GP San Jose: the aftermath

Howdy! It’s been a bit since my predictions for GP San Jose were posted, so I figured I’d check back in with ya’ll and tell you how well I did. Additionally, I’ve been decently busy with Comp REL stuff, so I wanted to give you some thoughts I’ve had regarding my recent adventures.

Let’s run down my lessons learned and see how well they matched with my GP experience:

Lesson the First: After you drop, go get barbecue at the Smoking Pig Barbecue Company. So good.

While I didn’t drop, I was part of a largish group of judges who got barbecue at the Smoking Pig Friday night. In quite the awesome fashion, former L4 and friend of the program Adam Shaw picked up the tab for the group. Classy guy, or classiest guy?

Lesson the Second: There will be plenty of mistakes on deck registration forms.

True! We had a whole slew of deck list problems to give out, but given that we had a ton of players register, that wasn’t unexpected. Kudos to the deck check teams for getting things done in an efficient manner.

Lesson the Third: The day is going to be very long. We are going to have to look after the wellbeing of our fellow judges assiduously during this event.

Oh so true. Eleven rounds day one made this event the longest (at least in number of rounds) day one I have ever worked [editor’s note: I erroneously credited this event with being possibly the longest ever. Rectified!]. As I was on the main event day two, I was released early (around 11:45 PM). Final standings were posted at 12:55 AM, and the event hall was closed at 1 AM. So good! Additionally, I know that my team had frequent breaks throughout the day, helping to relieve some of the strain of being awake for 19 hours. Their team leader was so thoughtful. I want to be on that person’s team, seriously.

Lesson the Fourth: Slow play has the possibility of making this long day even longer.

In theory, yes, this is true, but in practice I don’t believe our round turn-around was any worse than normal. It couldn’t be, we were getting kicked out of the venue at 1 AM at the very latest. I don’t have enough data on this to really say more about it.

Lesson the Fifth: Team sealed is a blast to play.

Ding ding ding, we have a winner. Anyone who followed coverage or the event reports will know how well-received this event was. Not only was attendance higher than expected, but players were coming to me throughout the day asking when the next team event was. While a logistical headache, the players had a blast, which is ultimately the most important thing. With some formatting changes (to avoid such a long day one), I could definitely see team events becoming a more regular feature of the grand prix circuit. If that’s the case, get ready for some long days.

Editor’s note: This article was written shortly after GP San Jose, but Louis’s inability to click “Publish” delayed publication until now. Sorry to keep you waiting.