Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #416: Early Worlds

Episode Date: March 10, 2017

In this podcast, I talk about the first five Magic World Championships.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another Drive to Work. Okay, so today, today's another of my history podcasts where I talk a little bit about the past. So, aside of today, I'm going to talk about the early world championships. I've talked about bits and pieces of them, but I want to sort of give some context to the evolution of worlds. context to the evolution of worlds. So I'm going to talk today about the first five world championships, which would be 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998. And I'm going to sort of talk about how they came about, how they evolved, what happened to them, and then sort of shape up how the world championship early on in Magic history got made. Okay, so for those that know their Magic history, Magic came out in 1993,

premiering, roughly premiering at Gen Con. That is the first place officially I think it was on sale. So it was a year later, and they were going back to Gen Con. And the previous year, they had been the toast of the convention. That, you know, every year, usually there's one thing that just becomes the talk of the convention,

and magic had been that thing. So anyway, it was a year later. So the president of the company was a man named Peter Atkinson. He was one of the co-founders of the company, and he was the, you know, president and CEO of Wizards of the Coast for the first, I don't know, five or six years. Well, first five or six years of Magic. I guess he was also president for a few years before Magic showed up.

Anyway, Peter really loved Gen Con. Peter loved Gen Con so much that after he left Wizards, he would later go on and buy Gen Con. Peter was a longtime role player. He loved Dungeons & Dragons, one of the reasons Wizards bought Dungeons & Dragons. And he really loved, he used to go to Gen Con every year, and he loved Gen Con. So he wanted to figure out, okay, the previous year we made this giant splash at Gen Con. We had introduced the game. Okay, one year later, what could we do?

And Peter sort of took inspiration from other things that were going on at Gen Con. And one of the things that was popular to do was games would show up and they'd have their world championship there. And so Peter liked that idea. He goes, what if Magic had a world championship? So that year, 1994, they actually had, I think there were four nationals. I know there's a national in the United States, one by Bobal. I've talked about that.

There was one in France. There was one in Belgium. I think there was one other European one. But it was pretty low key. But they actually said, okay, we'll have some nationals, and we're going to have a world championship. They actually said, okay, we'll have some nationals, and we're going to have a world championship. And, I mean, the first two ones I've talked to in other podcasts a bit, so I will be a little briefer on them.

But basically what happened was the world championship was held at Gen Con. There were flights. I think the flights were 64-person flights. There were a bunch of them. And they led to a final 64 flight that was the finals. Now, be aware, the whole event was single elimination. Not Swiss, single elimination. So the way it worked was you got in a flight, and I forget how many you had to win. I think you had to win, I don't know, five matches maybe, and then you advanced.

So the idea is, and you could enter as many flights as you wanted. Now, I've talked about when I went to Gen Con, I was at that Gen Con, and I actually played in one of the flights. I think I won two matches and lost in my third match. But anyway, it was definitely, I mean, it was the biggest thing Magic had done at the time. Not a high bar declarer. The biggest thing Magic had done at the time, not a high bar declarer, but have you ever seen pictures of it?

It was not the biggest of it. For example, there's a famous picture of the finals. You can see a young me. I had gone to that event to get the duelist to let me cover more stuff and write more articles. One of the things I suggested was covering the world championship. And Catherine, the editor, said yes. So I'm there doing coverage on the finals. Looking very young in my underdog t-shirt.

I actually pulled an all-nighter the day before. I had stayed up all night. And so I look very alert in that picture, but I was actually a little bit on the tired side. But I stayed up and I recorded all the thing. The DCI, which at the time was called the Duelist Convocation for the International, the I. That's what DCI stands for, Duelist Convocation International. There's a thing called the Duelist Compendium that members of the Duelist Convocation got, and one of those had me transcribing

the finals of the World Championship. So I literally, I had somebody else helping me, and we wrote down every, like, in the opening hand, you know, Zach Dolan had this in his opening hand, Bertrand Lestray had that in his opening hand, so we transcribed the whole thing. Anyway, the finals came down to Zach Dolan of the United States

versus Bertrand Lachrey of France. Bertrand Lachrey, by the way, would go on to, now he comes second here, but he'd go on to be second in the very first Pro Tour, losing to Michael Acanto. Anyway, so Zach Dolan wins.

