Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #116 - Pro Tour Coverage

Episode Date: April 25, 2014

Mark shares stories about his time producing the Pro Tour video coverage.

I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, well today, I've worn a lot of hats in my time at Wizards, so I thought that I would use today's podcast to talk about one of the ones I've not really talked about. And that is my role of video producer for the Pro Tour. You see, for the first eight years of the Pro Tour, I was in charge of a couple things. First, the first couple days, I was in charge of the feature matches,

which is its own story, but not today's podcast. And then on the last day, I was in charge of overseeing the videos of the finals. And today, I'm mostly going to be talking about the commentating and going through the history of the comment. And today I'm mostly going to be talking about the commentating and going through the history of the commentating for the Pro Tour up through the first eight years, because that's what I did. So there's some fun stories and interesting things, and it's an aspect of the Pro Tour that it's hard to know about. For example, usually before

I do a podcast, I'll do a little bit of research, just remind myself, so I, you know, I'll jot down a few notes on papers, just so I remember. And I could not find a lot of this material online, meaning, A, remember, most of this is going to be from my memory, because there was no way to corroborate what I'm saying. And I just felt like I'd like it to be somewhere. For example, there's a bunch of people that put a lot of work in in the early days creating the commentary. So here's one of the things that's very important to understand about the Pro Tour, which is the Pro Tour in 2016 turns 20. 20. Impressive, I think.

And what has happened over the years is we have worked on all the different aspects of the Pro Tour and slowly evolved them to the point where things are very, very polished. And right now, the commentary is as good as it's ever been. It's very, very good. But I like to believe a lot of what got us eventually to where we are now is things along the way. And so I want to talk about the early days, and I'm going to walk you through kind of what happens. The stuff I'm explaining now is mostly true today. It's a little bit more complicated today. The technology is a little bit different, but the general gist of what I'm

going to explain is true. So let me explain how this works. Basically, since the very first Pro Tour, well, I did a podcast on the very first Pro Tour, and I did a podcast on the video of the very first Pro Tour. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the first Pro Tour, because really, the first Pro Tour was chaos. The second Pro Tour was the first one where really, I was aware that I was in charge of making this happen. And so what we do is, for every finals, now we do it every single day,

but back in the day, for the finals, we would have video, and we would show the finals so the people who wanted to watch it could watch it. It's a lot more accessible now, there's more places you can watch it, but we always did record it and stream it. I think we always streamed it. We always did make it available on video at some point, and as we'll all talk about, for a while we were on ESPN2, I'll get to that today. Okay, so in the beginning, the very first commentary, well, PTA1 had kind of a weird commentary with me and two other people, which I talked about, which was forgettable, so

let's forget it. And I've already talked about that, so let's move on to the second Pro Tour, which was in Los Angeles. I've also talked about this one, so I won't repeat myself as I am apt to do. This is the Pro Tour in which Mark Justice did commentary with me. We were in the phone booth because that's the best booth we could find. It was like a 12-hour coverage. We almost ordered pizza.

Okay, so what happened was the way it would work is on the last day of the Swiss, we would make a top eight. My job was to sit down with the top eight. I would get them to fill out all the paperwork, get bio information so we could use it the next day. I would share with them deck lists so they knew what the deck lists of the other players were. And I would walk them through all the rules about what needs to get done during the finals. There's a bunch of things on camera. There's a bunch of things that no one needs to worry about until you're going to be on

camera, but then we have to walk you through it. And then on the day of the event, it was my job to coordinate with the director. So real quickly, there is a director. I'm not sure when he started. He started very early on, a guy named Bruce. And Bruce is still today the director. So real quickly, there is a director, I'm not sure when he started. He started very early on, a guy named Bruce. And Bruce is still today the director. Bruce is amazing. And he's, like I said, he's been with the Pro Tour almost for the entire time. He might not have been the first couple Pro Tours. But essentially what you do is there's a director and they're set up usually in some space with lots of monitors.

So for those that never know much about video directing, what happens is there are a bunch of cameras. Usually there are two or three cameras on the ground and there's one camera that's up above it, what they call a crane. It's the camera that looks down. But it's cool and that camera can move around and do neat shots as well as be over the tables and what happens is in video directing is you are looking at all the cameras you're giving directions for where they're supposed to be and then you have somebody next to you it's called a

switcher which is there is let's say there's four cameras um There's one main feed, what they call the switch feed, which is what the audience sees, which is, you know, you're cutting between camera one, camera two, camera three. You're going back and forth between different cameras, and the audience is seeing one shot at any one time, and that's the switch feed. And the director's job is to talk to the switcher and say, okay, now show camera two, now show camera three. Meanwhile, they're also talking with the cameraman to make sure they set up the shots they need, because not only do they need to have a shot right now,

but they need to set up what the next shot's going to be. Now, magic has a lot going on that's very complicated. You have an over-the-head shot because you have a table going on. You want reactions of the player. Sometimes you need to see the player's hands. Sometimes you want a two-shot of both players playing together. There's a lot of different shots that you might need in shooting a game. The other thing that's really complicated, and Bruce explained to me really well, now when Bruce came to the Pro Tour, he was obviously a very good director, but he didn't know magic. And I mean, and there was no directors we knew of that knew magic, so we had to educate Bruce.

