Hello everyone!

In this wave, we will continue to feature some highlights of the Exemplar nominations received by judges in our region.

Stay tuned to this blog or to the Europe-East Magic Judges Facebook group to read more features, today we present…

Olivier Gheysen

Olivier an L2 judge from the United Arab Emirates, having lived there for 15 years now. He started judging there and got his L1 in 2009 with Falko Goerres. He is heavily focused on the development of Magic in the area (UAE and Middle-East) which he has been working on for almost 10 years now. He has seen the development of the game from 4-player meetups to a community of 400+ strong and 7 stores in the area. Through the judging program he has found a way to give back, meet great people and constantly challenge himself both on a social and cerebral level.

Olivier received 3 nominations in Wave 4, let’s have a look at them.

David de la Iglesia had this to say about Olivier:
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“It shouldn’t surprise anyone I am recognizing you and Abdulrahman again in this wave, same as I did in the previous one. This time I am recognizing your joint effort in helping me see what was the correct decision when dealing with a conflictive situation with a local judge candidate. The two of you showed amazing maturity levels and professional demeanor during our discussion on the subject, and it should surprise nobody that both Abdulrahman and you quickly reached to the conclusion that giving up on the candidate was not an alternative, and that we needed to give him a chance like everyone else. I will keep counting on you two for helping me build the great team we’re assembling in the Middle East, and in particular in the GCC region. I’m sure the best is yet to come.”[/cets_callout_box] Abdulrahman Alhadhrami had this to say about Olivier:
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“Olivier, judging with you is always a great experience. What I like is the discussions that we have. Whether they were real scenarios or hypothetical ones, you always manage to get the discussion to be thorough.”[/cets_callout_box] Masaru Koide had this to say about Olivier:
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“You are expanding UAE magic community as good Lv2 judge. And you are making good relationship not only our region, but also outside of our region and High Lv Judge. It will be good help for our community development. Thank you very much.”[/cets_callout_box]

Congratulations Olivier, this is some amazing work!