The Magic Pro Tour Hall of Fame is an institution that I have a lot of time for. For the first time ever, I’ve decided to fully document my thought processes in putting together my vote. This is a combination of a few things. Now that I’m the editor here at Magic Madhouse I have a nice straight-forward platform for doing so, which certainly doesn’t hurt. More than that though, this is the first year that the entire community gets to have a say in the Hall of Fame voting. There has never been a better time to share some stories about players, and points of view on who ought to be in the hall.

It’s entirely possible that the Hall of Fame means very little to you as an institution. It may be that whether assorted Pro players are qualified forever more isn’t a big deal for you. Those rare moments of playing against a Hall of Famer at a GP, and getting a badge for your trouble may not be worth worrying about. However, to my mind everyone has been impacted on by the best players in the game. These are the ones whose community outreach includes making the game more accessible through articles and streams. These are the ones coming up with amazing decks time and again for us to try out. Even if this is the first article you’ve ever read on the internet (what are you doing! There are so many cat pictures out there, and you started with this?!), you will have felt the sway of some Hall of Famers, who have shown R&D a thing or two over the years, and helped them make sure that going forward Magic continues to be the best TCG, and quite possibly just the best game of all time.

I’m privileged to have a vote on the Hall of Fame, and have done since year two. This year is an interesting one. I know more or less everyone on the ballot from events, and consider many of them friends (not just in the Facebook sense of the word). Additionally there are lots of calls about the number of people that should be in the hall, and what it should represent. Hopefully as I go through the players, I’ll be able to articulate my view on these issues.

Everyone eligible for the Hall of Fame has played some seriously impressive Magic to get there. 150 Pro Points are not easy to get, and ten years is a long time to have been playing. I’ve been doing coverage for more than ten years now, and it’s been so fun that sometimes I forget quite how much Magic has changed in that time. The players that are on this list are all worthy of some scrutiny, and that’s exactly what they’re going to get here.

Given that for many of you considering community votes, you might not have too much perspective on the players, I figured it was time to go deep. Below you’ll find my thoughts on every player in the list. I really hope I don’t offend any of them, but this is the time for brutal honesty. I respect the Hall of Fame enough not to just go around voting for which people on the list are my best friends.

Buckle in folks, this is likely going to be the longest article on this here website that you are ever likely to see. If you want to find out my views on anyone on the ballot, you will find that CTRL + F is your friend.

Sam Black

The joys of an alphabetical list mean that Sam gets to go first in my epic dissection of the ballot. Sam is, first and foremost to me, a deck builder. The Hall of Fame is sometimes a little soft on builders, as it isn’t a given that they will achieve the best results with their creations, especially in today’s structure of superteams, deep in talent.

Right now, Sam’s key stats on the Pro Tour at a glance are ‘Two Pro Tour Top 8’s, no wins’. An inauspicious engraving for most tombstones. Clearly Sam’s legacy is bigger than that. Sam is fantastic at analysing a situation and finding novel ways of dealing with it. While many d ecks that emerge at Pro Tours feel like they have been handed to us on a plate by Wizards of the Coast, many of Sam’s are quite clearly Sam Black decks that simply wouldn’t have come to be had he not combined ingenuity with top end play skill to make it happen.

As easy as it would be to dismiss Sam as being a deck-builder, it’s worth reminding you that his top 8’s have come in the time when Pro Tours require you to compete in both constructed and draft. Speaking to him just days after Magic 2013 came out, when he’d already dissected and rebuilt the set in his head in terms of draft strategy was amazing. His 2008 Worlds finish on one of the more stacked teams America has put together is also certainly a cap feather that some might overlook because of the fact that it’s a messier stat than simple Pro Tour top eights.

The good thing about Sam is that he’s about as active in Magic as he could be, and I’m confident that his skill set isn’t going to stop him from more banner finishes any time soon. I believe Sam to be better than his stats might indicate. The tricky thing about voting in this way is that Hall of Fame voting doesn’t really work out unless the committee forms a consensus. A large amount of the voters very much do lean on the stats. If someone makes it in without them, there’s always a question mark about whether they should have got in. I want Sam to get in with an exclamation point rather than a question mark, so for this year, he’s not getting my vote. I fully expect to vote for him in the future.

Nico Bohny

So far everyone on our list is a team World Champion. We’re not inducting teams into the hall though, so lets look a little deeper at this Swiss player. Nico is a regular on the Grand Prix circuit in Europe, and has had a good amount of success within t he World Championships over the years, potentially because qualifying for the Swiss team is not quite as hard as it is for assorted other powerhouse teams. When you look at his Pro Tour triumphs, things get a touch thinner. Two Pro Tour top eights in impressive by regular standards, but we simply aren’t talking regular standards when we look at the Hall of Fame. There would need to be quite a bit more to enshrine Nico.

My favourite stories of Bohny are around him being utterly fearless in his deck choices, in a fashion similar to the great Tomi Walamies. While ‘Gri-shoal-brand’ is all over the place in Modern today, it was Bohny who first piloted the deck in a prominent setting, and this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of his rogue choices. At Pro Tour Amsterdam he was sporting a [mtg_card]Runed Halo[/mtg_card]/[mtg_card]Story Circle[/mtg_card]/[mtg_card]Leyline of Sanctity[/mtg_card] deck that was waaaay off the radar, and very cool. As I mentioned in my notes on Sam, it is difficult to get into the Hall of Fame on being a deck-builder alone. His writing is primarily in German, and while excellent, doesn’t really have the sort of reach that is likely to put him over the top in popular voting.

Right now this nice guy is not finishing last, but he’s also not high up enough in this field to win a vote from me. Maybe some time in the future when he’s racked up some more big finishes.

Marcio Carvalho

Onto the first of the controversial members of the list of Hall of Fame candidates. On pure numbers, Marcio has a decent set of stats, including a lifetime median that is among the best on the ballot. Right now his numbers aren’t good enough to be in serious consideration for me, though I’m sure they’ll go up considering that he’s just locked up Platinum this year. The bigger concern I have for Marcio is around persistent rumours of him cheating.

Now, rumours of foul play appear from time to time about just about anyone. It doesn’t take much for them to appear, and they can be difficult to shake off. I once inadvertently made a blooper in coverage, suggesting that LSV had picked up [mtg_card]Eternal Witness[/mtg_card] with [mtg_card]Wirewood Symbiote[/mtg_card] while covering one of the more complicated turns ever as he went on to win PT Berlin. For the record, that was me screwing up in keeping track of a very complicated board state, not Luis. Sometimes people really do make weird little mistakes that look shady. Chapin at the last Pro Tour played an additional land on a complicated turn, and having been stood by on that match, I can easily see that there was a lot going on and it was almost certainly a mistake. The thing with Marcio is that there isn’t just one rumour – there are a whole host of them. I’m not about to air any dirty laundry here, but I have enough concerns about the integrity of his play that he doesn’t get my vote.