And what Bruce had a lot of problems with early on was magic is quirky in that you could be doing a lot of things, but nothing really is happening. Or nothing could be happening as far as nothing's moving, but yet there's tension because something is happening. That sometimes in magic, where the focus is is hard to tell if you don't know the game well. And so one of my jobs was I had to interact with Bruce and explain to him where the camera wanted to be, what was about to happen. As I'll tell today, there's some stories where like, oh, it's all about this. You want to focus on his hand. You want to focus on what he's going to draw. You want to, you know, the cards don't matter. Look at their faces, whatever. I would tell him stuff like that. Meanwhile, while that was going on, and I was also coordinating,

and the current producer does this now, coordinating what order the matches go in. When do we do things? Sometimes we had to hold matches because we wanted to see something. And right now, we play all the matches and we wait for them and go in order because we have the resources. In fact, we didn't have those resources. So what would happen is

quarterfinals would start, everybody would start playing, and then I would get updates on how matches were going, and if we needed to hold stuff, I would say, okay, have them stop, don't have them play the next game, so that we could get the camera to them. Meanwhile, so when it very, very first started, in the early, early days,

I used to do commentary. What I would do was, I was doing play-by-play, and I would always have a pro doing color. Who the pro was tended to change from pro tour to pro tour, partly because some of them were top eight and I couldn't use them, and partly because at the time I thought, oh, it'd be fun just to get a lot of different pros on camera, or behind the mic, if you will. So the first pro tour that I'm talking about was in Los Angeles.

That was with Mark Justice. The second pro tour was in Columbus. That's the one that Ularade won. I think that Hammer, Sean the Hammer Regnier, was my co-host. So for those who don't know, Hammer was, he won the second Pro Tour in Los Angeles, the one that Justice and I did the commentary in the phone booth. And he was a professional arm wrestler before he got into Magic. He owned a comic store.

And he was, early on, one of the big pros. He made top eight of the first Pro Tour. He won the second Pro Tour. And Hammer was a very cool individual. He definitely had a very, very good mental game. He could be very intimidating. And he just had a way of, had a presence that was very dominating. He tended to play control. But anyway, I believe that I did the commentary with him in Columbus.

Once again, this is all from memory, so if I miss something, I apologize. I'm trying to do the best I can from my memory. My memory is weird in that it remembers small details sometimes and then forgets things like the name of Simple Card. I'll try to tell you interesting stories as we get to it. So the big story in Columbus was, so in order to, I didn't finish this, in order to do our job, the commentators, okay, so the director's off, has his camera, is talking to everybody. Meanwhile, in a separate place that's soundproofed is the commentators. Now we have a booth.

At the time, sometimes we'd... We've gotten more elaborate over the years, but we always were somewhere, not always a phone booth, that was soundproofed, and that we would have every camera, a little look at every camera, and then a big screen of the switch feed, meaning what the audience was seeing.

And so we could see what all the cameras could see, so we could figure things out, and we could see the main camera, the main switch that the audience was seeing. Also, so what they call CG is computer graphics, that the score and certain elements, the names, those are laid on top. So on the switch feed, you can see those,

but you don't see them anywhere but on the final that the audience is seeing. Okay, so you sit in the booth. I would have a headset on. Actually, I had two headsets. One of my headsets was to talk to Bruce, and the other headset was so we could hear the commentary. And I used to switch back and forth,

so I would take off the one so I could talk to Bruce without the audience hearing me, and I'd switch and go back. That was really, really hard. Eventually, I gave up doing commentary. One of the major reasons was it was hard to both talk to Bruce and talk on air. But we'll get there. So anyway, in order for us to, one of the things that was very tricky was the score is very, very important in covering a match, that you need to know the score. And so

one of the things we figured out very early on is we need to have somebody on the floor that I could talk to, what we call the spotter. And so the spotter, basically in my day, there's two people that did most of my spotting for me, which was a guy named Scott Larrabee, who is currently, right now, runs the Pro Tour. He's the tournament manager of the Pro Tour. Scott and I were friends. He used to run tournaments down in Los Angeles back when I lived in Los Angeles, in Costa Mesa, the women's center.

