I’ve known Gavin Verhey for a few years now from various message boards. We’ve talked a lot, even played games online together a couple times. I’ve always thought he was a pretty cool guy, but I learned a couple of days ago that he’s even more awesome than I had thought. Gavin, you see, is a professional gamer.

Gavin plays in professional tournaments for the game Magic: The Gathering. Magic, for those of you who have lived under a rock for the past 17 years, is a collectible card game (CCG) where players construct decks of cards with various abilities, and compete to deplete the other’s life points. It sounds much simpler than it actually is, with an infinite amount of ways to customize your deck and formulate strategies. The game is popular worldwide, with a thriving pro circuit and tournaments held all over the world.

My personal experience with Magic consists of buying a premade deck and getting ripped off when I was 11, so I can’t even begin to do justice to the depth and complexity of the game with my feeble words. Gavin, however, has written several articles for different publications, and his passion and love for the game is apparent whenever it comes up in conversation. To call his knowledge “encyclopedic” would be an injustice; that implies that it was learned, studied, artificial. Magic is a part of who Gavin is, and talking to him and reading his articles even has me, someone who has no investment in the game whatsoever, hanging on his every word.

Gavin, who currently resides in Seattle and is a creative writing major at University of Washington, began playing video games when he was four years old, which led to tabletop and CCGs as well. He currently co-hosts podcasts frequently at MTGcast.com, and pens a weekly column for Starcitygames.com. His next tournament is in Oakland next weekend, and San Diego the following weekend.

Gavin has been a huge supporter for PK Bloggin’!, so it was a great pleasure for me to have the chance to interview him for this article. Questions from me are bolded, and his responses will be in normal text.

How did you get started with Magic: The Gathering?

Like many players, I started through the phenomenon that is Pokémon. Like most cool people (yourself included,) I was hooked on the Game Boy games from the start. Having played a lot of board games and card games with friends and family, not to mention wanting to devour everything that is Pokémon, I naturally wanted to play the Pokémon card game. The very first day the card game was released in the USA, I picked it up. I was never very good, but I just had fun playing and being ripped off in trades at that age.

A few years later, in January 2001 at the ripe age of ten, I was shown Magic by an employee in a Wizards store when I had went there for a Pokémon tournament. I came home, started to play with my brother, and have been hooked ever since.

How did you become a professional player?

By spending every minute of my day thinking about the game.

Okay, so maybe that’s only half true. I think it mainly took perseverance and patience. When you’re starting out and new, you’re not very good and you really have no idea what’s going on in the world of Magic. Slowly, you begin to learn Magic theory, meet people, become part of a community, and devour information.

It can be a long process, though, and many people become discouraged and give up somewhere along the line. But by continually playing with players better than I was and learning from them coupled by dedicating the time to study the finer points of strategy. It’s kind of like learning how to ride, say, a velociraptor. It’s exciting, difficult, and you really need someone else to show you how to do it. But man, once you learn how, it sure is rewarding.

Has video gaming impacted your skills as a CCG player, and vice versa?

Definitely! Aside from launching my CCG career through Pokémon, the skills from both have found their way into the other. I played (and still play) a lot of RPG’s, so when I was starting out I was able to transfer the resource management skills to how I played. Many of the same concepts you learn in video games I still commonly use when thinking about Magic today.

For example, you know how when you’re going through a dungeon you want to conserve all of your potions for when you really need them, and save your Pokéballs just in case you run into a rare Pokémon? That’s the kind of resource management Magic is all about. You know how, over time, you quickly begin to figure out which materia are best to equip, or which armor is going to be best for the upcoming boss battle? That’s the kind of card evaluation and metagame foresight that you use in Magic all the time. Growing up and being constantly reminded of those kind of concepts really makes them second nature.

It definitely works the other way too. When I play through video games now, I use Magic concepts like tempo and “Who’s the Beatdown” to aid my play. Right now I’m playing through Chrono Trigger again and I am constantly fascinated how much the strategies I used when I was playing through the game at eight years old has evolved now that I’m almost twenty. Sure, you can attribute some of that to age. But many choices in the game, especially involving resource management and long-term strategy, I’m positive have been improved by playing Magic so intensely.

What’s the best thing about playing competitively?

There are a lot of great things about playing competitively. The competitive atmosphere. Watching the hours of time spent working building and tweaking decks pay off. Travelling all over the country and the world. But by far, it has to be the people. Every time I go to a tournament, it’s like a reunion of all of my closest friends. I’ve met some of the most intelligent, clever, hilarious, and enjoyable people to be around in my life through Magic. The game brings us together, but the friends and community keep us there. No matter how bad I do in an event, I always have fun at the dinners we go out to, and the crazy adventures we go on. (Like the time we spent almost 12 hours trying to find a slice of cake in downtown Austin… it’s harder than you think!)

What was your best tournament experience?

Whenever you are on a winning streak or do well, it always feels like it’s your “best.” But the thing is, those feelings of being the best is ephemeral. Winning a tournament is great, but eventually it fades into the backdrop of a hundred other tournaments like it. With that in mind, I’d say my best experience was Pro Tour Berlin in 2008.

The tournament didn’t go as well as I wanted it to. In fact, I lost the last game of day one to not advance to the second day. But the experience was incredible. I had never been to Europe before, and my entire family came along for this trip. It was my first real experience spending time in a country where English wasn’t the primary language. My family and I spent an extra week there sightseeing all around Germany, and I’ll never forget the places we went and the adventures we had.

