cooling wings because they have no drinks is a bad bad thing. Rule 2. If you get asked for the check it is usually because the people are ready to leave. It is one thing to be busy and quite another to proceed to yak in front of your patrons. We sent not one but TWO separate waitresses to‘remind' our Einstein that we were ready to go.

Day Two. My draft table is fairly strong. I'm happy to see Matt Linde and Brock Parker at the table as they are both solid but neither had won a practice draft before the event. I'm sitting next to Ed Fear whom I've seen numerous times at PT events having taken a few of his dollars in poker before. Ed asks if this is anybodies first Pro Tour at which point I say‘yeah man, my first Pro Tour, pretty happy to be here really.' Ed apparently takes me at my word and proceeds to look at me in utter disgust with every pack I pass to him. I cut black HARD and took white cards when available (it was during this draft that I realized that I really hadn't learned to draft any other color with black besides white and found myself wishing I'd have drafted the Red/Black Kyle Rose beatings deck that whole time.) SOMEHOW, Ed winds up playing black anyways, cutting an Enforcer that was on his way to the good team in the second set of packs. My deck looked ok to me, probably I could go 3-1 maybe 2-2 with bad draws here is the gist of it. First pick Charmed Griffin, then I didn't see much white (which was ok, as I was assured of getting all the white I could ever want on the backdraft right?) and I started hammering into black. I was taking mercenaries, Maggot Therapy, and any other black card worth anything. On the second set of packs I start getting the hook up with a Glider, Intimidation, Persuader, Steadfast Guard, Fresh Volunteers, Lieutenant, I feel like it is all coming together.

Oh my god were the times abysmal. I feel that I was definitely one of the best drafters/players in this format at this PT. So the next four rounds were an utter nightmare for me. It started with my feature match vs. Gunner Ruesdahl: (as reported by Newwave's Caroline Lui)

Game 1

Gallitz is b/w. Refsdal played b/w/g. Gallitz choose to go first. His hand consisted of 7 spells. He mulligan down to 6. Gallitz decided to keep his hand with 5 spells and 1 land. Gallitz plays a Swamp. Refsdal kept his hand. He played a plain. Gallitz could not top deck a land until turn 3 to play a Misshapen Fiend. While Refsdal keep on dropping land but don't have any spells. Refsdal builds up to 6 lands and Desert Twistered one of Gallitz's Swamps. Meanwhile Gallitz was forced into discarding. However Refsdal had nothing but defensive creatures. He played 2 Alabaster Wall and stayed at 16 life. Refsdal finally drew a creature. He played the Steadfast Guard. Refsdal has the edge now, along with SS Armor he was able to attack with Steadfast Guard. By now Gallitz has recovered from his mana screw. Gallitz now has an array of creatures on his side. He summoned a Deathgazer but could not do any damage because of Refsdal's 2 Alabaster Wall. Gallitz Arrests one of the Alabaster Wall and Snuffed Out the other Wall. Refsdal took 2 points per turn for the next couple turns. Gallitz started counting the # of cards left in the library. This alerts Refsdal, he has less cards in his library. Refsdal starts to go on the offense. He Maggot Therapied Gallitz's Deathgazer and Charm Peddler. The Steadfast Guard was able to knock Gallitz down slowly. Refsdal was not able to Desert Twister Gallitz's Pious Warrior because Gallitz cast Cho-Manno's Blessing on it, protection green. However Refsdal was able to cast Maggot Therapy on the Warrior and ping it with his own Crossbow Archer. Gallitz played a Scandalmonger to force Refsdal to discard Ramosian Rally. Gallitz cast another Deathgazer. Just when it appeared to be too late for Refsdal to come back, he managed do deal with Gallitz's creatures in the next 3 turns. He was able to take out 1 creature, 2 creature and 3 creatures in order to slowly eat away Gallitz's life. Refsdal was able to win with only 1 card left in his library.

Refsdal 1
Gallitz 0

[I discard 3 x before I got into the game, Gunner's deck was terrible, I hated having to concede at the end but of the 5 cards left in my deck 3 were creatures and 2 were land, if I draw a creature at any point I can chump block and I win the game..both draws were land]

Game 2

This match went at a faster pace. He cast turn 2 Ramosian Lieutenant. Turn 3 Crossbow Archer. Refsdal Maggot Therapied the Ramosian Lieutenant. By this time Gallitz realized that Refsdal had 3 Maggot Therapy in his deck, Refsdal choose to splash black for creature removal. Gallitz cast Deepwood Ghoul on turn 4. Turn 5 he played Scandalmonger with 5 lands in play. Refsdal was holding 4 cards. Refsdal played Pious Warrior and did not drop a land. Gallitz forced Refsdal to drop a land next turn. The turn after Gallitz forced Refsdal to drop Ramosian Commander and another spell. Refsdal was able to top deck the Desert Twister to kill the Scandalmonger. However by this time Refsdal was at 6 life. Gallitz was able to send creatures after Refsdal and takes the game. They ran out of time to play a 3rd game.

