{"id":293,"date":"2019-02-21T18:27:48","date_gmt":"2019-02-21T18:27:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/?p=293"},"modified":"2019-02-21T18:27:48","modified_gmt":"2019-02-21T18:27:48","slug":"magicfest-cleveland-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/2019\/02\/21\/magicfest-cleveland-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"MagicFest Cleveland 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This weekend in Cleveland, we have 1 new judges to Welcome to the fold!<\/p>\n<h2>Karl Simmons<\/h2>\n<div class=\"wp-caption alignleft judgeimg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/apps.magicjudges.org\/judges\/dci\/4210118173\"><img src=https:\/\/apps.magicjudges.org\/dci\/avatar?dci=4210118173&size=200 alt=\"\"><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><\/p><\/div>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Name:<\/strong> Karl Simmons<\/li>\n<li><strong>Pronouns<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/pronoun.is\/he\">He\/him\/his<\/a><\/li>\n<li><strong>Level:<\/strong> Level 1<\/li>\n<li><strong>Location:<\/strong> Cincinnati, Ohio, United States of America<\/li>\n<li><strong>Region:<\/strong> USA &#8211; Great Lakes <\/li>\n<li><strong>Approximate date\/month\/year you started playing Magic:<\/strong> October 2010<\/li>\n<li><strong>L1 Certification Date:<\/strong> March 4, 2018<\/li>\n<li><strong>Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, group of people) about Magic:<\/strong> Cubes, preferably weird ones<\/li>\n<li><strong>Occupation:<\/strong> Unemployed, but looking<\/li>\n<li><strong>Random fact about yourself:<\/strong> I&#8217;ve seen every episode of Survivor, most of them multiple times. Season 38 airs next week.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Why did you become a judge?:<\/strong> Simply stated, the rules of Magic are extremely interesting. I enjoyed being an encyclopedia of the game, and became used to helping out around my store. When people would have questions, I would answer them. The decision to continue forward in the judge program came from a love I found in the community of judges. Meeting other judges, and bonding over this shared interest we all have in this weird and arcane game, I couldn&#8217;t have stayed out.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Who are your mentors?:<\/strong> Jeff Kruchkow, Stephen Brown, John Alexander<\/li>\n<li><strong>What challenges have you faced or are you facing to become a better judge?:<\/strong> I can be too quick with my calls. I have a tendency to approach calls with a &#8220;Get in, resolve the problem, and get out&#8221; mentality, and sometimes that leads to me speaking too quickly, or not investigating where I should. Paradoxically, I also have a tendency to over explain, in a way that could risk straying into coaching. These two issues are on other ends of a spectrum, and in correcting one direction, there&#8217;s a danger of veering too far in the other.<\/li>\n<li><strong>How have you worked to overcome those challenges?:<\/strong> I ask for feedback a lot. I shadow other judges to watch their approach, and communicate frequently with those judges to ask how they would handle calls that I just took. Even when I&#8217;m relatively confident in a situation I just handled, I always want to hear a new perspective.<\/li>\n<li><strong>What is the best part about your local Magic community?:<\/strong> I&#8217;m more familiar with the Indianapolis community since I recently moved, so I&#8217;m going to talk about them. Indianapolis Magic is a family. When our friend, Clay Spicklemire was diagnosed with cancer, we all came together to gift him a modern deck that he&#8217;d always wanted to play. We all signed the individual cards we donated. When our friend Riley Oberhart died in a car accident, we (primarily Riley Spelman) created a memorial tournament for him, which has been continued annually. This year will be the third.<\/li>\n<li><strong>What is your favorite Magic memory?:<\/strong> When I learned the game. My friend in high school knew I wanted to pick up Magic, and his dad used to play the game back in the mid 90s. He&#8217;s one of those guys that left when damage went on the stack. So my friend told his dad, and they organized a sort of Magic party. Four of us got together, and we really learned the game. He handed us a whole bunch of sealed product, and let us keep it. We built sealed decks from an amalgamation of old tournament packs and boosters, even some Unglued and Unhinged. I won. I felt on top of the world. So then dad pulled out his old Stasis deck and showed me what the game can do. It was like a &#8220;supposed to lose&#8221; boss fight in a game, to show you the obstacle you&#8217;ll eventually be able to overcome. It was less than a month before I went to my local game store to play the game, and I never stopped.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This weekend in Cleveland, we have 1 new judges to Welcome to the fold! Karl Simmons Name: Karl Simmons Pronouns He\/him\/his Level: Level 1 Location: Cincinnati, Ohio, United States of America Region: USA &#8211; Great Lakes Approximate date\/month\/year you started playing Magic: October 2010 L1 Certification Date: March 4, 2018 Favorite thing (e.g., card, deck, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":97,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"language":[],"class_list":["post-293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/97"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":294,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions\/294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/fold\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}