Hall of Long, Color Me Shamed, and #SDCC

Friday upon us again folks. Another week behind, and another weekend ahead.
Ended up playing some Cockatrice with @theBG_D, and i'm getting tired, so going to cut the chitchat and dig in, because there's a few things on the agenda today.

Hall of Long
Lot's of #mtghof talk lately, and rightfully so. For those selected, there is a great responsibility to conduct due diligence with respect to submitting a ballot. I applaud the conversation and effort that I've witnessed, which I'm sure dwarfs what actually goes on. I am not in the group that thinks people should vote privately and without lobbying... It's silly to think Pros, Writers, Judges and other members of the election committee(s) aren't going to talk to one another.Hall of Fame speculation is covered heavily in the press for major sports, so I'm not surprised that's what happens on Twitter for MTG. Further, I don't think @mtg_law_etc's post on his website MTGlampoon.com was that out of line. I understand why some people were offended, but to be brutally honest, he didn't really say anything negative about anyone. Just stated his opinion repeatedly that most weren't worthy. It's just one opinion people, ON A FUCKING LAMPOON SITE. Excuse my language. Wait don't. Don't excuse it if it bothers you, let me know, so I can direct more curse words at you.
Digressing... digressing... digressing... Digresed. Really, the post just wasn't funny, so people didn't get that it was supposed to be funny. We've seen this before from Sperling, when he made the Pro-player Fake MTG Cards and posted them on his blog. Felt attention deprived so he pissed off enough people so that people talked about him for a couple days. Shit, its effective, can't blame him for going back to it. (See, THIS is how you troll/lampoon someone and actually be funny... Just sayin')

Well, the part of the Hall of Fame discussion I want to talk about, is one that apparently comes up every year. @maro254 has been known to encourage people to vote for him. Many of the community quickly dismiss him as a cheat. I wasn't in anyway following Pro-Magic at the time Mike was around the pro-tour. I was playing magic at the time, I was about 13-14 when his famous Pros-Bloom deck was born, and was months before I stopped playing the game. I remember losing to someone who showed up with the Pros-Bloom deck at our local tournament, my understanding of the rules was pretty loose, and was mostly a casual player. I still liked going to the LGS to play in the tournament, mainly just to find new opponents. After losing to the Pros-Bloom guy, I gave up magic. Whether it was directly related to that match, or not, I dont know. But was probably part of it. I didn't understand what was happening in the game, i was confused, and intrigued at the same time. The other part of it was coming of age, and all that other good stuff, but none-the-less, i distinctly remember playing against that deck...

Fast forward to 2005-2006. I'm a recent graduate from UCSD. I had spent my college years, along with my buddy (who just won his first WSOP bracelet this year, grats to John Monette) working labor as movers. Johnny did most of the advertising and found us work to fund our party lifestyles all the way through college. After he discovered poker (this was when you could only play Limit poker here in San Diego, NL just didn't exist) he basically passed the reigns on to me, and I found other help. I couldn't do it long, once I finished school, I got a real job in Marketing, and was also just getting my feet wet in tutoring. I'd ocassionally still get calls for moving jobs, and depending on how hungry i was that week, I'd take them. One day I get a call from a lady, who said she's the personal assistant to a couple of guys who need my help. They are moving to San Diego from out of town, and they need some labor. I show up, and I meet Mike Long. He was not very interested in chatting with 'the help' (which is fairly common) and was busy settling in to his new place. Me and my friends are unloading endless amounts of stuff, when I open a box with a Magic: the Gathering World Champion trophy. I set it on the Mantle, and ask him about it. I kinda chuckled, I mean, I played this as a kid, thats like the World champion of Chutes and Ladders, right? He sorta brushed off my question, and I went about my work. At the end of the day, he, and his co-workers who were also moving to San Diego with him, paid us (very generously) and we were on our way. That night, I googled Mike Long, and found out he won $10,000 as world champion, WOAH! That was that, or so I thought. Two days later, Mike's assistant called me again, saying they had some more work for me. Ocassionally people would do this, they'd realize i'm not just dumb labor, and I'm capable of handling lots of little projects, so they'd ask me to do something else. They had me pick up Ikea furniture and build it. Ummmm okay, I was pretty stoked with my $40 wage to sit on my ass and build furniture. After a few other similar jobs, I got to know Mike and his co-worker Dave pretty well. Dave had a lot more mini-projects for me. These guys were doing some marketing work for Mystery, the pickup artist. You've probably seen him before, but he's faded from the limelight a bit since then. Dave had me help him fix up his bachelor pad per Mystery's direction as part of their plan to get a VH1 show for Mystery (it worked). Infact you can see the video they did afterward on Mike's Youtube, but it says you can find the 2nd half (the good part) on some other website, and I wasn't able to find it. Bummer. We basically made this "dream room" dave called it. THe floor was covered in Love Sac's and the ceiling we covered with billows of off-white sheets, with colored disco lights underneath that pulsed to music. We blacked out all the windows with dark canvas, and set up a sound system. Dave's only goal: "I dont want people to know it's morning yet..." After getting to know these guys better, I asked Mike a bit more about his Magic career, and he told me about how when he started playing it was all mind games and shuffle tricks, and you had to know the game too, but the real edge was outside of that. He showed me some shuffle tricks, none of which I now remember, and I didn't think much of it. Months later, at Dave's house, I saw him playing Magic Online. What? You can play this online? I watched him play through a single match of a draft, and was surprised, that from my rudimentary understanding of the game prior, I understood what was going on pretty well. I scoped out Magic Online, but the program was a bit too initimidating for me so I approached Mike about it later. I asked him to teach me a little about the game, and told him about my brief history with it as a kid. He broke out a couple decks and we talked a bit. He showed me a pros-bloom deck and I started laughing. I said, "This was your deck!?" It all came full circle to me at that time, and the Planeswalker's spark was back in me. Not long after Dave left town, in an apparent hurry not on the best terms with Mike, but I"m not here to speculate nor slander either one of them. They were great clients of mine. However, after all I witnessed, the conversations I had, and the information I gleaned, I have no doubt Mike Long has the ability, skill and knowledge to cheat successfully. I cannot personally vouch for whether or not he did so, but he was quick to show me how to do it. Would I vote him into the Hall of Fame? FUCK YES. With out Mike, I would not be playing Magic today. Without Mike, we wouldn't have epic stories about someone sideboarding out their only wincon in their deck just to next-level someone into scooping. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?! I do. Mike could do that. For realz. For those of you who don't know the pros-bloom deck, it basically generates stupid amounts of mana by using prosperity and cadaverous bloom. I believe it also used Squandered Resources too to help fuel the engine. After chaining a few prosperities, you could draw your whole deck, making enough mana for a lethal drain life. Apparently in his world championshiop match, he boarded out his Drain Life, and was able to bluff his opponent into scooping, by discarding every card in his deck but the drainlife, so his opponent assumed it was in his hand. Another version of the story, was that he bluffed his opponent into thinking he had 2 when he only had 1, and I dont think that's been confirmed in any way. Without deciding to take that moving job, I never would have pulled a Magic trophy out of a box, and meet some long term clients who taught me a lot about a lot of things, and mostly things I probably never needed to know. Thanks Mike and Dave. I'm certainly not vouching for Mike's moral character, as the circumstances underwhich they both left town was suspicious to say the least, and I don't know much about their business other than online marketing schemes (most of which appear to be complete ripoffs in my opinion)
As far as I know, the stuff I saw, participated in, and heard about was not deemed to be private or secret, but  I used my best judgement on this, and kept it as surface level, and relevant to how I feel about Mike Long with respect to his place in the Hall of Fame. In some slim chance Mike or Dave happen upon this blog post and they object to anything I say here, let me know, and i'll gladly edit.

