PRO TOUR SEATTLE REPORT

WEDNESDAY

Since it was Seattle, I decided to go a day early to hang out with some of my friends in the Pacific Northwest. My friend Gretchyn the Rocket Scientist decided to go with me for a few days because she likes the city and there's always plenty to do. We spent most of the day traveling, but still managed to arrive in the middle of the afternoon (funny how those time changes work), giving us enough time for a nap and get refreshed before heading out to dinner at Ray's Boathouse with Scott Larabee, Chris Galvin, Randy Buehler, and his wife Del.

As is now tradition (and according to Scott,"a good one"), I brought along two bottles from the cellar. By the way, the new 600-bottle storage unit is installed, in good working order, and waiting to get filled. As always, donations are accepted. The two bottles I brought were Ravenswood Zinfandel Teldeschi '01 and D'Arenberg Laughing Magpie '01, a good wine with a great name. Those links are to the VinoCellar.com site, so you may need to register to get in. If you like wine at all, it's the best discussion board around, so join up. I think the table agreed that the Laughing Magpie was the better of the two. The food at Ray's was excellent (I swear my fish wasn't cooked so much as drowned it a vat of butter), only eclipsed by the company and conversation. Somehow we got onto old TV shows and never came back. The next time you're out with Magic folks, trying talking about something other than the game. You'll be pleased.

THURSDAY

A quick note on breakfast. Generally, I'll size up the food at a hotel restaurant on the first morning by ordering the Eggs Benedict. It's generally a good barometer of the quality of the rest of their stuff. Crowne Plaza Seattle: 7 out of 10. Well-poached eggs, not too runny, decent Canadian bacon, the English muffins were nice, but could have been a little crispier. Hollandaise was from a mix, so points off.

For some reason, I thought I was supposed to work on Thursday, but then found out they didn't need me to help with the last-chance qualifier. Tim Shields, the most excellent local organizer, had his crack staff running things smoothly. Given an extra day, we explored downtown Seattle. Pike's Place Market is a little touristy, but still very, very cool. We bought a couple of pounds of Ranier cherries (they're like $2 a pound there, but $9 here) to munch on while walking around. We dropped by the wine shop at the far end of the market so I could grab something to take to the L4 dinner that night, but didn't find anything exciting. We swung back around and hit the Seattle Art Museum (mostly unexciting), then stopped at a brewpub for lunch. Gretchyn had the most unbelievable portabello mushroom, goat cheese, and red pepper sandwich. The fish and chips I had was pretty good, especially when washed down with Guiness.

Thursday evening we got together for the now-regular Level 4 dinner and meeting at Salty's, another seafood place. In attendance was Andy and Ingrid Heckt, Scott Larabee, Ilja Rotelli, Rune Horvik, Gis Hoogendijk, and me. We shared some great appetizers, drank some mediocre wine, I ate an immense Dungeness crab, and actually got done quite a bit of work. You'll be seeing some changes--actually, I think I'd call them"course corrections," since the program isn't really broken--in the judge program in the upcoming months. As I've said before, Andy is doing incredible work with the judge program and staff. We're very happy to have him.

FRIDAY

Finally, to work! The smell of the chalk and greasepaint...oh, wait, that's the circus. The smells of the Pro Tour are...well, different. Friday, I was assigned to the Logistics team under the leadership of Brazil's Rafael Dei Svaldi, who would be interviewing for Level 3 over the weekend. What the Logistics team does is everything else that's not specifically assigned to the Pairings, Deck Checks, or Slips team. This includes setting up the tables for the draft and putting out the cards, sorting lands for the land stations (yes, the lands come unsorted and we have to do it manually), keeping the area clean, and of course, covering the floor. If you go to the Pro Tour, you'll notice that there are well more judges per player than you'll have at your local events. This is quite intentional. In addition to being able to quickly resolve any issues the players have, it allows us to put many up-and-coming judges with those of more experience. Those experienced judges can then provide the training and mentorship to help the others to hone their skills or toward advancement to the next level. Additionally, the L2s and L3 are the ones more involved in running PTQs and their local events. They can give the senior folks more insight into what's happening at the grass roots of tournament Magic. There is definitely learning going on in both directions.

I had an amusing moment during one of the deck builds. Marco Blume (of Phoenix Foundation, along with Dirk Baberowski and Kai Budde--perhaps you've heard of them) called me over and asked me about Gemini Engine. He asked specifically when the power and toughess of the token is calculated. I told him that it's calculated during resolution of the triggered ability. Changing the P/T of Gemini Engine while the triggered ability is on the stack will set the token's to the higher value, but changing Gemini Engine after the token has come into play won't change the token. While he was asking me, I noticed Kai staring at Marco with a look of disbelief (or was it irritation). It didn't immediately register, until as I walked away, I heard Kai say"See!"