To put this into context, someone doesn’t need to have much of an asterisk by their name to be left off my ballot. I didn’t vote for Olivier Ruel, I didn’t vote for Saito or Guillaume Wafo-Tapa. I didn’t even vote for Bob Maher. I don’t accept that for those playing on the Pro Tour in the early days of the game that it was ‘the wild west’ and deserves different standards. I have a hard line there, and so far I’ve had no reason to deviate from it. This isn’t quite as simple as looking at suspensions. There have been some players with shady reputations who never got a suspension. If I’m concerned about the integrity of a player, and in turn the results they appear to have, they won’t get my vote.

Paul Cheon

All three members of the 2008 US National Team are up for voting this year, two of them in my first two people to talk about. When Paul (paulpaulpaul, yes, I get it) first broke onto the scene he was a very big deal. America seemed to have lost some of its edge at the top of the game, and Cheon (along with his goofy pal Luis) showed himself to be a dominant force comparatively quickly. In the year prior to his Worlds win, he’d racked up five Grand Prix top eights, and a pair of wins. This was the guy to showing us how to play good control decks well.

There is an alternate universe where Paul is a likely slam dunk first pick for the Hall of Fame. That is the universe where Paul made the (probably foolish) decision to spend all of his time on Magic rather than taking an awesome job on a desert island doing clever things for good money. It’s the universe where he may not be a proud father and husband. Watching Paul play, there’s no question in my mind that he is hugely talented. However, he did take that break. It was almost certainly the right decision. I’m super happy he’s back though.

Of all the finishes of Paul’s that mean something, I think the biggest might be a 4th place finish at Grand Prix Portland. That was where he got to get back on the Pro Tour, with the help of his best bud LSV and fellow Hall of Fame candidate Eric Froehlich. These days he’s right back in the game, and working on putting up some numbers. He’s also become a super active streamer, opening up high level Magic to a lot more people in a very grass-roots way. To me this isn’t necessarily a necessary trait in a candidate, but is a very welcome addition.

Right now his resume just doesn’t have the Pro Tour success needed to make the Pro Tour Hall of Fame. As with Sam, the next year or two will be important. Spiking some big finishes in the next few years will be a very big deal in terms of ballot building.

Stanislav Cifka

Stan first made his mark as a player (to my mind) when he won Pro Tour Return to Ravnica playing Eggs. It actual fact, Cifka was already a player quietly sitting on enough Pro Points for a high level in the player’s club, but somehow he hadn’t had the standout finish to push him more squarely into the public eye. At that point, I thought that Cifka was naturally a great player for that sort of deck, which is all about perfect sequencing while otherwise being fairly mechanical.

Since then, I’ve seen Stan excel playing 18 land aggro decks in Standard which are all about dominating the red zone, and sat at the top tables with blue/white control lists which never really intend on doing much but completely smothering any plans the opponent might have of winning. Cifka is, plain and simple, just a very talented gamer. A chess master (I don’t believe he’s quite a grand master, but it’s close), there is a fun story about him playing blindfold chess against the likes of Lukas Blohon, Ivan Floch and Martin Juza. While all of them are very successful Magic players, and strategic thinkers, they aren’t on Stan’s level in that game. Apparently he reached a position (blindfold) where he declared the game was over. He explained the sequence of moves that would necessarily follow from the board position they were in which made the win inevitable. Game over, right? Wrong. Juza suggested that they switch seats, so that team NotStan could try to win from what is essentially a winning position. It turns out that while Cifka was able to think many moves ahead, his unblindfolded compatriots couldn’t do the same, and gradually got out-maneuvered by Cifka.

Stan has also had some success on the burgeoning Hearthstone circuit, where his general abilities as a gamer have translated very well. While Cifka has two top eights in 19 Pro Tours, and a win, he still hasn’t cemented himself for me as one of the game’s all time greats. Perhaps in time he will, but with so many games that he’s competing at at a high level, I wonder if focus may be an issue for him.

Andrew Cuneo

Draw. Go.

These two words are very important in the history of Andrew Cuneo. This is the man who has been playing blue based control decks for about as long as they have existed. He may well have built some of the first. Andrew has an impressive career median of 53rd at the Pro Tour, which is the third best of anyone at on the ballot. What he doesn’t have though are the sort of stand-out finishes to get a vote from me.

I can imagine a different version of the Hall of Fame where Andrew would be a likely candidate. If we looked at people who have been important for the game, I can easily see that Andrew would be in, for showing us how it’s done in a way that really makes a big difference to how everyone plays. It would likely be a hall populated more by deck builders than those who are credited as winners with them. John Ormerod would be in there. Dave Price probably would too. That isn’t the Hall of Fame we have. As long as stats are important, Cuneo’s simply aren’t good enough. Thankfully for us, he’s currently a regular on the Pro Tour, so even if he doesn’t make the hall any time soon, we’ll see him around the top tables regardless

Willy Edel

Now we come to a very interesting candidate. With four Pro Tour top eights, Edel has at least one of the key metrics for a lot of commentators. Some point at the fact that his stats drop off fast after those top eights, but rejecting him on pure stats is a little harder than everyone we’ve spoken about thus far. What Willy brings to the table beyond raw numbers is certainly worthy of mention though. This man is Brazilian Magic.

There are a few sides to this, and all of them come from people other that Willy, who may have a trumpet somewhere, but certainly doesn’t seem to be one to toot it in public. The first of these is that he mentors Brazilian players and supports organised play in a way that is only really rivaled by the way that Bram Snepvangers supported the early days of Dutch Magic. There have been a number of occasions where this has been at the detriment of his own ability to perform at the highest level. Given the option of working with a number of super-teams, Willy has consistently worked on supporting his local players wherever possible, both in testing and the fiddly logistics of even getting to events. There’s also the fact that playing Magic in Brazil is a difficult business, card availability and travel complexity mean that competing at the highest level is tougher than it might be for those elsewhere in the world. This has never stopped Willy.

All of the above paragraph would, of course, mean nothing if Edel hadn’t also put up results. He has. He’s also more or less the leading authority on building competitive mid-range decks, be they all shades of Abzan or some variation on Jund.

Willy Edel is an overwhelmingly positive force in Magic and a fearsome competitor. At the time of writing, he is my first vote for the 2015 Hall of Fame.

Gerard Fabiano

Somehow or other (I presume due to a typo in some very old coverage), for a very long time I was mis-pronouncing Gerard’s name. Fabiano is something of an institution to his friends, the loveable joker of the Pro Tour who has his own fan club ($5 entry, and you get a slice of cheesecake on your birthday. Spoiler alert, chances of getting cheesecake are staggeringly low). Fabiano is good fun to be around, which sometimes overshadows his successes as a deck-builder and player. With three GP wins and a PT Top 8, he’s certainly no slouch, and much of his success has come with playing his own creations, a skill that I personally have a lot of time for.

