I felt the need to respond to Kurt Hahn's report and explain my position in this matter. Hopefully, this will shed light on the events proceeding this situation and allow everyone to understand the true history.

I know it, and so do many of my opponents.... I don't like to lose. Call it whatever you want but I complain when I get mana hosed. I'm sorry; it shouldn't bother me, since it's part of the game, but when it happens numerous times during one event it bothers me and I bemoan my fate at times. Better complainers such as Scott Johns are called fierce competitors... But I have been labeled a whiner for whatever reason you care to attach to it.

I don't ever mean for an opponent to take anything I'm saying about mana screw personally, and I don't direct comments about that at them. I do, however, want to have a couple games against some opponents without mana screw, and I have been known to ask them if they would play again with ante involved.

Again, I have nothing against any of these opponents and I am not calling them chumps or losers or telling them that they stink when I ask them to play again; it's merely to have the satisfaction of playing a game without bad luck being the deciding factor in the match. This is especially true against players that are at about the same play level that I am at. I like to test wits against good opponents - and when mana screw or flood is the deciding factor then it's quite unenjoyable.

The entire group that Kurt Hahn hangs out with - and Kurt Hahn especially - has taken these requests for another game as personal insults. I can't think of any other reason why Kurt would think that,"...me and my friends have been taking crap from him for forever, and someone just finally had to take one for the team." I know that their group is a bunch of good players; I have always stated that. I feel like I'm always in for a tough game whenever I sit across from one of them and I try to put my best game on.

Help me out here, Kurt... But I can't think of a time where I attacked any one of your team in a personal manner.

I can, however, think of a number of times when I have been verbally attacked by Kurt:

At Grand Prix: Milwaukee every single time that I walked near Kurt he would start yelling at me about how stupid I was for not playing a fourth Flametongue Kavu in my deck for Regionals. He constantly berated me about how terrible my deck construction abilities were and how I must be extremely lucky. I know I was lucky to win Regionals. Who cares? Does Kurt really need to yell at me from across the room the entire day? Please. I ignored him as much as humanly possible and didn't reply to his rants except to say that,"Yup I'm lucky."

The same ranting at me about my Regionals deck was done the entire weekend of GenCon whenever Kurt saw me. I don't remember saying a single word to him or his friends that entire weekend.

At the Houston PTQ in Madison, WI on the 31st of August I'm playing in the top eight - which I fought through some very difficult matches to get into. Kurt is in the corner yelling out how he hopes I get mana screwed and how he really hopes that my round one opponent beats me. When my opponent wins the first game, he continues to go off from across the room. The judge sits there and does nothing. I beat my first-round opponent in some very tight games and Kurt yells at him about not beating that chump.

I go into the semi-finals and get terribly mana screwed both games to lose. Kurt stands up and starts yelling at me to"Get the #$@ out of here. Hope you enjoy your trip home!"

I never said a single word to Kurt or his friends to touch this kind of behavior off.

At the Onslaught prerelease at Pastimes, the Madison guys brought along a print out of an email discussion about me. It has a number of supposed events that happened in CA that were extremely exaggerated. In these stories, they have me rolling around on the ground crying after a match loss and getting beat up by a thirteen-year-old kid. All lies - but just for fun, I sign some of them...

On October 12th I skip the Chicago PTQ in Madison. I have a group of friends that are all driving up and they say they will come by and pick me up... But you know what? It's not fun to play at a place where you are constantly harassed by Kurt, so I decline and stay at home even though I would really like to play in the event. I didn't go because I knew that Kurt would be there, that he would harass me in a manner that would be unprovoked by any of my actions, and that the judge staff would do nothing about it.

I see Kurt Hahn at the Chicago PTQ mentioned in Kurt's"tournament report." I avoid him and say nothing to him or his friends. In round 2, I have to play against Dan Flood (one of Kurt's buddies, I guess); both games I lose to drawing mana problems. I simply state the following:"If there was ever a deck that I would play for ante, this is the deck I would play."

I was attempting to be funny, but I guess I don't have the comedian timing down.

I said nothing about him personally. No rips on his play abilities. In my opinion, no"crap" - and correct me if I'm wrong here? Flood stands up and begins bragging about how he beat me 2-0 to his friends. I just sit there and ignore him. If Flood wants to be a poor sport about an obviously manascrewed opponent then so be it.

I get ready to head out for lunch and Kurt starts the typical"give Mike Dove crap after he's mana screwed" lines, yelling from across the room again because he wants to be the loudmouthed funny guy. He says something about paying Flood before he will play me to take any more of my money and some other junk.

The only response I had was to point to my zipper and tell him"right here Kurt, right here." I don't grab my crotch or unzip my pants or say anything graphic; I don't make any kind of threatening move towards him.

Should I have pointed to my zipper? No. I admit that that was rather rude. I thought that Kurt would be able to take some harassment from me since he dishes it out all the time but I guess he's just too sensitive about the zipper thing?

Kurt then loses his mind and cold cocks me as I pass by him!

For those of you who don't know, Kurt is about twice my size. I couldn't tell if he was done assaulting me after the first hit or not, so I wanted to mention the police right away - to hopefully wake him up as to what he was doing. It had the desired effect. Many other people in my situation would have gotten into a brawl with him and possibly caused significant damage to the store and to both parties. I kept my calm and chose to do nothing. I'm thinking that Kurt hitting me had to be the most ridiculous reaction ever - but you know, after my initial reaction I realize that it didn't hurt and I thought that he knew that it was stupid, so I didn't think that it needed to go any further.

With his mouthing off about it on his Team Academy post, it's obvious that he thought it was okay to assault someone. (Though to be fair, since then Kurt has posted this in our forums:"The point is that while Mike and I both can't help but be childish around each other, whenever someone resorts to physical violence, that person is in the wrong." - The Ferrett) If he really feels that way, I may file a police report to make sure that if he assaults someone else that he has a history of aggressive behavior.

Sorry about the long rant. I just felt compelled to state my case after I saw that some people thought I was verbally harassing him and somehow deserved to be hit. How ridiculous. Can you honestly say that, after a mana screwed match, an impolite opponent bragging about it, and a history of harassment from one person that you would refrain from saying something back to him?

In this one instance, I was not a good enough person - and I apologize for that.

Thanks for listening,
Michael W. Dove

By the way: I also got banned from Pastimes and Barrat Moy events for one month for this incident. I was angry about that, but I understand their position: They want to create an enjoyable tournament environment for everyone and I was not promoting that. SO I'll sit it out in the Midwest until after Pro Tour Houston. Its finals week and I need to be studying anyway!