Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1312: Kai Budde

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

I spent eight years working on the Pro Tour overseeing the feature matches and final-day video coverage. Those eight years just happened to overlap with the greatest run in professional Magic where Pro Tour legend Kai Budde won seven Pro Tours in five years. This podcast honors Kai, who sadly passed away last week, talking all about that epic run.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time another drive to work. Okay, so sadly, last week, Kaibuda, the greatest magic player of all time. I guess there's, you can argue a few other people, but clearly, no matter what discussion you have, and by the numbers, clearly the best magic player of all time,

Kaibuda sadly, last week at 46 died of cancer. And I know there's been a lot of tributes to him, and I really want to do a podcast to him. But I have a slightly different take. I'm a magic historian. And it turns out, so when the Pro Tour first started in 1996, I was very involved with it. I started working at Wizards in 95. Before I come to Wizards, I'd been very involved in running tournaments because I wasn't allowed to play in tournaments because I was writing for the duelists and doing puzzles, and I had advanced knowledge.

so I wasn't a lot of play in tournaments. So I did a lot of stuff behind the scenes and running them. So when I got to Wizards and learned that Scafellias was starting a pro tour, I was really interested in helping him. So I was very involved. And at the events, I sort of, I created the feature matches, and I ran the feature matches for the first couple days. And then the final day, I would produce the commentary.

In the early days, I did the commentary, later days other people would do it, but I would be producing it. And so from 1996 to 2004, when my twins were born, and I pulled back how much traveling I was doing, I went to every pro tour. Well, you know, with one exception, I skipped one for when Rachel was born. But for eight years, I went to all the pro tours,

from 96 to 2004. Well, it turns out that Kai's crazy run, where he wins in a period of five years, he wins seven pro tours happened smack dab when I was in charge of coverage when I was in charge of feature matches and all that so I was

there just coincidentally so I want to kind of today I want to talk about sort of Kai's rise like I want to sort of bring you back and experience the craziness that it was and I mean real quickly just

Kai had seven PT wins seven Grand Prix wins he was player of the year four times. We'd later named that award after him. In 2007, in the third year of the pro tour, the first year he was eligible, he got inducted. And he won a total of

$384,220 played in 16 pro tours and had 571 Lifetime ProPoints. And all that is impressive. Those numbers are impressive. But hopefully today, I want to tell the story. I want to tell the story of watching it happen. Because it was

It was just this amazing thing. So our story begins, of all places, in Barcelona, in February 6th and 7th of 1999. I was in Barcelona because the magic invitation, the third magic invitation, which at the time, I think it was still called the Duel's Invitational. But the third magic invitation was in Barcelona. First one had been in Hong Kong. Second one had been in Rio de Janeiro. We were hopping around continents. In fact, the Invitational ended up being in every single continent, save Antarctica, which doesn't

a lot of people. But anyway, I was in Barcelona for the Magic Invitational, but normally when we ran a Magic Invitation, at the same time, they ran a Grand Prix. And so there was a Grand Prix in Barcelona, and that was Kai Vooda's first big win.

Kai came in first at Grand Prix Barcelona in 99. And what had happened was he had just come in second at another pro tour. This was his first win. And then he would later go on to win two other European Grand Prix. So in one season, he came in the top two

four times, three of which winning them. And that is when I first heard of Kai. I remember him winning in Barcelona, and I remember hearing about there was some dominance that he was doing really well in Europe. So we next go to Tokyo in

1999, August, 4th through 8th. This is the World Championship, the 1999 World Championship. So at this point, we were starting, we were recording things and we were editing shows and putting them on ESPN2.

And so my commentators were Brian Weissman doing play by play and Chris Pakula doing color. In fact, Chris flew out. He didn't play in the event. He flew out slowly to do commentary on the final day.

He was exhausted. But, so anyway, so at Tokyo, the Kaibuda playing a mono red deck would go on to defeat Mark Lapine in the finals

to become the 1999 world champion. Now, the interesting thing at the time was one of the worries at Wizards was that a lot of a lot of the world championships have been won by people that didn't go on to do other things. And they were worried at the time that this was another one of those,

oh, someone who wins worlds, but isn't one of the best players. And I knew of Kai's record in Europe, I actually defended Kai and I'm like, guys, this is not, this is somebody who will, I remember saying this to them. This is definitely somebody who will top eight future events. This is a really good player. This is not a flash in the plan, flash in the pan. This is not someone getting lucky. You know, when we started the pro tour, one of the concerns we had, I remember Scaff and I had this conversation, which is one of our worries was, what if competitive magic shows that magic is just too random?