The real short story of it is he was traveling to the event. His car broke down as it got into town in Milwaukee, and he abandoned his car and, I think, hitchhiked to the event or something. But anyway, so this wasn't, this is pre-Pro Tour. There was no cash prize. In fact, when Zach won, basically what he got was just a whole bunch of Magic product, like a huge amount of Magic product. And, you know, it was, I think that it wasn't anything super splashy.

Like I said, they were playing with, you know, essentially what was now vintage, you know, playing with Black Lotus and Moxes and like, you know, like pretty high-end stuff on wood tables without tablecloths. I know people who look at that go, what are you doing? And note there wasn't sleeves yet. Sleeves had not really been a thing yet. So there weren't sleeves. Sleeves didn't exist. And so, anyway, the first world championship, I mean, it was special in that we'd never done anything like that before.

But I think Peter saw it and said, okay, we can do better. You know, the world championship, we really can put our stake in and make it something. More so than just an event at Gen Con. So Peter got it in his head. He said, okay, we're going to do, we're going to make something bigger, better. That we're not going make something bigger, better. That we're not going to be just one thing. The World Championship is not going to be yet another event at somebody else's event.

We were going to make our own event. So 1994 at Gen Con in Milwaukee, Wisconsin is where Gen Con was. But 1995 was going to be in Seattle, home of Wizards of the Coast. So we actually rented, it's called Red Line Inn. It's near the airport. And we rented the ballroom. And we had, so the 1995 World Championships was our own event. It wasn't like we were just at somebody's event. It was our event. So the very first World Championship, I think there had been four nationals. I think all the people who were in nationals actually sent teams. They all got invited to the World Championships. So 1995, oh, so 1994, anybody could play.

If you were at World Championships, like myself, you could play. It was open to anybody. 1995 was the first time that the World championship became an invitation-only event. And in fact, to play in 1995, the world championship, you had to do one of two things. You had to either come in top four at your nationals, or you had to be the reigning world champion. So basically, there were 17 countries that had a world championship. I think all of them sent at least somebody. I'm not sure if all of them sent all four people, but most of them did.

And then Zach Dolan, the reigning world champion, got invited. And so for those who remember, I talked a little bit about this event before, too. There were 17 teams. What had happened is 1994, the head judge was a man named Steve Bishop, who was the person who ran the event team.

Steve, while very passionate, did not know Magic particularly well, and so there was nobody, really the people that were judging the original 1994 didn't know Magic nearly as well as the players did. 1995, Steve was gone. There was a new guy named Jason Carl.

Jason actually knew Magic. He probably wasn't as proficient as people will eventually become, but he knew Magic. I tried to convince Jason that we should do a team event and that we should have the team event. And then they should, you know, we would track all their data and the top two teams would play off. I couldn't convince him of that because there was a lot going on. And by the time I was talking to him, it was beyond the point where we can make that change. But I did convince him to let me track who did well. And so what I did is I kept, there's a big whiteboard that I kept running total of how all the teams were doing.

And when the dust settled, the U.S. team won. In fact, two members of the U.S. team made it into the top eight. So Mark Justice won the Swiss. And Henry Stern came in third or fourth in Swiss. So they both advanced. Mike Long was one game out, one match out from getting into the top eight. And Pete Lyre, the other member, was two matches out. So the average of the U.S. team was the cutoff for making top eight. The U.S. team was way, way, way ahead of everybody. There was one other team,

Italy, that got two members into the finals, Ivan Carina and Andrea Redi, but the other two members of the Italian team didn't do particularly well. So, overall, the Italian team, well, they did pretty well because two of the members did well. The team as a whole didn't do quite as well.

So, the U.S. was, that was the first declared winner, although there wasn't a finals. No one played anybody. I believe France came in second that year. Although there was a big gap between the U.S. and France. In the finals though, it was Alexander Blumke of Switzerland versus Marc Hernandez

of France. So there was a little running joke for a while. The first world championship, France comes in second. The second world championship, France comes in second. The first Pro Tour, France comes in second. Where there's a joke for a while that France was good because they were one of the best countries

but they kept coming in second and couldn't close the deal. And eventually at Pro Tour San Diego many years later there was a young, I don't actually remember his name, there was a young French player that wasn't a particularly memorable French player, who eventually would break the streak and win a top event for France. But anyway, that wouldn't be 1995.

