Here are the October 2017 judge anniversaries!
15 years
Monsuporn LauhaphandHector Fuentes
Arthur Edson
10 years
Matt DannerAtipong Pathanasethpong
Andrew Plinston
John Tong
Enrique Manuel Guzmán Mosqueda
Jorge Sirvent Orts
Konstantin Schukraft
Tsutomu Date
Josh Barkon
Masaya Honda
Justin Hovdenes
Sergio Perez
sebastien bernaud
Stéphane Thirard
Eduardo Sajgalik
Ivan Morel
Nicolas Poyet
5 years
Anthony MorrisAriel Sandoval
Tyson Henning
José Miguel Caldera Amundarain
Mason Andjelkovic
Sam Smit
Rafeal Jenkins
Roudi Bachar
George Roehr
Matthew Bernard
Mark Manning
Michael Fan
Hitoshi Iizuka
Junhao Pan
Veljo Hagu
Harunobu Takeda
Jacob Boschee
Leonard Dominguez
Christian Mejia
Wu Jingting
Yin Xin
Michael Barclay
Seth Veit
Damien Miller
Richard Wilkins
Christopher Meyer
David Miguel Garcia Lopez
Kimball Polanik
Robin Nielsen
Elizabeth Hare
Marek Augustin
Ciro Brizzio
Josh Shishilla
Filipe Guimaraes
Marco Lazzazzara
Thomas Sowders
Jarvis Roach
David Mantel
Lawrence Matthews
Mohammad Nazri Ishak
Tomas Klimes
Jan van der Ham
Egor Kuznetsov
Sergey Izherskij
Erik Vande Vooren
David Meetze
Harry Frank
David De Loach
Jacopo Borrelli
Lin Meise
Anthony Haviaras
Cody Coffelt
Kellen Neal
Cory Leeman
Jonathan Rackowski
Caitlin Nestick
John Hessler
Richard Bednarik
Jiri Kubos
Daniel Restrepo
Manuel Inacio
Dominik Lewis
Steffen Jäger
Brian Miller
Davide Rinnen
Andrew Turpin
Kevin Hundt
Taro Ito
Hao Du
Matthew Balcom
Patrick Frentzen
Jacob H. Haven
Jonathan Connolly
Thomas Cao
Ward Poulisse
Jun Akahane
Zhu Bin
Noah Stromberg
David Van Dusen
Christopher Morger
Kyle Hislop
Mickey Walkup
Jake Kindsvogel
Albert Wooten
Louis Rowe
Michael Potente
Brandon Schmidt
David Scopac
Goyet Quentin
Steve Giannopoulos
Joe Rittiner
Jonas Breindahl
Gonzalo Alonso
Natalia Ruiz Estepa
Fernando Valverde
Kenichiro Arai
Kyle Taggart
Piovan Jerome
Dmitry Pyatov
Vasiliy Saenko
Adam Hubble
Steven Wood
Ian Smith
Matthew Bevenour
Alex Valencourt
Daniel wegner
Abeed Bendall
David Delgado
Germán Más
Jeff Sirkis
Mihail Turetskiy
Mary Angel Davila
Johnnys Torres
Congratulations, and thank you for all your hard work!
This month we have 2 judges being featured, both for their 10 year anniversaries! Justin Hovdenes and Enrique Manuel Guzmán Mosqueda both have been with the program for a decade. First we have Justin, who had 2 RCs step up to the plate, wanting to express their appreciation: Scott MarshallSo, the background story on how Justin became a judge…
Years ago – not sure exactly when, but definitely before Shards block – he played in a Denver PTQ. In one round, he was one of the last matches playing, and during the post-game discussion with his opponent, he said something like “yeah, my only hope was to stall you out”. Obviously, he and I had a chat about his poor choice of words! He wasn’t actually Stalling, it’s just that the strategy of his deck in that matchup was to prolong the games as much as possible, and he didn’t know the significance of that word.
