With only Grand Prix: not Boston between us and the next Pro Tour event of the year in Yokohama, it’s time to bring you up to speed with all the goings on in the world of Pro Magic. For reference, here’s my 100% unofficial database of what’s happened so far. This time around, we’ll be taking a top-down approach, meaning that if you’re looking for a pithy comment on the juicy two-point brigade, you’re going to need either a lot of patience or a scroll button. Let’s rock ‘n’ roll…
25 points: Mike Hron.
So Pro Tour: Geneva winner Hron still sits on top of the pile, adding to his Swiss success with… nothing. Not to say that he didn’t do well in any of the other events. He just wasn’t there. So, what’s the deal? Players like Raphael Levy and Tiago Chan have been flinging themselves around the globe in a bid for Pro Points, Hron hasn’t, and he’s still on top of the pile.
I argued at the start of the year that the Player of the Year race would likely be decided on the basis of Grand Prix rather than PTs. In a sense, Hron’s continued table-topping appears to give the lie to this. Win a PT, stay at home – this seems like an excellent strategy on the face of it. However, I believe that my stance is still correct, and here’s several good reasons why:
- Looking at the events of the last two Player of the Year races, we can see what a tiny margin exists between the top players. Olivier Ruel and Kenji Tsumura fought each other to a standstill during 2005, and ended up a single point apart. That’s the difference between 65th place and 64th place at a single Grand Prix. This year, that’s the difference between finishing 9th at Grand Prix: Dallas or finishing 8th at Grand Prix: Dallas (see Tiago Chan, later.)
- Going by last year’s storyline, Paulo Vitor Damo Da Rosa of Brazil should by rights have won Player of the Year comfortably, given any kind of Grand Prix consistency. It wasn’t that he wasn’t consistent, it’s that he wasn’t there. Of course, he managed Level 6 anyway, which lends weight to the stay-at-home brigade, but hey, it’s my article, and I’ll choose the facts to suit my argument.
- Although Grand Prix points aren’t exactly free, they are relatively easy to come by for a top Pro. Over an eight round Day 1, a Pro with three byes coming in is playing, essentially, Triple Elimination. If you prefer, he needs 3 wins and 2 losses to make it to Day 2. Even with a grinding nine rounder to kick things off, that’s still just 4-2, or even 3 wins, 2 losses and a draw (see Tiago Chan, later.)
- You can’t rely on math at Worlds. To put it mildly, Worlds isn’t just one big year-ending tournament. It’s hundreds of little tournaments, most of which you never hear about. What do I mean? Well, start out with 80 or so Pros. Add in at least another 50 who are either ex-Pro or wannabe-Pro with sufficient points to put them somewhere in the mix. Whilst winning the whole thing is a theoretical goal, in reality almost all of these have separate agendas, whether it be make Level 3, 4, 5, 6, or just get a cash finish to end the year. It’s almost impossible to keep track of all the diverse requirements as the last few rounds of Swiss go by. In Paris last year, there were a lot of dismayed faces, as players discovered that their mathematically ideal ID (intentional draw) matchup didn’t want to play ball, because their math didn’t match. We all know that the world of prize-splits and “I-owe-you-one” is pretty murky and doesn’t do much for the legitimacy of the game as a whole. Smart players don’t want to find themselves up against the guy who just needs that one more win to make Level 3 for next year, when you’re trying for Player of the Year, and an ID makes it safe. To my mind, it’s no coincidence that some of the Europeans in particular have taken the plunge early this year and got busy accumulating some “insurance” points.
So, what of Hron? An avowed Limited player, his first thoughts on Yokohama were the hopes that there would be people to go with from his playgroup. I can’t prove this, but I think Takuya Oosawa’s first thoughts on Yokohama were “I’m going to win it.” It’s usually pretty easy to say that the first PT winner of the season won’t still be on top come December, and yes, I believe that’s the case with Hron. However, if we take the view that the Player of the Year is likely to have two Top 8 appearances during the season, Hron only has half as much work to do as most of the other contenders. One more weekend even vaguely similar to Geneva, and suddenly he’d be extremely hard to catch. Hell, he might even turn up at GPs!
