FRIDAY, SATURDAY AND SUNDAY IN NEW YORK - A NON-PRO'S PRO-TOUR REPORT CARD '98. Some of you may remember a report card I did for PTNY '97. Wizards (to their credit) did make a number of improvements, so I am doing another one to show how much they've improved the event since last year. If you want to see last year's report card check my web site or The Dojo at: www.akula.com/~hogan/Magic www.thedojo.com or thedojo.com FIRST A WARNING: This report card is not meant to be a description of any of the tournaments held in NYC. I will leave that to those that have something interesting to say. I did take notes about The Dojo team tournament but I will post that report separately. This post is only intended to talk about the New York Pro Tour '98 as it relates to non-Pro Tour players like me. I went there to play in the side tournaments. These are my impressions, complaints, and comments. If this does not interest you, go read something else - I don't want to be spamed because you were not interested in the topic. NOW FOR THE REPORT CARD: LAST YEAR THIS YEAR TOPIC GRADE GRADE COMMENT SUMMARY Location....................F A Cost........................F F Why more than NG/GM? Presentation................C A Availability of Cards.......A- A Cost of Cards...............D F Why not below cost? Fun factor..................A A Tournament Administration...A F Prize support - the pits Other players...............A A Judging...................New C See below. Overall..................B-/C+ A- LOCATION: Well they fixed the location problem this year. It was located in a perfect location. Right in the heart of the city - easy to get to by everyone, and access to lost of good food (probably about 20-30 restaurants and fast food places within 3 blocks and over 50 within 5 blocks (5 blocks is about a 10 min. walk). The room it was held in was fantastic - it was huge! The ceilings were about 150' high. This made for an airy and comfortable feeling. Often at tournaments the air will get very "stuffy" with all those players sweating over their next move - this did not happen at this location. It was nice. The hotel was about a 15 min. walk away and was also a nice location that was centrally located. It was on the top floor and the elevators were slow - but hey you can't have everything. As you may know from last year, I vented a lot about having it in Rye. Let me be just as emphatic this year - WIZARDS MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE PRO-TOUR IN THE CITY AGAIN - IT WORKED!!!! COST/COST OF CARDS/PRIZE SUPPORT This is a big problem. Wizards should not be the worse at giving good value for entering a tournament. However, this is just the reverse of reality. When playing at tournaments not run by Wizards at Pro-Tour events, you can expect to have good prize support. For example at a Gray Matter event you can expect to get about 9 packs for a first place finish in a 8 person side event. Wizards gives 4! Lets do the math. In an 8 person draft you "sell" 24 packs to 8 people at $10 a pack. Then Wizards was giving away 6 packs to the winners (sometimes less), 4 for first place and 2 for second place. Thus the total packs given out for a 8 person draft was 30. That means Wizards was making $80 for 30 packs of product. Now I could go on the net and buy a box of boosters (36) for at most $70-$75. So if *I* was running the event I could turn a profit of $5 + 6 packs. If I ran 5 events I could make $125! THAT IS ME! I AM NOT EVEN GETTING THE PRODUCT AT WHOLESALE - I AM BUYING FROM A DISTRIBUTOR! WIZARDS MAKES THE CARDS AND SELLS THEM TO THE DISTRIBUTORS! IT MUST COST THEM A LOT LESS TO MAKE THAN THEY SELL THEM FOR!!!! Lets do some more math - lets say that it costs Wizards half what they sell to the distributors - that would mean in one 8 person draft they made $63! They are making $63 profit on income of $80! Wizards wants people to run tournaments and they want people to come to sanctioned tournaments. They encourage the tournaments organizers to run tournaments and they expect the organizers to give out good prizes. But they don't do it themselves. What kind of message is Wizards giving the organizers and the players when they "can't afford" to give out decent prizes at their own tournaments. Even Andon does a better job of giving out decent prize support. Giving Wizards the benefit of the doubt I went up to one of the big shots (Skaff Elias) and expressed my options on this matter. His reply was something to the effect of: We've done it this way for years and no one has complained. I pointed out to him that just because no one else has called them cheap does not mean that they are not being cheap. I encourage everyone else to complain to Wizards on this matter when they get a chance. Lets show them that we do notice when they are doing something unacceptable. PRESENTATION Presentation got a lot better. Wizards is to be cheered on this point. Unlike Rye they had big screen TVs to view the action. And in one very good move they had the matches taking place out of ear shot of the audience. In the past when a good move was made or a good card was drawn - the crowd would cheer.... then they would be told to be quiet because the players could hear them. This time they fixed that! The only bad part about the presentation was the graphic at the bottom of the screen... it tended to cover over the cards... make the graphic small and put it up near the top of the screen... (like football or baseball) we don't want the cards covered up... they are what we are interested in. OTHER PLAYERS Everyone was very nice - there was only one case of people being asses I know of and that was late on Sunday (or early Monday) so maybe I can forgive 'em of that. TOURNAMENT ADMINISTRATION/JUDGES All of the Wizards staff was VERY NICE. I liked their attitude a lot and was amazed they managed to be so pleasant with all of the craziness going on. The judging was OK. There were two or three cases where I was not impressed. It seems that it would be a good idea if the Judges at a Wizards event followed the floor rules. In all of these cases they did stuff that was contrary to the floor rules... and this shocked me. FUN FACTOR It was a blast overall. Three days of Magic - I was happy as a pig in... well where a pig wants to be. Keep up the good work Wizards Fix your prize structure and you will have a true winner. Play well and don't get mana screwed, H.