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One thing that comes with doing pairings by hand is doing tiebreakers manually. As luck would have it, at the end of the Swiss rounds, we had a clean top three, but six players tied with the same number of points for 4th through 9th. Obviously, one of them would be out. Just the previous week, I had worked an event run by the Belgian office, and they showed me how they did tiebreakers. So I did tiebreakers that way, and announced the Top 8, leaving a 10 minute window for any appeals, as was the style at the time (I also had an onion on my belt).
Within a nanosecond, I had my first meeting with my now-friend Matt Vienneau. The unlucky 9th place player was (one of the nicest guys in recent memory on the Pro Tour) Andy Wolf. Matt argued that his friend Andy had played at or near Table 1 all day, and his tiebreakers had to be the best, not the worst. By this hour of the night, the only WotC person around was Skaff. Seconds later, I had my first encounter with him as well. Strangely enough, there was a"how to run the event" manual in Skaff's possession which clearly detailed how to do tiebreakers. The Belgian office had missed the memo.
With tiebreakers refigured correctly, Andy Wolf made it in; some other poor schlep (an American, if I recall) got bumped. He took it remarkably well, considering it was 2am. I remember only two other players in that Top 8: Ondrej Baudys from the Czech Republic (the Czechs were pretty damn good in those days, led by Slemr and, um, that other guy) and the inimitable Graham Thompson, from Scotland. Graham, a good egg and a veritable mountain of a man (who happened to show up at Side Events at the recent Pro Tour Amsterdam; it was cool to see him again), has the largest capacity for alcohol of any person on the planet. When we started the Top 8, he had been consuming more beer since about 10am than I had water. And he made the Top 8!!! Graham was frustrated by Ondrej in the quarterfinals because of Ondrej's Winter Orb deck, and he made his displeasure known. Fortunately, he's a relatively kind soul and didn't just break the Czech in two and ground his innards for haggis. He shook everyone's hand at the end and went off, no doubt to drink more beer.
For reasons that I have since lost, we ended up playing a match in this Top 8 on Sunday. Andy was involved, so perhaps he remembers. It'd actually be interesting to get his take on this whole situation. Andy, if you're out there, tell us what you remember!
I do recall the events of PT-Mainz fairly well, even after so many years have passed. It was my third Pro Tour, and after a 3-3 performance in the PT, I went on to play in the aforementioned PTQ the next day. As you may have guessed, I was playing my Pox deck and had breezed through the Swiss, due in part to the fact that at the time, very few people had a good concept of how Pox really worked and how to play against the deck. As Sheldon mentioned, at the end of the Swiss rounds and a really long day, the top 8 was figured, and when I wasn't included, it was clear that there was an error in calculation. Matt went to bat for me, and we managed to track down Skaff, eventually straightening things out. I do remember others doing a lot of the dirty work for me during the appeals process, as I was a bit frustrated and anxious, and I recall there being some language barriers that made it tough to work through. Anyway, it all worked out and with the proper tie-breaks, I was in the Top 8.
By that time, it was really late, but we forged ahead to finish the event. Some of the exact details about why we ended up playing a match on Sunday elude me, but I do remember it all revolving around the fact that this was a two-slot PTQ. I had won my quarter-final match and went on to lose to Ondrej Baudys in the semifinals, finishing fourth I believe. Now this is where the story gets interesting. Somehow, Ondrej was already qualified, but ended up either winning the PTQ anyway, or dropping and splitting in the finals. So it was argued that the slot should drop down. Somehow, it was decided that the second slot should drop down to the third place finisher, but he had already left the site and no one had a good way to get in touch with him or let him know about the slot. Since I had stuck around to watch the finals, I tried to lobby the judges to give the slot to me, or at least to set up a playoff between myself and the third place finisher for the following day since he had left.
It was eventually decided that if the third place finisher could be found, we would play for the second slot, otherwise it would be awarded to me. I was told to show up at the site on Sunday and wait it out while the staff tried to find my opponent, or else I could have the slot. Eventually, he was tracked down, and we finished the Saturday PTQ on Sunday afternoon. I wish this story could have had a happier ending (for me, at least), but I lost that playoff when in game three, I had a bad Consult for Perish against my opponent's Five-Color Green deck. I found the Consult after going through two in the top six cards, but only had a few cards left in my library and lost when I ran out of cards.
I did end up winning a PTQ back home, which Adrian Sullivan referenced in the Pox article on magicthegathering.com last week for Ice Age week, and then went on to make Top 8 at PTLA with Sarcomancies, Servants of Volrath, and Spinal Grafts (oh, my!). So I guess the story does have a happy ending after all.
Hopefully this jives with what you remember from the event, Sheldon. I had forgotten all about that crazy PTQ until I read your article. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. Ah, the good old days...
