Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #240 - Pro Tour with Melissa DeTora

Episode Date: July 2, 2015

Mark discusses the Pro Tour with his carpool guest, Melissa DeTora.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's drive from work! This is my second ever drive from work. So I'm here with Melissa DeToro. She had to come with me to work, so she's going home. We decided to do a second podcast because I'm trying to milk as much material out of Melissa as I can. Okay, so the topic on the ride home for this one is going to be about the Pro Tour. So I figured out that I attended most of the Pro Tours from 1996 through 2004, and Melissa started attending Pro Tours in 2003? Correct. So between the two of us, we hit most of the eras of the Pro Tour.

So we're going to talk about the Pro Tour then and now. So what was the last Pro Tour you played in? The last one I played in was Honolulu, so it was Pro Tour Kansatark here and it was only like six months ago.

Yeah, see, back in my day we never went to Hawaii. So there's been like three or four Pro Tours in Hawaii, but that's all after I stopped going to Pro Tour.

Yeah, I've been to two Hawaii Pro Tours and they were awesome. So one thing we used to do that we don't do as much is back in the day um we used the way they used to do it is there would be um three pro tours one would always be in north america one would always be in europe and one would always be in asia usually japan um and they they do some of that this year but i'm not sure if it's quite as like it was always

sort of we would we would rotate back in the. Yeah, now it's pretty much mostly North America and usually one Europe. Yes, there's not as many as Japanese. Oh, there's zero Japanese, yeah. They use it every year. Like, once a year, we'd go to Japan. Yeah, I think, like, with the coverage now, it's, like, pretty expensive to ship the equipment out there.

Yeah. So no more Japan. And I guess also all plane tickets are paid for now also. So I guess that's an expense too. The other thing that's different is now we have coverage. Back in the day, because I was in charge of a lot of stuff.

We would have feature matches and there would be internet coverage of feature matches but it was all written. We would have finals that we would shoot on video, but you couldn't see them on the internet. It was something that, like, we later, I think, put some of the... We used to have the ESPN show we did for a while, and we'd use some of the footage on that.

But it's just a very, very change of pace between kind of what we used to do back then and now as far as coverage, and it's very different. One other thing is, I could be mistaken but cameras were so bad back then that for the top eight everyone had to unslee their decks. Oh no, that's not why. The reason they unslee the decks was

the lighting which was the lights would reflect off the cards and we got a lot of glare and you just couldn't see the cards. That's pretty much the same thing. It's a camera thing. But it was a glare thing. In fact, it's funny.

One of the things, I used to give a little speech because I was, one of my jobs was when you made the top eight, I would sit you down and then I'd have to talk to you and tell you what was coming up

for the next day, for the day of filming. And you would fill out a form and give us information and we'd get deck lists and we'd have to tell you about a whole bunch of different things so that you knew what was coming up.

And like, we had a D-sleeve. That was one of the things we used to tell them. But it was funny because most of the rules came about because we would mess something up and then the next, like, there's a very,

I think I told this story on my podcast, but there's a very famous story where, what was his name, Dominic Krapischetz, the guy who ended up playing the first pro tour that John Finkel ever won in New York, his opponent was Dominic Krapczak also won, also is the inventor of, what's it called, a really good game where you have to bet on people. It's a trivia game where you bet on people. The name will come to me in a second. But anyway, he made top eight, left for the day, and it turns out that Scott Johns was actually in the top eight because his matches got recorded wrong. Turns out that Scott Johns was actually the top eight because his matches got recorded wrong. And then I had to wake up early when Dominic first came in, and I had to tell him he didn't make top eight. Oh, wow.

And then we changed the rules so that, like, we made sure that everything was in correctly before we announced the top eight. Wow, that's crazy. Okay, so what is your favorite story of the Pro Tour? Well, I made the top eight of a Pro Tour one time. That was pretty exciting. Okay, tell me about that. What happened? Where were you?

Okay, so it was in Montreal. It was Pro Tour Gate Crash. And the team I tested with was Raphael Levy's team. We named ourselves Team Revolution. And it was a bunch of French guys, including Jeremy Desani, who was in his very early Pro Tour career, Timothy Simeneau, who is a goal-level pro right now, Pierre Dagen, who also top-aided the Pro Tour that Desani won, some other French guys. And I just asked them to join because I qualified for the Pro Tour so late, and I didn't have a team to test with, and I was friends with Raf, so I asked him if I could play with him.

