Grand Prix Toronto 2017

| Io Hughto

This weekend in Toronto, Grands Prix get the pleasure of meeting these fine new people:

Alex Frank

  • Name: Alex Frank
  • Level: Level 1
  • Location: London, Ontario
  • Region: Canada

Michael Hill

  • Name: Michael Hill
  • Level: Level 2
  • Location: Toronto, Ontario
  • Region: Canada

Paul Holbrook

  • Name: Paul Holbrook
  • Level: Level 2
  • Location: Syracuse, New York
  • Region: USA – Northeast
  • Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: Summer of 1994
  • L1 Certification Date: 7/19/2015
  • Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: I love being able to travel and meet people who share my passion about a game.
  • Occupation: Receiving Specialist and Trainer
  • Random fact about yourself: I was a Level 4 judge for the Lord of the Rings card game back in the day.
  • Why did you become a judge?: To be able to travel with my friends to events for formats I don’t play and to fill a need in my community.
  • What excites you most about this event?: I’m really excited to be judging at an event of this size.
  • What worries you most about this event?: I’m afraid of making all the wrong calls or not knowing what to do in some random situation that might come up.
  • What are you hoping to learn at this event?: I am really intrigued by the team system and hoping to learn more of how that functions in a large scale event.
  • Who is your mentor?: Joe Hughto
  • What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: I sometimes feel pressure to resolve situations quickly and don’t think things through completely. I end up making the wrong call because of this at times.
  • How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: I have come to realize that accuracy is more important than speed, and my community has appreciated it and been very supportive when I let them know I made a mistake or when I take the extra time to not make a mistake.
  • What is the best part about your local Magic community?: For the most part, I am fortunate to have a very warm, accepting, and supportive community. I am proud to be a leader in such a community.
  • What is your favorite Magic memory?: Beating Reid Duke in a game of Standard after coming off of a multi-year hiatus.

Gessi Hurd

  • Name: Gessi Hurd
  • Level: Level 2
  • Location: Charlottetown, PEI
  • Region: Canada
  • Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: 1995 when I was first introduced
  • L1 Certification Date: 6/22/2014
  • Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: Scaled Wurm, Urzatron
  • Occupation: Quality Analyst
  • Random fact about yourself: I wear T-shirts that feature TMNT at least 5 days a week
  • Why did you become a judge?: I’ve always enjoyed reading and dissecting rules and rule books. There’s a couple of board games that I play that can attribute some of it’s FAQs to me.
  • What excites you most about this event?: The sheer size of it. I’ve never been to an event this large.
  • What worries you most about this event?: I imagine the same thing that worries a lot of judges. Making a mistake!
  • What are you hoping to learn at this event?: Something about the logistics of running an event of this size. And hopefully some tips and tricks I can bring back home to help my events run more smoothly.
  • What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: Practice! Unfortunately, not a lot of events fire locally that require the need for a judge, so I don’t get to flex my judge muscles very often.
  • How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: I’m still working on it! It’s difficult to run local events due to inconsistent turn out, so I often need to travel off island to run more Comp REL events.
  • What is your favorite Magic memory?: Least favorite memory you say? Reading Chains of Mephistopheles a dozen times while playing High Tide.

Ryan Zacharias

  • Name: Ryan Zacharias
  • Level: Level 1
  • Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba
  • Region: Canada
  • Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: December, 2015
  • L1 Certification Date: 3/16/2017
  • Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: EDH at my local game shop every Wednesday
  • Occupation: Payment Services – Government of Canada
  • Random fact about yourself: I’m in the process of traveling somewhere every month in 2017
  • Why did you become a judge?: I initially got into magic after moving here from an island in BC (I had played yugioh in junior high so I was already familiar with the TCG scene) with the hopes of becoming more socially active in the community. Shortly after that I was welcomed with open arms and it was at that point I realized what a great community that we have locally.
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    My inspiration for becoming involved in the judge program was that I wanted to work within, and for the community that allowed me to learn and grow as a magic player, and to be in a position where I am able to share what I have learned with new players and folks who are getting into the game and being able to relate to them as a new player coming into the massive game that is Magic the Gathering.
  • What excites you most about this event?: Bedsides the fact that it’s my first GP (on staff verses grinding edh pods and chaos drafts), I’m super excited to be able to network with the other judges and learn from those outside of my immediate area.
  • What worries you most about this event?: I’ve never done anything quite like this, so I guess just a fear of the unknown. Although I’m continuously reminded by my peers that there’s nothing I should be worrying about.
  • What are you hoping to learn at this event?: Just the overall inner workings of a GP. I’ve always had a good time as someone playing at the event, but I’m curious to see all of the behind-the-scenes stuff with scheduling and all that type of stuff.
  • Who is your mentor?: I’m super fortunate to live in a densely judge-populated area, but if I had to pick, I would say a combination of Jan de Vlaming and Chris Hrichishen
  • What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: My first competitive event was a bit of a blur and with having no judging experience outside of FNM, it might have been a bit optimistic going into that with not having as much support as I would have liked.
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    That being said, I can already tell things will be much better this time around with things like having a buddy working with me and actually knowing what I’m getting myself into.
  • How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: See answer above
  • What is the best part about your local Magic community?: The diversity by far. The player base, the local stores, and variety of formats available at a given time are great.
  • What is your favorite Magic memory?: Playing BFZ draft, opening a P1P1 Ulamog the Ceaseless Hunger, taking it because it had an orange set symbol, but then thinking ‘why the heck would anyone spend 10 mana on this’ and immediately putting it in my binder, never to be seen for the remainder of the evening.