So when I first played organized magic, Scott was the tournament organizer. And Scott came up to Wizards, and he and I were good friends. And I think when Scott first did scouting, he might not even have worked for Wizards yet, although he's worked for Wizards now for over 15 years. But I'm pretty sure back then he was still just, he lived in Los Angeles, so he was there. And we were friends, so I had him spot. The other spotter I used a lot was a guy named Scott

Johns, that you might know. He's the only person with five top eights not in the Hall of Fame, or that's qualified for the Hall of Fame, that's not in the Hall of Fame. And he ran the Magic website for a while. He ran many websites for a while. He won a Team Pro Tour with Potato Nation

with Gary Wise and Mike Turian. Anyway, Scott was my other spotter, and I used one of the two of them. I believe my very first spotter might have been Scott, because I've said both are Scott. Scott Letterby, because Scott Jones was in the top eight in Los Angeles. So what happened was, anyway, I had four, but for Columbus, I had a different spotter. I did not have Scott and I did not have, I did not have Scott Larrabee nor Scott Johns. I had Lisa Stevens, who if you guys remember my podcast on the PT video, she was the vice president that was helping me with the video. And she really wanted to be involved, so she was spotting for me in Columbus. And so the story is that Ula Rade is playing Sean Fleischman, I believe was his name. I apologize,

Sean, if I get your name wrong. Sean was out in New York. He used to work at Neutral Ground. He had a big hat with a feather he wore. And Sean and Ula had a very tight final match. So we were trying to figure out whether or not Sean had something

in his hand because we realized it was important. So I whisper over my headset. I have a headset. I'm talking to Lisa. I say, okay, Lisa, here's what I need you to do.

Subtly get behind, you know, Sean. Look at his hand. We're looking for a card X, whatever card X was. I just need to know if he has it. But you got to be real subtle because we don't want Ula knowing whether he has it. It's important that Ula doesn't know this. So she goes behind him. She looks.

And then, to me, relatively loudly says, yeah, he has it. And then Ula smiles. And we're like, oh. We got better. Our spotter didn't give away vital information in the future. And then, let's see. The next one was myself and a guy named Mark Chalice. Mark Chalice, he was someone out of L.A. I was friends with.

He is one of those people that I thought was a really, really good player that didn't... He tended to make a lot of top 16s and not make a lot of top 8s. I think looking back that he tended to clutch in the final. He would do really, really well, be sweeping the Swiss, and then get to the match that mattered and he would lose. He did make a top A in New York once. He made one top A, and he actually got invited to the very first Magic Invitational.

But he's definitely one of those names that you have to be a real connoisseur of old Magic Pro Tours to know. The interesting thing about that was, that final was Tom Champing from Australia. He was playing Mark Justice of the U.S., and Tom would win.

But something happened, and Mark Chalice was sure the judge made a bad call, and we stopped the play so they could go back and look at the tape, which might be one of the few times we've ever done that. And Chalice was wrong, and they got really mad at us. Then we were in Atlanta. I don't remember who did the pro tour coverage in Atlanta. I don't remember who did the Pro Tour coverage in Atlanta.

I don't remember who did it. It was one of the pros. I do remember that the next one in Dallas, my commentator was done, was Brian Weissman and Matt Place. So Brian Weissman, let me explain who Brian Weissman is. Matt Place, I've talked about before, he won Pro Tour Mites. He ended up becoming a developer in R&D, one of my favorite developers of all time, awesome guy. He's off doing other

things now, but we miss him. Brian Weissman, another friend of mine, Brian Weissman is known as being the creator of the first publicly known deck called The Deck. So Brian was one of the early people that really got the grasp of card advantage,

and he made a control deck, a white-blue control deck, that had one win condition. I think it was a single Serra Angel. Maybe there were two. I mean, it changed over time. And the idea was he would just use counter spells and motes, and he would gum you up, and then he would beat you. And it was all about just gaining card advantage on you

so that you can't win, and then just it had one way to win at the end. He would beat you when it was time to beat you. And it was all about just gaining card advantage on you so that you can't win. And then just, it had one way to win at the end. He would beat you when it was time to beat you. He didn't worry about it. He wasn't trying to beat you quickly. And it became so famous that around San Francisco, people were like, have you seen it? Have you seen the deck?

And Brian became one of the early, Brian, I know, used to write, I believe, on Magic Dojo, which was the first real magic website that people contributed to. It was a player website, and there's a lot of strategy on it. Anyway, at the time, there was, I know Rob Hahn wrote The Schools of Magic, and he would take different players and talk about how their approach to the game. So I believe there was The Weissman School of Magic,

which was very much about card advantage and a lot of stuff that had become key to understanding technology. By the way, let me just take a check here. It is raining here, so I can tell that you guys are getting an extra long podcast today, which is fine, because this is a topic I can talk to Lenny about. Anyway, I did commentary with Weissman and Place. And I was real happy. I thought Weissman in particular did a very good job. Then, I don't remember all of them. I know Mike Long did some commentary for us in, I think, New York. I tried to use as much of the prose as I could. So a couple of things happened. First off, there was a problem with the rotating pros. And the problem was that the first time you tend to do commentary, you often made the same mistakes.