He's like, yeah, sure, so we tested together. And, like, we had a bunch of drafts. I was really prepared in draft, and, like, for Construct, and we just couldn't decide on a deck. Like, we just, like, we tried everything. I was going to play Gruul. I was going to play, like, Mad Control with no win conditions. So was the stick, was standard the format? Yeah, the format going to play, like, Mad Control with no win conditions. So was the format standard?

Yeah, the format was standard, and it was Gatecrash, so it was Return of the Rock and Panistral Block. So, like, Sphinx Revelation was a thing, Crack Tusk was a thing, Aristocrat. John was pretty popular with Liliana of the Vale, like, stuff like that. So what did you play? So I played this deck

called Wolfron Bant, and basically it was a last-minute decision that Jeremy made to add Kessick Wolfron to our Bant deck. And mana bases were, like, so good.

You had Far Seek that could get anything. And, like, we played zero basic lands, so, so like the mana base is just incredible and so i played probably one or two games with it before the actual pro tour so i had zero experience with this deck so um i reeled the first draft and went into the next uh constructor like first round of construction well explain to people who might not know the pro tour how the pro tour is set up oh okay sure So, the first three rounds are

draft. They used to be constructed, but for some reason it's draft now. I'm not really sure why, but the first three rounds you do a draft and you play people in your pod, you play people with similar record as you, and that's pretty much it.

So, anyway, the constructed round, so I'm playing against this guy. It was a European guy. I don't remember his name, but I guess that's not the point. Anyway, he was playing a control deck, and I was playing a control deck, so I was like, alright, I think we're in for a long match. Especially because I didn't really know how to play the deck very well. So we play, and the match takes forever. Like, just a really long time. But as we're playing, I'm figuring out how to actually play. So we probably play about a 35-minute game one, and I end up losing. But then, when I lost, it hit me.

I suddenly knew how to play this matchup. So I quickly won games two and three, and that was it. And then, like, I don't know, I just had an epiphany or something, I was like, all right, that's how you play this deck, sure, so then, like, all of my other matchups, um, I played against, like, actually, I got pretty favorable matchups in day one, so I ended up, uh, going 8-0 on day one of the pro tour. How does that, how does that feel, 8-0 at the end of the day? Oh, it was actually really sweet, I had never done that before, like, I had gone, like, in GPs, like, 8.01 or something, but never 9.0. So, like, this was, like, a first for me. So, it was pretty cool. And people were

like, oh, how'd you do today? And I was like, oh, uh, 8.0. And they're like, what? Like, they couldn't even believe me. Like, I was the only 8.0 in the tournament. So, it felt pretty sweet. So, one of the, I mean, the elephant in the room, as they say, is the Pro Tour is, as of Gate Crash, how many years old? It started in 1996. Gate Crash, what, two years ago? This was 2012.

Okay, so we're talking 16 years into the Pro Tour, and there have been a lot of decent finishes by female players in Grand Prix's, but up to this point in the Pro Tour, there had never been a female in the top eight, right? That never happened. That's true.

And I know, like, I remember you making top eight because it was a pretty big deal. And I know it's tricky because, like, I know you wanted to be sort of your own

accomplishments, right? That, I don't know, how do you feel about, like, how did it be to be the first woman to ever top eight? All right, well, a couple things. One, I don't really like being a female Magic player. I just rather be a Magic player because I don't think it really matters what your gender is, you know? But, and the second thing is, like, I've been playing for a long time. When I was younger and I was playing,

I did get treated pretty unfairly because I was a girl. It was like, oh, I lost to a girl. Oh, you know, like, things you hear about all the time happen to me. But as I became a better player and I proved myself and was qualifying for Pro Tours a lot and, like, making top eight of PTQs all the time, I started to, like, gain some respect and, like, so, like, my peers consider me, like, one of the better players in the region, um, so it felt good to, like, finally top eight a Pro Tour and have everyone who, like, treated me badly, uh, you know, 10 or more years ago, like, to see me, like, accomplish this goal, you know, like, like, that felt pretty good to, like, be able to, like, show them that I could do that,

and I had been trying to, like, like, do well on the pro tour for so long, like, I had done okay on the pro tour, like, my best finish was top 64, but never better than that, so I finally got over that barrier, so that felt pretty good, but as far as being, like, a female player, I think it is, That felt pretty good. But as far as being a female player, I think it was pretty good for the game. Because since that happened, now more female players can say, oh, I can play Magic too. And I actually got a lot of emails and Facebook messages from female players saying how much I inspired them. And dads who said how much their daughter wanted to be like me. So that was pretty cool too. So overall, it was definitely a good thing that this happened.

