Subject: Pro Magic = Pro Wrestling Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 21:23:04 -0500 From: "Bob & Tricia" To: Subject: Pro Magic = Pro Wrestling Date: July 14, 8:44 PM CST From: r.dewane@toast.net To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com By now, everyone has read all of the different posts regarding the whole cheating issue and everyone also has there own spin on how this is affecting or will affect the sport of Magic. After reading the same posts as you and talking this issue over with others who play in my area, I too have developed my own opinion. Years after Magic took off and had become the biggest thing to hit the gaming industry in a long time, Richard Garfield told us how he wanted to start a pro tour in the hopes that Magic would eventually be percieved as an intellectual sport on the same par as world class chess. The success of the pro tour, the thrill of eventually seeing the best minds in the game duel each other, was what he thought would give Magic the staying power that he and Peter Adkinson so desperately want it to have. I will start by saying that I DO NOT play Magic on any kind of professional level. I play the game for the same reason a lot of you do. It provides and encourages depth and creativity unlike no other game I have played before or since. However, I did have an initial interest in the pro tour because I thought, "Hey, if they can get the game noticed in the mainstream society by creating a successful pro tour, who's to say how long it will hang around? I mean really, did the first people to play chess ever dream that someday a world class chess player could damn near cause an international incident before a world championship match (i.e. Bobby Fischer)?" I was excited that there was a possible means to not only help this game stay around but to expose it to new players as well. Little did I realize what the pro tour would mutate itself into. Today's pro tour bears little resemblance to any kind of intellectual sport. Players are squatting on their chairs instead of sitting in them. They taunt and raise their voices at their opponents. They act arrogant in victory and cry & complain in defeat. Officials see blatant cheating take place and yet never disqualify the cheater. Professional Magic reminds me of a sport allright ... professional wrestling. Pro wrestling bears many similarities to pro Magic. The participants spend as much time taunting each other as they do actually competing against each other. When a pro wrestler loses a match, it is never his fault. He lost the match because somebody interfered or failed to interfere, not because he wasn't as skilled as his opponent. There are also two tiers of competitors in pro wrestling, as there are in pro Magic: the names and the no-names. The names have a little song and dance that they go through every match and it always ends with their "patented finishing maneuver." The no-names are expected to roll over and take it. And perhaps the most glaring similarity between professional wrestling and professional Magic is the officiating. In pro wrestling if you smack your opponent in the head with a steel chair, EVEN IF THE OFFICIAL SEES YOU DO THIS, chances are you will get the count and the winner's check that goes with it. So there you go. I know some people are saying to themselves, "Well, pro wrestling has a pre-determined outcome. Pro Magic doesn't have a pre-determined outcome." To those people, I offer only this: we all know that right now cheating is a rash on the pro tour and isn't a cheater actually attempting to set a pre-determined outcome for his match? Richard Garfield, wherever you are, is this the "intellectual sport" you were looking for. It's your game, not mine. But if this is bothering me, it's gotta be killing you. Respectfully, Bob Dewane (all comments welcome)