June 2000, Legends Comics and Games
“Yup, I never let it out of my sight.” I lied
“The file says that you told the person complaining that you give the laptop to Fred after each tournament and he inputs the reports each week.” Shit, It was Black. I thought. He was the only person I confided to. How could he be throwing me under the bus like this?
“No, I use Fred’s Internet, the store doesn’t have any, but I do it all myself.” Great, now I’m digging myself even deeper. I’m sure this won’t end well.
Meanwhile, my boss, Marc is looking at me quizzically. I’m feeling so much pressure I think I’m gonna puke. He answered the phone. Wizards hasn’t ever called the store before this, I’m gonna need to lie about this too. That’s what three lies in just the last 3 minutes? How am I gonna keep this up? STRESS!
The woman on the other line is waiting for some answer. I haven’t been listening for the last 30 seconds.
“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”
“Fraudulent Tournament Reports are a major concern Zachary, The DCI investigates these complaints very seriously. Legends has been hosting a lot of events for the last few months, I’d hate to see that be called into Jeopardy.”
OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD! Did she say complaints? with an “s”? Who else complained? Think Zac!
“Me too, I think who ever this is complaining is jealous of Fred’s success. I’ve recently had to talk with a couple of players about cheating. Nothing I can prove, adding cards to draft decks, drawing extra cards during Yawgmoth’s Bargain combo, stuff like that. The same thing you worry about at Grand Prix. They’re good kids, but I think the competition is starting to get to folks. We were a casual store just a year ago, now we have people with their eye on the Pro Tour and I think its starting to get to some of the younger players. Like I said though, there is a group of players that come from another store and they really hate Fred, not being about to beat him doesn’t help that.”
“That could be the case, as I said, this is a preliminary investigation, When ever we get these complaints we reach out to the Tournament organizer and see if they can offer any insight. I don’t want to keep you from your job any longer, it sounds busy there.”
“It is. Thank you for the call Jackie.”
“No, problem Zac, and congrats on your graduation for level 1 judge! It’s great to see you’re taking the next step for your store.”
Holy shit! Did I just deflect this conversation?
“Thanks, It’s been a lot of work. Just getting the store to a point where folks would show up weekly was the hard part.”
“Alright, I’ll keep you posted about what we spoke about before.”
“Thanks, have a good one.”
I hang up the phone. Marc is sorting comics now. The store wasn’t really busy, but it always sounded that way. For now, I think things are ok. But I’m gonna need to talk to Fred. Obviously, he’s still doing it. First I need to look at the results of the tournaments on my computer.
I’m scared, I’m pissed off at my friend, at both of my friends. We all just went to Pro Tour New York. Everyone was fine. What the hell happened…
August 1999
This guy wanders in with Sprocket. Black hair to his shoulders, he looks like he doesn’t really belong with all these Magic players. He looks cool, Like this place is kind of beneath him. Back in 1999, I felt like I could size up a person just by looking at them when it came to Magic. This guy looked like a mark to me, someone you smash in the first round of the tourney and maybe show him how damage on the stack/playing cards at instant speed at the End of Turn works. Those classic errors that newbs make, I could see this guy not realizing he was swimming in my pool. I was the shark.
For a few weeks, I’d been either taking home the box or splitting it in our guaranteed win a Box tournaments. Sundays were getting more competitive. Local ringers were showing up on the regular to try to beat the “scrubs” over at Legends. In reality, I was a big fish in a small pond. I had the cards, the time and the access to play to be one of the better players in the store. It was the Summer of 1999 and I had graduated High School. With no plans for college, I was at a nexus of things that still make you great at Magic. When your only responsiblity is to wake up at 2pm and remember to Counterspell your opponent’s Animate Dead chances are you’re gonna be pretty spot on when it comes to both of those things.
So instead of his normal trading in $20 worth of rares to get $10 in credit for the tourney Sprocket ponies up cash. He introduces me to Fred. The only reason I even remember our meeting was because he gave Sprocket money to play. I can’t remember what happened in the tournament. It was 16 years ago. I do remember that Fred invited me to Superhero City with Sprocket for next Saturday. They were going to play Type 2. Superhero City gave out cash to the winners of their Saturday Tournaments. I told them I’d try to make it out.
If you go back a few weeks you can see how that worked out. I borrowed a deck from Fred, scooped to him in the single elimination rounds and joined his team. Aside from Black and my friends from high school Harry and Paul, I didn’t really have many friends that played Magic. Honestly, I didn’t have many friends that I didn’t work with. There was a group of guys I hung out with after work, at pool halls and diners because that’s what you did if you couldn’t drink. After that pretty much the only person I steadily hung out with was Fred. Our schedules were the same and we both played Magic.
In the year after high school Paul and Harry (my friends from high school that I learned to play with) were still in school as they were a year under me. The townies I played pool with didn’t really share my interests and basically each night degraded into cruising for chicks. And playing pool. And let me tell you, if left to that plan the human race would have died off long ago. So Fred and I took the the Denny’s and Diners late at night to practice for the Pro Tour.
Fred was actually very much like a coach. He supplied the equipment in packs and singles and I upped my game each night, with a Coke and Moons over my Hammy. Play mistakes were pretty much forbidden. Testing was serious stuff. This is also where I learned to play fast and log my mistakes. Fred insisted that we keep track of our play mistakes during the tourney. We talked about them and discussed the better play, we talked about recognizing similar situations and short cutting so that we wouldn’t go to time. Even now that carries over, I rarely tank, and when I do you can bet that it’s a pretty complicated board state. That’s not a secret to success by any stretch but the mantra he dug into me over and over was that Pro Tour is a practice game. A battle of attrition against other people’s level of practice. If you did it right, and more often you had a pretty good chance of beating someone with less practice that was maybe a little better than you.
The speed increase was also a trick Fred and Sprocket used to conceal sleight of hand. Fred always told me that was how Sprocket won so often. He didn’t use it unless the person “deserved” to lose. I didn’t like it, but the guy was 6 years older than me he knew more about what was right than I did. At least that’s how I felt. He also insisted that this wasn’t something you did at my shop.
“Those kids spend every dollar they have just to show up, and get decks together. If they always lose they’ll stop showing up.”
Basically, that translates to, “I’m farming points, if there’s a drought of players we can’t have a harvest.”
I honestly believed that Fred had the stores interest in mind. It behoove do him to make the shop and good place to play. We offered splits to the locals in the top 8 and crushed the Sharks from other stores. This was, after al,l our turf. We had to defend it.
And not for nothing, we kicked ass for a while. Fred put us on decks he built for each tourney. We were instructed to not tinker with the builds and play the decks as we got them. Fred was good at staying ahead of the store’s meta.
Fred kept me ahead of the curve. I enjoyed having a Magic Manager. I hadn’t practiced that hard in High School for any sport and I haven’t since. The results were proof though. I knew the plays to make and I rarely lost in the swiss.
Soon, though Fred pulled his tech. I had transgressed in one of the worst ways. I shared tech with the wrong Shark. More on that next week.