Hi, this is Alejandro van Mourik from the bolivian team
we didn't gave Canada a 2-0, we had an intentional draw since both teams couldn't make it to the next round.
I don't know why they said that we wanted to "screw" Puerto Rico, that is not true, and I am sad we were put in a position as the "unsporting guys"
The match between us and Puerto Rico was not just a heated match, it was the most unpleasent match I've ever played, I've played in 2 pro tours, 2 worlds, the magic world cup and 4 grand prixes, people have tried to cheat on me in worlds memphis, have yelled at me and insulted for not conceding in worlds in japan, have treated me like a noob in gp sao paulo, have tried to intimidate me in gp buenos aires and even so, this was much worse for me, they yelled at one of my team members, and treated like garbage to another of my team members while playing so slow it might have been on the border of stalling, when my team member asked him politely to play faster, his opponent answered to him "I have 3 minutes to make this decision" and turn his back on him while watching my match.
I can't tell if the "strange" shuffling happened during our matches, if it did we didn't notice, but I find it funny because they made huge deal about the way one of our team members was shuffling, hehe
Thanks for sharing your point of view and thoughts on the matter. It's always amazing to see what media coverage misrepresents.
Why would it be stupid? "Taiwan" is not the name of the country, only part of it. It's like referring to The Netherlands as "Holland", most people will know what you mean, but it's not correct and it's not what the people who actually live there prefer.
But Wizards isn't even using the official name, so what's your point?
The Taiwan name issue is also different from the Netherlands/Holland as Taiwan is by far the most common usage for the country name - even a simple google search for "Taiwan" vs "Republic of China" reveals that. It's also not geographically distinct as Holland is relative to the Netherlands.
And if you really think people in Taiwan walk around every day referring to their country as zhonghua minguo then you've clearly never been there.
I disagree with people that it's "shady" to fail to find/shuffle, but what he did with putting the champion on the bottom definitely isn't legal.
Most people aren't saying that. The issue is the different behavior in deciding to fail to find or to search appears dependent on the player's knowledge of where an Etched Champion is in his library.
The top 8 was full of high-level pros, you just hadn't heard of them because of the biases in coverage.
This. Please take a step back and consider the absurdity of suggesting that a platinum-level pro with 8 GP T8s and 158 lifetime pro points is a nobody. There was at least one other platinum pro in the T8 and probably some gold pros too. Just because a top-level pro comes from a distant country that Wizards can't even name correctly and so never gets coverage doesn't mean that he's not one of the top players in the world.
The most suspicious aspect is the situation caused by Path to Exile and Iramain having his only two basics in play. On Kuo's first Path, Iramain already knew that the bottom card in his library was Etched Champion b/c Kuo had just Vendilion Clique'd one. He doesn't bother searching (for a basic land he doesn't have) and just scam shuffles his deck to stack the Champion on top. But on Kuo's second Path, Iramain doesn't know where the Champion is. So this time, he takes the time to "search" his library (despite still not having a basic land in library); of course, this time the purpose is to locate a Champion. In the event coverage video, he's clearly shown doing just that, and then scam shuffling again to try to stack it at the top.
Is there an error with your screenshot? June 29, 2012 is marked as a Friday in my calendar...
I don't think FNM can even be reported on any date but a Friday in event reporter. With the risks that come with being presumptuous, I think the reason OP included the screenshot is that one of the listed events is the regular FNM, and then the TO runs another event on Sunday as FNM and puts it in event reporter as an FNM as if it had been run on Friday.
Filtering view to "Waiting" and then decreasing sort by ID results in only 20-30 matches, and then it's easy to see which ones are multiplayer and how old they are. For example, right now, only the bottom 7 entries are "old" matches so it's easy to just ignore them. It may not be as easy as the Multiplayer room was, but it's not very troubling at all - and it allows people who might otherwise be looking for 1v1 games to see and jump into a multiplayer.
I'm not sure how OK the practice is, but a shop owner around here schedules his FNMs for Thursday night so that he can run draft on Friday. It's actually pretty annoying as I'd rather play constructed and Fridays are an easier night for me. But I never thought there was anything wrong with the practice.
FNM can be run as draft (among other formats), so that might not change anything.
I don't think he got enough promos for that particular night. He probably is listing it as "FNM" so that players will get their Planeswalker points for playing on Thursday. That's actually pretty nice of him and a good way to get more seasonal and fnm points than players from other areas. I don't know how okay it is with the DCI though.
FNM doesn't affect PWPs - it's the same as any other sanctioned events. As for whether it's OK with Wizards, FNM is only supposed to be run on Fridays - it's explicit on the website.
... The first night there was 36ish people. For the sake of arguement, because I don't want to use false facts, I'm gonna just say 30, I know it was in the 30s so let's round down. ...
Our prize pools were, in order, descending:
4 3 3 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 (I honestly don't think he even gave packs out to 16th place, but once again, I don't wanna give false info, I'd rather err in his favor than against.) That's a total of 27 packs....
Wow, what a rip. My LGS charged $30 for sealed, distributed 2 extra packs to every participant regardless of how they finished in the tournament, then also distributed a prize pool to the Top 16 finishers. I finished 5th at the midnight prerelease and got 15 packs, and then 2nd at the daytime prerelease and got 24 packs. Looking at some of the prize payouts reported in this thread, I feel guilty!
I understand that LGS need to make money to stay open, and staying open is important for the MTG community - but an absurdly low prize pool (less than 2 packs a person - are you serious?) seems like it harms the community as well.
I was wondering, if you had dollars to blow through are you more likely to make more money buying booster packs and reselling the contents or are you more likely to win money at a slot machine. How about blackjack or craps? I am just wondering if pack opening is a legitimate form of gambling.
