A Year of Grand Prix Events

This year marked my return to the competitive Magic scene. When I came back from the Pro Tour, I was about to finish my studies and I had just met my girlfriend – there wasn't much time and money available to me to spend it on Magic. Also, I suffered from a bit of cockiness about Magic and, probably as a result of that, was mostly unsuccessful in requalifying for the Pro Tour as a consequence. I decided to focus on other things and get a better perspective on why I wasn't succeeding in competitive Magic.

After finishing my studies successfully, moving in with my girlfriend, getting back to my very enjoyable part-time job at BB-Tradingcards, and stabilizing in real life, I figured 2018 would be the best time to get back into competitive Magic and "invest" some spare time and money into attending a lot of Grand Prix Events, to see if I can qualify for the Pro Tour again.

My Initial Goals

Since I started the season with almost no Planeswalker Points, my top priority was to have two Byes for Grand Prix Events again as they are very crucial to your chance of making a deep run in the tournament. Many players underestimate them but if you approach the topic mathematically and set your chance of winning a match to 50 %, a bye doubles your chance at winning the tournament. I realize that the benefit decreases with your skill as you're trying to win more than half your matches, but I still think decent players undersell the effect byes have on their performance.

Since I was used to having between 4.000 and 6.000 annual Planeswalker Points, I wasn't aware on how hard it's actually to achieve the threshold of 2.250 Points in a year to earn the benefit. If I recall my earlier statements, I was even expecting to earn more than 4.000 Points in order to have a bye at the German national championship as well. I played in 8 Grand Prix Main Events this year, and with MagicFest Prague and Strasbourg, I will finish the season with enough points to earn two byes at Grand Prix Events, but far from 4.000. Since national championships have been abolished again just a few days ago, it doesn't matter a lot – I just wanted to mention that it's easy to set high goals if you don't view everything rationally.

Of course, I also was hoping to finish in another Grand Prix playoff and earn a requalification for the Pro Tour. But to be honest, a player's chances of doing so without a world-class win-rate and by "only" attending 8 qualifying tournaments is pretty slim, so I was afraid to make assumptions about whether or not I'd make the Pro Tour.

Overall, I guess I achieved my goals, as I will have two byes again going forward and kept my calm attitude, which helped me avoid dissapointment with not going back to the Pro Tour yet.

My Year at Grand Prix Events

Since I wrote tournament reports for Cardmarket Insight covering some of my Grand Prix journeys, I will just go over them quickly and reflect on what I've learned from them.

As you can see, I qualified for the second day three times and didn't win any cash prizes. I came close in Prague, but in the end, I paid 2.415 € for 3 Pro Points and two byes going forward. The costs include accommodation, main event registration, and travel cost. I ended up almost winning 60 % of my matches not considering byes and I consider that a pretty good win-rate at the Grand Prix circuit. Without an astonishing win-rate of 66-70 %, like world-class players achieve with three byes, your chances of accumulating a bunch of pro points, qualifications and prize money are super slim!

Expect to pay a lot and earn little in return if you decide to grind a bunch of Grand Prix Events.

Sure, I've got some years where I broke even or returned the most of my costs with lucky finishes but the dream of actually earning Money playing Grand Prix Events is just an illusion – even for top level Pro Players.

If you plan to start the Grand Prix grind, you should have some spare money you don't mind losing on the way, otherwise you'll be disappointed at the end of the year.

With the Pro Players Club Bronze Level, there was some kind of justification for going to as many events as possible because being qualified for all Regional Pro Tour Qualifier Events is a huge deal and skipping on the local Preliminary Pro Tour Qualifier grind frees up a lot of time and money to safe up for the Grand Prix Travel. But since Wizards of the Coast are building up the Pro Player's Club again from the scratch, transforming it into the Magic Pro League and getting rid of Pro Points and leaving us in the dark about the coming Qualification process for the Pro Tours - which will be called Mythic Championships going forward - it's hard to say if Grand Prix Events at MagicFests are the way to go for competitive players or not.

Let's Not Forget the Upsides

I was going into this season knowing that I would probably spend a lot and earn less or nothing, and that I probably wasn't becoming a bronze Pro or earning a Pro Tour qualification. I solely did it for the awesome community and to improve as a player. And that certainly paid off! I met so many new friends and built up old relationships again – it was so much fun! My personal highlight was finally getting to meet my childhood idol Kai Budde through my friends Helmut Summersberger and David Brucker. He even followed me on Twitter and we're Facebook friends now. Those social interactions are really the main selling points of going to Grand Prix Events and I think the rebranding as MagicFests is a very positive thing for the Magic Community going forward, as those events are much more about the social aspect of gaming and not about the things you can win or not.

I will certainly attend MagicFests Prague and Strasbourg in early 2019 since they're very close to my hometown and my local friends are going but before everything regarding the qualification process for Mythic Championships is revealed, I can't justify committing more to the Grand Prix Grind.

Also, I started to stream Magic Arena on Twitch.tv/andifeated this year and it is a lot of fun to me!

If that's becoming a good way to qualify for premier play events, I might travel less next year and commit more to streaming Magic.

Let me know in the comments how your Grand Prix Events went this year and what you do think about the recent competitive play announcement! See you at a Grand Prix, errh... MagicFest near Germany!

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily Cardmarket.