What if nobody ever wins more than once? You know, what if it just reinforces that there's not as much skill in the game as we thought? Which is funny as I tell the story, because I think Kai Buda is the poster child for no, there's a lot of skill in magic. So anyway, Kai's first win, 99 August, he wins. He's also on the German team, but the German team gets defeated by the American team. And so he doesn't win. He will later, we'll get to that, he will later win a team team. championship, a world team championship, but that doesn't happen yet. Okay, so he wins

Worlds. It's, you know, a lot of people have won a Pro Tour or a Worlds. It's an impressive thing to do, but no one really, I mean, just so you understand, Kai had started playing in the juniors. He'd been playing for a couple years before this. So he had been playing, he wasn't, he hadn't top eighted yet. You know, he had done well in the Grand Prix, but he hadn't done anything at the Pro Tour. So, you know, his name wasn't sort of the top of the last. One of the things I did as the guy who did the feature matches is I was really well aware of who the players were that had done well in different events

so that I could feature them. So, at the time of World, Kai was not yet a big name, even though you're starting to build a name for himself in Europe, obviously. So next we get to Pro Tour Chicago, December 1st through the 3rd in December of 2000. So this is about a year later, a year and change later. So this was a standard event. The worlds that he had won, I believe, it was a standard event as well.

So this is another standard event. And Kai goes on to defeat Camille Cornelison, a very good player, in the event. And so Kai becomes one of a handful of people to win a second pro tour. I think at the time, Tommy Hovi from Finland, was the first to do it. He had originally won in New York the Pro Tour Riot Pro Tour, the one in which the finalists, Dave Mills, gets eliminated. The judge remove him in the finals for tapping his mana before he cast a spell too many times. And so Tommy wins that one. And then he wins in Rome, and PT Rome. Tommy wins for the second time.

And I believe the only other second win that I can remember is a year later at 2000. So, Kai wins the 99 world championships. At the 2000 world championships, John Finkel defeats Bob Marr Jr. to win the world championship. And that is his second pro tour win. He had won in New York many years before. So I believe when Kai wins, it's like, oh, he's the third person ever to win two pro tours. And that was impressive.

I remember I was, you know, talking with Randy Bueller was doing common. with me. Or he was doing commentary. I was producing. But he went and I would chat about stuff. And at the time, Kai won. I remember talking about, okay, see, he's in contention now for greatest player of all time. And Randy's like, no, no, not yet. And I'm like, well, what, what would he have to do in your mind to be in contention for the best player of all time? And Kai goes, well, he, I mean, Randy goes, I think Kai would have to win another pro tour. That was Randy's replied. But anyway, he's won two pro tours. That's impressive. Not a lot of people have ever done that. So we come to Barcelona in May of 2001. So this is same pro-tour season,

a couple events later. So this is a limited event. So this is not a constructed event. This is limited. And he ends up defeating Alan Comer, who later go on to be in the Hall of Fame. He defeats Alan Comer to win his third pro tour. At this point, okay, he's the first person to do this. Nobody has never won three pro tours. In fact, other than, I think Finco, not a lot of people have won three pro tours. That's the, by the way, the craziness of Kai's accomplishments is not only as he won seven pro tours, there's no one even close to him.

Like I said, I think John won three pro tours, and maybe, I mean, Dirk Babarowski technically won three. We'll get to the team wins in a second. Two of them are team wins with Kai. But other than that, and maybe there's one I'm missing, but there's a bunch of people that have won two. There's a few that even won two, like consecutively, something Kai did.

But there's not, like, Kai's records are so beyond when anybody else came close to doing. That's the interesting thing. Okay, so now he's won his third pro tour, and everybody's sitting up, like, okay, like you got to take Kai seriously. And the other interesting thing is

Kai not only has won three pro tours, but he's not, he's only been the third. top beat three times, meaning he gets to the top eight and he wins. And they start getting this quote of not wanting to meet Kai on Sunday, because Kai doesn't lose on Sunday. And we're starting to see kind of the

build of the legend of Kai. That, you know, three pro tours is pretty impressive. So the next event is in New York in September of 2001. So remember, by the way, I should point out, so his first three wins. One is in 1999

at Worlds. One is at 2000, Chicago. The third one is 2001 in Barcelona. Kai has now won three pro tours in three consecutive years. So not as the only the first person ever to win three pro tours, but he won them three consecutive years.