Okay, so you get to the top eight. So what happened in the finals? So you're in the quarterfinals. Who do you play in the quarterfinals? So I played Tom Martell, and so the night before we tested the matchup, because, like, that's just, like, what happens, like, you go back to your hotel room with your friends and you just build all of the top eight decks and you test your matchup, because that's just what happens. You go back to your hotel room with your friends, and you just build all of the top eight decks, and you test your matchup.

And we found the matchup to be pretty unfavorable to me, although on paper, it looked great. I have a lot of creature control, he has a lot of creatures. So it seemed easy. What was he playing? He was playing the Aristocrat deck, so

the Falconwrath Aristocrat and a bunch of Sack Outlets and, like, Restoration Angel, stuff like that. There's this, like, 1-2 guy that makes 5-5s with Morbid. I don't really remember the card names or anything, but... I never remember the card names. Okay, but you might have an idea of what I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was like, anytime I kill a guy, he can just make a 5-5 Demon, you know, and like,

if I tap out for a Supreme Verdict, he can just cast, uh, Falcon Wrath, Arisa Kraton, deal me four, and, like, I just, like, he had a lot of stuff with Haste, and he just, like, his deck just never ran out of gas, so it was like a pretty bad matchup for me, Like, his deck just never ran out of gas. So it was, like, a pretty bad matchup for me. And then in the top eight, I'm pretty sure game one played out like it was supposed to, and I lost. No, maybe I actually won and lost the next three. So currently, the top eight, you play best two out of three,

but back then it was best three out of five. Yes. That way for a long time, best three out of five. Yeah, for a long time it was best three out of five, and it was a recent change for best two out of three. And the reason for that change was so coverage could show every single match in the top eight. Yeah. So this was the best three out of five.

And I remember I won game one, and I was surprised. And then I just lost the next three. Yeah. I made, um, he had a zealous conscript, and I had a thragtusk, and, um, he had a restoration angel also, so he cast the restoration angel to blink his zealous conscripts to steal my thragtusk during combat, um, and I just let him have it instead of thinking, like, if I thought about it, I wouldn't have remembered to Azorius Charm my own thragtusk so I could redraw it, gain five five life and get a beast instead i just gave it to him and that was that was a huge mistake i probably would have lost anyway but i do remember that was the thing that i knew i lost when that happened so that was it and then tom went on to win the yeah he won the entire the whole event so um to be fair if i beat

tom i my other matchups were actually very good tom was the one that tom's one you had to be fair if I beat Tom my other matchups were actually very good Tom was the one that Tom's the one you had to beat yeah he was the one I had to beat yeah

Tom's a really good player so I mean yeah but yeah does it feel good that if you're going to lose at least you lose to the guy

who eventually won the whole thing oh yeah definitely so yeah at least you can like go home and say

oh well at least the guy who beat me won the whole thing so like clearly like I deserved to lose. So what was your record going into top eight? Your 8-0 first day, remember? It was X, 3, and 1.

I remember I could intentionally draw into the top eight. So I'm pretty sure it was X, 3, and 1. I lost one round of draft and two constructed rounds. So, obviously, your top eight is your best memory. Do you have other memories? Just pro tours you went to, just something stands out as sort of, I don't know, your favorite pro tour besides the one that you did real well? Actually, yeah, like, one of the most fun pro tours I went to was at Kuala Lumpur back in 2008.

the most fun pro tours I went to was Kuala Lumpur back in 2000. And the reason why that one was fun was because it was in Malaysia. Who even goes there? It was a place I never even thought that I would ever go to. It's funny, I went to Kuala Lumpur

because the Invitational was in Kuala Lumpur. Yeah, I remember when the Invitational was there. I've been there for the pro tour, but I went there for the Invitational. You go to the So that's, I haven't been there for the Pro Tour, but I went there for the Invitational, so. You go to the Night Market? The what? The Night Market.

No. Oh, there's this very famous like giant, like a flea market on steroids. Oh, maybe I did go, but I didn't know

the name. Yeah, it's called the Night Market, so. It's a big part of Kuala Lumpur, yeah. Yeah, yeah,

alright. I definitely went there, but I didn't know the name of it. But yeah, that was pretty cool. But another reason why it was so cool was because it was all draft

Pro Tour. They don't do those anymore. Now they're split formats. But like years ago they were only one format. It was either constructed, which could be block constructed, extended, which isn't a thing anymore, or usually not standard, actually. In the early days, we didn't do standard Pro Tours.