So, the two of them actually asked permission if they could speak French in the finals, since both of them were native French speakers, and we said yes. Oh, the other thing that happened in 1995 for the very first time is we did video production and did a finals where the audience watched the finals. I mean, 1994, there were people gathered around the table. You know, have you ever seen the picture, the famous picture? There's people gathered around the table. So 1994 had a finals and people watched the finals, but a small group of people watched

the finals. In 1995, we had video. In fact, the 1995 Nationals where Mark Justice had defeated Henry Stern, we actually had done the very first video we'd ever done. We had commentators, Sean Carnes, who was at the time one of the customer service, who would later be in R&D. I think Glenn Elliott, who was in R&D. There were a couple people that did the commentary.

Most of them had had some acting background. And I actually, when I got there, my background from schooling was communications, and I had done a lot of video production in my school. And when I had got on scene to help I realized that they had like one of the things they had forgotten is they had no way to for example communicate the score which was an important thing if you wanted the audience to watch so I suggested them getting a spotter which I ended up getting what a spotter is is somebody who's on the floor right at the

match who has a headset on that can talk to the commentators, that can talk to the director, that can feed them the important information so that everything can be conveyed on screen to the audience. Normally the way it works is there's somebody in the back, usually not the director, but somebody who's doing what we call chyron or the special effects, if you will, who are doing the score, who is updating the score. And I would keep feeding them the score so that the score was always accurate and correct.

And then also, if there's any confusion, the commentators could ask me questions and I could answer the questions if they couldn't see something. Our technology doing video productions has advanced 8,000-fold since that first one. But anyway, 1995, if you've ever seen the tape, there's a tape of it. I don't know if it's online.

You can see me on the floor during the 1995 World Championships. So Alexander Blumke goes on to win, and the second World Championship is in the history books. Okay, so what happened between 1995 and 1996 is the Pro Tour started. In February of 1996, Pro Tour New York, the very first Pro Tour happens, and we had Pro Tour New York, then Pro Tour Los Angeles, then Pro Tour Columbus, and then the fourth Pro Tour was the world championship. So it started with 1996. The world championship wasn't just the world championship. It was part of the Pro Championship. So it started with 1996. The World Championship wasn't just the World Championship. It was part of the Pro Tour.

Along with that came a few changes. One was the invitation policy changed slightly. You still got invited if you were on the national team, which at the time were four-person teams. So if you're on the national team, top four, you got invited. Reigning World Champions still got invited and we started inviting um we had started doing ratings for um the the dci and um at the time we did what's called elo ratings which was you started with a score of 1600 and then every time you beat somebody your score went up and every time you lost your score went down uh the better the person you beat based on their their rating the the you know the higher the vector would be so on their rating, the higher the

vector would be. So if I was a player and beat someone better than me, I would go up by a bunch and they go down by a bunch. But if I beat someone I was supposed to beat, I just go up by a little and they just go down by a little. And the idea was it took a little while to sort of, I think you had to have, I don't know, 20 matches or something before your score was kind of reflective. But eventually you would get a score that would start to sort of dictate where you were. And anyway, we started having ratings and we had a sense of, oh, who are the best players in the world based on our ratings.

For the first time ever in 1996, we invited people to the World Championship based on their ratings. In fact, the person, I think the number 10, I think we invited 10 people. The last person to get into the World Championship in 1996 was a young man named John Finkel. Anyway, we also, for the first time, had a team event. The previous year, I recorded everything. But in the intervening year, I started working at Wizards full time. And I convinced them the importance of having a team event.

And a team event with money on the line, a finals, the full thing. So the U.S. team that year was Dennis Bentley had won the U.S., George Baxter, who was famous for writing books about magic, came in second, and then Mike Long and Matt Place. Mike Long, probably one of the more famous or infamous pro Magic players. Matt Place would go on to be in R&D. I worked a lot with Matt. He would also go on to win a Pro Tour. In fact, Mike Long and Matt Place would both go on to win Pro Tours.

Anyway, that was the U.S. team. They were very good. So the U.S. team ended up playing against the Czech Republic in the final. The Czech Republic led by a guy named Jakub Schlemmer, who would go on to be a very good Magic player, and we'll talk about him in a second. Anyway, for a long time, U.S. had been number one, France had been number two.

This was the first time a country really even started threatening France from the number two slot, which was the Czech Republic. In the main event, Tom Shanfang from Australia. In fact, it's interesting. The very first event won by a North American. The second event won by a European. The third event won by an Australian. So, the

third continental win. He defeated Mark Justice. Mark Justice actually did back to back top eights. In fact, he wasn't the only one to back-to-back top eights. In fact, he wasn't the only one to do back-to-back world top eights. Henry Stern. So Mark Justice and Henry Stern had come in third and fourth, respectively, or Justice was third and Henry was fourth, at the 1995 World Championships.