There are a lot of Gerard stories. Some of them are more easily shareable than others without knowing him. My favourite one is a bit of a classic, from a PTQ in the Extended format from well over a decade ago. Fabiano was playing a Junk (Abzan) list and cast [mtg_card]Demonic Consultation[/mtg_card] looking to find his biggest creature to get his beatdown on. Unfortunately, the name of the card ([mtg_card]Hunted Wumpus[/mtg_card]) just wouldn’t come to him. The closest he got was ‘Humpus Wumpus’. The judge was having none of that – he had to name a legal Magic card. After three minutes of trying to get to the right name, he just couldn’t do it, and had to go for the easier to remember [mtg_card]Cursed Scroll[/mtg_card]. [mtg_card]Uktabi Orangutan[/mtg_card] ultimately put an end to that plan, and meant that Fabiano would have to find a different PTQ to win.

That play alone is enough to get Gerard enshrined somewhere. It’s not the Pro Tour Hall of Fame though. At least not yet.

Chris Fennell

Fennell and Fabiano have the same number of Pro Tour top eights (just the one) but have had careers that are otherwise quite dissimilar. Fennell is known as one of the better drafters on the tour, and scored his lone top eight as recently as Pro Tour Born of the Gods, playing Storm in Modern Constructed based on just a tiny amount of practice with the deck.

The best way to get to know Chris is at the draft table, and indeed he’s typically seen at the Pro Tour wearing a backwards baseball cap with the word ‘Drafts?’ emblazoned just above his eyeline. Sadly I’m busy enough at the Pro Tour that I’ve not had a chance to get thumped by him in a draft just yet, but I live in hope. Fennell’s work as a team member is similar to that of Ben Stark’s, as a key draft strategist. Being able to break down a draft format and teach it is a phenomenal skill, and was enough to have Chris recruited to onto one of the bigger pro teams.

Being on this sort of team could do wonders for Chris in terms of building his Hall of Fame resume. Right now it is pretty thin, but as an active player on the tour, it seems possible to me that we haven’t seen the best of him yet.

Ivan Floch

Being a player associated with just a single type of deck is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as you’re really really good with that deck. Floch is exceptional at playing control, to the extent that he won Pro Tour Magic 2015 with control, and then made top eight of the very next Pro Tour (Khans of Tarkir) with control, in a field where the deck was one he actually believed not to be especially well positioned.

Floch is one of a few top Eastern European players who live together, gaming every day. In some respects they are what terrifies me about what it might take to be a Pro Tour Champion. When you have exceptional players who live with other exceptional players, and devote most of their time to playing, improving, iterating to perfection, how are us folks with jobs meant to keep up?

Floch, who has had Team World Championship success in addition to his individual results, needs to build his stats to be in the conversation for me, but he has put himself in an environment where this is entirely possible. He’s currently Platinum, and will be around the Pro Tour for a good while yet.

Eric Froehlich

The current number 1 ranked player in the world has probably the strongest set of stats of anyone on the Pro Tour. His career median finish at the Pro Tour is 52nd. His three year median is 23rd. With four top eights and a whopping 10 top 16s, the only cherry left off the cake for Froehlich is a Pro Tour win. Eric has made the top 64 of over half the Pro Tour’s he’s ever played in – and he’s played in 41 of them! Let there be no mistake, his stats are absolutely crazy, and right now he is more or less at the peak of his powers, making a strong run for Player of the Year.

Is there a world in which Eric doesn’t get the votes he needs to make the Hall of Fame? Actually, yes. While he is one of the true crusaders of fair play in the game, Eric is also someone who has a bit of a history of being, for lack of a better term, a sourpuss. There was a relatively long period of time where his online persona was outspoken to the point of rudeness, mirrored to some extent by his being less than graceful in defeat. Community involvement, and promotion of the game in a positive light is a big deal these days, and for a good while, Eric was not someone I’d associate that with. When players don’t want to be paired up with you because you aren’t fun to play in addition to because you’re good, that’s not a good thing.

Times, they are a changin’. My first real interaction with Eric came at Pro Tour Gatecrash, where I had the pleasure to interview him upon making another top eight. To say that he was emotional would be an understatement. I nearly cut the interview short, because I had a concern that we might see tears of joy, and while those are clearly the best kind of tears, I didn’t necessarily want to make anyone feel uncomfortable on camera. I’m very glad the interview ran to it’s conclusion though. It included heartfelt thanks from Eric to family and friends for their support and involvement with the game, with them being what makes the game truly special to him. It was emotional in all the best ways.

To my mind, Froehlich is someone who deeply loves Magic, and has strong feelings which he shares. In the last few years, this has become increasingly positive, with commentary stints (both on GPs and Vintage Super Series) and now a role on Constructed Resources with Marshall Sutcliffe. I believe that he’s come to understand his position within the community better, and has adjusted his behaviour accordingly. Yes, he can still get a bit salty when he loses, and tends not to be the most talkative of players at the table when the pressure is on. All told though, he’s an asset to the Magic community that I wouldn’t want going anywhere.

Eric Froehlich is firmly on my ballot for the Magic Pro Tour Hall of Fame.

Justin Gary

It is a little bit crazy to me that we are 12 names into the ballot before we have a player that I wouldn’t consider active in the game. Justin Gary has a stat line that runs side-by-side with Eric Froehlich’s including a Pro Tour win, and places on the US National team as well as strong runs in the Masters series. Three Pro Tour top eights, 20 top 32s. Make no mistake, Justin Gary was a machine at putting in high quality finishes at the Pro Tour.

I would forgive you, of course, for making exactly the mistake of not realising how good Justin was if you met him, because you could easily have been dazzled by his ever smiling visage. Justin basically always looks like he’s having a great time, because it seems that basically he always is. When he won the Pro Tour, it was in a top eight where two of his teammates (already hall of famers) finished second and third. With entirely different decks!

Justin took his absence from the game to work in making games, and has been very successful in that endeavour. Ascension is one of a number of top notch deck-building games that are out there right now, and before that Justin was involved in making the Vs System game that I for one enjoyed immensely.

The last time I saw Justin was at a Grand Prix in Germany in 2010, around the time that Ascension was first being released in Europe. He and Brian Kibler were over to peddle their wares at Essen, the world’s biggest games expo. At that point I spoke to him about Magic, Hall of Fame and everything that it meant to him. At the point that he’d left the game, he felt he’d achieved everything he wanted to. He’d won a Pro Tour and played at the very highest level, with a dominant run in the late 90’s where he could be expected to finish in the top 25.

Then, the Hall of Fame came out. First he saw Darwin Kastle inducted, then assorted other teammates, and his friend Brian Kibler, who worked with him on Ascension. Hall of Fame was certainly something he wanted to achieve, and he made it very clear that if he was in the Hall, he would come back and play on the Pro Tour. The difficult thing for Justin, was eking enough time out in his schedule to qualify for the Pro Tour to show the world what he could do. That was true then, and I believe is true now.

I’m confident that Justin has the numbers to be fine induction to the Hall of Fame, but I worry a little that he’s been off the tour for so long that his induction may prove to be difficult – many players simply don’t know him. He has my vote, but I’m wary that it may be a vote in vain. We are at the point now where there have been about 100 Pro Tours, and I think it makes sense to look back through history at the great players in the game. In the same way that Chris Pikula got a special invite to PT Philadelphia (his home-town PT) when he was close on the ballot, I’d be just fine with Justin getting a shot at showing what he can do.