Most of the time we didn't do standard Pro Tours. Most of the time, we didn't do standard Pro Tours. Worlds, which I guess technically was a Pro Tour, but a standard component. Nationals was always standard. Right. The regionals, nationals, and worlds had standard in it. But the Pro Tour for a long time didn't really do a lot of standard. And then we've obviously gone 180 on that,

and now we do tons and tons of standard. Yeah, so, and then there was draft. There was either booster draft or Rochester draft. This particular one was booster draft, but Rochester draft, like the pro tour is always alternated between Rochester and booster draft. I don't know, except for people that might not know Rochester. Booster draft is what everyone plays now.

Rochester draft is a draft where you open up the pack, you land all 15 cards, and then you take turns drafting it, but it's open information. Everybody sees what everybody else is taking. Yeah, and that also used to be a format on Magic Online, and it was pretty fun, but they did away with that too. I don't know.

What happened was, for those who are wondering, the fate of Rochester, when we first made up the different formats, we considered, R&D considered Rochester to be the better format. It was more skill testing, or we thought it was more skill testing. But what happened was, stores preferred playing Booster Draft because A, it was a lot more fun, it was quicker, and you didn't feel as bad because in Rochester, everybody sees every move move you make and if you make a bad pick everybody's aware you made a bad pick

and in Booster Draft no one saw what you picked necessarily so you could make mistakes and it wasn't so obvious and so the faster playing time and the kind of less there's more hidden information and it made people enjoy it much more and so we eventually did away with Rochester

and it's not a supported format anymore. Yeah, like, I think I preferred Booster Draft also, and Rochester Draft to me was just, like, really hard because you had so many things to consider. You had to know what everyone was doing. You had to just keep track of what everyone drafted. And if you just, like, stopped paying attention for a second and you missed something crucial, like, your draft could just be screwed. Right. stop paying attention for a second and you miss something crucial, like, your draft could just be screwed. So it was definitely, like, a much harder format to play.

And, like, one interesting thing, though, is, like, you knew who your opponent was because you just played the person, like, directly across from you, like, four seats from you. So you could draft your deck to beat that opponent. Of course, maybe you lose to your other opponents, but, like, that was definitely a thing that people did back then. Yep, for sure. So what's your favorite format you played in at a Pro Tour? So my favorite format is Booster Draft. So that's why, like, I really like the Qualum 4 Pro Tour, because it was all Booster Draft. So, like, if you like Booster Draft a lot,

well, this Pro Tour, you get to draft, like, how many times is it? Five times? Yes, a lot of drafting. Like, I don't even remember how many rounds it was, but I want to say that it was three drafts day one. Does that sound correct? Usually we do two drafts a day. Three is a long day if you did three, because that would mean nine rounds in a day. Yeah, it's only six rounds if you do only two drafts, right? Yeah, it could be three rounds. I mean, sometimes what they'll do is sometimes we would do drafts

and you would save your decks for the next day. Oh, maybe we did that. Yeah, alright, maybe we did that, actually. That sounds... No, it could be you did two drafts,

drafted the third draft but didn't play it until the next day. That's very possible. That's possible. Yeah. Yeah, this was like seven years ago.

I don't really remember but i do remember what was the format uh this was um lorwyn lorwyn okay uh did you like lorwyn draft i did i'm trying to remember if it was morning time also um i think it was just lorwyn um uh no wait it was morning time i remember this because i remember like so we're opening up our first packs, day one, first draft. And they're like, okay, guys, open up your packs and let the judge know if anything bad happens. Like, make sure there's 15 cards. Like, one thing you have to do is you have to open your pack, count them to make sure it was 15 cards, and, like, notify a judge if there isn't.

