Here are the November 2017 judge anniversaries!
20 years
Darren Gamble15 years
Igor CattaniAndres Martinez
Fabio Simoncini
Salvatore La Terra
Zachary Reyburn
Kevin Desprez
10 years
David Lyford-SmithAnders Thidemann
Roel Jans
5 years
TJ ClarkBrandon DeJean
Derrik Smith
Gregory Rome
Ivan Seleznev
Ruiming Chen
Brant Abeln
Hokuto Kanbara
Josh Ross
Brendan Charan
Matthew Stangel
Noah Koessel
John Galbraith
Cristiano Piu
josh hibbler
Jacopo De Rosa
Angel Ruiz Guerra
Mickael Li Thiao Te
Marc Pibernat
Philippe Josse
Konstantinos Brouzioutis
David Strütt
Mattia Pellegrini Miani
Francesco Giorgio
David Sorba
Timothy Murphy
Malte Irmer
Walker Robinson
Simon Carmichael
Tom Gibbs
Alexander McLaughlin
Arthur Stifelman
Justin Luttrell
Renier Rousseau
Christopher Zaal
Jason Benner
Aljaz Osojnik
Svarun Leskovšek
Yong Ming Lim
Jackie Lee
Stefan Kuntner
Fabian Januchowski
Scott Mayer
Elliot Van Wormer
Sony Searles
Addam Love
Ricardo Sánchez
Stephen Speck
Leonard Havliček
Steven Bezzio
Charles League
Justin Martin
Kai Sternitzke
Benjamin Upton
Rubén Ayllón Montesinos
Michael Wayne
Nahuel Vignatti
Tobias Olofsson
Samuel Akers
Jonathan Reasoner
Jamie Arnold
Per Carlsson
Michael Piotrowsky
Alexander Byatt
Tyrel Cameron
David Porzio
Serge Yager
Bryan Brahmer
Charles Lee
Alex Tune
Will Morell
Florian Zarges
Mark Brezinski
David Maddox
Colja Würdemann
Cliff Cheung
Gregory Havlik
Daniel Gluck
Juan Gonzalez
Mike Torrisi
Orlando Gonzalez
Mattias Hjelmström
Yunho Choi
Hyunwoong Park
Minqi Chen
Matthew Toledo
Andreas Eibel
Stefan Günther
Chong Lam Khaw
Sebastian Fieber
Jan Brinkmann
Brandon Martin
Irma Derkach
David McDarby
Julien Al-Rubei
Roger Glasser
Kade Boveington
Robson Falcão de Oliveira
Renato Kitagawa
James Farlow
Zachery Tracy
Alexandr Omelyanchik
Benjamin Autin
Devon Van Camp
Christopher MacKenn
Gabriel Nieves
Vincent Fleury
Giacomo Gambini
Jeffrey Schlichter
Aaron Sewell
Henry Moore
David Pitstick
Sergio Alexandre Carnevale
Benjamin Anuworakarn
Thomas-Moffitt Stage
Luigi Sbrocca
George Williams
Jose Tamargo
Ben Johnston
Hannah Wines
Vitaliy Glukhov
Sean Choate
Stephen Oliveiro
Samo Seljak
Ki-won Kim
Anastasiya Rozhkova
Jake Henry
Levi Brooks
Weipei Bu
Marco Kesseler
Steve Rogers
Yu-Wei Zhang
Dan Livant
Jorge Santos
Congratulations, and thank you for all your hard work!
This month, we have 3 headliners: Darren Gamble, Kevin Desprez and David Lyford-Smith! First, lets celebrate Darren’s 20 year anniversary as a judge! Jon Goud20 years in the judge program is an incredible achievement – and I started flipping through old ‘back in the day’ photos of Darren for inspiration. I started noticing something as I looked through old photos of GPs, Canadian Nationals, and many many judge dinners … Darren was one of the few pictured that are still actively judging.
Darren certified in 1997 – Tempest block would be the new set that fall, and the game had yet to grow through art design changes, the sixth edition rules overhaul, the M10 rules overhaul, mythic rares, and the list goes on! Young Randy Buehler would win Pro Tour Chicago that fall – his debut PT appearance! ‘Sequences’ and ‘Batches’ were likely on his level 1 test … which would have been administered by a L3 (the only level at the time that could certify new judges)
In that time Darren has judged many many tournaments of all shapes and sizes, certified and mentored innumerable judges in his home province of Alberta, and been a touchstone of integrity and energy at every event. Even after all these years he is a bottomless well of enthusiasm and hustle. I’ve never seen him do something sluggishly or absent-mindedly.
Much has changed in the last 20 years, and much is changing now both in organized play and the judge program. I look at 10-year-old pictures of Darren in his ‘zebra shirt’ alongside judges who have long since stepped down or who I don’t recognize at all. I think about how not all of us have ‘survived’ turbulence in the past, and it’s quite possible that in the years to come more of us will step down.
But it makes me feel safe to know that Darren will be there for those of us still judging years from now – he’ll be there to show us how to hustle, he’ll always up for a beer and a game of Commander, and always happy to share his ‘back in the day’ war stories to try and educate us young folk 🙂
Congratulations Darren, and we all hope to be judging alongside you 20 years from now!