I'm not sure what you mean by "legitimate". Either way, the EV of packs can be calculated just as the EV of gambling can be calculated. Perhaps the simplest baseline valuation would be what the person opening packs can sell all the individual cards for, and averaging based on the probabilities would give the EV of any given pack. Note that the valuation might change somewhat depending on the individual (e.g., if the person opening the packs actually wants to keep certain cards so the value would resemble something closer to market value, etc.)
Because there are a significant number of people who engage in activities that require sealed booster packs (Limited formats, people who are simply obsessed with the feeling of cracking packs, etc.), it naturally follows that a booster pack will have a higher market value than the EV of the individual cards.
Yeah, magic is a nerdy hobby...nerdy hobbies tend to attract more intelligent people
As someone who has participated in numerous "nerdy" hobbies ranging the spectrum of said hobbies, I'm actually inclined to strongly disagree with this.
So I seem to have suffered my first time getting screwed over by someone agreeing to split in the finals. It was one of those 12-6 queues and we agreed 9-9. As soon as the match was over he disconnected.
Possibly he just forgot, but I'm seriously doubting it. I know there's no official recourse in a situation like this, certainly not from Wizards, I'm just wondering if there's anything people do or have done in this situation. Is there like a bad trader thread for dishonest people on MODO?
That sucks. There's no way he "forgot". Did you take a screenshot of the agreement? Post about it here, or we could even make a thread for bad splitters. I know mtgotraders also maintains a scammers webpage which is meant for trade scams, but it certainly could apply here.
Did someone at Wizards mistake today for April Fools' Day?
This was so blatant it's absurd.
Yeah, the decision to have a bunch of cold weather GPs is curious. Apparently they didn't get enough from GP Lincoln this year.
Thanks for sharing your point of view and thoughts on the matter. It's always amazing to see what media coverage misrepresents.
But Wizards isn't even using the official name, so what's your point?
The Taiwan name issue is also different from the Netherlands/Holland as Taiwan is by far the most common usage for the country name - even a simple google search for "Taiwan" vs "Republic of China" reveals that. It's also not geographically distinct as Holland is relative to the Netherlands.
And if you really think people in Taiwan walk around every day referring to their country as zhonghua minguo then you've clearly never been there.
Most people aren't saying that. The issue is the different behavior in deciding to fail to find or to search appears dependent on the player's knowledge of where an Etched Champion is in his library.
I don't think "complex" is the right word - "stupid" seems a lot more accurate. Only in select international competitions is Taiwan not called Taiwan.
This. Please take a step back and consider the absurdity of suggesting that a platinum-level pro with 8 GP T8s and 158 lifetime pro points is a nobody. There was at least one other platinum pro in the T8 and probably some gold pros too. Just because a top-level pro comes from a distant country that Wizards can't even name correctly and so never gets coverage doesn't mean that he's not one of the top players in the world.
The most suspicious aspect is the situation caused by Path to Exile and Iramain having his only two basics in play. On Kuo's first Path, Iramain already knew that the bottom card in his library was Etched Champion b/c Kuo had just Vendilion Clique'd one. He doesn't bother searching (for a basic land he doesn't have) and just scam shuffles his deck to stack the Champion on top. But on Kuo's second Path, Iramain doesn't know where the Champion is. So this time, he takes the time to "search" his library (despite still not having a basic land in library); of course, this time the purpose is to locate a Champion. In the event coverage video, he's clearly shown doing just that, and then scam shuffling again to try to stack it at the top.
I don't think FNM can even be reported on any date but a Friday in event reporter. With the risks that come with being presumptuous, I think the reason OP included the screenshot is that one of the listed events is the regular FNM, and then the TO runs another event on Sunday as FNM and puts it in event reporter as an FNM as if it had been run on Friday.
There are a couple competitive monocolored decks which can't make use of shocklands, but yeah, pretty much everything else makes use of them.
FNM can be run as draft (among other formats), so that might not change anything.
FNM doesn't affect PWPs - it's the same as any other sanctioned events. As for whether it's OK with Wizards, FNM is only supposed to be run on Fridays - it's explicit on the website.
I always play in the prereleases anyway, but the reduction in price is very good news.
Wow, what a rip. My LGS charged $30 for sealed, distributed 2 extra packs to every participant regardless of how they finished in the tournament, then also distributed a prize pool to the Top 16 finishers. I finished 5th at the midnight prerelease and got 15 packs, and then 2nd at the daytime prerelease and got 24 packs. Looking at some of the prize payouts reported in this thread, I feel guilty!
I understand that LGS need to make money to stay open, and staying open is important for the MTG community - but an absurdly low prize pool (less than 2 packs a person - are you serious?) seems like it harms the community as well.
Pointedly, the shops have a huge built-in profit on material cost by running sealed events for $30.
I'm not sure what you mean by "legitimate". Either way, the EV of packs can be calculated just as the EV of gambling can be calculated. Perhaps the simplest baseline valuation would be what the person opening packs can sell all the individual cards for, and averaging based on the probabilities would give the EV of any given pack. Note that the valuation might change somewhat depending on the individual (e.g., if the person opening the packs actually wants to keep certain cards so the value would resemble something closer to market value, etc.)
Because there are a significant number of people who engage in activities that require sealed booster packs (Limited formats, people who are simply obsessed with the feeling of cracking packs, etc.), it naturally follows that a booster pack will have a higher market value than the EV of the individual cards.
As someone who has participated in numerous "nerdy" hobbies ranging the spectrum of said hobbies, I'm actually inclined to strongly disagree with this.
That sucks. There's no way he "forgot". Did you take a screenshot of the agreement? Post about it here, or we could even make a thread for bad splitters. I know mtgotraders also maintains a scammers webpage which is meant for trade scams, but it certainly could apply here.