Hola there Judges,

Welcome back into another weekly edition of Judge of the Week, this time featuring one of the most representative Judges in the Judge Iberian community. On the surface a very involved judge of his Local community who can spend long hours talking about their pals! But in the Judge of the Week we expected to dig through the black shirt, there we found along a board game lover, a sport man with a very solid sense of community work beyond the events. Judges if you have not meet Sergio Perez from Spain before, don’t miss this chance and follow us in this interview!

Name: Sergio Pérez
Level 3!
Location: Móstoles, Madrid-Spain
Judge start date:
September 30th, 2007
Why did you become a judge?
To help at my LGS answering questions at tournaments I played and at forums. I was also quite difficult for me to move around to tournaments and judging was a better reason for my parents than playing :).
Occupation: Stress Engineer for an Aeronautical company
Favourite card: Battle of Wits Least favourite card: Bayou.
Favourite format: Limited. Probably Booster draft over Sealed. I think I’m stepping between Modern and Legacy… in constructed.
Commander General: Child of Alara Favourite non-Magic Game: Chess. I used to play competitively when I was a child, before Magic 😛
Best tournament result: A few Legacy and Modern Leagues wins. Nothing really relevant inside the Competitive Pro Circuit.
Random fact about yourself: My friends usually call me by my nickname “Peke”, even if most of them don’t even know where it came from! It actually comes from my childhood, when I participate at a TV show for “smart children” and my school mates started calling me that way. I didn’t win, but ended in a good position. No recorded documents from this program will be shared, but you can call me Peke if you wish! 😀

How did you get involved in magic in the first place?

I met Magic on summer of 2001, with Apocalypse, but bought my first deck with Judgment release, on summer 2012. The old-brothers of some of my friends had this “strange cards” and gave them some. We were 12 years old and meet everyday all the day at our swimming-pool, where we start playing with our own rules. We liked it more and more and start buy some occasional boosters and trading between us until one day, after the summer ended and it was much more difficult to keep meeting everyday, we start going some weekends to our LGS. I’m the only one of my old friends who still plays Magic (and not very frequently, I must admit :S), but my LGS still exists :).

How has being a judge influenced your non-Magic life?
Highlighting several L3 qualities that improved my competences at work, like teamwork, leadership and stress management is very easy; traveling and foreign languages development have been also a plus; but it wouldn’t be fair to stop on that.

I started judging more than 7 years ago, just the day before I started my university studies. We could say that I’ve been a judge during my whole “adult life”. I passed my L3 a few months after starting at my current job (May ’12) and just a month right before defending my degree’s final project; my wonderful girlfriend met me when I was already a judge almost 5 years ago; some of my best friends are or have been judges… It is more difficult to find a life aspect not influenced by being a judge than describing how much judging helped me to develop myself both as a professional and as a person.

What is your favourite non-magic hobby?
I could go with a 50-50 between boardgames and futsal (indoor soccer). I have I boardgame collection at home I’m pretty happy with, which is growing and growing with the years, and I regularly (almost weekly) play football, futsal and volleyball, with occasional Padel matches. I like team sports, and futsal would be my choice if I had to decide. I also don’t refuse a good game of chess 🙂

I’ve been playing futsal since I was 12, I played before with my friends, but on a team I started being 12, on the other hand, volleyball has been a pretty recent one! My girlfriend used to play volleyball when she was young and when we meet at the university, I started playing a little when they were missing people on the training seasons.

Now I’ve been playing for a couple of years on a male-female team padel is also a recent one I think I like these sports because it’s easier to find people available around here (you need 10 players for a futsal match, instead of 22) and I’m also more used to more intense efforts in shorter distances. After that, playing football is less tiring, since you have more time to get back from the “sprits” sprints!

Have you tried these games  with other fellow judge?
Sure many times! Actually, some of them are birthday gifts from judge friends, some guests in our boardgame meetings have been Sandra Regalado, Miguel Calvo, Luis Martin, Antonio Jose Rodriguez, and Alfonso Bueno… although I can’t remember playing all together, but in different times, and some friends that used to be judges but decided to left it. On a particular note I think DLI have been in some meetings, but can’t remember playing boardgames but magic =P.

What type of games are the most popular in your play meetings and why?
Normally I like switching between cooperative and player vs player(PvP) games, usually like player vs player more than cooperative but I enjoy a lot cooperatives as well, some of my favorite games are Zombicide, Desert island, and fire rescue the “problem” with pvp is that there are usually “time stops” (when other players are playing, maybe others just can look and not interact, which usually doesn’t happen at cooperative that’s why I like 7 wonders, because everybody plays at the same time. Also, Sushi GO! is also a very good one on this idea, a great pocket game!