A very, very common mistake, by the way, of the pros was they were hypercritical of the other pros. Because they themselves were pros, like, what are you doing? That's stupid. You shouldn't do that. That's a mistake. And the funny thing was, usually the person that made the finals better understood the environment than the pro that didn't make the finals. And so often they were criticizing things that ended up being not the wrong move or wrong thing to do. And also, I mean, mostly what happened is I learned that with experience, I just could make somebody that better understood how to do the commentary. I just could make somebody that better understood how to do the commentary. Also, I was having a problem myself.

I had two problems. One was I was both acting as producer and as commentator. While Randy Bueller would later do that and do it well, I was having trouble with it. Partly because, number two, I sucked at doing commentary. I'm not good at identifying cards. The names of the cards are not the ones that I know because I'm so used to doing design.

So I wasn't always great on getting card names. Anyway, I was not a pro player. I wasn't doing colors, doing play-by-play. But I was not that good at doing play-by-play. In fact, I was good at one thing.

Here's the one thing I was good at. When somebody would win, I had a great, like, and, you know, the winner of the Pro Tour is Randy Bueller! You know, and I would have, and we used to do the ESPN, we used to do little clips, and we used to do me announcing the winner, and that little segment of me announcing the winner, where I was all excited and announcing the winner, was awesome, because that was the best thing I did. But, you really can't have me doing commentary for like,

you know, 15 seconds at the end of the commentary. So I realized I needed to find somebody to replace me to do play-by-play and I needed to find someone

to do color that was consistent, that I couldn't keep changing people, that we needed to train people. The problem was where do we find people that didn't make top eight all the time? So what we did was, so what happened was, I had worked with Weissman in Dallas. I really liked his commentary. And so I decided that I was going to have Weissman do play-by-play.

I thought, one of the things that's really important in play-by-play is just explaining what's going on, and I thought Weissman did that really well, that he set context well. And then, to do color, or actually, maybe early on, Brian was doing color. So the two people

I got, one was Brian Weissman, the other was a guy named Jeff Donais. So for the people that don't know Jeff Donais, Jeff Donais for a while, though when he first started doing commentary, Jeff eventually worked

for Wizards for a while, was the tournament manager that ran the Pro Tour. He worked in organized play. Jeff was a very charismatic individual, very spontaneous and a little on the wild side.

He was funny. He was very funny. And he, at the time, had been on the pro tour. In fact, he almost top-aided Worlds in, I think, 97 or 96? No, 97. He almost top-aided 97 Worlds. And, in fact, he needed to go 2-4 on his final day. He swept day one. He needed to go 2-4

on his final day to make... 2-5. 2-5 on his final day to make it into the top eight, and he didn't manage to go. He went 1-6, I think. But he might have... I think he needed to go 2-4-1. Anyway, he didn't make it. And then we hired him at Wizard.

So I started using him for commentary. I don't remember whether Weissman was doing play-by-play and Jeff was doing color. Maybe Jeff was doing play-by-play and Weissman was doing color originally. I don't remember. But anyway, that was my first team after I'd stepped out. And they were the first team

where regularly we're doing commentary. I tried out a couple different people, but I settled on the two of them as being the ones I liked the best and so they were the commentary for a while but then Jeff Donet became the

head tournament manager of the Pro Tour and he had things to do on the final day and wasn't able to do commentary and so I able to do commentary. And so I needed to find, I think he must have been doing color because I needed to find a new color guy, which means I needed to find a pro player.

So the thing that Jeff had brought that I really, really had learned to appreciate was Jeff was funny. He was funny. And what I found was Jeff was knowledgeable. He understood what was going on, but he was able to bring a lot of levity to it. And I found that it really made it fun.

And the rapport between Brian and Jeff had been very good. So I was trying to find someone that had a similar sensibility. Not necessarily the same sense of humor, but a sense of humor. So I ended up finding a man you guys might know of named Chris Spakula. So for those who don't know Chris Spakula, Chris is a hair's breath for me in the Hall of Fame. He multiple times have just been, you know,

a few votes from actually being voted in. He has three top eights to his name. He has a fourth near missed top eight where he literally made an error with, he had the win on the board and just didn't see it and lost in a team event in Pro Tour Seattle. And anyway,

Chris was one of the early, I think Chris was claimed to fame, other than later doing commentary, obviously, was he was part of a team called the Dead Guys along with Dave Price, later John Finkel, Tony Sy,

Werth Wilpert, anyway. And this group was, they were one of the earliest groups that were very gung-ho about, they were very, they cared a lot about cleaning up the tournament. And that the early days were kind of the wild west. There was a lot going on.

The judges were doing what they could, but it was hard. There was a lot of shenanigans going on behind the scenes. And what Chris and his team said, Chris was really the ringleader of this, is saying, hey, fellow pro players, we can't just rely on the judges. There's only so much they can do. There's only so much they can do.

There's only so many places they can be. We have to self-police. You know, the judges are our allies to help us, but we have to self-police. We have to say to other players, it is not okay. It is not acceptable. And then if we don't toe the line, if we don't say this is not acceptable, it won't change.