24 Points – Shingou Kurihara.
I’m a racist. Well, kind of. It may or may not surprise you to learn that I was rooting for Mike Hron all the way in the PT: Geneva final. It’s not that I don’t have anything against Takuya Oosawa, because I do. See, I don’t speak Japanese, and he doesn’t speak English, and in my line of business, that’s bad. Hron wins, and I get a nice juicy interview full of fresh-off-the-press insight into the world of a ten-minutes-ago Pro Tour champion. Oosawa wins, I tell you that Phthisis is pretty good against Spectral Force, which I’m guessing you knew already, and then I go home. In my perfect little coverage world, the winner of every event would speak English fluently, and have a great previously unknown backstory about donating his heart and brain three years ago to save the life of his kid sister. If you’re the Brand and Marketing departments of Wizards, your ideal PT winner has chiselled Hollywood looks, a fantastic smile, and has a great previously unknown backstory about donating his heart and brain three years ago to save the life of his kid sister. Olivier Ruel, apart from the Hollywood looks bit, fits perfectly!
You can see where I’m heading with this. Although I rather neatly covered my ass in my start of year Preview articles, saying “it wouldn’t be a total surprise” to see him do well, I’m the first to admit my surprise at just how well Kurihara has built on his outstanding semi-final performance in Geneva. 28th place in Kyoto out of 858 generated 2 Pro Points, equivalent to turning up to another PT, lest we forget. But while everyone is destined to remember that Raphael Levy won GP: Singapore, fewer people will recall that Kurihara was his vanquished final opponent that weekend. A very tasty 6 points in the bag leaves Kurihara perfectly positioned to take advantage of his home PT next month. And remember, this is the guy who now plays in Tokyo with Oosawa and Tsumura and umpteen other great Japanese players. Kurihara doesn’t have chiselled Hollywood looks. He never smiles. He doesn’t speak English, and that means I don’t know whether or not he has a great previously unknown backstory about donating his heart and brain three years ago to save the life of his kid sister. I’m rather starting to think that he may be front and centre at the Javits Center in December, and I don’t want him to be. Because I’m racist. Well, kind of.
23 points – Takuya Oosawa.
I’m here to exclusively tell you the most significant moment of Pro Tour: Geneva. It happened approximately ten seconds after the final had finished. For those of you who’ve never been to the Tour, the moments after the last card has been turned sideways are absolutely manic, as a lot of people try to do a lot of things very very quickly in a bid to prepare the Presentation Ceremony. Plus, in Geneva, there was the final Tournament Center to set up for Randy and BDM. I’m not kidding, it was like a brigade of marines storming the stage. In the middle of all this carnage, Takuya Oosawa. He simply sat in his seat at the final table, going over and over what had just happened. How should he have played it? Would blocking differently have made any difference? What about the Corpulent Corpse? Could he have had extra draws, played out another way? Let’s be honest, for most of us it’s a part of tournament ritual that on the way home in the car with our mates we’ll chat about games we played, games we saw, rulings we heard – it’s the kind of desultory chat that pays off six weeks later when it turns out that we know the rules on assigning damage with Weathered Bodyguards in play for Two-Headed Giant, and our opponents don’t. Oosawa started learning less than ten seconds after $18,000 had left the building. Now if that isn’t the living embodiment of professionalism, I don’t know what is.
23 points – Kenji Tsumura.
I’m a glass half full kind of guy. 16 points from Geneva, an excellent 5 points for finishing 3rd at Grand Prix: Dallas, and another 2 from GP: Singapore means that Kenji has once again started the year showing every sign of being in contention for the title he so narrowly won in 2005. On the downside, he would have expected some kind of return from Kyoto, but finished a lowly 202nd, and then there was Grand Prix: Amsterdam. In a tournament with 666 teams featuring the entertainment of Sealed Deck on day 1, to talk of favourites seems at the very least to be tempting fate. Nonetheless, when it comes to sexy – and who’d have thought I’d manage to get “sexy” and “Magic” into the same sentence? – it doesn’t get much better than the Marquee pairing of Kenji Tsumura and Rich Hoaen of Canada. Surely, barring opening a suite of basic land and pretty much nothing else, Tsumura and Hoaen would make Day 2? Well, I can’t tell you what they opened, but it wasn’t sufficient, and they joined the list of Big Name Casualties. Arguably, this event affects Kenji more than Rich, who got off to an admittedly disappointing start to the year in Geneva, a year that is already slewed against him given the majority of Constructed events that lie in wait. So, my overall view is that Kenji has every chance of Level Enormous come year’s end, but that Kyoto and Amsterdam may be events we look back on and see that the points he didn’t get there were more significant than the ones he’s accumulated so far.