Can you recognize a few judges within your community?
I can give a lot of names for a lot of reasons (Exemplar Program is excellent for it :P) let’s start with my closer ones!

Alfonso Bueno, of course, not only as an excellent judge but the greatest RC we could have confident and dedicated to the region, always try to improve whatever that can be improved.

Sandra Regalado would be my next thought I’ve been really close to her since we actually started judging quite close one to the other and we grew together as a judge see spends a lot of time workign and leading regional projects she started developing her isolated community and when she came to Madrid to live she kept giving a lot of time to the judge program.

Miguel Calvo is also really passionate and likes perfection over all, he’s really active answering LOTs of answers on twitter for Spanish players with the spanish magicjudges account and he used to coordinate also Cranial Insertion translation.

Antonio Jose Rodriguez (AJ) is another untiring hard worker involved in a lot of projects he was my European coordinator on the international GP Travel guide Project, with excellent performance until I decided to leave the project and give him the leadership he deserved he’s also really community involved.

Sergio Garcia, leading the magic judges spanish facebook and improving event after event his logistical skills, being one of the strongest event judges we had on a shorter time this last year Jorge Requesens, Sandra, AJ and Sergio passed their L3 and I couldn’t be happier with it after working with them soo hard for a long, long time!

Actually is a bit unfair, because I’m talking all about L3s from Madrid, but the truth is that I could tell you also things about most of the L2s and impressive L1s. I have to say Hector de la Paz , L1 from Tenerife (Canary Islands), who will be L2 really, really soon :P, is one of the L1s I admire the most, he’s a local leader there in the Islands is working, studying and leading a quite isolated community while going to L2.

Proudest moment of your Judge life?
I like asking the judges to sign whatever they give me, it is really important for me passing my L3 was a great moment, but I have to say that probably my proudest two moments where:

When Alfonso told me on 2011 summer that he wanted to Recommend me to L3. It was during the last Portuguese Nationals. I had never thought on L3 before that moment but Alfonso offering me such a thing on that moment made me think on it and work for it.

The second proudest moment would be when AJ and Sandra passed their L3 on last GP Madrid ’14. Actually I was happier when they two passed their L3 than when I passed mine on 2012.

Do you have any particular goals/objectives as a judge for this new year?
For 2015 I have two main goals; one regarding my personal out-of-events organization and another event-related:

– My out-of-events goal is to improve my personal time organization. This year I’ll be involved not only on my Region development as last year, but also in three international projects, which will take a lot of my “free time”. One of my 2015 personal goals is to sleep more, so to achieve that with more responsibilities I need a quite better planning and self-management.

– My event-related goal is to do an event-trip to America and maybe another to Asia. I have never judged outside Europe and I think that this would help my personal growth as a judge :).

Of course, I want to do these two things while keeping high my event performance and my project involvement. And them I have my full time job, my girlfriend and my Master’s Degree Final Project, which I have to present and defend before July… Did I mention that I wanted to sleep more? :S

Can you describe us how you see your local Judge community?
In a few words I have to say that I’ve attended 4 weddings in my adult life and I’m attending a 5th this may and all of them are judge good friends. I love my community!

Madrid’s community is really healthy, and a great enviromment to start judging and grow as a judge there are very good and experience judges, that are also usually friends. At GPs, for example, we are quite well known to be a very close community, wich usually try to meet together when we can. All Spanish judges like to meet at least one day to have dinner together, even if we join other judges other days or later, sometimes I agree that this can be a bit difficult for other non-spanish speaking judges but this says a lot about how good friends we are and how easy is for a new judge to join us and enjoy while learning, I think we are really similar to our Italian cousins!

Two Truths and a Lie
Two of the following statements are true and one is false. Figure out which!
1. I have a big sleeping dragon guarding our guest room at home.
2. I won the under-12 Spanish Chess Championship when I was 10y/o.
3. Some years ago I could beat my friends at Dragon Ball Budokai Tenkaichi for PSP without looking at any screen, just hearing the sound of their PSP

The answer to the last Two Truths and a Lie...

Thanks Sergio, we really appreciate your passion for the game and the judge community, hope to keep hearing from you and for you Judges, don’t forget to let us keep catching awesome judges around the globe, Nominate a Judge Today!