And that really, Chris was the one, you know, and the dead guys that led the way to really changing how the players approach things and help clean up the Pro Tour because until the players self-policed, it was hard to really get rid of a lot of it. And like I said, the judges did what they can but the judges aren't everywhere.

And the players are. Anyway, Chris was one of the early, I mean, Chris was one of the early, I mean, Chris was, one of the things that I did a lot in early, in the early Pro Tour was I really, I've talked about this when I did talk about the Pro Tour coverage, was I really did a lot to play out the personalities

and that I tried to find the characters that really were just charismatic in different ways, and Chris very much was. So when I came up with the idea of putting Chris behind the mic, I was like, oh, I think Chris will be good at this. And Chris was very skeptical. Chris, at first, did not want to do it. He thought it was a lot of pressure,

and what people told him he was funny, it's another thing to be put on the spot. Chris, by the way, the other thing about Chris is Chris is one of the best storytellers on the spot. Chris, by the way, the other thing about Chris is Chris is one of the best storytellers on the Pro Tour. And I just knew if I could get him behind the mic and have him tell these stories

and do what he does. And plus, he was very knowledgeable. Obviously, he's one of the top pros. So what happens is, I swap in. The very first time I used him for coverage was at PTLA3, which happened to be

the one that Dave Price won. A very, very good friend of Chris. So he was excited. He kind of wanted to do the commentary because Dave was in it. So what happened was I put him on the mic, he does the commentary, and he just knocked it out of the

ballpark. In fact, that pro tour, which was a Tempest-only block constructed, which Dave Price tour, which was a Tempest-only block constructed, which Dave Price won, he was on fire. He was amazing. And in fact, I liked all the teams I'm talking about today. All did a good job. I was very happy with all of them.

But my personal, my pet favorite of all the teams I put together, I think Weissman and Bakula were the ones... And in fact, my all-time favorite coverage ever, ever, ever was Weissman and Bakula were the ones. And in fact, my all-time favorite coverage ever, ever, ever was Weissman and Bakula. And let me explain it because it's so awesome. So it was nationals of, I want to say 98. I think it was 98 nationals.

It might have been 97. So Mike Long goes, there's 15 rounds in the Swiss. Mike Long goes 14-0. He's in the 15th round. When discovered on his lap is a Cadaver's Bloom. So Mike was playing a deck called Prosperous Bloom, the same one he won with or similar one he won with when he won the Pro Tour in Paris.

It's a combo deck. Anyway, Mike wins the first 14 matches, but he's found the Cadavra's Bloom in his lap. By the way, the judge, a little trivia question, the very first judge, the judge who came to the table when it first happened,

meaning the first judge on the scene, was me. So I'm not going to talk about this today because I think I'm going to do a podcast on some judging stories. And that's a classic, classic, classic judging story. So I'll talk to that another day because it's not super relevant right now.

But it's a little tidbit to talk about the future. Anyway, Mike Long gets found with a car in his lap, gets a match. He gets a match loss. So he's 14-1, but he still makes the top eight. But the audience did not like Mike Long. Mike Long wins! I'm not sure why I didn't tell you that.

Mike Long, I mean, we had played Mike Long up as being the bad guy. I mean, the bad guy. You know, the embodiment of evil. The heel of all heels. So not only did the audience already prep not to like Mike and want to root against him, but, oh my God, a cadaver's bloom in the lab? You know, the rumors were going around, and everybody was all fluttered, and like,

you know, Mike Long cannot be the U.S. National Champion. Now, Mike Long had been horrendously successful in U.S. Nationals. He, in fact, over the years made four U.S. National teams, I think all of which won, I think Mike might have been on four winning U.S. National, four winning

World Championship teams. At least three of them won. I think all four have been on four winning world championship teams. At least three of them won. I think all four won. But anyway, so Mike's in the top eight. And so we are in the U.S. at Origins in Columbus, I believe. And we have this giant ballroom set up. And the way it works is we have all these chairs, and then Brian and Chris

are sitting up in front of them. And I'm with them with my headset talking to Bruce. And there's a giant audience. Giant, giant audience. It's filled to capacity, standing room only.

Meanwhile, about the equivalent of two football fields away, locked away in a back corner, is Mike and the top eight playing their matches. So Mike makes it to the finals. So he plays in the quarters, he

wins. Plays the semis, he wins. The finals is Mike Long versus a kid named Matt Lindy, who I think was like 16, 17 years old. Now, Matt Lindy would go on to become a pro tour regular. He had multiple top eights to his name. But this was his first appearance. And he's a kid.

So right now, it's like the fate of the U.S. of whether or not the embodiment of evil becomes the U.S. national champion. All that stands in his way is a kid in his first big event. Matt Lindy.

Okay. So what happens is, I think they get to game five. So, what happens is, I think they get to game five. I think what happens is, I believe that they win one apiece. I think Mike goes up 2-1. Matt pulls it back. It's 2-2.