Both of them lost out in the semifinals. In this one, though, Henry again made it to the semifinals, but Mark made it all the way to the finals. Henry, by the way, right after this event would go on to work for Wizards, when we hired him, I had recommended him, and it took a while for him to get hired, but when he finally got hired, he asked if he could play one last event. And he wanted to play in Worlds because he had done,

well, not that he had done well at Worlds, but he had played Nationals, and he had come in second. In fact, almost won the U.S. National title. Anyway, Henry would go on coming in third in this event. The finals was White Weenie, Tom Champagne, versus the Necrodeck, Mark Justice. This was the summer of the Necrodeck. So this was, for those who don't know, Necropotence, the card from Ice Age was a crazy powerful card

the deck that used it ended up becoming this dominant monster this summer was when it was dominant Dennis Bentley, for example, won the U.S. National Championships playing a black-red version of the Necrodeck anyway, Tom Champagne brought a deck specifically

designed to beat the Necrodeck in a white weenie deck that allowed protection from black and stuff like that. So Mark Justice, the matchup, even though he brought an anti-Necropotence deck and Mark Justice was

playing Necropotence, I think Mark Justice was still the favorite to win. Mark made a he had a card in his deck called Demonic Consultation where you exile the top six cards of your library and then you name a card,

exile the top six and then you keep exiling cards until you find the card you want. So you get to go get the card you need but you lose some amount of your deck in the process. And he had done something and then in response,

Demonic Consultant in response to Demonic Consultant in response to Demonic Consultant ended up eating all his library. So basically he made a mistake, and it cost him the game, and then he kind of went on tilt and ended up not winning. The most crush I've ever seen Mark Justice is losing that. He really, really wanted to be the world champion,

and he let it slip through his fingers and was upset. Bye-bye. Anyway, so Tom would win. Another interesting thing about this event was Tom, in his trophy, was a card. We embedded a unique magic card called the 1996 World Champion that was all five colors

and had an activated ability in your library which allowed you to go get it. And then its power and toughness were equal to, I think, the life of your opponent or something. Anyway, it was a very powerful card that didn't actually work. I think the rule person at the time was either Tom Wiley or Beth Morrison. And when I went to show them the card, they were like, that doesn't work, but it's embedded in a trophy, so I'm fine with it.

What we did is we printed it, made a video showing all the copies we had of it, and then destroyed every copy but the one embedded in the trophy. I heard a while back that Tom actually sold this trophy to a collector. There's two unique Magic cards in Magic's history. One is a 1996 World Champion. The other is a dragon whose name I can never pronounce that we made for a Japanese partner at the time to put in their big tournament center. It's like a good luck thing. Both cards, I think, appear in the Guinness Book of World Records being the rarest

magic card of all time. This is only one of them. I actually designed both of them, so I'm not mentioned in the Guinness Book of World Records, but I know. There's a little footnote in my head that I designed both. Anyway, the one other thing that happened at this event, because it was a Pro Tour, was the first time we ever had a player dinner at the World Championship. We actually held it. Oh, I didn't even mention this. The 1996 World Champion was held at the corporate offices in Renton. We decided we wanted to do it in Seattle.

We had a lot of space because we had just moved into new buildings. And we had space to run it, so we ended up running at the corporate offices. The player dinner was actually held outside in the the mana pool, as we called it. But anyway, it was the first time we had gone to become a staple of the World Championship. In fact, we used to do a Play or Dinner for all Pro Tours, and then that eventually went away and just became a World's thing. Okay, 1997. We were still in Seattle, although now we've moved to the University

District near the University of Washington. Wizards of the Coast at the time had opened up a, we started doing retail stores and our, like, I don't know, our, the jewel of the retail stores was the University District. In fact, Mitzi, the shiv and dragon that hangs in our lobby actually comes from that tournament center. We ran the World Championship in the tournament center. Now in 1997 the big change was we were now filming things, it was still a pro tour, but we're now filming things for ESPN2. And so we had hired somebody, a guy named Brian, who was the official producer and I worked with Brian to help him. One of the things I was real proud of was we interviewed people ahead of time,

and Brian knew video and knew production, but didn't know magic well, and so I was his expert there. And so I made a list of people for him to pre-interview. And one of the people I stuck on the list was Jakob Schlemmer, because I thought he was an up-and-comer. And so we actually interviewed him before he won. So we had some really fun footage of him talking about, like, this is before the tournament

begins, and his hopes and dreams, and he's like, I think I can win this, and it was very cool. So anyway, Jakob Schlemmer from the Czech Republic would go and defeat Janusz Kuhn from Germany. The event was held in the basement of the tournament center, which really was not an ideal place to hold it. The ceilings were kind of low. It was really hard to get the—normally we have a camera that goes above the mat.