Mark Herberholz

Mark Herberholz is a player who can be characterised a lot of different ways, depending on who’s talking about him. To some, he is one of the greatest deckbuilders of all time, up there with Gabriel Nassif, Zvi Mowshowitz and John Ormerod. To others, he is a crazy goofball who is at the centre of all sorts of ludicrous stories, including but not limited to, the time that he was The Price is Right and went loopy as he won $5,000. One thing sometimes gets forgotten, with him currently not playing on the tour. There was a time that he was spoken about as being the best player in the world.

While a lot of people (especially us salty Brits) focus on his victory over Craig Jones in the finals of Pro Tour Honolulu, for me the tournament that really stands out for Mark was Pro Tour Yokohama. The format was Time Spiral Block Constructed. In the weeks before the tournament, white weenie had been dominant online, but by the time it came to Yokohama itself, red decks sporting main-deck [mtg_card]Sulfur Elemental[/mtg_card] had marginalised that plan. The ‘best deck’ in the tournament was likely a variation on [mtg_card]Mystical Teachings[/mtg_card] control, but with a format sporting a huge amount of cards to play with, this block constructed event had a lot of moving parts to consider. Many of the decks sporting [mtg_card]Mystical Teachings[/mtg_card] were straight blue/black, or potentially blue/black/red, splashing for [mtg_card]Detritivore[/mtg_card] to win control mirrors. Herberholz went further still with his build, including white for [mtg_card]Teferi’s Moat[/mtg_card] and [mtg_card]Pull From Eternity[/mtg_card], along with the likes of [mtg_card]Magus of the Tabernacle[/mtg_card] in his sideboard. Ultimately he lost out to Hall of Famer Guillaume Wafo-Tapa in the finals, but that list was one that stuck in this reporter’s mind as being a metagame razor that showed a deep understanding of the environment he’d be facing.

Herberholz has no fear for complicated decks to design or play. If his [mtg_card]Mystical Teachings[/mtg_card] deck was hard to play, then his top eight deck from Pro Tour Philadelphia was downright brutal. [mtg_card]Sensei’s Divining Top[/mtg_card] and [mtg_card]Gifts Ungiven[/mtg_card] are among the more complicated cards to play with at the best of times, and Herberholz’s main-deck plan was a complicated Rube Goldberg machine of splice interactions, which set up a fiddly [mtg_card]Hana Kami[/mtg_card] loop to lock opponents out of the game. His sideboard had a no less fiddly beatdown plan, with options at setting up different kinds of locks using the likes of [mtg_card]Yosei, the Morning Star[/mtg_card] on some occasions, and aggressive discard on others.

The biggest thing that Mark has to worry about in terms of getting into the Hall of Fame is the fact that with each passing year, there are fewer players that know him. For many, stories of his antics echo longer in history than his top level play. Sadly antics don’t get you into the Hall of Fame. I believe that there’s a strong case for Mark’s record though, and much as with Justin Gary, I wish that he would get onto the Pro Tour for at least one event to remind the world what he can do.

Tsuyoshi Ikeda

If Ikeda gets into the Pro Tour Hall of Fame at this point, it will be a Lifetime Achievement Award. This Japanese pro has long been heralded as the taskmaster behind assorted other Japanese success stories, but the thing that most stands out about his statistics at this point is just how many Pro Tours he’s played on. With 59 events under his belt, it seems almost inevitable that some of his numbers will look good. Four Pro Tour top eights, 313 Pro Points – these are not easily achieved milestones. However, how do we rate four top eights in 59 tries against someone like Stanislav Cifka, with two top eights in just 16 events. Clearly the absolute number of successes achieved is not worth nothing, but there are certainly some stats that are ‘counting stats’ that we would naturally expect to improve as players have more opportunity to achieve them.

Tsuyoshi is one of a very small number of people on this year’s ballot who I haven’t interacted with at all. This is unfortunate, as I would love to have more first hand experience to help me make up my mind on his level of play. There’s a school of thought in martial arts that if you took everyone’s coloured belt off, and watched them train for a while, you’d be able to tell who the black belts are. I kind of hope that the same would more or less hold true of Hall of Famers too – that you can subconsciously tell that they are on another level from watching them do their thing, like listening to a concert pianist. While they might have a legacy of greatness, to the uninitiated it is still clear they are great after just a few bars.

With Ikeda, I don’t have those bars to work with. In previous years, I’ve heard glowing reports of his play from only a comparatively small number of players. While this may come across as a bias toward people I know, it’s more just that without personal experience, I don’t see Ikeda’s stats as being good enough on their own to assure him admittance into a Hall of Fame that many already consider to be on the large side.

Michael Jacob

Remember Sam Black’s US Nationals team? Michael Jacob was the third on it. MJ (or DarkestMage as he’s known on Magic Online/Twitch) is actually someone I’ve known personally for longer than just about anyone else on this list, having first met him back in the summer of 2004, where we were both playing VS system. He was a great player at that game, which was admittedly a shallower talent pool than the Pro Tour today, and is by no means a slouch when it comes to tapping lands and casting spells. The biggest note I have on MJ relates more to his presence as one of the early adopters of Twitch streaming rather than his dominant performances at Pro Tour level. With one top eight and a pair of top 16 finishes, he is not commanding attention for people’s votes in the same way as many others on the ballot, but that doesn’t mean to say that Jacob is not important to the game.

These days, streaming of Magic is still growing, but I’d struggle to say that it’s really found its place. The game of Magic is a fiddly one to broadcast because it has an ebb and flow quite unlike any regular computer or video game, and the structure of Magic Online events inevitably creates downtime that can be difficult to stay entertaining through. Is there a good answer to this? Some streamers double-queue or play other games in-between Magic rounds. If and when leagues get introduced online, there may be an infrastructure that allows more seamless play. I myself have shied away from streaming Magic Online for the time-being for these reasons, even though I have a lot of practice at talking about the game. Michael Jacob has a real talent for being able to articulate what is going on in a game, breaking it down and bringing the viewer closer to his level of play. It’s clear from watching him play that he’s good, it’s just not so clear whether he’s one of the all-time greats. I’d love to get a chance to watch him doing more at the Pro Tour level, as I feel his stats don’t fully reflect what he’s capable of.

Scott Johns

Scott Johns has been on the Pro Tour Hall of Fame ballot for longer than anyone else. This tells us two things. His record is good enough that he keeps getting enough votes to stay on the ballot, but also that there’s something about him that means he’s not getting enough votes to get in the Hall. What is the reason for this ballot purgatory? On the face of things, five Pro Tour top eights with a win ought to be plenty. Scott was even one of the pioneers behind early Magic strategy sites, having worked as the editor of Mindripper.com, Brainburst, and Magicthegathering.com. When I first started as a Pro Tour writer around Pro Tour Prague, Scott was still on the coverage team, in the background making sure that everything that went up on the site looked great.