Has becoming a professional Magic player taken some of the (pardon the pun) “magic” out of the game, or is it still more fun than work?

There are definitely days, especially in tournament crunch time, when you’re playtesting game after game and it begins to feel more like a level grind in World of Warcraft then a fun game. What I’ve learned over time is that when it stops being fun you need to take a break. If you’re not having fun, not only does it feel like work, but you begin to burn out quickly. It’s important to pace yourself so the game is always fresh and fun, and so that you’re playing optimally instead of sloppily due to boredom and frustration.

Regardless of how fun Magic can be in playtesting, tournaments are always a lot of fun. When you drop the chains of preparation and let yourself play your best game against some of the best players in the world, it’s always exciting.

Remember when you would play Monster Rancher and spend tons of time training your monster and perfecting its skills? That could be kind of a repetitive grind, right? Well, that’s playtesting. Then remember how exciting it was to send your monster into battles? Yeah. That’s what playing in a tournament is like.

Do you have any kind of training regimen, or what goes into getting ready for a big tournament?

It really depends on what kind of tournament it is, and how much work I have already done for that format in the past. Magic has different tournament formats, and you have to put in a lot more preparation if, say, you’re in a Constructed tournament and have to bring your own deck as opposed to being handed six boosters in a Limited tournament and being asked to create a deck on the spot.

In general, if I feel underprepared I’ll put in extra time to understand the format. If I already have a lot of experience, I’ll spend time tweaking and experimenting with the pieces I have faltered at in the past. In general, I try and have several playtesting sessions of between five and nine hours in the weeks leading up to the tournament, as well as spending a lot of time practicing on the Magic Online computer program. But really, it differs every time, and sometimes the ideal turns into what will suffice as school beats down on me while I’m trying to prepare. And sometimes, well, I think Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes said it best: “There’s no inspiration like last minute panic.”

Are there any big rivalries in the pro circuit, or does everyone get along pretty well?

Heh. Good question. For the most part, people get along. But there are definitely a lot of cliques that form within the community which exclude others, and often players from the same country bond together. While there are definitely a lot of people across countries who are very close, there’s nothing like displaying a bit of home country pride when it’s someone from the USA versus someone from Japan in the finals of the event.

The only time people are really ostracized is when it comes to cheating or being a general scumbag. Information travels in Magic communities very fast. If you’ve leaked information from one group to another, or were suspended from Magic at one point for cheating, or are a very poor sportsman, people are going to find out and might not want to associate with you.

What’s a typical day for you during tournament schedules?

If it’s a tournament day, usually I need to be to the event site at around 9 or 10 in the morning. I wake up about two hours prior, eat a good breakfast, shower, then show up to the event a little early so I can socialize and do something to wake my mind up, which is usually to play some practice games. Then the event starts. Each round of a Magic tournament consists of best two out of three games against a single opponent with the same record as you and lasts 50 minutes. After those 50 minutes are up, each outstanding game is given five more turns to complete before being called a draw, then shortly afterward the next round is put up.

At a major tournament, each round works out to being about 60 to 75 minutes by the time everything is said and done. While small, local tournaments held in card shops might only last four rounds, pro level events are often somewhere between seven and ten rounds! You’re there for most of the day, usually somewhere between nine and twelve hours. Then, if you’re at a major event like a Grand Prix – an event anybody can play in with a total prize pool of $30,000, happening every weekend or two – or a Pro Tour – an event you have to qualify to play in with a total prize pool of $230,795, happening four times a year – you get to wake up and do the same thing the next day. It’s definitely draining, but it’s a lot of fun.

How long do you see yourself doing this, and do you think it could lead into a career in the gaming field in some aspect?

As long as I can! Magic is so deeply entrenched in all aspects of my life that I can’t see myself quitting anytime soon. Many of my best friends, the way I think about life, and the choices I have made are all crafted by Magic. I wrote an article about this that was well received and explains, in detail, how much Magic has effected my life. I wouldn’t be where I was today without Magic. My goal is to work for Wizards of the Coast, the company which produces Magic. We’ll see if that happens, and I’m going to try everything I can to try and end up with a job making the game I love. I can’t imagine a better job anywhere.

What tips can you give people who are looking to go pro?

If you want to excel at anything, whether it’s Magic, school, or your job, you need to dedicate yourself to it. I feel like dedicating myself to Magic and making the decision to do everything I could to improve and put myself into positions where I could qualify to play on the Pro Tour is something a lot of people just don’t do.

Additionally, when you lose, it’s important to know why you failed. Too many players gloss over their losses, but if you lost you almost always made a mistake somewhere. Look over the game closely enough and you will find something you could have changed, however slight, that would have put you in a better position to win. If you can’t beat Brock, you’re not going to get any closer to winning by continually challenging him with Charmander again and again, It’s like repeatedly hitting your head against a wall. Figure out why you lost, adapt your strategy, understand how the matchup works, and then come back in with a grass Pokémon and take him down.

I’d like to very sincerely thank Gavin for taking the time to do this interview. If you have any questions you’d like to ask, please leave a comment! I assure you I’m not going to let him get away with only contributing to one article, so look forward to more from Gavin in the future!