And so the first pack back then was a lorwyn pack because like instead of drafting the way we do now where we draft the most recent set first back then you drafted the older set first and then you drafted the new set so it was aab not baa yeah so i opened up my first pack not lorwyn pack it was just a Mordingtide pack, I guess. So I was like, uh, okay, judge, and then the judge had to come over and replace the pack, our draft pod was behind, and it was, like, kind of embarrassing, even though it wasn't my fault, like, it was, someone just messed up, so, and then when we get to the next, like, the third pack, which should have been a Mordingtide pack, um, it was a Lorwyn pack. So,

again, had to call the judge, everything got messed up. So that was pretty funny. Yeah, so Lorwyn was, that was the heavy tribal set, so I know there's, people complained a little bit on rails, because you had to, once you picked a, once you picked a

creature type, you tend to get more forced in drafting a lot of that creature type. Yeah, I remember most of the drafts I did were either elves or elementals. I drafted a lot of red and green. Yeah, so elves were green-black, right? And elementals were base red-blue? But they were in all the colors, I think.

Yeah, it was base red blue but they were in all the colors i think yeah it was base red for sure and i think my deck was like either red black or red green or something but it was mostly elementals for elementals showed up in all the colors they were heavier in blue and red and then but you could draft any i guess the reason you go into elementals is you can take any colors because they're elementals in all the colors yeah mana bases weren't so good though so like generally you had to, like, stick to your tribe and stick to whatever your color pair was

in your tribe. So, uh, any other... We're not too far from my house. Is there any other, uh... What's your favorite, um... just moment, protour history moment, like a singular moment

where something happened at a protour? That's a really tough question. Put you on the spot here. Yeah, wow. Pro Tour history moment, like a singular moment where something happened at a Pro Tour? That's a really tough question. Put you on the spot here. Yeah, wow. I mean, it could just be a neat play, it could be something that was just funny, I don't know, something where... just something memorable, I guess.

So, I guess my answer would have to be Pro Tour Theros, which was in Dublin, and it was the Pro Tour that we all played Monoglue Devotion. And we had three of our team members in the top eight. We had Guillaume Wafotapa, who actually played us for non-Monoglue Devotion, and then we had two guys who played Monoglue Devotion in the top eight, which was Jeremy and Pierre. which was Jeremy and Pierre. And that was really cool because, like, that night when we went back to where we were staying, we were staying at this hostel, we were, like, testing the matchups and, like, trying to do all this work to, like, help everyone win.

And then, like, Jeremy gets back to the room and he's like, no, don't worry about it, don't test, we're friends, we're just going to play and have fun, you know? So I think, if I remember correctly, Jeremy played Guillaume in the top eight. And Guillaume made this mistake that he never would have made otherwise, but because they knew each other and they tested the matchup so much, he just did this thing that's very common of inbred playtesting. I forget what exactly it was. I think it was involving like a thought seize like he thought he was the wrong card and it was like a crucial card and if he just like

did what he should have done like if he thought he's the right card he probably would have won but like it was a like a card in testing and like we always said oh this is the most important card of the matchup you always thought sees this card he was like all right fine i'll thought sees this card but in that situation it wasn't the right card yeah to take another card so i ended up losing and then like jeremy went on to win the entire tournament and beat pierre in the finals so that was cool to be a part of that moment to be on a team where like we had three people in the top eight so can you hear pro Tour trivia for you? Can you name the Pro Tour in which number one, two, and three were all from the same team

playing separate decks in Detroit? Yes, that would be Pro Tour Houston. I want to say it was 2002, but I could be wrong on the year. 2002 sounds right. And it was Team Yoramu Games. Okay. Who were the three players?

I know the three players. I don't know the order. So it was Justin Gary, Rob Doherty, Darwin Castle? Yes. Justin won it, for sure. Okay. Who was in the finals? I'm not sure who was in the finals.

I'm not sure whether he played Doherty or Castle in the finals. But yes, very good. Yeah, I know that because I'm from New England and grew up playing with those guys. And my first pro tour actually was tested with them on Team Your Move. Okay. I did not realize that. So, in fact, it's funny. I just did an article where I talked about the finals that your team, your team, your

team game, your move game, the one they won in pro Tour Washington, D.C., so it was Doherty and Castle and Humphreys. And Rob got super, super, super sick. But played the finals anyway. I think he got food poisoning? But anyway, he was like, literally, they

drafted, and then he laid on the floor while they built his deck. But he managed to win. Well, his deck. But he managed to win. Well, deathly ill, he managed to win. Yeah, and teams were different back then. For team pro tours, you couldn't communicate at all, like zero speaking. You could ask, what's your record, to your teammate, but you couldn't give play advice. Now, for team tournaments, you can give play advice.