Refsdal 1
Gallitz 1

I have no doubt whatsoever that I would have won that match, but def. Not in three turns. By the time he is casting 6 casting cost Stone Rains on my mana screwed self and it still goes to the last 2 cards in the deck it is VERY apparent to me as to who had the better deck. Sigh. For the record, my Mark Rosewater Feature match record now stands at 20-8-1 (pretty funny upon reading Bruce's report how desperately he wanted to play a feature match— I'm thinking he'll get a few more now that he is on the train)

Somehow my match vs. Matt Linde is NOT a feature match, but in the end I was thankful as he had Stinging Barrier x3 and Kris Mage x2 I'm pretty sure I was lucky to win a game at all as I found myself locked with 3/3's in my hand during the last game. Who CAN'T afford to cast a Charmed Griffin?

At this point I'm pissed, I mean really pissed. I'm 0-2-1 with a deck that I just KNOW is better than this and I'm falling further and further away from my top eight. Enter the‘lunch break'. Brock and Linde are playing each other at the lunch table and Linde is beating him like 8 of 10 and I find myself itching to prove my deck does not suck. Enter Tim McKenna. Now in Tim we have a very proud Midwesterner who doesn't get a lot of notoriety coming from the same town as Bob Maher, Andy Nishioka and Derek Rank. He was in second after day one and is currently tanking as badly as I am. We MUST play for 10$ cuz it MUST be shown that he is the bigger stick of the two of us. Tim's deck has multiple Bouncers and Stinging Barriers but I have rebel control and Intimidation finisher. He is able to get board control and win game one but I sideboard in my tech card, Invulnerability, and game two gets under way. I get Charmed Griffin working and manage to use a timely Cure to keep a Glider alive for a very important extra two points of damage at one point. This match is TIGHT! The loser just KNOWS that he is going to have to admit they drafted the worst deck, we both begin to pour over our sideboards. Linde and Brock on match number 20 (the count is like Linde 15 Brock 5) sitting right next to us, when I pick my head up and look around the room. There is nobody else there. I mean it is the four of us and a cafeteria worker who looked like Chef from South Park. Oh shit! The round must have started. Sure enough as we fly down the three flights of stairs to the tournament area the round has started and we have been given game losses… well everyone except Brock and Linde who play each other. McKenna and I are actually playing at adjoining tables, god I wanted to kill him, well right after I was done killing myself… dumb dumb dumb dumb. So I'm playing Mark Hernandez who's deck is complete ASS, he is 0-3 at this point… his deck DOES have one good card it is 6/6 black and tramples…damn don't spot a game to that. Behind me, I hear Tim lose to Volcanic Winds and we both finish our matches in under 5 minutes. The irony doesn't stop there as I was exiting the play area I saw Linde hang his head in disgust as Brock went on to take their match.

So now I can't even make top 32. It's hard to get yourself psyched up for your last draft when that is the case… the possibility of winning nothing at all changes that pretty darn quickly.

Who gets the entire chain of command? I do. It was fun, at one point I had a match so in hand I made a bugle type noise and had my soldiers start talking to each other, instructing the Sergeant to locate the Lieutenant and bring his orders to the Captain at which point he could get final advice from the Commander who then decided that a two pronged attack with the heavy artillery (Ballista) and the airforce (both Gliders) would be a sure fire road to victory. If I'm not having fun with the cards in play I'm probably not winning… oh let me tell you I was having SOME fun with this deck.

Remember earlier I said that we discovered three tech decks before this tournament (r/w flaming sword, cutpurse and g/w with a splash)

Well they weren't snuff outs but the two Dehydrates did everything I needed them to. Between the 2 Dehydrates, the 2 Muzzles and the Arrest I was very happy that I cut 2 Tranquilities out of the draft and that I took all the Disenchants that I saw as well.

So my drafts were 2-1-1, 3-0, 0-3-1 and 3-0 good enough for 40th place and 780$. I wish I could have one more shot at this format. I already like what Nemesis adds to the draft set and can't wait until the next limited format.

In order to let Bruce have a night of undisturbed rest, Derek and I pulled an all-night poker/money draft session. I actually only money drafted one time with Mike Turian and Terry Tsang vs. Jason Zila (now there is a blast from the past) and 2 friends of his I'd never seen before… somehow Turian and Tsang were down money to these guys but it was a damn shame the VERY best deck I drafted all weekend was in this draft. B/R with Notorius Assassin, 2 Kris Mage, Squee, Negotiations, Maggot Therapy, Snuff Out, Lunge x2, Shock Troops x2, Undertaker, Bruteà Persuader à Harpy, Smugglers, Battle Squadron, Warmonger,… it was a joke… I literally called 3-0 before we were half way into the third set of packs, if I call it, I've got the nutz. I went 3-0, Tsang went 2-0 and Turian went 1-1 (damn that weak link Turian).

Now I had a bit of a tough time with the Long vs Cowley match in the top eight. I went on record as pulling for Bruce, but this was not because Long isn't my friend or that I wanted him to lose. Mike simply has had his day in the sun and therefore I'd have liked to see Bruce win the whole show.