It didn't really fit. Another interesting thing, a little funny story, was Brian saw the U.S. team. Now, the U.S. team had won in 1994, had won in 1995, had won in 1996. It's like, okay, you know, we're going to have the team event. And they just didn't look much like anything. The world champ had been Justin Gary, big pro player, would go on to win PT Houston a few years later.

He, I don't remember the rest of the team. There was one other person that was a pro tour player and the two other were sort of unknown people. But anyway, there was a lot of pressure on them. They're like, okay, the U.S. had never lost. And so Brian made one of the assistants go over all of Seattle finding these four

U.S. flag shirts and it took like days to find and we finally got them and got them on the U.S. team and the U.S. team didn't make the finals. So the finals was actually Canada versus Finland. Canada won. So Canada kept it in North America, so North America kept the team title, but not the U.S.

On the Canadian team, by the way, was Mike Donais, which would go on to be a future R&D member. So, in fact, I mentioned for a while, like, the 1995 team Henry Stern was on, he went to be in R&D. The 1996 team had Matt Place. He went to be in R&D. The 1997 team had Mike Donais. So we joked for a while that, like, we should be looking for more R&D members on the winning team.

that like we should be looking for more R&D members on the winning team. So anyway, so Jakob Schlemmer went on to win. It was dramatic. It was fun. He was the first person who wanted to win the world championship that like clearly, clearly was like somebody that went on to make other top eights in other pro tours. That's the first time that had happened the the world championship for a while people were saying it was less demanding than a pro tour but as as more pro tour people started getting involved and they started becoming harder and harder and

Jakob Schlemmer was the first kind of pro tour regular to win a world championship okay 1998 so this was the last year that I think Peter the reason to win a world championship. Okay, 1998. So this was the last year that I think Peter, the reason I grouped these five was, 1998 was the last time before we were bought by Hasbro, before Peter moved on, like sort of the last of early Wizards. And this also was held in Seattle, also held in the U District,

but not at the Wizards of the Coast Tournament Center, but rather it was held in one of the stadiums at the University of Washington. This one was interesting. I've mentioned this before I think of my podcast. My sister got married the Saturday of the event. The event was Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So I was there Wednesday and Thursday. I flew home for Friday and Saturday to be there for my sister's wedding. Flew back Sunday morning and got back

in time for the finals of the World Championship. This is also the World Championship that Randy Buehler first ever did his commentary on. My regulars for doing commentary were Brian Weissman and Chris Pakula. But Chris Pakula made the top eight and I couldn't use him. And so Randy Buehler ended up doing the commentary in the top eight.

Now what happened was in the quarterfinals, Chris Pakula lost, so I ended up choosing to put him in for the semis and the finals. I think I showed up during the quarterfinals and I made the choice. Randy did a good job. I just, my go-to regulars were Brian and Chris and we were filming this for ESPN so I kind of wanted to use my regulars. We didn't tend to show a lot of the quarterfinals. I mean we showed a clip of it but usually it was the finals is what we showed. So anyway in this event, so the US team this year was, Matt Lindy had beaten Mike Long in the finals.

So this would be the third time that Mike Long was in the final, was on the U.S. team. He would be on a total of four times, by the way. And the finals where Matt Lindy beats Mike Long, I have called the most amazing match in magic history. It was awesome. I've talked about it elsewhere. But basically what happened was

it was at U.S. Nationals. We were at Origins, I think, a big convention. The audience was at one end of the convention hall. They were at the other end of the convention hall, like multiple football fields away

behind closed doors. And Matt Linde needed to draw a specific card on a specific turn. Like he was going to lose to Mike Long unless he drew the card then and there, and he did, and the audience just went crazy, yelling so loud that Mike Long knew he had drawn the card from, like, multiple football fields away behind a closed door. That's how loud they'd yell.

