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Worlds Rome 2009 — Day 1 Wrapup

By Trick Jarrett ⋅ November 19, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

The end of Day 1 at the 2009 World Cham­pi­onships in Rome Italy has arrived, it has been an illu­mi­nat­ing day with many sur­prise pieces of tech com­ing out to help shake up the Stan­dard land­scape, but before we get to that, we also had the induc­tion cer­e­mony for three new mem­bers of the Pro tour Hall of Fame: Antoine Ruel, Kamiel Cor­nelis­sen and Frank Karsten. These three gen­tle­men are all excel­lent Magic play­ers and have more than earned their spot in Magic’s his­tory — con­grat­u­la­tions to you.

Dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion

Onto the rest of day 1, the real news aside from all the juicy deck tech is the dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion of Charles Gindy. This dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion takes the defend­ing team cham­pion United States out of con­tention for the 2009 title, leav­ing Todd Ander­son and Adam Yurchick to fight for the indi­vid­ual title. Todd Ander­son you know from his 8th place fin­ish at StarCityGames5k Nashville, and his wife’s win of the same event.

We don’t know the details of Charles Gindy’s dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion other than it was a Fraud penalty, and report­edly had to do with the mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the game state some­how involved with his Mas­ter of the Wild Hunt. But we don’t know any­thing definite.

Player of the Year

It looks that the Player of the Year race has taken an inter­est­ing turn, the year­long leader is Yuuya Watan­abe and he had his share of prob­lems with the games today. Report­edly the Japan­ese play­ers may be suf­fer­ing from the flu and that could affect his and their per­for­mances. At the end of the indi­vid­ual rounds, day 1 hav­ing been stan­dard, Tomo­haru Saitou and Mar­tin Juza are the new lead­ers, fight­ing each for the abil­ity to take the title.

Indi­vid­ual Standings

At the end of the Stan­dard day 1, there are 7 play­ers sit­ting pretty at 6–0: Joel Calafell of Spain, Mar­ijn Lae­bert of Bel­gium, Alexey Anto­nenko of Ukraine, Cynic Kim of Korea, Bram Snep­vangers of the Nether­lands, David Reit­bauer of Aus­tria and Tomo­haru Saitou of Japan. But the story con­tin­ues into the 5-1s with the top two by tie break­ers being Makahito Mihara, the 2006 World Cham­pion and Mar­tin Juza the Player of the Year hopeful.

Of course the fans are watch­ing Brian Kibler to see how he does, he’s been on a tear this year since his return and he ended up being 4–2 in Stan­dard. He feels con­fi­dent though a bit let down that he didn’t con­tinue his streak of unde­feated day 1s.

For the indi­vid­ual cham­pion, I think I have to go with Tomo­haru Saitou, he’s been on a tear and is fight­ing to take that Player of the Year title as well.

Team Stand­ings

With the USA, an early favorite, now out of con­tention it falls to Brazil with their all star team of: Car­los Ramao, Paulo Vitor Doma da Rosa and the lesser known Aris­tides Camara. Behind them in third is the peren­nial favorite Japan with: Yuuya Watan­abe, Shu­uhei Naka­mura and Yuuma Shiota. In sec­ond place for team scor­ing is Ger­many on which the only big name is Sebastien Thaler. I have to say that I think Brazil is my favorite to win the Team title this year.

Through all of this we’ve had some very excit­ing decks come to light through the deck tech fea­tures com­ing from the likes of Rob Dougherty, Con­ley Woods, Mar­tin Juza and Luis Scott-Vargas. It’s a fan­tas­tic array and indeed more excit­ing inno­va­tion in the Stan­dard for­mat. We’ll be post­ing deck lists as we get them so check back to Man­a­Na­tion frequently!

Trick Jarrett is the host and founder of ManaNation.com, he writes, edits, covers, and spoils Magic for a living. Playing it whenever he can manage to find the time. He is engaged to a lovely woman who refuses to learn Magic, and they have a cute cocker-spaniel puppy who is all too eager to play Magic.

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