This is not like, you know, this long drawn-off period. It's a very short period of time. So then we get to New York. New York was a team limited event. And Kai was part of a team called Phoenix Foundation. I think that's named

after it's a group in is it a Knight Rider it's named after a pop culture thing I think it's a Knight Rider but anyway so the team is himself Dirk Baburowski who Dirk had won one of the Chicago's earlier, Dirk had won a pro tour

and Marco Bloom Marco Bloom was on the German team with Kai when they came in second lost to the Americans in 99 and Marco who is a very very good player sadly, one of his most famous, playing in that event, he was playing the same deck that Kai was playing that he won with, which was a mono red deck.

It had covetous dragon in it. And covetous dragon, you have to sacrifice it if you don't have any artifacts in play. But the deck spits out so many artifacts, you never have to worry about that. But Marco is playing something where somehow he got the covetous dragon out and he didn't have any artifacts and it died. And sadly, it's one of the things where people remember that. But Marco was actually a really, really strong player. And so that team was very strong.

In fact, in the semis of PT New York, they defeat Carr Acobatics Squad, which was the last professional tournament of Aaron Forsyth. Aaron Forsyth, that was his team, car acrobatic team. And one of the last things he did, or his last ever, his team takes on Kai's team. And that was his last professional match was against Kai's team. So, now this is Kai's. fourth win. So now he has three individual wins and a team win.

And so he's now done something once again. I mean, no one had won three. Now he's won four. And it's just like, what can't Kai do? He wins constructed tournaments. He wins limited tournaments. Oh, real quickly, I should just explain this. So back in the day, the way the

pro tours used to work early on was the whole pro tour was a single format. I think the world championships worked a little different at the time. But if you were going to a pro tour event that wasn't a world championship, you just play,

if it was limited, you played limited the whole time. If it was constructed, you played the constructed format the whole time. So Kai is winning constructed formats,

limited format, team formats. He's just winning everything. And really, once again, so his, I mean, the reputation is just growing, right?

Kai is... So the name for Kai, his nickname at the time, was a German juggernaut. And the reason was there's a card in magic in alpha called Juggernaut. And juggernaut can't be blocked by walls. And the idea was you just can't stop Kai. He is the German Juggernaut.

You know, he was from Hamburg, Germany. And, you know, when nobody wanted to face Kai, Kai. So one of the things that happens over time is in any one moment in time, there's always sort of the dominant player, the player that everybody thinks of as being the best player in magic. And one of the ways that I always could tell who players thought it was was I often would do interviews before the pro tour began

and I would say to people, who do you want to play in this pro tour? And whoever the most people named that was what people considered to be the best player usually because everybody wanted to play the best, right? So like at the very first pro tour, everyone's saying they want to play Mark Justice.

He was sort of the first kind of big, you know, best at magic. He had top four two world championships and he had, then would top eight the very first pro tour. And then at some point, like, it becomes John Finkel, and there's a few other people over time.

But we're getting to the realm where I ask people who you want to play. It's like, I want to play Kaibuda. You know, that I want to, that is the true sense of being on the pro tour is going up against Kai. Now, the other thing to remember the time,

so the way that you got invited to events was there was a bunch of different metrics. You could win qualifiers to get in. Or one of the ways you can get in is if you have enough pro points, as you play in pro events, you earn points. Like I said, Kai's total was 571. You earn enough points that you then qualify.

And the way that the points worked is we basically let a certain number of people in. So the threshold would change based on sort of the circumstances. And during Kai's run, Kai was winning so many different. events that he himself lowered the entry by a significant number of points, like double-digit points. Like, he was winning so many things that it was just lowering what it takes to qualify. Okay, so New York is September of 2001. A month later, in Cape Town is the Magic Invitational.

So the Magic Invitation of Cape Town, I think, was the sixth one. So there was Hong Kong, then Rio, then Barcelona, then Kuala Lumpur, then Sydney. Yeah, so this was 6'1 in Cape Town. It's not the first one Kai played in for sure. But this is the one that Kai Buddha wins. Kai has won everything. So so far in 2001, like 99 he wins a pro tour. 2000 he wins a pro tour.