Anyway, that team year also had John Finkel on it and a guy named Bryce Currence, all of which were Pro Tour regulars, all of which I think would make a top eight at a Pro Tour beside this one. Obviously, John Finkel has won three Pro Tours. Mike Long won a Pro Tour. Obviously, John's in the Hall of Fame. Mike Long might be in the Hall of Fame.

He wasn't so infamous. He might go on to win four Pro Tours. I'm sorry, be in... no, he'd win one Pro Tour. He'd be in four Top 8s. Four Tour Top 8s. Anyway, the US team would go on to defeat France. Oh, this was a year, by the way, one of the themes of the year was the dominance of the US. That year, I think, Randy Bueller had won an event, Matt Place had won an event, John Finkel had won an event, I'm a player, I'm forgetting, but all Americans, all Americans, every approach

of the year was won by American. We get to the finals of the top eight of the world championship, the US versus France, the US wins, and then the individual top eight, there were seven Americans and only one non-American, Raphael Levy of France, a future Hall of Famer, would go on to be the only non-American in the top eight. So in the finals, Brian Seltzer in the United States defeats Ben Rubin in the United States. Ben Rubin would go on to be in the Hall of Fame.

Also, Alan Comer and John Finkel, also future Hall of Famers, would be in the top eight. I mentioned Chris Picoula was in the top eight. It was, when we talk about star-studded top eights, this is one of the ones that comes up. There's a few that are slightly better, but this is in the, you know, top ten of all time amazing top eights of Pro Tours and Worlds. Anyway, Brian Seldon would go on to defeat Ben Rubin. And both were very good players. Both would go on to have top eights. I believe Ben Rubin would have, I think he had five top eights.

Brian Seldon had, I think, two others, one of which was a team event. Anyway, the big difference in 1998 was for the first time ever, we had an opening ceremony where the players carried flags. 1999, which would be the first year that we actually leave the U.S.,

it would be in Japan. And if I do another in the series, I'll talk about first year that we actually leave the U.S. It would be in Japan. And if I do another in this series, I'll talk about the first time we ever leave. It was in Yokohama, Kaibu-dawan. Anyway, the opening ceremony, we could splash here and splash here. But this was the first year we did an opening ceremony. We had the flag processionals where people come in with a flag. Usually the national champion would carry the flag to their team. I think this was

the first year we did the official pictures where we, we had our professional cameramen take pictures of people posing with the flags and posting that.

It was also the, you know, it was, we, as it was evidenced by the top eight, this was the pro tour where the top eight

really, really looked, I guess 97 did too. 97, 98 is we started, we started getting top eight. This was the pro tour where the top eight really, really looked, I guess 97 did too. 97, 98 is we started, we started getting top eights at the Worlds that really looked like a pro tour top eight. Part of that was

the invite policy had changed such that if you had a certain number of pro points, you got invited. It was now a pro tour. So if you got, if you were qualified

for pro tours, you were now, you were qualified for the world championship. So you could get it, you could be on the national team. You could be standing world champion. You could get in on your standings through the DCI. Or you could get a Pro Tour invite, much like any Pro Tour.

But anyway, so the first five Pro Tours, like I said, it's kind of early Wizards. It's pre-Hasbro, you know, during the time when Pete Atkinson ran things. It was definitely... You could see just watching from 1994 of, you know, people playing on raw wooden tables at a convention to, you know, an event on ESPN with, you know, a dedicated audience

and an opening ceremony. And, you know, by this point, it was a pro tour, so there was money on the line. People would win, and not only were you a world champion, but you won a person of a prize. And so I think Peter was very excited in sort of the evolution of, you know, starting from kind of a very small, tiny thing to becoming a very big thing. You know, starting from kind of a very small, tiny thing to becoming a very big thing.

And the funny thing is, 1998 compared to modern day is nothing. I mean, just the video coverage and the presentation and just how everything was run would improve massively. But 1994 through 1998, just in five years, was a radical, radical step up. That each year, there's giant gains that happen in the early years. And so, you know, so I tip my hat to Zach Dolan, Alexander Blumke, Tom Shanfang, Jakob Schlemmer, and Brian Seldin for winning the first five world championships. Like I said, I'm curious if you guys sort of like this. I'm more than happy to talk about more world championships. It's a topic people like. I love diving into

some of the early things and make people more aware. I think a lot of people weren't aware of sort of how some of early magic's history and stuff. And so like one of the roles of this podcast is to provide that to you. So anyway, that my friends is the first five world championships. Anyway, I'm now at Rachel's racial school so we all know

that means this means at 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 guys soon bye