I believe that there are a few things at play to Scott’s status with regard to his Hall of Fame prospects. From day one, his stats have been good, and they haven’t changed from that point. That is enough to get him in a lot of conversations. The tricky thing is, the way that those conversations go isn’t exactly in his favour. Scott was in the top eight of five of the earliest Pro Tours, including Pro Tour 1. It is not exactly a secret that at that time, rules enforcement worked a little differently, with many people referring to those events as being ‘the wild west’. Scott never received any suspensions for foul play, but there were certainly rumblings about how he played back then, with rules lawyering and clock manipulation frequently being mentioned. There is also the simple assertion that succeeding at the very first few Pro Tours may not have been as challenging as it is today. As those earliest events fall into dimmer and darker memory, there is also potentially the concern that many of the voting committee simply don’t know who Scott is, or anything about him, making him tricky to vote for.

To me, the only consideration that really exists in terms of whether Scott gets my vote is around concerns about shadiness in his play. It seems crazy to me to deny someone a vote because the time at which they excelled was a time when it was easier to do so. We don’t know how good a baseball player Babe Ruth would be today. It’s not worth speculating on. However, of his time he was incredible. Denying Scott Johns a spot in the Hall of Fame based on his stats simply doesn’t seem correct. However, denying him a position based on concerns about how he played the game seems more reasonable, at least within my own set of rules for voting. Having spoken to various of his contemporaries from the early days of the Pro Tour, I have sufficient concern to strike him from my voting list.

Martin Juza

When talking about Tsuyoshi Ikeda, I made reference to counting stats. These are the big numbers that inevitably inflate as sample sizes get bigger. Ikeda has a lot of decent Pro Tour finishes to his name, in part, because he played in a lot of Pro Tours. Martin Juza has over 400 Pro Points, in part, because he has played more Grand Prix than just about anyone else on the planet.

Technically, I don’t have a stat on the number of Grand Prix Martin has played in. However, I know that there was a period of a few years where Martin and Shuhei Nakamura pretty much didn’t miss one. Twenty-two top eights at the GP level is, let us be very clear, insane. Martin is definitely a spectacularly skilled player. However, when he places himself in a room with all of the other most spectacularly good players in the world, his results haven’t looked quite as good. Two Pro Tour top eights, no wins. Eight top 32 finishes. This isn’t quite a Hall of Fame resume to my mind.

I’ve spent a bit of time considering Martin’s stats, to try to make sense of how he hasn’t done better at the Pro Tour level. He is naturally more inclined toward limited than constructed, which is not unusual of top level Pros. Beyond that though, it may be that all of that globe-trotting and format switching for GP preparation has left his preparation for big events somewhat hampered. At Grand Prix level, there is less requirement to get in on a good deck from the ground floor. Being a better technical player potentially reaps bigger rewards at GPs than at PTs (where there aren’t so many matches with huge skill disparities). Meanwhile, being better prepared and hitting the ground running with a fine constructed list and draft plan is very valuable at the Pro Tour in a way that diminishes by the time of Grand Prix.

Martin was the first of the eastern Europeans to take centre stage at an international level after Arnost Zidek. I feel he’s one or two great Pro Tours away from getting my vote, which I sincerely hope he earns.

Tomohiro Kaji

These days Tomohiro Kaji is a member of the Niko-Niko broadcast team who stream the Pro Tours to an ever-growing Japanese audience of fans. It is easy to forget sometimes that he was also one third of a powerhouse team that won a Pro Tour. Alongside Shota Yasooka and Tomoharu Saito, he lifted a trophy in Charleston, but isn’t necessarily someone who remains a household name to western audiences. Watching him in tears of joy for his friend Shota Yasooka at Pro Tour Dragons of Tarkir was a beautiful moment, but much of his biggest celebrations recently have been vicarious rather than personal.

I was fortunate enough to be around to watch Kaji draft for top eight at Pro Tour London a decade ago. There, he was fighting for attention with the likes of Masashi Oiso and Tsuyoshi Fujita. When the other two Japanese players in your draft both now have Hall of Fame rings, it’s easy to be overlooked. That draft didn’t work out for Kaji, who would have to wait for the World Championships that year to lock up another top eight. With three top eights in total over the course of his career, Kaji certainly has a record better than almost every pro player around. Sadly for him, it is likely not one good enough to make him stand out for Hall of Fame.

Tzu-Ching Kuo

At first glance on the stats sheet, Tzu-Ching Kuo appears to be lacking any top eight finishes, something of a bummer if you are planning on making the Hall of Fame. Thus far his ultimate achievement was to be the captain of the Chinese Taipei team who won the first World Magic Cup. This injection of Pro Points, along with those that followed with his World Championship invite meant that Tzu-Ching Kuo would become more of a household name outside the APAC region, where he was already well known for utter dominance at the Grand Prix level.

At the Pro Tour level, a single top 16 is not enough to really begin a conversation for his position in the Pro Tour Hall of Fame. At present he will have to make do with being part of the most electric .gif ever seen as part of a Magic event. I’m referring, of course, to the top-decked [mtg_card]Bonfire of the Damned[/mtg_card] which knocked a star-studded Team USA out of that year’s World Magic Cup. I was stood as part of the crowd watching that match, and all the emotions there were very real. Tzu-Ching Kuo and his crew went on to win the whole event – certainly a relevant exclamation point on his Magic career thus far.

Shingou Kurihara

It may be something about how my brain processes information, but for some reason, Limited Pro Tours (or Pro Tours with draft top eights) don’t stick in my mind in quite the same way as those with constructed decks. This, if nothing else is probably one good reason why every Pro Tour now sports a constructed top eight. Kurihara’s lone Pro Tour top eight finish was at Pro Tour Geneva, drafting Time Spiral and Planar Chaos. Pro Tour ‘Ski Trip’ certainly had many memorable moments for me personally, including my only ever venture onto skis, and witnessing an epic battle between Quentin Martin and Sebastian Thaler, who was shooting for Rookie of the Year. Shingou Kurihara’s top eight was not a moment that really stood out for me.

While I had witnessed Kurihara’s rise through the ranks of top players in the months prior, with solid numbers at a Grand Prix level, his was never a brand of Magic that got me excited. He won plenty, but his was never the draft you were arching your neck to see. He was never the player with a constructed deck that was worth crossing the room to find out more about.

Osyp Lebedowicz

If you’re looking for someone on the Pro Tour who would be described as ‘a character’, Osyp certainly qualifies. With a Pro Tour win in Venice (playing red/white [mtg_card]Astral Slide[/mtg_card] in Onslaught Block Constructed), along with a couple of other top eights, Osyp has the pedigree to be part of the discussion for the Hall of Fame, but when I think of him, the first thing that appears in my head is not the image of one of the greatest Magic players of all time; rather the Clown Prince of the Pro Tour. One of the tricky things with Oysp’s sense of humour was that it was deeply laced with sarcasm and mockery. A natural performer, in a big group he would loudly claim the centre of attention, and hold it like the high ground in a civil war melee. For those on the receiving end of his comedic jabs, things could be a little rough. It is no big secret that his stint commentating on the finals of the Pro Tour is one of the reasons that for a long while Pro players were not allowed in the coverage booth. However, when on point, Osyp was (and I’m sure is) riotously funny.