What's going to happen? Okay, so now, Mike's big thing, for those who don't understand Prosperous Bloom, is it's a combo deck. Once he has the pieces he needs, he's going to go off

and you're going to lose. So, Mike is having control of the game, but it turns out that he's having a little lack of luck, and he has to drop his guard for one turn. For one turn, he has to basically open himself up so that he can get the piece he needs, but he makes himself vulnerable. Now, Chris and Brian have done an amazing

job setting up the audience so they understand that the game all comes down to this moment. That Mike had to let down his guard. He's only let down his guard for one turn, and during that turn, he's getting the thing that he needs to win. So Matt Lindy needs to have a card

to stop him. But not just any card. The only card in his deck that can stop him is a card to stop him. But not just any card. The only card in his deck that can stop him is a card called Abance. And it's a white card that keeps your opponent from doing things. So if Matt can play it on that next turn, it'll stop Mike, and then Matt can do what he needs to do to win.

But he has one turn and they look in his hand. It's not in his hand. Will he draw it? Won't he draw it? Like I said, Brian and Chris set this up beautifully. It's like, okay, it's all about this moment. Matt

peels and it's a man's and the audience goes berserk. I mean ballistic. In fact, they scream so loud that two football fields away, behind multiple doors, Mike Long, his shoulders slump

because he hears the audience and knows that Lindy got the advance. And Mike loses. And Mike's the runner-up. Matt Lindy, the U.S. national champion. That is the most electric I've ever seen. There were many, many awesome commentaries, and that's just the one that's my personal favorite. But it was, I don't know, it was just,

electric is the word. Just everybody, the entire audience, wanted the same thing. And every, yay, aw, they were all excited. It was really fascinating. Anyway, Chris and Brian did commentary for quite a while. But eventually, Weissman couldn't continue to do commentary. So I needed a new play-by-play guy.

So I tapped Randy Buehler. So Randy won his very first Pro Tour at Pro Tour Columbus. And then would go on to be a very good player. He came in second in the Pro Player of the Race behind John Finkel that year. Randy and I became friends. I recommended him to Bill Rose, and he got hired. And Randy did quite well while he was at Wizards. He eventually became the head developer.

Then he became director of R&D with my boss. Aaron's called Aaron now. Eventually he became vice president of digital. And so he did quite well for himself. And one of the things is when he first came to the company, we had started doing video for ESPN2. And so part of doing the Pro Tour was doing the ESPN stuff. And a lot of the commentary, a lot of Chris and Brian's work had been,

we would fly to New York. When you do commentary on ESPN, you had to re-record stuff because what you said live in the moment often wasn't exactly what you needed to say when you're just showing clips. But anyway, at some point I handed over the reins to Randy and Randy started doing ESPN stuff. I still did the producing of the Pro Tour. But then Randy started doing commentary. He did play-by-play. I'd used Randy actually at 98 Worlds when Chris made

the top eight. And I used Randy in the quarters. But then Chris got knocked out. And because we were doing ESPN 2 and I wanted Chris to do the voiceovers, I put him back in at semis. So Randy had a little moment. And I liked what Randy had done. I thought Randy did decent play-by-play. So anyway, so for a while we had Randy and Chris. There's a story I would love to tell. I'll tell the abbreviated version of it. I can't tell the details of this one, but I will tell the abbreviated version,

which is we're at DC, Pro Tour DC, and Randy and Chris are doing commentary, and I am producing. And Randy says something that I can't repeat here, but Randy is talking in magic ease. And in magic ease, he said something that makes perfect sense. Everybody understood it.

But if you heard it in English, it was kind of dirty. It was something in which it had a context in non-magic ease that really was a little risqué. So what happens is Randy says this. Chris hears it. I hear it. And we start laughing. I mean, I don't mean like giggling.

I mean all out, can't stop laughing, laughing. And because we're laughing, seeing the other one's laughing, we're just making each other laugh more. And we literally can't stop. I mean, we are getting out of breath. We are laughing so hard. And then Randy at some point figures out what he said because he sees us laughing and Randy starts laughing. But anyway, it's one of my favorite, I mean, just, I don't know if I've ever laughed as hard in my life as that thing, as Chris and I were trying to stop laughing. Chris was on air, I wasn't even on air, Chris was on air, and it was super, super funny. And they were, the thing that was interesting is, they were also, now the commentators are

back behind the scenes, you don't see them, but at the time, the commentators were up in front of the audience. We always separate the commentators from the players, but the audience sometimes has been with the commentators. There's a few times we've tried having them with the players. Now they're with neither. But anyway, it was pretty funny. So one point, so eventually, I've got to keep going here. What happens is Chris gets a job.

Kula gets a job, and he's not able to go to all the pro tours. So I need to find a replacement. I need to find a new color guy. So what I find is a man named Brian Hacker. So Brian Hacker, for those who don't know him, is out of Los Angeles. He had a team name that's not super family friendly. A lot of not family friendly stuff today. And he was known for being one of the early players that was uber, uber, uber aggressive, especially in Limited.