In 2001, he's now won two pro tours. He goes to the invitation and he wins the invitational. And we end up making the card Void Made Prodigy Which I will, real quickly, when Kai made the card Normally we try to make the Invitational card as good as we could

The problem was It was coming out, I think, during Onslaught And we were doing There was a strong typo theme And his had been a wizard Because it showed him on it And the problem was that Because white blue was really good

We kind of nerved wizards. We didn't know for his card in particular, but because we had nerfed Wizards, that it just didn't really show up. Most of the other pro cards had shown up at Pro Tours. And maybe Kai's later would show up. I don't remember exactly. But then also, we ended up redoing the art for Kai's card.

But anyway, so Kai wins the Magic Invitational. There's not a lot of people. There's only 11 Magic Invitational. So, okay, so he wins the Magic Ritational. So he's won two Pro Tours and the Magic Victational in 2001, but he's not done yet. So he next goes to New Orleans. The format is extended.

So Kai is one standard. Kai is one limited, team limited. But I don't think he's won a constructive event that wasn't standard yet. The two constructed once he won, I believe we're both standard. So he ends up winning, of course. This is his six win. He beats Alan Comer. And so he beats, this is a six-one-fif.

win. Fifth win. This is fifth one. So once again, nobody had ever like once again, every Kai Kai won. And this one, this one is like, just imagine a year. And nobody had ever won three pro tours ever at the time other than Kai. And now

he wins three pro tours in the same calendar year. And the invitational just for extra goodwill. And in New Orleans, he beats Tommy Wallamese. It's November 2001, 9th or 11th to 2001.

Oh, and in New York, the team event, they end up beating Le Plus class. It's a French team. Amil Tenembaum, Gabriel Nassif, and Nikolai Olivier. So which is a very good team. Gabriel and Sceef is one of the best players of all time.

And so now he has won five pro tours, three of which in the same calendar year. So this is where we start getting, like, the true height of Kai you know like Kai is now

I mean once again he's five for five he has won every single top eight he's been in so then we get to 2002 in Nice this is a limited event May 3rd of the 5th in 2002

Kai makes top 8 and shocker does not win the event he comes in 5th and that was the talk I mean, you know, the idea that Kai made the finals that doesn't win the finals. And once again, you know,

it's just another top eight. I mean, Kai, like I said, would end up making... How many top eights? Twelve pro-tore top eights. I mean, I think only Thinkl has some... I think Thinkl has a... I think Thinkl is 16.

But the... That's amazing. And it's amazing you make a top eight and people are like, well, the expectations, every time you make top eight, you'll win. Okay, so it's been... next event is in Boston. It's another

team limited event. September 27th to 29th of 2002. Oh, wait a second. Do we get the wins his? Oh, before we get to that, in 2002, in August of 2002, so after he comes in Fifth and Nice, later that summer,

Kai goes to do something he hadn't done yet. He as a member of the German team, he didn't win Germany, so he wasn't a German national champion, but he was on the team. And for the first time, he wins the team, the world team championship. So at this point, Kai has won an individual

world championship, a team world championship, a pro-tore individual, and an invitational. And the only other person to ever do that is John Finkel. And on top of that, he also won a team event, which I don't think John ever won a team pro-tore event. He won a team world championship event.

Okay, anyway, just as a side note, as we're running through his crazy run, He also becomes a world national champion. Okay, so in Boston, September 27, 29th, 2002 is the next team limited pro tour. Phoenix Foundation is back again. And they win again. They win, I believe it was back to back. I mean, you know, team back to back.

So they played a team called 2020. They were Canadian. Steve Wolfman, David Rood, and Elijah Pollock. And so that is Kai's sixth win. also Kai enables Dirk Babarowski to now be I think the second person to win three pro tours

because now Dirk Babarovsky has won the two team events with Kai and his own individual event so like the person who has won three pro tours now would not have done it without the help of Kai because he was on Kai's team and so

that is his six win so his seventh win so now we come to 2003 January 17th and 19th 2003. It's in Chicago. It's a limited event. And so he's playing Nikolai Herzog

in the finals, who also is a very, very good player in the Hall of Fame. And that is his final win. Now, it also, it's the first time I think somebody wins twice in the same city because he had won

a previous Chicago. So for the first time ever, he won twice in the same city. And it was I mean the thing that is interesting to me is It's hard to describe as You know like when you're in the middle of something Like one of the things that is that happens in sports Is you have somebody like Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods

Or somebody that is so dominant in their sport That wins so many things That is so clearly the goat The greatest of all time that everyone's just like, you know, there's not, how can anybody ever, you know, measure up? And the idea of just having that run with Kai where just, you know, like, it just became almost like mythology. It was, it was really exciting. It was really, and that's part of what I want to sort of describe today is, like, Kai wasn't always, Kai, Kai, Kha, Kha, Kha, Kha, you know.