Let’s get back to Magic though. When you catch Osyp in ‘serious mode’ he is a fearsome competitor, particularly in constructed formats. Two of Osyp’s three Pro Tour top eights were in Block Constructed, for Odyssey and Onslaught blocks. Block constructed was an odd format in some respects because it tends to be a format with few real surprises. The card pool is often small enough that the real success stories are about small adjustments to lists or lines of play, to differentiate between the good and the great. When he won in Venice, while Red/White [mtg_card]Astral Slide[/mtg_card] was not a surprising deck (indeed, it was one of the lists in the top eight that many were most prepared for), it still included some individual touches that pushed it a little over the top. In Osaka, the blue/black [mtg_card]Psychatog[/mtg_card] was a little more interesting. While it would go on to be a powerhouse in Standard, at the time much of the focus of the format was on mono-black vs blue/green Madness. In what seemed to be a fairly open and shut metagame, ‘Joe Black’ (Osyp’s nom de plume from a string of entertaining articles) found a way to win.

I would love to see Osyp back at the Pro Tour, but again find myself struggling to put together a strong enough case for him winning my vote. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of there being some sort of invitation system to let us see some of the big names from yesteryear playing more Magic. Obviously I could consult old internet replays, or they could grind their way back onto the Pro Tour, but I don’t think it would hurt for there to be a courtesy invite or two for players like Osyp.

Marijn Lybaert

Guilty confession time. Even though I work fairly regularly with Marijn on Grand Prix coverage, I still have to stop and think about both the spelling and pronunciation of his name. Additionally, even though he has four top eights, he doesn’t have my vote this year.

Let us be clear. Marijn is a great Magic player. You don’t get four top eights by being any kind of a slouch. He’s also got a raft of community contributions, from the coverage that he and I get to work on together to his work nurturing the institution that is Belgique Magic. It is obvious from speaking to him that he loves Magic and that that love translates into a lot of hard work, and ultimately success.

The fact that Marijn isn’t getting my vote this year is, if anything, a testament to the regard in which I hold the Hall of Fame. While four Pro Tour top eights is an achievement few have matched, to my mind it doesn’t signify the kind of mastery that makes someone a sure-fire vote-winner. I mentioned earlier the idea of having an exclamation point somewhere in one’s resume. Right now, I don’t feel like I have one for Marijn.

Tom Martell

A three year median of 16th at the Pro Tour is utterly insane. It is the best of anyone on this ballot, and is likely to remain among the top three year medians we will *ever* see on a Hall of Fame stat sheet. With just two Pro Tour top eights (including a win), it signifies that Tom had a few seasons where he was always in the running, but rarely at the very front.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Tom’s brain simply moves at a faster pace than mine. If you measure speed of thought by speed of speech, that would certainly be true. Possibly he is, like much of the world, more caffeinated than me. Regardless of where it comes from though, Tom is one of the players that I tend to very much enjoy watching, because he really thinks through his plays, and plays very cleanly and crisply. If, after a match, you ask him something about one of his games, he can typically reconstruct it all, and give you a detailed reason for why he made the play he did. Some players play on instinct. I get the feeling that where Tom is really great is at figuring it out. The Pro Tour is clearly a good place for him, as this is where sets are at their newest, and he can leverage the ability to think on his feet well. I shudder to think what level he’d be playing at if he could devote more of his time to the game.

Tom doesn’t get a vote from me this year. In spite of that crazy median, he hasn’t demonstrated quite enough ‘winningness’ to get past the post. A mainstay on the Pro Tour though, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if in future years I took a different view when it comes to his vote.

Kazuya Mitamura

Known to his friends as ‘Chief’, the winner of Pro Tour Honolulu had a relatively short Pro Tour career, but one studded with highlights, including that one win. I principally always thought of him as a Limited player – among the best in the world at one time.

I fondly recall interviewing Mitamura at Grand Prix Bochum about the Scars of Mirrodin draft format, where he’d been introduced to me as ‘the best person in the world to speak to about drafting infect’. While everyone else was in the process of working out the basics, Mitamura already had a full set of pick orders figured out, along with clear indicators as to what he considered signals, and where to go when it came to drafting less traditional infect decks should the more straightforward plan of ‘pick the creatures with infect, dummy’ prove difficult.

Mitamura didn’t have great English, and my Japanese falls somewhere between ’embarrassing’ and ‘non-existent’. That he was able to explain in detail both the nuts and bolts of draft orders, and the more nuanced details that turned a bad infect deck into a good one, was a testament to his clarity of thought, and it was no surprise to me at all to receive a message from Steve Sadin (then Limited Information author over at magicthegathering.com) letting me know that his article for the week was basically sorted, and ought to just be a link back to the interview.

Chief is a little short on finishes and impact to get my vote, but my fantasy Pro Tour of people I’d like to see competing just one more time has gotten just a little bit bigger.

Kenny Oberg

While the story of Pro Tour Berlin ultimately ended up being all about Elves, and most particularly LSV, who walked away with the trophy, it could easily have worked out that instead we would have wound up talking about one little Swede who had found a way past The Elvish Menace. Kenny Oberg’s blue/artifact deck ‘Tezzerator’ was a revelation in the Extended format, taking him into the top eight of Pro Tour Berlin almost undefeated. It marks the high point in his career, which has included a great many innovative decks.

Someone who I always associate with creativity when it comes to deck-building, I feel that Kenny has a place in a Hall of Fame, but not really the one we currently have. If there were a Hall of Fame less focused on finishes, and more on deck design, I can well see Oberg making it. As things stand though, he would have to put up some more numbers to make it into the Hall of Fame we have.

David Ochoa

I feel like David Ochoa gets it. Of all the people on the Pro Tour, he’s the one that I think has best figured out how to have a blast at every event he’s at. I would like to imagine that Ocho has a string of groupies who follow him on Twitter, while literally following him, about a week behind, eating and drinking everywhere that David has eaten and drunk. They too would be having a fantastic time. Technically, it may well be that many of Channel Fireball fit that description, as I’m confident he’s one of the ringleaders in the group for finding great places to dine.

David’s successes at the Pro Tour, while enough to get him on the ballot for Hall of Fame, aren’t enough to get him a great deal further. I’d say that this is a shame and that I feel sorry for him, but that’s simply not true. Ochoa is doing great, and I can’t see that changing any time soon.

Jamie Parke

Three Pro Tour top eights in three separate decades is something very few people will ever achieve, and speaks of a longevity that doesn’t exist for most people playing Magic. In point of fact, I feel that there have been a few incarnations of Jamie Parke over the years. The most recent one is the only one I’ve hung out with much, but I very much like it.

When Parke had his first success on the Pro Tour, he was a fast talking kid with a knack for the game beyond his years. These days, Jamie is a little older, a little wiser, and has a formidable combination of attributes – talent and dedication. Either one is enough to get a long way in life, but both together is where greatness lies. I recall speaking to Jamie after he made his most recent top eight finish, and we spoke about how this time around, he has a newfound focus for the game, wanting to properly dedicate his time to it, and see how far he can go. With a great team around him, his goal of taking down a Pro Tour some time soon doesn’t sound like any kind of grandstanding. Like a good control deck, I have a sneaking suspicion that Jamie Parke has inevitability. With one more top eight (and ideally a win) I can easily see Jamie making the cut in the future.