21 points – Raphael Levy.
Levy went 10-5 in Geneva, 2-1 in each of his five drafts. Here’s what I said :
“… if you’re Levy, there’s a good chance you left Geneva extremely frustrated and irritated. Surely, sooner or later, there won’t be someone better.”
I have to admit, it’s nice to be right. I may even try it again one day. Levy winning Grand Prix: Dallas clearly meant a great deal to him, not least because the one knock against him en route to his enshrinement in the Hall of Fame was that, good as he was, he never actually won things. (For the sake of historical inaccuracy, I should probably point out that he has won a previous Grand Prix title, circa. 1732). As for the deck, what’s not to like about a Boros Swiftblade that can attack for eighteen damage on turn 3? I believe they refer to that as, technically, a kicking. Plus, for a change, a deck gets a name that is both humorous and relevant – Gaea’s Might Get There. So, Dallas is great, and 8 points get added to his consistent 5 from Geneva. And then he goes globe-trotting to Singapore. It’s all very well knowing that the format, Extended, remains the same. And it’s all very well knowing that you have a good deck, and know how to play it well. To win back-to-back Grand Prix needs to be put into perspective. Kai Budde, Kenji Tsumura. That’s the company Raphael is keeping thanks to his Singapore exploits. Hall of Fame or not, that pushes Raphael another notch up the all-time list. It was almost inevitable that the fabled “three-peat” wouldn’t be achieved, and the bid was duly crushed during the heavy-duty Day 1 in Amsterdam. Playing with Pro Tour: London 2005 winner Geoffrey Siron, Levy fell victim to a distinct lack of bombs in the Sealed pool, and that was enough to end the dream. So now, Levy looks forward, knowing that a double-digit finish in Yokohama would make those 16 points of GP-winning goodness count for more than levelling up, and potentially count for a whole lot more.
15 points – Tomoharu Saitou.
When you’ve finished 5th in the 2006 Player of the Year race, and are Level 6 as a result, it figures that you may have featured in some pretty major matches. But what marks Saitou apart from the rest so far this year is his unbelievable consistency. He is one of only two players on the list to have garnered points from 4 events this season. 17th in Geneva got him underway with 7 points. Change continents, play in Dallas, just the 1 point there for 36th place. Change continents, play in Singapore, make the Top 8, lose in the quarter-finals, 4 points. Change continents, play in Amsterdam with reigning Player of the Year Shouta Yasooka. Miss out on tiebreaks, but still finish 5th and add another 3 points to the global haul. Change continents, play in Kyoto. Finally get a Day 2 free. Zero points. Saitou is a man on a mission. I suggested he was a threat if he didn’t travel round the world. He is travelling round the world, and that makes him a near-certainty to be a factor in the end of year shake-up.
14 points – Jim Herold.
Herold was one of the more unexpected members of the Geneva Top 8, notwithstanding the fact that he had 3 Grand Prix wins to his name between 1999 and 2001. Plenty of people had him favoured in his quarterfinal matchup against Oosawa, but that wasn’t how it panned out. His two extra points come courtesy of Grand Prix: Amsterdam, where, together with second head Gunnar Refsdal, he managed a creditable 13th place. As a player who really values the “see the world” bit of “play the game, see the world,” you can expect to see him in Yokohama. Apart from anything else, those two extra points from Amsterdam mean that as long as he attends all 4 remaining PT events, he’s guaranteed Level 3 for the 2008 season, and that would mean playing more game, seeing more world.
13 points – Ervin Tormos.
Tormos had an unfortunate matchup on Geneva Sunday, as many of his kill-anything-that-isn’t-White cards didn’t really cut the mustard against Shingou Kurihara’s, er, White cards. Grand Prix: Dallas generated a single point, and he hasn’t been seen on the GP circuit since.
12 points – Paul Cheon.
If you haven’t started to take notice of Cheon, now would be a good time. The 2006 U.S. National Champion has taken pretty successfully to the world stage, with a 12th place finish in Paris at Worlds, a decent 31st in Geneva, and then a run that took him all the way to the final in home-based Grand Prix: Dallas, before running into the French juggernaut en route to double success, Raphael Levy. A certainty for Level 3 next year, Cheon’s Dallas performance suggests that he might well turn out to be rather better than a run-of-the-mill Level 3, and that we could easily be talking about him on one of the Pro Tour Sundays before the season’s done.
12 points – Marijn Lybaert.
