PHILADELPHIA, September 23, 2000, 10:20am -- I arrive, with hangover, to the pre-release twenty minutes late, but I would have been better off being an hour late. Half of the people, most of who got here long before me, haven't even gotten a deck to register. I go burn one with the smokers waiting for a pod. They make us smoke next to the dumpster out back. By eleven, still without a pod. I'm pretty glad I didn't show up at nine thirty.

Nobody likes the cards.

Maybe the smokers are just pissed that we have to smoke right next to a dumpster, in the rain, instead of standing out front underneath an awning. Half my pack is burned. I decide to withdraw if can get my money back, seeing as the event appears to be poorly run and would be a waste of a perfectly good Saturday. On the way to the registration desk, I see people I know.

Nobody likes the cards.

The whole pre-release experience is just one big everyone-says-it-sucks fest, to the point where the set is irrelevant. At the Urza's Destiny pre-release, the majority said that the set sucked, so pre-release opinions are worthless for the most part. Saying the set sucks is an automatic reaction, thoughtless, similar to the often noted use of filler words, such as "like" and "f**k," even though the word "like" is not used to make a comparison and the word "f**k" is not used as a synonym for sex. So I've come to decide that when people at the pre-release say the set sucks, it is just filler in place of an opinion.

"POD 5 PAIRINGS ARE UP!"

Why am I here? I don't know. I'm a little cranky right now. Maybe my blood sugar is getting way too high.

I open up the packs, at first not really looking at the cards, but the casting costs and whether they say Creature or not, Flying or not, in order to see which stack of cards I won't take the time to read carefully. Blue, with exactly three creatures, was out of the question as a main color, though blue did have some nice card drawing that I could splash. My red and black cards were amazing. I could have splashed blue, but I had two sources of green/red mana, so I felt the stability of going green - offered by the R/G Cameo, a G sac multi-color land, and Harrow - outweighed the card drawing of blue.

As I'm building my deck, someone from the next pod over is about to cry because his opponent wants to shuffle his deck. Wow. I heard the same thing two times in my own pod during the tournament. What difference does it make if your opponent is further randomizing the randomizations you already made? None.

My first match was fun. I won that one. The second round was fun to. I lost in the third round, but even that wasn't a thrill killer. I won the fourth and lost the fifth, which ended the fun.

$25, plus eight hours (10:20 a.m. to 6:15 p.m.), for five rounds of play, is not a good deal.

I drive away and go out and get drunk with some friends. Thankfully, I woke up way past noon on Sunday and decided it wasn't worth driving to the second day of pre-release action. That was just as good, since my wild adventures at the clubs on Friday, the pre-release and clubbing on Saturday, pretty much drained my wallet of $300, which was my Magic budget for the rest of the year. Maybe I can scrounge up enough for a box of boosters. In any case, I didn't need to spend another $50 to hang out in a trash-filled room. Besides, with a spoiler, what sneak peek am I getting if I go to the pre-release? The pleasure of seeing new cards isn't even possible, which really puts into question the whole value of a pre-release tournament that costs the same amount as a PTQ, but without the measly carrot of the Pro Tour dangling in front of my face. More and more, playing for fun at the pre-release seems like an incredibly bad deal.

This is the reason I did not enjoy the pre-release. I don't play Magic for fun. I thought I did, but apparently I don't. I must be freaking insane, but I don't play Magic for fun. I play Magic because I think life sucks. Life has its moments, but for the most part one day bleeds into the next one with the same crap reloading day in and day out. Your worldview may be happier than mine, and if it is, enjoy it, bask in the sun and roll naked in those dew-covered daisies - because you can, because you are able to do something many people can't.

My world is bleak and I need outs, and Magic is one of those outs. Things always go wrong, pieces don't fit, you get fatter, and things fall apart. Bills pile up, your knees give out, friends die, etc., etc., you don't need me to explain this - you've been through it, or you will find out soon enough.

I'm trying to find a point to this pile of words.

I've been playing Magic for one year and six months, and been playing in tournaments for one year and five months (roughly twenty-five events). As soon as I learned the rules, I had no desire to be a casual player, because in my mind the casual game only scratches the surface of the possible rewards tournament play has to offer. Tournament play can be very disappointing, and if you are mentally well balanced, tournament play probably has very little appeal to you and you should remain as far away from it as possible.

One of the best days I've had this year was Mid-Atlantic Regionals. Everything fell into place. The things I learned, the time invested, all paid off as things clicked the way they were supposed to, the way I hoped they would. In the real world, things don't always click, but in Magic sometimes they do, and that's what makes it worth it. On that day, I could do no wrong. It was as if the person in charge of these things, who decides who wins and loses, was telling me everything is okay, that everything will be just fine. It's like the person in charge of winners and losers was telling me that the Rebellion isn't so bad, here's a Massacre. Don't worry about enchantments; here's a Duress... or would a turn two Persecute, turn three Negator be better? The critters on the other side of the board ready to do me in... Don't worry, let's Thrash 'em. I won the whole thing my way, with a deck that I worked on for months, but that's not what made the day.

Mid-Atlantic Regionals was supposed to be the last tournament I was ever going to play. The friend who introduced me to Magic was shipping off to boot camp to become a tech servicing Apache helicopters for the ARMY. I'm not a social being. I didn't know anyone else who played, so it looked like that was it for Magic. I show up alone at 8:30 in the morning after driving from Philadelphia to DC, wondering how much I've learned in the past year, and lamenting the fact that this was the last tournament for me. Don't worry about it. Here's Corey. Here's Tom. Here's John. You're not finished with Magic yet. You're just starting. As a price for this, they will laugh at you because you have no idea what Aura of Silence does.

Everything was taken care of. It is a rare occasion when everything just happens to tie up, fall into place, and work out. You learn to take it whenever you can. Tournament play is just one way (there are hundreds of ways) to create that feeling which goes beyond simply having fun. I keep playing so that one day I can re-create that experience, because I feel I have a pretty good shot of doing it with Magic, but it could have been fly fishing, chess, or photography.

Several people have asked me how it feels to win a big tournament. It's like being a stranger in a strange, but happy land. That's why I play.