Why We Compete
by Jeff Zandi


Monday morning: four in the morning. I'm sitting in front of my computer
playing in the seventh and last round of a Mirrodin/Darksteel sealed deck
tournament on Magic Online. I'm 5-1 and in sixth place after six rounds. I
can safely draw with whoever I'm paired with and be a part of the final
eight draft playoffs. The tournament started hours and hours ago with just
over one hundred players including one of my teammates, Bil Payne (Guildmage
is his Magic Online name). As luck would have it, I'm paired in round seven
with a very good Magic player who is also 5-1 but whose tiebreakers indicate
that a draw could leave him just barely outside the top eight. Forced to
play, I promptly win game one but lose this close match after lengthy games
two and three. Suddenly, the tournament is over for me, and I'm left
wondering what exactly was I doing for the past eight hours and what
precisely did I have to show for it? I have played for eight hours and my
tenth place 5-2 finish wins me zero prizes. At the time, the answer to both
questions seemed to me to be 'not much'. I know I'm not alone in having
these feelings from time to time. If you play Magic competitively,
regardless of the level of competition or whether you play online or in
'real life', the question comes into your head. As we speak, the U.S.
Nationals are commencing in Kansas City. I wanted badly to be there, and had
figured that I would be. At any rate, as I sat in my chair at four in the
morning on Monday, I knew I wasn't going to Kansas City and I was generally
a little bitter about Magic. Tuesday night, there were only four players
besides myself at our weekly team practice. Many of the seventeen players
that were in the house last week couldn't be there Tuesday because they
were, what else, preparing for their trips to Nationals. Basically, the BIG
QUESTION has been on my mind all week.

Why do we do this? Why do we spend so much money and time on this strange
game with these funny looking cards? Why do we compete?

Well, playing Magic is a lot of fun, you say. Yes, Magic is definitely a fun
game, and it's obvious that any one willing to read THIS FAR is definitely a
fan of the game. Magic: the Gathering, in my opinion, is not just a fun
game, I happen to think that it's the MOST fun game ever invented. Yes,
poker is fun. Yes, chess has its charm. Yes, me and my five year old son
play Trouble (you know, with the pop-o-matic dice) for money. I've played a
thousand different games in my life and I've invented a hundred others.
Magic is the best.

Obsession is a funny thing when it comes to Magic. Have you ever known a
Magic player who was really fired up about the game for a long time, but who
told you that they were burned out on the game? Sometimes, this player comes
back again and becomes just as fired up once more. I can understand how that
might be, how the game they once loved lures them back, like that old
girlfriend you keep thinking about long after you break up. I, on the other
hand, am one of those guys who mates for life. I've been married for ten
years to my wife.AND to Magic.

When I first saw the game, I thought it was innovative and interesting
looking, but far too complicated with almost every card having some new rule
that players had to keep up with. Trying to learn the game from those tiny
rulebooks that used to be included inside starter decks was ridiculous. I
quickly gave up on trying to learn the game. Six months later, in the summer
of 1994, a friend at work named Shelly wanted me to go to lunch with her
(she knew I was a gamer) to meet this other guy who was going to teach her
how to play a game with these cards her kids had come home from school with.
White bordered Revised edition Magic cards. Reg Watt was a computer
programmer who had a gift for explaining things in a very concise and
logical way. In half an hour, he taught Shelly and I how to play Magic.
Within a few days, I had taught half a dozen of my best friends how to play.
A week later, we were meeting at each other's homes every Friday night to
play Magic. Casual, but competitive. Call it casually competitive. We played
at our house and my wife would be the hostess and make sandwiches (she has
been the computer scorekeeper at literally HUNDREDS of Magic tournaments but
has never wished to play the game herself). The next Friday would be at
Kent's apartment. The next Friday would be at Ken Warrix and Dawn Fontaine's
house. Dawn was the player in our little group that was always escalating
the arms race with weekly purchases to make her decks better than anyone
else's. She was the first of us to pay money for an individual single card
at a store. Later, she was the first of us to put cards in sleeves. She was
the bully of our Magic playing group. In February, 1995, Kent and I went
with some of our gaming buddies to War Con, an annual gaming convention held
at Texas A&M University. There, we played in our first Magic tournament. On
Friday nights, we were constantly playing group games. Playing in that first
tournament in 1995, I learned that Magic was amazingly well-suited for one
on one play. I was astounded at how easily players who had never played with
each other could play this game and not argue very much about how the rules
worked. This was not the case with Dungeons and Dragons, Battletech or any
of the many other games we had played in past gaming conventions.

The Pro Tour started a year later, and I was hooked on competitive Magic
once and for all. The idea of being rewarded with BIG MONEY for winning a
Magic tournament sounded very good to me, just like everybody else. The Pro
Tour divided our little Friday night group. Competition meant taking the
game more seriously than a lot of my friends were interested in taking it.
They would ask me if I ever played Magic just for fun? I always repeated
what Texas Magic legend George Baxter once said: "winning is fun". Soon I
was traveling almost every weekend to some tournament somewhere. I feel like
I INVENTED the travel all night Friday night to play all day in a pro tour
qualifier on Saturday before driving all night to get back home. I've played
in over one hundred pro tour qualifiers. I've won five of them. Don't do the
math.

In my mind and, more importantly, in my heart, Magic IS the great
Intellectual Sport that Richard Garfield and Peter Adkison intended when
they created, respectively, the game and the Pro Tour. I KNOW Magic is a
game of skill because I've seen how hard work and practice make players
better. The idea of trying to be the VERY BEST at something has been on my
mind ever since buying my first copy of the Guinness Book of World Records
when I was eight. Competitive Magic, for me, has been my way of trying to
pursue the holy grail. For me, the holy grail is the goal of being the best
Magic player in the world. A lofty goal indeed, particularly for a guy who,
for the past seven years, has hardly ever been even the best player in his
OWN HOUSE for more than a week at a time. A great man once told me "success
is the continual pursuit of a worthwhile dream". I never judge other
people's dreams, they are completely individual. However, I am always sad
when someone tells me they have no dreams, no goals. I have a lot of goals,
and one of them is to be the best player in Magic.

When you compete, you're going to lose sometimes. In fact, the only way to
not lose is to not compete. This is a lesson I've learned thousands and
thousands of times playing Magic. Competing in Magic, like in any other
sport, teaches you something new every time you do it. Sometimes you learn
how to be a good loser. Sometimes, you learn how to do something even more
difficult.how to be a good winner. Laying it all out on the line, which
competition is all about, is always an opportunity for growth. If I never
played Magic again, I could walk away from the game feeling great about the
time, energy and money that I have invested, because I know that the
experience has made me better somehow. Of course, I don't plan on walking
away from the game. I'm just like you. I'm signed up for another Magic
tournament. I continue to compete because, like George Baxter, I think
winning is fun.

As always, I'd love to hear what YOU think!

Jeff Zandi
Texas Guildmages
Level II DCI Judge
jeffzandi@thoughtcastle.com
Zanman on Magic Online

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