Not a major traveller, Lybaert failed to add to his Top 8 from Geneva when not reaching Day 2 in Amsterdam. Since he’s likely to attend at least a couple more European GPs this year, he has realistic ambitions of making Level 4.
12 points – Willy Edel.
Nothing to report since Geneva, except that he’ll be teaming up with Paulo Vitor Damo Da Rosa when Pro Tour: San Diego rolls around. That sounds like quite a good team, doesn’t it?
12 points – Olivier Ruel.
Ruel rescued the start of his season by marauding his way through the back end of Day 1 in Geneva, and ultimately came away with 5 points. Although he missed out in Dallas, he made the long haul to Singapore worthwhile as he made the final table before losing to Osama Fujita in the quarters. Next came Amsterdam, and it was here that we saw a little glimpse into the mindset of the serious contender. Playing with brother Antoine (more of whom soon), the Ruels were involved in a titanic penultimate round match which, had they won, would have left them in a strong position to make Top 4 (it being Two-Headed Giant there would be no quarter finals.) They lost. Coming past the scoretable on his way to the final round of Swiss, Olivier shrugged and said, “Oh well, Top 8 isn’t too bad out of 666 teams.” And you know what? He was gutted. To most people, that kind of performance would be a cause for celebration. Ruel saw it as points that got away. Whilst there is clearly plenty of stiff competition, anyone who thinks Ruel may have lost his appetite for the game during his enforced absence can think again. He has his eyes firmly on the prize, and that prize is Player of the Year 2007. For more details on his testing regime for Yokohama, see Antoine Ruel, below.
11 points – Koutarou Ootsuka.
A quietly accumulated 5 points from Geneva has been supplemented by two decent finishes since. He lost the odd game in three to Antoine Ruel in Singapore, but since that was at the quarterfinal stage, he still got 4 points from the weekend. And then he managed another 2 points for his Day 2 finish in Kyoto.
10 points – Antoine Ruel.
Unlike Olivier, Antoine didn’t get off to a good start to the season, with the minimum 2 points return from Geneva. In addition to his near-miss in Amsterdam though, he’s also managed Top 8 in Singapore. It’s hard to imagine him continuing with just 2 points per Pro Tour, and given his testing proposals, Yokohama should be the place for some climbing of the ranks. So just what is this secret testing program? 56 swamps, a MTGO account, 4 Extirpate and a lot of screenshots! Simply enter every premier event for Block Constructed on MTGO, give away no tech of your own, Extirpate your opponent and print out their complete decklist. Genius. Of course, the Ruels, being the Ruels, just may have been kidding…
10 points – Amiel Tenenbaum.
We’re a fickle lot. There’s lots of talk around at the moment of Two-Headed Giant not really being a “Pro” format. Depending on who you talk to, this seems to mean a variety of things. Some people think the format is very luck-based. Whilst this has some element of truth for Sealed – and I’m saving my “Sealed is the most skilful format ever” for another article – the Pro Tour for 2HG in San Diego dispenses with the Sealed portion seen in Amsterdam, and instead heads straight for booster draft. Some people think that 2HG gives lesser players a better chance of winning, because they can rely on their other head – standing on the shoulders of giants, if you will. Yet more believe that God created Magic to be a single-player experience, and the only reason you should need another head is so that you’ve got somebody to beat. It’s certainly true that plenty of Pros have been taking 2HG somewhat less than seriously to date, whether it’s by playing with their suboptimal best friend / girlfriend / wife / sister etc. or just by plain not showing up at all.
However you slice it, the naysayers point to Amsterdam as proof that you can just get lucky and win at 2HG. To be fair, Messrs. Hornansky and Havlic are hardly household names. But the truth is, apart from a slight land flood and a monstrous turn involving any amount of countermagic and a regenerating Dawn Charm, the champions of Amsterdam would have been Amiel Tenenbaum and Gabriel Nassif, neither of whom are exactly shabby at the game. Amiel now seems certain to make Level 3 next year, and although down on 7 points, Nassif may come to look back fondly on Amsterdam when the points are tallied in New York.
10 points – Katsuhiro Mori.
Despite all kinds of last round shenanigans, Mori had to settle for “just” 8 points in Geneva, finishing 9th on tiebreakers. Since then he had a moderately successful Day 2 at Singapore, and an extremely unsuccessful Day 1 at Kyoto. Given his demonstrable track record of extreme achievement, it’s not hard to see Kyoto as the odd one out. Another 9th-placed Pro Tour finish would be bad news for Player of the Year, but at least one more run at the top table seems likely by season’s end.