You can all open communication. I think the only thing you can't really do is like touch your teammates cards or something manipulate their cards so like wow to win being sick and like not having any help from teammates

yeah it's pretty impressive yeah no no it's I remember it's funny when I think back a lot of my favorite

memories have to do with like the finals and the coverage because I was in charge of doing coverage and so a lot of the stuff I think about is stuff like the finals and the coverage because I was in charge of doing coverage and so a lot of the stuff I think about is stuff like that where like we're doing coverage and

someone's sick and things like that. But anyway, we've just pulled into my driveway. So ironically, most of the time when I'm in my driveway, it means we're starting the podcast but today it means we're ending the podcast. So Melissa, thank you for joining me for two podcasts. You're welcome. And I hope I'm glad you drove 40 minutes to join me today.

So, anyway, guys, hope you had fun listening to Melissa. And I just realized we have a short podcast today. Oh, wow. Oh, here's the, well, actually, here, we'll use up a little bit of time. The problem I just realized is my ride home is quicker than my ride to work because the traffic is less in the afternoon. So, here, we're going to talk a little bit more because I try to get close to half an hour. So, we have, like, a few minutes to fill. So, any final Pro Tour thoughts?

Any final, like, you miss, I mean, being an R&D, you can't play in the Pro Tour now. And do you miss the Pro Tour? I miss going to the Pro Tour. and uh yeah do you miss the pro tour um I miss going to the pro tour so hopefully like

I can go sometime as an R&D member and like talk to players and like do other R&D things there yeah that's that's one of the

one of the perks of being an R&D is uh we send a couple people to each pro tour um I usually go to Worlds is where I tend to go

um cause I have a streak well not streak I miss one Worlds but I've been to every Worlds but one so well which one did you miss I miss Rome okay so did, not streak. I miss one world. But I've been to every world but one. Which one did you miss?

I missed Rome. Okay. Did you go to Rome? I did not. I only went to one world. What world did you go to? Memphis 2008. Oh, okay.

I was in Memphis 2008. That was the one world I qualified for. So Memphis, who won Memphis? That was from Finland, right? Antti Malin? Oh, yeah. I remember him. We played at a Pro Tour one time, actually.

My favorite thing about Memphis that sounds like Pro Tour memories is the player dinner was in at Graceland. Yep, I remember that. And, oh hold a second my wife is trying to get in the driveway I'm about to pull up a little bit.

And so we were at Graceland for the player dinner. And so we got to eat. Like, we were across the way, and then we got a tour of Graceland. And I don't know. The number of famous places I've been surrounded by magic players. Like, I went to Pro Tour Rome, and then I stayed afterwards, and we were, like, visiting the Sistine Chapel.

And I'm looking up to see the Sistine Chapel, I look down it's like just magic players as far as the eye can see uh but uh did you enjoy the travel it's like traveling around the world is that it's that uh yeah like traveling is really fun like the downside is it's really hard to travel and sight see and also focus on magic so it's actually like a grind and very tiring. Yeah. So like there's like, so for a European one, for example, I like to try and go a week and a half before. So I can get used to the time zone, get a little bit of sightseeing in and like get some rest and like then focus on practicing for the pro tour.

It's funny. Your experience, my experience is very different because like I don't have a lot of prep. I mean, I have, back when I used to work on the pro tour, I had a little bit of prep for the, for the video, but not that much, and most of my work was when I got there, it was just, like, you know, I had busy days. I'd have to get there, like, early in the morning and stay till late at night, just like you guys, but I was busy behind the scenes putting things together, so I missed the pro tour. I don't really get to go to the pro tour much anymore, so, like I said, there was a period where I had been to every single Pro Tour.

In fact, for the eight years I went, I think I only missed one Pro Tour, and that was for the birth of my oldest daughter. And other than that, eight years I had a streak. But like I said, it's so much seeing the Pro Tours now. It's just so, so different. I wish, because my job was to oversee all the coverage. And seeing all the stuff they have now,

I get so jealous. I'm like, if I had just a fraction of that back in the day. But the internet wasn't a different time. But anyway, now we've got close to our full 30 minutes of podcast. But I want to thank Melissa for joining me.

And it was fun doing our two podcasts here. And I hope you guys learned a little bit more about the Pro Tour. And a little more insight about what... I don't know. All the fun that comes with going to the Pro Tour. But I've just pulled into my driveway. So ironically, that means it's the end of my drive from work. And so instead of talking magic, it's the end of my drive from work.

And so instead of talking magic, it's time to, well, go have dinner, actually. So anyway, thanks for joining me and we'll see you guys next time.