Color Me Shamed
I read some alarming news Thursday on Twitter, and apparently I seem to care about this more than most. I hope by spending a few words on it here, some of you at least take a peek at a different perspective. I'm not going to rehash the whole story, but its here. Read that, if you're too lazy to read that, then don't bother with the rest of this section. I said my piece in the comments, and also left a blurb in the forums of the most recent article from the offender, and spouted off on Twitter. This is a pretty interesting Game Theory problem.

Robby has two options in this game, He can Express his discontent quietly, and attempt to cooperate with Sean, or he can Rage and try to bring awareness to the issue. Sean also has two options, or decision alternatives or strategies, he can take. He can comply/cooperate and change the name of his column, or he can resist, and tell Robby to take a hike.

There are 4 possible outcomes here, let's look at the payoffs, or outcomes associated with each outcome.

They both cooperate. In the Prisoner's dilemma, this is where the two prisoners don't rat each other out. They both get off scott free! In this case, Sean maybe has a minimal effect on his new coulmn, as it was brand new when Robby first approached him, and Robby is no longer slighted, and the world goes on. Essentially we can call this a $0 gain over all, and in reality for each player individually as well.

They both Defect. In the Prisoner's dielmma, this means both players actually rat the other out, so they get huge jail times. In this case, Sean is resisting the change, and Robby is making the public aware of the issue, and using his influence to show the community what we /can/ do about it (which is not visit SCG's website). Sean loses a portion of his potential audience, many of which are supporters and fans of Robby. Robby loses his quiet stoic "Switzerland" appeal, and possibly alienates some readers, some of whom may be affiliated with SCG, or otherwise loyal. In this case, Sean probably loses out more than Robby does, but Robby's bruised ego is certainly part of the loss to him in this situation as well.

One Cooperates, the Other Defects. In the Prisoner's Dilemma, the one who defects is the one who gets off the sentence easy for helping authorities, while the other serves a ton of time. This is similar to if either Robby or Sean tried to cooperate, but the other refused. If Robby approached Sean, and Sean said, "Take a Hike" Robby is still out his brand, and Sean is in no way affected. Viceversa, if Sean said, "Hey man, sorry i did xyz, i'll stop." and Robby said, 'I don't forgive, GTFO." Then he loses the connection, and likely more the brandingi he was once trying to protect.

From a Game Theory Standpoint, the Nash Equilibrium says that both players will defect, even though its in their best interest to cooperate. Advanced computer simulations have shown that if this game is repeatable (like it is here) you should cooperate with your partner until they defect on you. This is a very interesting take-away for every day life, by the way. Robby is playing this optimally, as far as Im' concerned. He attempted to work things out behind the scenes but was turned away a number of times. since his opponent has now defected, he's basically eating up all the jail-time in that prisoner's dilemma example, and in order to force Sean to share a piece of that, he needs to change strategies.

Anyway, just a a game theory aside. My comments in the article explain my feelings as a whole. There's just no need to not cooperate here, even if you think you're entitled to it. Just pick something else. Done.

#sdcc
I normally attend, since its in my town, but this year I couldn't go. I went to high school with MCLars, and he usually can hook me up with some passes, but this year he's on Warped tour, so he didn't come. I didn't want to shell out the dough, so I'm riding the pine on this one. I didn't think i'd be that disappointed until i felt the energy downtown SD yesterday. Wow. So much fun. I'm terribly jealous of everyone who got to go. Fuck you all.

No time for FF's this ran way too late. All of you follow each other!