Jon Becker and I shared a cab ride to the airport before the semi-finals, so I was very surprised to hear that Blackwell won the show, but congrats all the same. I lost to Trevor the one time I ever played him in a Pro Tour… it was PT Chicago and I had THE deck. I'm talking about the deck that David Mills took second and Long placed ninth. Blackwell was playing a TERRIBLE necro deck that maindecked 4 Royal Herbalists. Much to my chagrin and horror, I could not outrace the damned Herbalist (who, if you have ever seen the girl version of the card, looks very much like my wife and is therefore one of my most favorite cards… the dude version looks like Buehler… hehe, did you think you were SAFE behind that WOTC shield Mr. Randy [wink].) I don't know how Trevor finished up that tourney but I don't think I gave him much credit at the time. Though we always remembered each other and he'd grin at me at every Pro Tour I saw him.

Praps and Slaps

Bruce Cowley— the only person who doesn't seem to have confidence in this guy is himself. I knew you could do it. Great person, great friend.

Derek Rank—I almost gave you slaps, but then realized that I could never do that to one of my best friends (Day 2 any time now though ok?)

Bob Maher—Sorry if my prediction came true, but son, you were TOO DAMN hot for your own good as far as Magic goes… how cool would it be if he won GP Philadelphia?

Pete Leiher—it was good to have Pete back and complaining about how much Magic sucks and is a terrible game and he hates playing it and OH by the way I got 32nd. Do you love to hate it or hate loving it Mr. Pete?

Nish—you go boy. This makes up for the screw you got in Mainz eh? My list for best players to never make top eight just got shorter (hmmm, I may be the ONLY one on the list now, sigh.)

Jason Holanda (I hope I spelled that correctly)— this guy is GOOD TIMES! Oh man I'm thinking he and I could throw 6-12 down at a bar and talk all night. He HAS to be the only former Canadian Football League player who is playing Magic today..hahaha. He'd make for a good story, ala Hammer, if he ever did well at the PT.

Slaps

MCKENNA! Damn you damn you, damn me.

The Fuller Incident— By now most of you know that Ryan Fuller was ejected in the second to last round of the Pro Tour while he was in contention for the top eight for attempting to get his opponent to agree to flipping a coin if the match ran out of time. This whole situation just smelled to high heaven. I'll preface by saying that I did NOT know that flipping a coin for a match was illegal. I knew you could concede a match at any time according to the floor rules, so I didn't really understand how this could be any different. Chris Pikula, David Price and Worth Wollpert did a decent job of helping me to understand how it could be detrimental to the game (I like to call Deadguy the Right Wing of Magic) and to be sure I'll never attempt such a stunt in future Tours. It does sorta seem ironic that Pikula wrote a very heated and passionate article on the Dojo once about how Long didn't concede to HappyJohn in an Invitational once. So it still seems a bit hazy to me. I do believe that if the rules state that you cannot do it, then you cannot, I'm not going to say that I'm against the idea of flipping a coin however. It seems to be on the level with Intentional draws and Intentional concessions in my book. I don't see how you can‘draw the line' at flipping, when you allow both of the previous actions as reasonable ways to conduct a match. If the goal is for people to play make them play, otherwise you cannot justify to me the notion that being allowed to concede a match at any point is any different than flipping for it. A side bar to the Fuller incident is the past relations of Randy Buehler and Ryan Fuller. Pt Chicago II, these guys played for top eight rights and things went VERY badly including heated arguments and raised voices. It seems that there really could be a conflict of interest here. Why the hell was I the ONLY person on the boat who thought it may be a good idea to hold Fuller back from pummeling Randy? I think Magic players have been watching too many UFC shows on Pay Per View. People used to allude to the fact that Henry Stern cheesed me out of a top eight in Pro Tour New York so that Mark Chalice could make it into the round of eight. I don't believe that for a minute, but a problem DOES appear when people with close past ties are put in a position, such as Stern and Buehlers, that allow them to act on past grudges or disagreements. I don't believe for ONE second that Buehler, given the same situation, turns Mike Turian in for such an offense (though I don't believe Turian would ever do something like that either). And I cannot deny that Buehler and Fuller have a heated past. I think something needs to be done to rectify that sort of‘conflict of interest'. I remember a good friend of mine James Farr, was THE premier judge in the Mid-Atlantic area. I could NOT stand playing in his events, I swear the guy was harder on me with rulings than any other judge possibly could have been. Again he didn't want to be seen as having a conflict of interest. So I got the reverse effect, hampering instead of bonus. Farr has since soured on Magic after his brief tenure at Andon Unlimited, something shady happened to him there. And that is a damn shame because I think the world would be hard pressed to find anyone who LOVES the game as much as Farr. I'm talking pure adulation bordering on the scary. Hehe. But I digress, my point is that former players simply should NOT be judges or in the position to rule on past foils.

Final Slap goes out to my boy Mike Katz. If Bruce could do it…….

Donnie Gallitz