He just started as a normal player. he's in the juniors and slowly worked his way up. So the one thing about Kai, let me talk a little bit about Kai, having interacted with Kai a lot. One of the things that made Kai such a good player was he treated the game very seriously. He would, he always put in the work. That if he was going to play an event, he wanted to understand that format, whatever it is he was playing, the best that he could.

And he would play endlessly. Kai really wanted to understand the nature of everything that was going on. And Kai wanted to play very, very clean. He wanted to always be making the right play. And there's a lot of stories Carmen, who works in R&D, talks about how

she had a pro-tro match. She plays against Kai, and she has the matchup. Like, it's in her favor. Like, her deck was made to beat the deck that Kai is playing. Doesn't matter. Kai wins, nonetheless. And I have a lot of stories of people talking about playing Kai and like I played

Kai and he beat me and it was a great honor to be beat by Kai Bhuda Kai was just very methodical you know very and also the other thing about Kai I guess is he was really he was very gentle he was a very kind person

he truly truly loved magic and you know he would do whatever he could if somebody made a top eight that he knew he would always like say I'll you know I'll practice the night before. We'll run through things.

He always was trying to help new players. And, I mean, you know, I mean, over and above, I mean, I'm obviously talking about just his complete and utter dominance in playing. And that's true. And the phenomenon that was Kai is even hard to wrap your brain around. But he was just such a good guy. I mean, that's something else that I know other people have been talking about. He was a very gentle soul. He cared very much.

He cared about people, you know, and that, you know, Kai was an amazing, amazing player. But he was an amazing person. I do think that's important to convey that I always liked interacting with Kai. You know, there are a lot of pro players. Like one of my jobs, when I was on the pro tour, when I was the eight years I was working the pro tour, my major job was basically interacting with the pro players and doing a lot of sort of promoting the story of the pro tour,

which involved promoting the players. That really the trick about promoting ProTor Magic is promoting the best players. So I got to know the players really well. I had a lot of interaction with them. And a lot of players were very nice. It's not as Kai was the only nice player, but there was a fair of people that were less nice,

I will say, to put it kindly. But, you know, I got to see Kai play a lot. He was in the feature match. he probably was the most featured player. During my run of doing feature matches from 96 to 2004, I feature, I mean, that was in the heart, you know, whenever Kaibuna was playing anybody of note, he was in the feature match.

In fact, there's a real famous feature match. In the very first Chicago that he won, he played John Finkel in the quarters of the semis, I think the semis. And I remember, so my job as the producer, was I would go to the director and I would map out and say, here's the matches that are going on. We're going to start at this match. And once they finish the game, probably will jump to this match. And normally my procedure was I wanted to show a little bit of all the games. I wanted the audience to get a sampling of all the stuff that was happening.

And I remember when Kai was playing John, I went to the director. I go, here's what is going to happen. We are going to start on Kai Buda playing John Finkel. And we are not going to move the camera until the match between Kai Buda and John Finkel is done. we were going to watch the entirety of that match because I think it's the only time that Kai and John had met in the top eight that they played each other I think

maybe it happened one of the time that I'm forgetting or maybe after my reign although it's the best of my memory but anyway Kai I can't really say enough nice things about Kai it is very

it is sad to me You know, I'm saying? I mean, 46 is pretty young. And so it is true. So one of the things that happens, we found out that Kai was sick. And so one of the things we did that I'm really happy we did is we renamed the Player of the Year Award. Before we were just Player of Year Award. And now it's the Kai Buddha Player of the Year Award. And the thing we were able to do was we were able to invite Kai.

Well, Kai was able to attend. And by the way, not only did Kai attend, he top aided, I believe he top aided the event that I'm talking about. Or if not, he top aided one of the, while he came sick, while he was coming and still sick and playing in pro tours, he top aided one of them. It might have been the very one I'm talking about. But we had a great ceremony where Billy Jensen, who's in charge of organized play, was sort of giving a little speech honoring Kai and talking about how we were giving him this award. And then Kai spoke. And you can see that all this was taped. It's online.