His strategy was you win by never giving your opponent a breather. Just you find the fastest possible way, especially in Limited, to play. You know, he would draft whatever the archetype was the fastest, he would draft that. And he would prioritize, you know, one drops and two drops and things that seemingly weren't that good, but they were if you went all out aggression. Hacker was a blast. He was a ball. He was always very funny.

And he made a great commentator. I think the highlight of Randy and Brian's commentary, and I think this one's online, was at PC Chicago that Bob Marr won. Bob Marr was playing a guy named Brian Davis. Bob Marr's in the Hall of Fame, you know, dark confidant. Yeah, he won the invitation to be dark confidant. He was playing at the time a kid named Brian

Davis, who was very good, but the famous story of that finals is the joke that Brian Davis went 5-0 and lost, which meant that every game, Brian should have won on paper, but in three out of the five games, Bob found a way to take a game that literally was basically won,

that Brian could have won, and found a way to get out of it. It's one of the most amazing finals ever. I believe that Randy and Brian's commentary was amazing. I think this one's online. You can go watch it. It really is amazing history. By the way, we have stuff online that you can go watch. And you can watch old commentaries and watch old finals.

And there's some historical ones that are really amazing. And I recommend the Bob Marvers, Brian Davis one. It's just watching Bob Mara win, that is amazing. It is truly a very neat thing to watch. And it's a testament, never give up. Never, ever give up, which Bob did not. That he found ways to win out of, I mean, literally like he couldn't win, but yet he did. So it's amazing.

So I used Randy and Brian for a while. And then eventually, Hacker moved on and I needed to find a new color guy. Now, I don't remember... So the next person I believe that I brought on was Brian David Marshall. I'm not sure. It's possible that Brian and Randy

then swapped positions where Randy started doing color and Brian did play-by-play, I think is what happened. Like, this is all from memory, so give me a... So Brian David Marshall, for those who do not know, I mean, he currently... So Brian and Randy are both currently doing commentary. Randy's come back after a long hiatus. Brian David Marshall is out of New York.

He was one of the founders of a place called Neutral Ground that for a long time was a store in New York. He also ran gray matter tournaments. He was one of the first person to run a store in New York. He also ran gray matter tournaments. He was the first person to run big tournaments in New York. He was a very, very big part of the organized play, one of the big TOs in New York for a long time. He's since become the Magic Historian. He does the introductions to all the Hall of Fames.

Obviously, he does commentary. He writes a weekly article called The Week That Was. Other than me, he has written for the Magic website for the longest. He's number two. And, I mean, Brian has just been in the game forever. I mean, if you know much about the history of the game, not only is he a historian of the game, but he's a big part of the history of the game, which I guess goes hand in hand. Anyway, Brian was, I think, doing coverage is how he ended up at the Pro Tour. He was just someone who we used.

And I don't remember how we first started using him, but he ended up, we started, I mean, maybe someone else suggested him. I don't remember how we first started using him. But he was really good. And when I left, so I was there for eight years. And then in 2004, Pro Tour started in 1996, my twins were born. When my first daughter, when Rachel was born, I cut down all my travel to just Pro Tours. I used to do a lot more travel beyond that. And then when my twins were born, I said, okay.

And I cut down my travel to worlds and to, at the time, might have been Invitational. Now it's San Diego Comic-Con. But I only travel a couple times a year now. I just, when I had a family, I felt like I could not

be out of town all the time. Part of being a responsible parent is actually being there. So anyway, I gave up on the Pro Tour. I mean, I stopped attending the Pro Tour. I still go to one Pro Tour a year, usually it's Worlds

and so when I left Brian and Randy were doing the commentary Randy then took over for me and took over role of producer like I said, Randy found a way to do all the producing and do on-air commentary something I was not particularly good at

probably because I was not good at on-air commentary and since then a lot has changed, for those that watch now on-air commentary. Something I was not particularly good at. Probably because I was not good at on-air commentary. And since then, a lot has changed. For those that watch now, there's now day-to-day, you know, day-to-day,

every single day there's coverage. You know, not just the finals, but all the days. And there's a whole team and they have amazing graphics and all sorts of cool things. And they have resources

that I get so jealous sometimes watching them because I feel like I had shoestring and some spit. But I look at the commentary we have today and all the players they have and all the people they have and all the resources they have. It's amazing, and I really think that the commentary has come a long, long, long way. But I like to feel that, in my own way, that I set some of the early

standards and clearly sort of... A lot of the history of magic and the history of the Pro Tour is us learning and getting better, and one of the reasons I think that the Pro Tour is so good and the commentary is so good and I think magic is so good, is that we keep learning from what we do, and I feel that