Brock Parker

Remember the way back when of the start of this article where I said I knew most of the people on the ballot? Brock Parker is one of the few exceptions. While I’ve heard many great players talk about him, I’ve never once seen him play, which leaves me with little more than a stats sheet to work with. To say that this leaves me outside my comfort zone would be an understatement.

Unfortunately for Brock, based purely on the numbers he’s not done enough to get my vote. Winning a Pro Tour is not enough alone, otherwise we’d have a weird variation on the Hall of Fame where Mike Pustilnik would be sipping champagne while Kenji Tsumura and Masashi Oiso were left waiting at the door.

Neil Reeves

Neil was first described to me as ‘cool as the underside of a pillow, but terrifying at the draft table’. At Pro Tour Fate Reforged, I found myself in a discussion with various members of the coverage team and Pro players, about the ultimate 3 man draft team. Assorted names were thrown out there, including William Jensen and Mike Turian (both Hall of Fame members). My personal pick for their third was Neil Reeves, which met a lot of oohs and ahs from the cheap seats of players who hadn’t been around for long enough to feel like wading in on the conversation. When Ben Stark turns around and says, ‘yeah, that’s probably a pretty good pick’, you know that you are on to a winner.

In this case, Neil Reeves isn’t a Pro Tour winner, and with two top eights, he is quite a ways off being able to really contend for a spot in the Hall of Fame. However, the heartening thing for me is that this shop owner still plays and has dallied with the Pro Tour fairly recently. His run at Pro Tour Theros was a good one, and his act at the draft table remains just as potent as ever it was. For those not familiar, Neil is sharp as a whip, but has a great knack for presenting a table image of someone who doesn’t know what’s going on. Almost everyone’s story of first playing him involves underestimating at some point, only to be caught flat-footed by some of the highest level play around.

The really funny thing is, even if you know about this ‘act’, you’ll probably still get caught. Neil is that good.

Tomoharu Saito

I mentioned, a while ago now, my stance on players with reputations that are less than pristine. Tomoharu Saito, in spite of all he’s done for the Magic community over the years (running a popular Tokyo based chain of stores, designing and sharing deck tech on some of the best aggro decks ever devised), as well as his insane stats sheet, is not enough to get me to look past his two bans.

While I’ve watched a lot of his play over the years, and know that the vast majority of his success is likely down to his being a very skilled player, this is a line in the sand I’m not crossing (and indeed is one I didn’t cross even before his second ban).

David Sharfman

It’s hard to get onto the Hall of Fame ballot. It takes time and no small amount of success. David Sharfman has a Pro Tour win, but once we get past that, there isn’t too much more to push him into the upper echelons of those I might vote for. It was at the point that I started looking at Sharfman’s stats that I first got to wondering how I would feel about the Hall of Fame voting if the requirement to get on the ballot was 200 Pro Points rather than 150.

I would remain sad that Chris Pikula is not an option to vote for.

I would note in passing that Scott Johns was not eligible any more, and likely would never be.

I would have a little chuckle about the fact that Matej Zatlkaj would again be in a position of having to chase the last points to be eligible as a candidate.

I probably wouldn’t miss David Sharman.

At some point, I expect the threshold of Pro Points to be on the ballot to increase. I’m quite glad not to be the person having to choose what to and when, but everyone likes a nice round number. If Scott Johns didn’t get onto next year’s ballot anyway, now would seem a good time to raise the threshold.

Matt Sperling

Matt Sperling, a little like Eric Froehlich, is someone who I had decided I didn’t particularly like when my only experience of him was through the internet. He has some strong opinions, and a wicked sense of humour that can rub many people up the wrong way.

In person, I like Matt a lot. He’s every bit as sharp, but it’s far easier to tell when he’s joking, and that in joking he really isn’t trying to make anyone angry. It’s no surprise whatsoever to me that he works in law, as his ability to construct and enact a logical line, both in games of Magic and conversation, is quick and clean. In interviewing Matt about Paul Rietzl for his Hall of Fame induction, it became all the more clear how much the game means to him on a social level – when Matt is in a room playing Magic he’s also in a room hanging out with some of his best friends, and that is a very important piece of the puzzle.

Some of Matt’s biggest success has come teaming up with friends in Team Limited Grand Prix, and with one top eight at the Pro Tour level, I doubt he’s too worried about getting into the Hall of Fame just yet. A regular on the Pro Tour, I think it’s unlikely we’ve seen the last (or indeed the best) of him yet.

Yuuta Takahashi

I have covered exactly two Japanese Grand Prix. Both of them were won by faeries, and both by Yuuta Takahashi. His mastery of that particular tribe is one that will always live strong in my memory. While Yuuta hasn’t ever held a period of dominance that would naturally recommend him for induction to the Hall of Fame, that doesn’t mean to say I won’t remember him even if he has no more finishes in the future.

It is interesting that it is possible for someone to potentially make the Hall of Fame based on a short spell of being very good with a particular style of Magic. Had Nicolai Herzog not met Mirrodin draft (which scored him two Pro Tour wins), would he have made Hall of Fame? Possibly not. The point is moot for Yuuta, who would really have needed to show off his skills a little more on the Pro Tour stage to make the Pro Tour Hall of Fame, but is probably worth considering in abstract for future candidates.

Sebastian Thaler

How valuable is Rookie of the Year in Hall of Fame calcuations? My personal stance is ‘not very valuable, if there aren’t some individual finishes in there that are exciting’. When it comes to Thaler, that means that he didn’t form an indelible enough impression on the Pro Tour to get my vote. Was it exciting to see him go to a four digit life total in a crazy Elves mirror at Pro Tour Berlin during the untimed top eight? Sort of. Ultimately it sticks out as more of a novelty than anything else. I feel that many of Thaler’s greatest achievements are better suited to being part of a trivia section in a Magic quiz than the Hall of Fame. While his successes aren’t trivial, they aren’t good enough to get my vote.

Robert van Medevoort

You always know if Robert van Medevoort is in the room. He consistently wears the brightest coloured fluorescent shirts imaginable, sufficient that he was about as easy to find at Grand Prix Utrecht as the chap wearing stilts. With no Pro Tour top eights on his resume, one might wonder how he got enough Pro Points to be on the ballot.

One stat that is missing from the official stats page of the Hall of Fame is his role on the Dutch national team. Robert was on the team that prevailed in Paris with a climactic draft against team Japan in the finals. Flanked by Kamiel Cornellison and Julien Nuijten in the finals, he was able to score victory to solidify himself as a name in global Magic even if he had initially appeared to be the least known player in a strong team.

Ultimately, a lack of individual success at the top level will mean Robert is unlikely to pick up too many votes this year.