Later, his was the last match, and at the end of turn 5 – with at least 3 judges watching – he said to his opponent “well, we can just roll for the win?” and picked up a die. This time, my chat with him led to him writing a statement, after being DQ’d. He put a lot of effort into writing that statement, and afterwards asked me a number of questions about becoming a judge. I pointed him to various resources, limited though they were at that time, and didn’t expect to hear much more after that.
Some time later, he asked to come be an L0 at another event, and take his test. I happily accepted – esp. knowing how isolated his community was, and what they’d gain if he certified – and we scheduled it. Justin did a fine job at the event, and then took his test. He had prepared, perhaps more so than any other candidate I’d worked with – but only on the rules. He didn’t know that policy would be about a third of his total score! He ended up getting nearly 100% correct in the rules section, and just barely enough right answers on policy, and achieved a passing score.
I believe – but wasn’t involved and can’t easily confirm – that he applied himself to both rules and policy knowledge, and nearly aced his L2 test!
Since that time, the inexperienced player I had to DQ became one of my most valued judges, even driving through South Dakota blizzards to judge at Denver events. He’s continued to apply that dedication all over your region, and I think we can both say that his inauspicious start led to a great judging career!
Rob McKenzieJustin (aka Hovey) is a good friend of mine, and he is in an unusual position in the judging community. He is very far from other L2 judges. The closest to him is a 3-4 hour drive away. He is the Area Captain for what I call the “Western Dakotas”, the west half of both South and North Dakota. That’s a larger area than the states of Minnesota or Wisconsin, but it’s mostly just isolated communities with long drives between them. He is the only L2 in this area.
It’s really an interesting place to be in, because it means that the only contact someone might have with the judge program at all is Hovey coming in and running their PPTQ. He is responsible for certifying multiple people, training in store-level folks in a couple of stores, and trying to maintain his skills when he is the most public and well-known member of the judge community for a long, long way in every direction.
Hovey does a great job of this, and is even pretty engaged in the region as a whole. For the last two conferences in Sioux Falls he has been involved in investigations workshops, first as an actor, and then writing his own scenarios. Hovey flew out to Minneapolis so he could come to our Leadership Conference this year, and when the conference got snowed out by a blizzard he was one of the primary folks presenting during an impromptu streamed panel session we put on as a replacement. He never complained during this process, just provided great information about store level organized play, compensation for PPTQs that are both small and far away from a judge, and acted as a great ambassador for the judge program, like he always does.
The other half of this is that Hovey is very experienced – he has judged at a huge range of events across the country and around the world, at literally every level. Hovey has judged World Championships, Pro Tours, and Grand Prix, along with 12 player PPTQs. He treats every event like it is important, and really brings a weight of quality judging to a place where you would be surprised to find a judge of his caliber.
I’ve been super pleased to have worked with Hovey for so many years, and I love having a judge and program ambassador I can really rely on in a place where the community really needs someone great like him.
Next, Carlos has gathered some thoughts about how Enrique has shaped his region in the past few years: Emmanuel LealEnrique is a judge with a high commitment to excellence. As an example, he helped prepare a seminar about layers for about 4 months, going over scenarios and questions for the attendees that helped both of us learn more about layers.
We were also impressed when he got a high score in El Erudito, a quiz contest designed to help judges become better at rules. Even though he didn’t use tools like Yawgatog, he still scored better than most of us. Daniel Gallegos
I met Enrique a few years ago and during this time I have realized that he is a very valuable person and an excellent member of the judge program. Since then we have been together in some projects and conferences and it is always a pleasure to work with him because he is responsible, firm, committed and a very charismatic and kind person. These qualities make him an ideal team player.
I think Enrique and I have many things in common and our vision of the judges program is usually very similar. I hope to last as many years as he will in the program and I wish him to continue doing great things with that excellent personality he possesses. Carlos Ho
Most people outside of Mexico don’t know Enrique, as he hasn’t traveled to big events yet. However, ever since the Hispanic America North region came to be, I noticed Enrique’s willingness to participate in the community and to try to help out. He’s a mainstay at our conferences, and enjoys presenting seminars. It’s a pleasure for me to congratulate Enrique for all of these years of service and for his increasing participation in our community.
Happy anniversary to all of you! We look forward to many more years of judging from you all.