I'll... I've used this expression before, but if I can see farther than those that came before me, it's because I'm standing on the shoulders of giants. Who said that? It's a paraphrase of a very famous quote. And the idea is, well, of course I'm doing better than those that came before me, because those

that came before me paved the way for me to learn and get better. And I feel that way with magic technology and design technology and development technology and R&D technology. I feel that way with the Pro Tour. I feel that way with magic technology and design technology and development technology and R&D technology. I feel that way with the Pro Tour. I feel that way with commentary and that there's a lot of stuff we've learned along the way. And I

hope that some of that learning came from me and from my teams and that when I look back and I think about all the stuff we did and the ESPN2 stuff and all the live commentary and I had a blast. It was really, really fun to do. And one of the things

that I think when I, I mean, I'm nowhere near retiring so don't take this as I'm going anywhere anytime soon, but one day I will retire

and when I do, I will look back on my long career and one of the things that I really, really enjoyed was I had a chance to do a lot of different things. It's kind of amazing when I look

back at the number of different things I did. And one of them was I got to be a video producer. Which ironically, it's funny, when I first got the job at Wizards, my background was communications. I took classes in video production. I never, ever, ever thought that would come to any fruition. I thought like well, I'm glad I spent four years at school learning stuff that won't matter. And all my communications training and my video training, all this stuff actually has come back. And I'm amazed how much of it's been useful. It's really kind of been freaky how much of my college education I've used. So, hey kids, go to college. It's important. And in fact,

a question that often gets asked to me, and I don't want to work with a sidebar, is people are like, I want to work in R&D. What should I study in college? And the answer I say to them is, study something that you're passionate about. Learn about something. Get good at something. Don't do what we've done. I don't need somebody that's an expert in things we're experts in already.

I want people that are experts in something brand new. And one of the great things about hiring new people is I love when you hire something and they have a set of skills that no one in R&D has. And you go, that's amazing. That's awesome. R&D has just improved because now we can do something we've never done before. We have a new skill set. And so when people ask, I'm like, go to college, find your passion, do something cool.

I mean, you want to learn to communicate and you want to learn to argue. I mean, there's basic skills you need to be good in R&D. But, hey, do your own thing. Become an expert in something that will matter that you bring to the table. And that one of the things about having a career, not just at Wizards, not just in R&D, is make yourself unique. Make yourself an expert in something or a combination of things that is unique to you so that when you bring to the table something that no one else can offer because you are uniquely you and you have something special to offer to your employer. Anyway, a little segue. I'm almost to work, so let me wrap this up. So I look back at all the commentary I've done and all the producing

and all that, and it was really, really was a blast. It was so much fun. Some of it's on video. The sad thing is we actually, every single thing we've ever done has been recorded on video. But along the way, we've lost some of it through different means. And it saddens me that like, we literally had everything on video

and now we don't have all of it. The more recent stuff obviously is there. We took some of our old stuff and some of it's archived, some of it you can find on the web. Like I said, I'm pretty, pretty sure you can find the Marr-Davis match from Peachy Chicago on the web. And there's other cool stuff.

And it's just neat. It is very fun to watch history but going back and looking at it. And it's fun to hear the commentary. And like I said, honestly, we're probably not as polished as now. We don't have a lot of the resources we have now. But we had spunk. I think we did a good job. I think we did something that I'm proud of when I look back.

Now, that said, if you happen to see a commentary of me doing commentary... So here's something, by the way. I'll let you guys in on something you might not know. In fact, I don't know if many people at Wizards know this. Which is, when I stopped doing commentary, the guy who was in charge of when I stopped doing commentary, the guy who was in charge of the video at the time, a guy named Ed, gave me a couple

tapes of me doing commentary, just for me to have, to remember. And now that I'm just thinking about this right now, I have these in my garage somewhere. And I'll bet you that we've lost them, meaning I think I might have hidden footage of early, early Pro Tours. Now the downside of me

revealing this coverage is it would allow the public to hear me do commentary, which was horrible! So that's how much I love you guys. I'm going to try to dig out... I've got to find these old tapes because I have them somewhere. I haven't thrown them away, obviously. I have them. And I've got to bring them in

and so we can see... This is like year one coverage. Because it's video of me doing commentary. So it's year one or year two. Because I only did coverage in the first two years. But wow, I just thought of that. Anyway, see, a discovery. A discovery as we drive.

Okay, well now I'm pulling into the parking lot and into a space. So hopefully today, today was a long, because of the rain, the rain in Seattle does slow people down. Oh, so today, wow, today was a long thing. But anyway, I think it was a fun day. There's a lot of interesting things. And I love talking pro tour history. I love talking history in general.

And today I'm particularly proud because you know what? I don't think this is anywhere. I think what I'm telling you, I don't think you can read. I don't think it's written down somewhere. This is a very, this is me sharing some sort of, some stuff that this might be the record of it.

So hopefully, I hope my memory did a good job. But anyway, thanks for listening today. And I always love talking about magic and magic history. But even more, I for listening today. And I always love talking about magic and magic history. But even more, I like making magic. So it's time for me to go. Thanks for listening to the epic session today. Hope you guys enjoy it.

And I've got to find those tapes. Bye, guys.