#benstark

This week there was a debate raging on twitter among top Magic pros concerning the qualification slots for this years World Championship. The summary of the argument is that several pros thought that the GP Master Slot (among others) was less hard to acchieve than a threshold of Pro Points. World Champion Brian Braun-Duin took this personal and the debate became partially about who deserved to qualify for the tournament and who did not.

2016 MTG World Champion Brian Braun-Duin

First up I want to say that in my opinion if two groups of highly intelligent people can not agree in an argument it is highly likely that both of them don’t have it 100% right. I want to share my thoughts on both sides of the argument as well as why I think this debate should have never existed.

I will adress the side of (among others) Ben Stark and Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa first. Their case was that having qualification slots such as the GP Master, Constructed and Limited Master allowed players to qualify who were not among the best 24 players in the world at the time. Based on the assumption that the World Championship should be about determining the best Magic player in the world, they suggested that qualification solely by the number of pro points would lead to more “deserving” players being qualified.

My first problem with this is the time when it was brought up. Complaints about the qualification to a tournament that has already been played puts you in a very bad spot because it makes you look like you are salty that you (or someone whom you favored) did not win. I do not think that is the case here but to put it into perspective, a little annecdote:

Telling Time art by Scott M. Fischer

I’m a Level 2 judge and at one tournament I deckchecked a table and when I was done with the check I told the players the extra time I was going to give them. One of them asked if I was sure because to him it seemed like I wasn’t giving enough time. I confirmed that I had stopped the time for the deckcheck with my wristwatch so I was sure. There were no matchslips at the table yet, so I returned a few minutes later and noted their extra time on their slip. After time was called many judges assembled at that table since it was the last one playing. After their extra time had expired, during extra turn 4 the same player as before called the head judge to appeal the extra time I had given them after the deck check.

Obviously this seems like a ridiculous claim because if he strongly believed the extra time I gave them was wrong, he could have appealed right away. The same is true for the World Championship qualification slots. They were public at the beginning of the season so if the system was obviously flawed why would nobody point it out at the time?

Also if the GP Master, Constructed Master and Limited Master slots were so much easier to acchieve than qualifying with a lot of pro points, why did none of the “deserving” players who were “left out” due to the aforementioned slots try getting those? That would naturally have made getting those harder because of more and tougher competition.

In my opinion, BBD was rewarded for a key part of the game of Magic: Finding the best way to victory. Everyone who wants to qualify for Worlds needs to figure out which is the most likely slot for them to get and BBD correctly identified that he could become GP Master.

My next issue with the argument of the BenS and PV camp is that they argued based on assumptions about the World Championship. They assumed a) that the only purpose of the World Championship was to find the best player in the game, b) that only the objectively 24 best players in the game are deserving to fight for the trophy and c) that pro points was the ideal measure for how good a player is.

Cedric Phillips has already said something about a) in this tweet

BenS talked a lot about what was “best for the game”. I think you can’t quote Mark Rosewater often enough “Magic is a lot of different games to a lot of different people.” So I strongly believe that no one person can know what is “best for the game”. Maybe what you think is best for the game might be best for the way you play the game but not for those making the game or for those working in a LGS or for those casual players around the corner. Sure, the World Championship is the pinnacle of competitive Magic but it is way more than that (more on this later).

If you start seeing the World Championship as more than the pinnacle of competitive Magic, moste of those assumptions suddenly become baseless. If Worlds are not only about competitive Magic, why should only the top 24 be allowed to play in it? Are cold pro points more “better for the game” than a good story? Is the competition “better for the game” than living the Magic dream? I do not think so.

Intet, the Dreamer art by Dan Scott

Now I could go on endlessly about this but I have already gone on for longer than is probably reasonable. Lets take a look at the other side.

It was super obvious that BBD would take this debate personally. Wouldn’t you? Imagine you just won the World Championship and then people startet talking that maybe you didn’t deserve to be there. Be it just about the concept of the GP Master Slot or not, about everyone would have taken that personally (except maybe Reid Duke because he is Reid Duke).

The thing is, yeah, BenS, PV and all those guys could have anticipated that BBD wouldn’t be very happy about reading that. They could have chosen different wording to imply they were not talking about him as a person. Twitter limits you to just a few characters though so perfect wording is far from always possible. I think Brian should have just not let himself get involved in the argument.

Being the World Champion is not only an honor but also a responsibility. Brian Braun-Duin is now the official No.1 representative of the Magic community. Now imagine you just got into the game and learned that BBD was the reigning world champion. Then you come to his twitter to see this:

I know nothing about football but imagine the Super Bowl winning team would go to their official twitter after the event and group-insult all people who say they shouldn’t have even gotten to playoffs. That isn’t the proper behavior of champions.

In my opinion this debate was a shame for the Magic community. Some Hall of Famers arguing with the World Champion on twitter for days over the qualification for a tournament that has already been played after the point of the argument has already been removed for next year’s installment!

You guys should be ambassadors for the game. People should come to your accounts to look up to you, not to see you fight over something that can’t be changed anymore because you want to be right or you took something too personal.

Seeing behavior like this is the one only thing that makes me think anyone might not deserve something. I have the greatest respect for all of these people and hope that they will learn from this experience and do better in the future.