And just, I mean, it is, I'm so happy that we were able to sort of let Kai acknowledge Kai while Kai could be there and experience it. Kai has brought a lot to so many people. Sometimes it's hard to realize all the people you impact and the people you touch. There are so many people, you know, like one of the things I know, when Scafers were trying to put together the pro tour, that he really wanted to have inspirational players. That one

of the things that he, Scott Cahett Redd is that one of the people that makes people want to play basketball is knowing that people like Michael Jordan exists, or I mean, that's a dated reference, but pick your favorite best basketball player in the moment. And the idea that there's something about wanting to sort of

have something to look up to and achieve to be them. And even though you're probably never going to be as good as them, the idea that there exists a person that could be that good, that can be that dominant, drives people. And there's so many people that I know that Kai inspired. And I'm not even talking directly. The number of people that Kai helped, that he directly helped, like, you know, the matches

he played with him or the things where he walked through or just the wisdom he granted. I'm not even counting the face-to-face. I just mean people that sort of the legacy of Kai meant something. And so, I mean, it is, I kind of knew when Connie died, I'm like, oh, I have to make a podcast. Like, I, the fact that I was kind of, I had front row seats to the most dominant things ever happened in BroTor Magic. And I really, I hadn't, I hadn't shared the story. I shared pieces of it. But I hadn't really shared the whole run.

And it is something, you know, I'm kind of really probably. that I got to experience that. I don't think that will ever happen in Pro Magic again. And not because there aren't really good players, but Kai is a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon. And like I said, seven pro-tor wins. Number two is three pro-tor wins. Somebody to even tie Kai has to win four more.

And that's John who's only one three. You know, so I just, I really wanted to do his podcast. to sort of make a nod and understand that Kai influenced so many things, had such a long reach, and was truly, honestly, a really sweet and great person. I just wanted to make a nod. I wanted to do this podcast in a nod to Kai. And so there's a bunch of articles and a bunch of videos about Kai. I strongly urge, if you haven't seen them,

Wizards made one that sort of walked through all its accomplishments and stuff, and it shows a lot of pictures. Other people have also done tribute. So if you not had a chance to see any of this, if this is the first time you've ever heard of Kai Booty, which I'm hoping it's not. There's a lot of stuff out there. If you want to sort of see retrospectives and things.

And there's actual coverage. We filmed a bunch of coverage, which is online. If you actually want to see Kai play, I believe some of that footage is still there. So it's interesting. One of... I did a talk at Magic 30, which was kind of the first Magicana,

It wasn't called MagicCon. And in it, I did a talk that was called like 30 years, 30 pictures, because it was the 30th anniversary of magic. So I picked 30 pictures that I had been in just showing the history of magic and then talking through the story of the picture. And one of the pictures was me working the feature match area. And it just so happens that the person seated there. I mean, not an accent, was Kai.

And there's this really nice picture of me, like, changing out the signs as Kai's like shuffling getting ready for his match. And somehow that, that's the picture I thought of when I heard Kai die of just sort of thinking back and just the voluminous feature matches of just watching. Like getting, like one of, there's a lot of honors in my life, a lot of great things that have happened to me that I'm very, you know, I feel blessed for. And one of them is that I got a front row seat to watch the best magic player that ever played magic to play magic for years right in front of me. I got to judge him, and not that he ever asked rules questions or anything, but I just got to have a front row seat of that. I got a front row seat to Magic History. And that's why one of the reasons on this podcast I wanted to share with you that front row seat, because I've been privy to a lot of things that, you know, most of you have not. and one of them was getting a chance to see the brilliance that was Kai Buddha.

And so I just want to say sort of a top of the hat, I'm so happy that Kai was part of this game and the game was part of Kai's life. I know magic meant a lot to Kai. And in his speech that he gave when we renamed the Player of the Year award, Kai gave this really nice speech and talking about how much magic had meant to him. And anyway, so I'm getting emotional. I guess it's the rule when I talk about Tony's died that I have to cry on my podcast. But anyway, I'm here at work.

So there's so much awesome things out about Kai that you can experience firsthand. If you haven't had a chance to do that, there's so much wonderful things about him. I would urge you to sort of see some of that stuff and learn about who Kai was as a person. And then I hope this podcast has done something to give you some insight and a little bit about, about, about, about, about, about, about, about, kind. And like I said, the most dominant run of magic that I think we will ever see. So anyway, guys, I'm now at work, so all that means, it means to the end of my drive-to-work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic.

I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.