Craig Wescoe

Wescoe is probably best known for his affinity for playing white beatdown decks. He is the person who, upon the release of a new set, will be deferred to to find the ‘right’ way to be playing white. This came to a head when he won Pro Tour Dragon’s Maze with a deck that was largely white, with just enough green to in some small way acknowledge that the block he was building from included lots of gold cards.

The interesting thing for me about Craig is that I think some players may underestimate him for having a focus that is not their own. Did you know that Craig Wescoe was also the designer of Free Spell Necro, the deck that got Brian Davis into a Pro Tour finals against Bob Maher Jr? Craig Wescoe was also one of the original innovators behind the adoption of [mtg_card]Mastery of the Unseen[/mtg_card] in assorted green/white morph builds in the last year. In spite of having been a regular writer for some years over at TCGplayer.com, Craig isn’t someone who I think of tooting his horn too loudly. Perhaps he should. With a Pro Tour win and two more top eights, he could easily be in contention for the Hall of Fame with just a little bit more on his resume.

David Williams

I don’t think that David will mind not getting into the Hall of Fame. One Pro Tour top eight isn’t enough to really be in the conversation, and three GP wins don’t really change that. I have no idea on whether the situation that happened to him a lifetime ago with four very warped copies of [mtg_card]Accumulated Knowledge[/mtg_card] for a very marked deck are worth worrying about. If I were Dave these days, I would have comparatively few worries. A 2nd place finish at the World Series of Poker, followed by a raft of other poker successes have effectively gotten Dave a ‘stealth Hall of Fame’ invitation to the Pro Tour for a while.

The amount of good that David has done for the game in terms of publicity is not small. When you’re casually watching a bit of poker on TV and suddenly there comes an explanation of Magic that is as smart as it is earnest, it does a lot to legitimise the game to a whole host of people who may have considered it beneath them previously. If you are ever looking for how to describe Magic to your non-playing friends, you could do a lot worse than take some notes from how Dave does it.

When talking to people who might otherwise dismiss Magic because of its fantasy background he’s quick to point out that there are knights and castles in chess, kings and queens in poker. These don’t stop the games from having a huge amount of strategic depth, or requiring a lot of skill. For thems that like dragons and elves, the game holds its own set of mysteries and wonder, but for anyone looking for a great game, Magic is a fantastic choice.

Dave, your ban means you will probably never get my vote for the Magic Hall of Fame, but I’m very happy you are a part of the Magic Pro Tour.

Shouta Yasooka

I had the privilege to work on the last Magic Invitational, in Essen back in 2006. There I got to hang out with a lot of the best players in the world at the time, over the course of about a week. While Shouta was there, I didn’t get to talk to him too much, as the language barrier we faced was simply too large. However, it was hard not to be impressed by his play.

Shouta Yasooka is such a joy to watch playing Magic that I’m willing to allow quite a bit of leeway in terms of pure Pro Tour numbers. He only has two top 8’s and a win, which is worse than others I have discounted. His seven top 16s, nineteen GP top 8’s and dominant performance at the first ‘new format’ World Championship (then Players’ Championship) is enough to make me comfortable in my view that he is a true master of the game.

Pro Tour Dragons of Tarkir was the most recent occasion where it was clear that Yasooka is one of the best players on the planet. In the coverage we repeatedly found ourselves describing the way he plays control decks as being similar to others playing aggro – not because of the lines of play he was taking, but simply the blistering speed at which he took them. Whenever I’m voting for Hall of Fame, I have to finish things up with a ‘gut check’ about how I feel on my votes. When it comes to Shouta, my gut says one thing – regardless of any numbers attached to his name, Shouta Yasooka is a Hall of Famer. It’s just a matter of when he gets his ring. As far as I’m concerned that should be now.

Adam Yurchick

It’s a small club of players that have enough Pro Points to be eligible for the Hall of Fame, but a big fat goose egg when it comes to top eight finishes. When it comes to someone like Paul Cheon, I feel that there is at least an argument for him to be one of those awkward ‘best player to never have top 8’d’ contenders. When it comes to Yurchick, I’ve never quite seen that same spark. Two Pro Tour top 16s and a Grand Prix win isn’t enough for me. Adam will have to do quite a bit more to get serious consideration from me in future years.



Matej Zatlkaj

Big Z is probably the player on this year’s ballot who I’ve spent the most time hanging out with, and I’m sure it comes as no surprise to anyone who has watched him on coverage of the European Grand Prix circuit that he is one of the nicest chaps one could ever hope to spend an evening shooting the breeze with over a pint or two.

Somehow, in all this time, I’ve never actually played Matej at Magic, and in some respects I’m quite glad about that, because I’m pretty sure he’d thump me with a big smile on his face the entire time. It seems like forever ago that Matej got beaten by someone known mainly by his initials (LSV) in the finals of Pro Tour Berlin. Since then, he’s had a successful run at the Pro Tour of late, along with a recent Grand Prix win, but not necessarily the sort stratospheric success that we would associate with a Hall of Fame member.

Of all of the people on the ballot who might potentially get a vote from me simply as a ‘friends’ vote, Matej is the only one that would come close. In practice he’s not getting that vote, because when it comes to the Hall of Fame I don’t believe in such things, and I’m fairly confident that Matej wouldn’t want to get in that way. I sincerely hope that some time in the future I get to cast an ultimately irrelevant vote in his direction, in the year that it is so obvious that he should be in that one vote makes little difference. On the day he gets inducted I’ll be right at the front, cheering.

And so, somehow, we get to the end of all the Hall of Fame candidates. I wouldn’t blame you if you’d skipped back and forth on this one, or read it in a few parts. Suffice to say, it’s been a long process to write, but one that has felt worthwhile to me as it’s helped me crystalise my thoughts on what the Hall of Fame should be and who I should vote for.

For those wondering on my final ballot, here it is (in alphabetical order)

1. Willy Edel

2. Eric Froehlich

3. Justin Gary

4. Mark Herberholz

5. Shouta Yasooka

At least, that’s my ballot before I do the gut check. You see, a lot of people have talked about how big the Hall of Fame ought to be, and of the role of the Hall of Fame in Magic. Are there any of these people who, in the context of those already in, seem undeserving? Am I worried that a full vote of five names is going to lead to a devalued Hall of Fame where there end up being tiers of who is in?

These are certainly concerns. There are players in the Hall of Fame already who I did not and would not have voted for. Already the institution doesn’t match up perfectly with what my personal Hall of Fame might be. My rational mind knows that it is unlikely that all five of the above would make it in with my vote, but that doesn’t mean that my vote isn’t important. I feel that Eric and Shouta ought to be slam dunks, but know that some people might write of Eric for being a bit of a grouch, and Shouta for coming 9th-16th too much. Some will look at Willy and say that he has spiked a lot of good results without the strength in depth. Justin and Mark may not be remembered by some, and will be ignored by others because they don’t play right now.

Right this moment though, my gut says this is a good ballot, and that I’d be happy to see each of these five in the Hall of Fame.

I’ve lumbered above 12,000 words here. Time to write 10 more in an email as my vote for this year’s Hall of Fame.