Friday evening was the only night that I didn't have something scheduled, so Gretchyn and I took the chance to go hang out with fellow judges Gis, Nick Fang, Seamus Campbell, and Sideboard reporter (our own) Ted Knutson and the inimitable Mike Turian (BDM was under the weather and didn't show), at the Palace Kitchen (a recommendation from noted gourmands Chris G. and Scott L.). We had the Laura Chenel goat cheese fondue, followed by the Washington Chicken with bing cherries and cocoa salt. We washed it all down with, um, many, apple martinis. I'm not generally a trendy drink guy, but I have to say, appletinis hit the spot. We did a great job of not violating The Dinner Rule (no Magic talk after the event), but I think Knutson and XX were whispering to each other about Team Rochester while they thought no one was looking.

SATURDAY

My tale of Saturday is mostly uninteresting. I was nominally assigned to the Logistics team again under the direction of France's Thierry Gourdon. I was pulled away early and often for Level 4 stuff, like doing Level 3 interviews. In the mid-morning, Gretchyn swung by to say good-bye on the way to the airport. I asked her what she thought of her first Pro Tour and she said"Hey, I went to Engineering school. I understand geeks."

Saturday night saw the Judge dinner at Paloma, just down the street from the hotel. We were arranged in three tables, ours (being the folks last to arrive) being the best kind: circular. That way, you can converse with everyone. I ordered two bottles of Washington wine for the table, which met with the approval of Thierry, so I guess I did well. Our table didn't do as well at not violating The Dinner Rule, but they were great tales of ribaldry and Magic, so that was fine. Alex from Russia did enumerate the reasons why his country is better than ours. Apparently, it's the women.

We had people at the table from 5 or 6 different countries, and the"why would I want to visit your homeland?" question made its rounds. Apparently, they're all for the women. We also talked about the best moment in your nation's sports history. The Americans all agreed on the 1980 Miracle on Ice, hands down.

The best part of the night was the presentation of a beautiful watch to Andy Heckt from all the judges. The card was signed (or signed by proxy) by 72 different people from around the world in thanks for Andy's outstanding work with the judges in the last six months. John Carter and Andy's wife Ingrid were co-conspirators in the setup; it's more John's tale to tell (which he's already done on the judge list), so hit him up when you see him.

SUNDAY

We were a perfect three-for-three in the Level 3 candidates we interviewed. Congrats to George M. from Greece, Rafael from Brazil, and Tony Mayer from the good old US of A for promoting to Level 3. All are well-deserved.

In the morning, I gave a judge seminar for those who weren't involved in the Top 4. The topic was"Being a Team Leader." It was a great hour and a half of discussion and feedback from all the judges. Soon, I'll write a report on that seminar for the DCI Judge page.

Sunday evening, I watched a bit of a Judge draft (Matt Tabak is savagely good, but Jeremy Smith won the David v. Goliath final), and then went to the always-tasty PF Chiang's with Nick, Rafael, Tony, and Jesper from Denmark. We packed off Tony, who's local, with enough leftovers that he's probably still eating them.

MONDAY

This is normally a travel day, but because we were in Seattle, the L4s and a few senior L3s (Ray Powers and John Carter) stayed and met with John Grant, Andy, and Scott regarding DCI Policy. Like with the Judge program, our policy is fine, it just needs a little tweaking now and again.

Monday evening, the Heckts had us all over for barbecue and to empty their wine fridge. We continued some of the discussions of the day, but mostly relaxed and had a great evening in the beautiful weather.

After coming back from Andy's, Gis and I sat for a while and caught up on old times, old friends, and new happenings. Gis is a great guy, and I'm happy to see him Head Judging Worlds.

TUESDAY

Everyone else left town (except Japan's Yoshiya Shindo), but I stayed another day to interview for the Magic Rules Manager position. In the afternoon, Yoshiya and I hung around the office and got involved in a Sealed Deck event that was taking place in Organized play. I beat up on Shindo-san and then completely savaged a guy named Tom who does what North American Organized Play Manager Laura Kilgore used to do before running into John Grant. I crushed him in game one, then couldn't deal with his Sun Droplet in game two. We left it at 1-1 because it was time to go for the day.

I got to go meet Scott's cat Sunshine while we picked up goodies to go over to Galvin's for more BBQ and to watch the All-Star game, along with Greg Collins and Ron Foster. Unforunately, we got stuck in traffic and missed the American League explosion in the top of the first. Fortunately, we discovered that The Galv has TiVo, so we got to watch it on the replay. TiVo is completely broken. We ate meat, and then Chris broke out his impressive scotch collection, to include one whisky selection from Japan. He also brought out some Chinese moonshine that he claimed was the foulest-smellest stuff ever--and was he right. I had never before smelled booze that had the aroma of grated cheese, but I sure have now. Huge props to Chris for the hospitality and excellent hooch. Also props to Ron who showed us the character for"hooch" in Japanese.

It was a long week full of fun and adventure. We put another well-run Pro Tour (the 50th!) in the books, and on Wednesday, I took the long flight home. Thanks to everyone for the company and friendship along the way.