10 points – Shuhei Nakamura.
Talking with Brian David-Marshall at Amsterdam, it was clear that Shuhei has a plan for 2007, and that BDM likes it. Basically, the man from Japan has his entire year planned out, with exact points requirements from the assorted PTs and GPs in order to finish the year at Level 6 once again. Of the five events so far, only Kyoto has failed to offer up any pro points, and even there Nakamura only missed out on Day 2 by a measly 0.08% on tiebreaks. Playing in a trans-continental team with Dutchie Rogier Maaten, Nakamura finally left Amsterdam in 23rd place. Following his 11th place finish at Dallas, Shuhei was looking to go even further in Singapore. And he did – 9th. Tedious. So he had to settle for another 3 points, just like Dallas, and just like Geneva, where he managed a hardly-barnstorming 167th place. Nonetheless, it’s a good bet that sometime this year we’ll be seeing him on Super Sunday, and that means that all the planning may come to fruition once again.
Well, that pretty much wraps up everyone on 10 points or more as we head for GP not Boston and then onto Block Constructed in Yokohama at the back end of April. From here on in, it’s selected highlights only, so I’m sorry Mrs. Neri, but Riccardo doesn’t get a mention. Except here.
9 points.
Rogier Maaten seemed to have lots of fun with Shuhei Nakamura in Amsterdam, and that’s more than can be said for a bunch of Pros. Mark Herberholz made the quarters in Dallas, but life commitments to the non-existent gamestore that he doesn’t own mean he’ll need to make the most of the PTs. Fried Meulders left me wondering what a Meulders is, and why you can’t grill or bake one, and World Champ Makahito Mihara managed a point in Kyoto, and I suggest that he will defend his title honorably, if not successfully, come December.
8 points.
Johan Sadeghpour expressed a broad dislike of GP travelling when we met in Amsterdam – “I’d rather stay at home” – so if GPs are a key component to success, don’t expect him to be too successful (Level 3 seems highly likely however). Jonathon Sonne was one of the more impressive players of the U.S. contingent in Geneva, and he picked up a couple of points on home soil in Dallas. A single Amsterdam point won’t have consoled Rookie of the Year 2006 Sebastian Thaler for his dizzying fall in the final round of Geneva. If you think Mori felt bad about finishing 9th on breakers, try being on the receiving end of Kenji in a match that ultimately drops you from “win and in” to outside the top 16. Also paying the penalty for Geneva was Brit Quentin Martin, who, short on liquid assets, wasn’t able to make Dallas, or Singapore, or Kyoto, or Amsterdam. Well, except Amsterdam, where with housemate Ruud Warmenhoven he failed to trouble the scorers. Still, it hasn’t been all bad for Q, who is now in the hotseat over at MagicTheGathering.com, replacing Noah Weil on the Limited Information column. Amongst his early tidbits of pure gold, I was particularly struck by this throwaway comment :
“(Aside: To succeed in Limited, you should know the exact text of every single card in the format.)”
Obvious, but to a PTQ+ player like me, that’s really scary.
Also on 8 points, Yuuta Watanabe got all his points in one go by winning Grand Prix: Kyoto. On the other hand, current Player of the Year Shouta Yasooka has cobbled together his points from a variety of locations. Three in Amsterdam and a further three in Kyoto at least in part made up for the minimum return from the first PT of the year. Of the rest, Guillaume Wafo-Tapa may perhaps have most cause for discontent. Having started very well in Geneva, where he was in contention for Top 8 almost to the end, he missed out in Amsterdam, which is at least on the same continent as he is, and Dallas, which isn’t. Still, with Block Constructed coming up, we can expect Wafo-Tapa to concoct another deck that may come to global prominence.
7 points.