Next, GuillaumeA couple of days ago, Sophie Pagès asked me if I was ok to write something about Kevin for his 15th anniversary. My first reflex was, wooooh 15 years is a pretty long long time. Then I realized that I’ve known Kevin for almost 15 years; first as a player, then as a judge. Finally it made me realize that I’m not twenty anymore… but that’s another story.
Fifteen years is a long period of time, but when you think about Kevin’s impact on the judge program, you realize that it can’t be done in just a couple of months. I could start to talk about Kevin’s influence on the French PTQs scene from something like 10 years ago, but let’s focus on the Kevin Desprez as a L3.
First of all, Kevin has been a keystone of the judge program in France for quite some years. This happened when 3 or 4 French L3+ stopped around the same period and Kevin was the last one until Daniel Kitachewsky finally passed his L3 and came to support. At this time, the MSN messenger window between Daniel and Kevin was the center of decisions for the French community 🙂
During this period Kevin was mentoring a decent group of L2s and some of them finally got their L3 and came to help to support the community. At the international level, one of his first big mark of influence was on the Investigation Committee. When he became the lead of the committee around 2010, he worked hard to create a structured document with philosophy support. The general concept of this document is still used today and allows the committee to handle most of the cases with pretty good consistency.
Kevin also worked a lot on the work flow, allowing players to have an answer regarding the outcome of their disqualification in a decent timeframe, while it was pretty erratic before that. Another point of interest in Kevin is an unusual trait of character: when you are working with the same group of people, doing the same things for years, it’s super easy to take habits and to stick to them. What always impresses me with Kevin is his ability to ask himself questions about everything, all the time. Take public transportation with Kevin in a country he never visited and you will quickly see what I mean. 😉 He is not only asking questions, he is also trying to find the best answer and if the current system is not the best answer he will design something to replace it. I could mention these recent ideas:
– In trial registration, he asked if the staff was able to take money at the table to give judges the ability to fire a huge number of trials from at the opening of the venue, without any waiting time for the players.
– In the sleep in special system, he crafted a process helping to answer to this question: “How to do the most efficient system to generate a great player experience, without risking to open the door for cheating?”
One of the most recent and visible impact that Kevin had on the program is the GP HJ program. While some people had concerns about the automatic maintenance of the GP HJ in the past, Kevin accepted the challenge and tackled this issue. I said challenge, because we are talking about evaluating other skillful people which for a large part of them are friends and trust me the job is not the most pleasant thing to do, but it has to be done. Kevin has been able to craft a process were a committee is able to evaluate different candidates anonymously, removing a maximum of bias in the candidates evaluation.
All of these initiatives have always been combined with a large amount of documentation and mentoring. If sometimes you feel Kevin has strong opinions, it’s true! But don’t be afraid to continue to discuss and to give your best arguments. As a very rational person, Kevin is very careful to listen to the facts and if at the end your suggestion makes more sense than the initial plan, he will probably go for it. Kevin is always giving his full attention to you when you enter a discussion with him. It looks like he believes that in every discussion there is a gem hidden that could improve the program or lives of others. Seeing him thinking about your craziest arguments and making them running in his head is something quite fantastic to see. Sometimes his conclusions go even farther than what you initially wanted to achieve!
Finally, we get to David’s 10 year anniversary! JackDavid’s ten-year lifetime as a judge has been a winding road of responsibility, professionalism, and excellence. At a time, David was only Level 2 judge on the main land-mass of the UK. Slightly later, he was one of the few Level 3 judges in the region, when that group could have their meetings at a single table in a Starbucks. David handled coordination of Level 1 certification and Level 2 certification for periods that I have personally experienced. He has served as the Head Judge of a Grand Prix (and indeed, he did so wearing a pointy witch’s hat). He has served as the Regional Coordinator for the region, leaving me with boots to fill that I still have worries about, to this day. He’s served as a sphere leader for the Player Experience sphere, spearheading (or sphere-heading) a multitude of projects, initiatives — both player- and judge-facing — and for each of these tasks, he’s inspired awe from many more judges, players, and Magic-involved individuals than just myself.
Throughout all of these roles, where I remember first seeing and experiencing the phenomenon known as “DL-S”, is as the Head Judge of a PTQ many years ago. Seeing David command a judge team, hundreds of players, and steer a ship through choppy waters to the end of the day has always been a fond and powerful memory of mine. One of the few things that he didn’t get to do “at the time” was be the Head Judge of Nationals. He got to show the English community exactly how well such a role suited him recently, and that memory of “Head Judge DL-S” was refreshed for me.
If I search my email account for “David Lyford-Smith”, what comes up is more than half a decade of advice, witticisms (or, as he would refer to them, as one of the most “street” individuals I know, “bants”), and relentless time and effort put in to improve me as a judge and as a person. That chain starts with “I want to become a Level 1 and I’ve been told you’re the guy to talk to” and ends somewhere yesterday providing information on yet another task David does for the region. I can believe DL-S has had this impact on an absurd number of other individuals. David has been a major positive influence for myself and the region, and I’m proud to call him a friend.
To ten more years!
Happy anniversary to all of you! We look forward to many more years of judging from you all.
Didn’t get my 15 years 🙁
There are some errors in the database that has caused a few people to miss their anniversaries. 🙁 We’re still trying to get it fixed but when we do, we’ll have a makeup post!