Grand Prix Prague 2018 - Welcome to the Fold

This weekend in Prague, we have twelve new judges to Welcome to the Fold!

Note: Pronouns were added in the middle of the response window for this event. Some folks here never got a chance to see that new question!

Maxime Chausson

Name: Maxime Chausson
Level: Level 2
Location: Nantes, France
Region: France
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: August 2002
L1 Certification Date: September 24, 2011
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: being able to meet a lot of people and, for some, become friends
Occupation: Project engineer
Random fact about yourself: I’m a professional wrestler (aka Maxime Chaoson)
Why did you become a judge?: At first, we had few judges in my area, and I wanted to help, improve players knowledge about rules, and make tournament better. After, i was the only one judge, and i want to keep community and big tournament alive. After, with some new judges (especially PJ Chaïb), Normandie became a good country with a lot of tournament and judges !
What excites you most about this event?: It’s my first GP ! I will meet a lot of new judges, and learn a lot in this weekend !
What worries you most about this event?: To find my place, and work in team. I don’t want to be too much or to less present !
What are you hoping to learn at this event?: How to work well in a team, some tips to judge and answer faster
Who are your mentors?: Stephane Manaranche (my L1 cetificator), Sophie Pagès (my L2 certifcator), with a lot of help from Marion Dupouy, PJ Chaïb, Claire Dupré, Arnaud Perrouin
What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: I need more time in my life ! Can we make 9 days week, with 3 days of weekends ? I need to manage my time better, in order to create some space to be more involved in the Judge Programm (like this project, that i found awesome !)
How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: Not enough time !
What is the best part about your local Magic community?: meet people, to be known from them and have a lot of question to help them
What is your favorite Magic memory?: what a big question ! It’s so hard to define one ! I prefer to give you one of the most fun : I played a 2HG Commander tournamet with my friend PJ, he plays Animar, and I play Teysa. Our decks name was (i try to translate in english) 5CCWKF? (5 Colors Combo Who Kill First ?), because we played 2 combo deck, and we try all day long to be the first to kill our opponents without the help of teammate. As he had a better combo, one time i just kill his Animar, in order to kill our opponents before he does ! But I think our opponents were a bit sad …

Filip Crnjac

Name: Filip Crnjac
Level: Level 1
Location: Rijeka, Croatia
Region: Europe – East

Cécile Denaux

Name: Cécile Denaux
Level: Level 1
Location: Brussels, Belgium
Region: BeNeLux

Alžběta Ferenčíková

Name: Alžběta Ferenčíková
Pronouns She/her/hers
Level: Level 1
Location: Ostrava, Czechia
Region: Europe – Central
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: June 25, 2014
Who are your mentors?: Tomas Kriz

Karel Jílek

Name: Karel Jílek
Level: Level 2
Location: Praha 6, Břevnov, Czechia
Region: Europe – Central
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: When the oldest Ravnica set was released
L1 Certification Date: January 9, 2016
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: Blood Moon, all crazy combo decks (for example Sram), the community in Černý Rytíř (a M:tG store in Prague) and the community of czech judges
Occupation: Student, studying Software Engineering
Why did you become a judge?: I have always been interested in rules interactions and was helping my local community on regular weekly tournaments where I was playing. One day, I thought why not to make this officially as a certified judge? And later, when I was buying some cards from Milan Majerčík, a L2 judge, the dream could become real. Later I found out that judging is much, much, MUCH more than rules interactions, but never mind. I like it anyway 🙂
What excites you most about this event?: After 2.5 years of judging, I finally managed to be selected for a GP. My biggest events so far were MKM series of no more than 400 players so for me, this is something completely new and possibly challenging. And combined with the fact that I was selected as a floor judge which I wanted to, I can really look forward to the event.
What worries you most about this event?: At the moment, absolutely nothing. However, it might change after I enter the venue 🙂
What is your favorite Magic memory?: When I was in Malaysia, I went to a store there with a friend to play Magic. Their schedule said that a booster draft shall take place, however everyone wanted to play standard. We had no cards and we wanted to play, so we borrowed preconstructed decks for beginners from the store, consisting of cards with no difficult interactions. It is needless to say that the deck had no chance to win. However, in round 1 I was paired against my friend and won and in round 2, I managed to beat a tier 1 deck (at the time of Return to Ravnica and Theros, it was Esper Control). And since there were only three rounds, this was already enough to win a booster pack.

Kryštof Juda

Name: Kryštof Juda
Level: Level 1
Location: Žďár nad Sázavou, Czechia
Region: Europe – Central
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: September 2014
L1 Certification Date: June 3, 2018
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: I just love the game and players
Occupation: Student
Random fact about yourself: Wherever I go, I try to use my bike as much as possible
Why did you become a judge?: To help out my store and to move somewhere in Magic
What excites you most about this event?: New experiences for me
What worries you most about this event?: I have no idea what to expect
What are you hoping to learn at this event?: Anything would help
What is the best part about your local Magic community?: It is very helpful and caring about everyone
What is your favorite Magic memory?: When I started playing and my first deck

Filips Kamkins

Name: Filips Kamkins
Level: Level 1
Location: Riga, Latvia
Region: Europe – North