Playing with his brother, Daniel Grafensteiner will have been happy to add 2 pro points from Amsterdam to his nice account-opening 5 from Geneva. Ryou Ogura finished in the low 100s at Geneva, but made a Top 8 appearance at the Singapore Grand Prix, where he fell to the unstoppable Raphael Levy in the quarters. As we’ve seen, Gabriel Nassif was within a whisker of winning Amsterdam, and, in case you’ve forgotten, he’s meant to be a Constructed player. Seeing what he does in Yokohama could be a lot of fun, and if that goes well, he transfers from “old school heavyweight” to “here we go again.” Although Frank Karsten managed to pick up a couple of points from Dallas, he unfortunately missed out on Singapore Day 2, and also at his home Grand Prix in Amsterdam, where he and partner Roel van Heeswijk finished just outside the points in 36th place (points went to just the Top 32 teams). Given that he’s been to four events thus far, Tiago Chan will be disappointed to still have just 7 points. Dallas was his high point to date, where he finished in the dreaded 9th spot, having apparently done all the hard work and beaten out Paulo Vitor Damo Da Rosa. Whilst Amsterdam was something of a crapshoot, the zero points from 73rd place in Kyoto will have made the flight home seem very long.
6 points.
As you can read here, Paulo Vitor Damo Da Rosa hasn’t had the perfect start to the year, but still finds himself on 6 points, with 2 of those coming from a GP that, last year, he wouldn’t have attended. Whether he regards the travel hassle of Dallas and Amsterdam as worth those 2 points is moot. Fact is, 2 points could yet make all the difference to his year. However, he seems pretty disenchanted with Two-Headed Giant as a format, and that’s not great going into a pivotal Pro Tour in San Diego. Masaya Kitayama has managed points finishes in both Singapore and Kyoto, and but for an utterly miserable 386th place in Geneva would be in much better shape. Yuusuke Iwasaki got all 6 of his points in Kyoto, where he lost the final to Watanabe. Havlic and Hornansky seem on the face of it to be one hit wonders, since nobody seems to know much about them or their track record. Well, everyone knows their track record: they haven’t got one. If Amsterdam is destined to be their one entry into the Magic pantheon, at least they made it a good one. Przemyslaw Wolowiec is the man who hired a car to drive across Europe to Worlds last year when snow cancelled his flight, and following his double round loss for late arrival still concocted an 8-4 record after two days. Now that’s commitment. Unfortunately, simple economics mean that Polish players are unlikely to be seen at the top tables on the GP circuit, or more pertinently, on any tables at all, and the same applies to the Russian / Ukrainian / Former Soviet States in general.
5 points.
Ben Rubin showed his desire with a $600 cab ride in order to reach Geneva, which works out at $120 per Pro Point. Nice. Liang Chen finished in the points at both Asia-Pacific events so far. Bernardo Da Costa Cabral came to Amsterdam claiming he didn’t like the format, and he went away with the same points he turned up with, so that’s unlikely to change his view any time soon. Amongst this group, perhaps the man with the most concern would be Rich Hoaen. Looking to come out of the blocks fast with a favoured format Limited PT starting the year, 59th spot and 4 points wasn’t really what our draft guru right here on StarCityGames.com was looking for. Pairing with friend Kenji Tsumura for 2HG in Amsterdam was a great choice, and watching them together was a masterclass in non-verbal communication, but as we know that didn’t work out either. Although it’s far too early in the year to talk about falling off the train, a good deck and a good run in Yokohama would avoid any mid-term nerves.
And, that, as they say, is that. The top 72 in the Player of the Year Race. You only have to compare Mike Hron with Raphael Levy to see how dramatically a given Pro Tour can swing a season around, and Yokohama will certainly shake things up. Hron continues to lead with his one-from-one season, as opposed to Levy’s sensational GP achievements. Indeed, Raph has clearly pushed himself into contention as a legitimate threat for the overall title, now that he’s shown so decisively his ability to finish the job at the near-highest level. As a former Player of the Year, Kenji Tsumura has made a formidable start to the campaign. Paul Cheon 6 points in Dallas are significant in my view, and right now he strikes me as the best of a decent American bunch that includes Hron, Sonne, and Herberholz at the upper end of the table. With no GP attendance, Willy Edel needs to keep on making final tables if he’s going to contend, which statistically is unlikely, but given what he’s done so far, by no means impossible. Nakamura’s consistency and planning keeps him in the mix, and although I’m by no means abandoning my pre-season pick of Tiago Chan, that 9th place in Dallas could really hurt. As we head off to one last double-headed hurrah before the second PT of the year, it’s the man currently in second place that I believe has had the best of the year so far. Ideally placed, surrounded by all possible manner of goodness in deckbuilding, playtesting and even travel companions, Shingou Kurihara is my player of the year to date. If he keeps this up, I’m going to have to bite the bullet and learn Japanese. Eek.
As ever,
Thanks for reading,
R.