Łukasz Klimek

Name: Łukasz Klimek
Level: Level 1
Location: Jastrzebie-Zdroj, Poland
Region: Europe – Central
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: Late 2014
L1 Certification Date: October 15, 2016
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: Playimg pauper with in FLGS – greatest format and greatest people
Occupation: IT student
Random fact about yourself: I’ve always had many friends with same name as me, Łukasz, so people started calling me Armek, as it was nickname I’ve used in online games. Nowadays I hear Armek thrice often than my name, since most of my friends use it, even my parents sometimes call me like that!
Why did you become a judge?: Mostly because my LGS didn’t had one and my local EDH group is pretty demanding! After their training shop owner asked me if I can try to become a judge and I was like “”Yeah, why not.”” Got my Level 1 three weeks later.
What excites you most about this event?: Obviously it’s a Grand Prix – a biggest event I can attend as both player and judge. It doesn’t get any more exciting than that.
What worries you most about this event?: Same thing that excites me – it will be the biggest event I’ve had ever attended. Everything will be new for me.
What are you hoping to learn at this event?: How it looks to be a judge at so big event to make a progress as a judge.
Who are your mentors?: Most important person to mention here is obviously Tytus Rduch – he is the first judge I had contact with IRL and he always is helping me with all the judging problems. Other one is obviously my RC – Sebastian Pękala, he always have patience and knowledge to answer all my questions.
What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?: For me it was probably being overzealous at events, it always resulted with me being totally wear off after event.
How have you worked to overcome those challenges?: It all came down to understand I need to take care of myself first and keep it calm at longer events. After all I need to keep my best smile for 3 days, which is hard if you don’t look after yourself.
What is the best part about your local Magic community?: Everyone is very welcoming and helps without asking. When I was learming to play some older players did paid the draft entry fee just to play Magic with me. This community is also a place where I made a habit of donating playmats to newer players, as it is normal in my community.
What is your favorite Magic memory?: The draft from Gnomicon 2017 – during the meal break for players I’ve decided to turn on the MTGO and finish my Throwback Gauntlet with Tinker deck. I was paired against Memoey Jar deck. One of judges at the event, Krzysztof Wójcikiewicz, started to reminiscence how scary the deck was, when opponent decided to go off on turn 0. Seeing how deep opponent is comboing I wanted to scoop, but Krzysztof stoped me, as he wanted to remind himself how the deck was killing opponent. So we waited few minutes, opponent was still doing his stuff. I’ve went to toilet for few good minutes and came back just to see laughing people staring at my laptop screen. Turns out opponent were still going for it. When they scooped another 5 minutes later everyone lost their minds, as opponent lost game on their turn 0 with 5 minutes left on clock. I still have no idea how Memory Jar was killing people.

Tomas Lanka

Name: Tomas Lanka
Level: Level 1
Location: Rakovník, Czechia
Region: Europe – Central

Matteo Ratti

Name: Matteo Ratti
Pronouns He/him/his
Level: Level 2
Location: Lurago d’erba, Italy
Region: Italy and Malta
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: 2004
L1 Certification Date: February 4, 2017
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: My PDH ( pauper commander) deck: Sedraxis Specter
Occupation: Student
Random fact about yourself: I love playing saxophone 🎷
Why did you become a judge?: I became a judge because I love this game and I love rules generally speaking. From the very beginning, I was the one in my group of friends who somehow responded to the problems facing us. I wanted to persevere and try to become a real judge because I always liked to deal with rules-related issue.
What excites you most about this event?: I’m excited by the idea of being able to judge a Grand Prix. It was my objective since I became L1 and now I’ve finally managed to make it real! The thing that excites me the most is knowing that I’m in a tournament with lots of people and lots of judges, thus having the opportunity to know new things almost everywhere I will move!
I’m sure It will happen because after doing some experiences in Italy one year ago, when i judged in France for a 200 players commander tournament, i saw new ways of judging.
What worries you most about this event?: My biggest concern is to find out that I am not able to judge a GP. I have worked hard to reach this goal and finding that I haven’t done enough so far would be a very hard blow for me.
What are you hoping to learn at this event?: I hope to learn a lot in any field I’ll work. In my opinion a GP is a melting pot of new information and methods in every possible and imaginable task.
What is your favorite Magic memory?: My favorite magic memory is a home tournament. Some time ago, with my friends, we did tournaments that lasted a year: every month we were and played in a different format, compiling a general ranking. Once we didn’t know what to play, so we bought 54 boosters of dragon’s maze, the ten heroes of the maze – the maze runners – and we made a sealed-commander tournament, the best I’ve ever played!

Andreas Reim

Name: Andreas Reim
Level: Level 2
Location: Göttingen, Germany
Region: German-speaking countries

Tomáš Vitvar

Name: Tomáš Vitvar
Level: Level 1
Location: Chomutov, Czechia
Region: Europe – Central
Approximate date/month/year you started playing Magic: October 2012
L1 Certification Date: April 26, 2015
Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic: Grindy decks
Occupation: Student
Random fact about yourself: Judging at WMCQ before being able to have a driving licence
Why did you become a judge?: It was quite natural. I was known in my local comunity for knowing the rules. One day someone told me about the program and I have become curious. Then all of a sudden, I was sitting in front of the L1 test! There was no specific need for me to become a judge. Still, I believed it was the right path to choose.
What worries you most about this event?: It is a huge event. There is always more to worry about that you can cover. I am just a pawn and the responsibility I take is minimal compared with the risks organizers face. On the other hand, there are many things I can fail in and I still have to be very careful to do as much as I can in order to succeed.
What are you hoping to learn at this event?: Tournament like this is a great opportunity to work in large teams. Everything changes when the number of judges exceeds a certain number. You are no longer able to know a mojority of your collegues and know problems they are coping with at the moment. I hope I can get used to it and feel comfortable in an environment like this.
What is your favorite Magic memory?: I probably do not have a specific story. What I love is the memory of our casual Commander sessions. The perfect state of things – sitting in pub, playing cards and escaping the reality of everyday life. That is probably my favourite one.