What's your life load?

[theorigamist]

Throughout the school year, I generally have money, but no time, to play Magic.  During the summer, I generally have some extra time, but not much, and not much extra money.  This summer in particular, I'm saving most of my money for college next year.  Because I've always had those time and money constraints, I never bothered to actually buy type 1 cards.  As a result, I actually have not been to a Type 1 tournament yet.

I do have a job (I was a teacher's aide at Hebrew school for like the last five years, and now I'm running the summer school), and during the school year most of my time was taken up by schoolwork and music, because I took on a ridiculous course load.  That was the most prohibitive thing during school.  In the summer, by days are always really fragmented by having to drive siblings around.  So my life load leaves me the weekends in the summer free to go to a tournament, provided I have the money for the deck and the time to test.  And I don't really have either.

Also, honestly, origami, which is pretty damn expensive (think of paying like six bucks for a hundred pieces of origami paper compared to like a buck fifty for five hundred of computer), is much cheaper than Magic.

[Smmenen]

But a huge chunk of your time must go into running this site (about a game).  Lots of people devote signifacant energies to games, hobbies and sports.  Some people play golf.  Some people fence.  Some people take lots of martial arts.  Others play basketball frequently.  

Time that goes into running the site is minimal. I would say on a productive day 1-2 hours, some days a simple 20 minute visit. How long did the Dual Lotus tournament last, Steve? Now how long does a basketball game last?

Everyone has different hobbies and taking a weekend off 5-6 times a year isn't too insurmountable.  You make it sound like people are going somewhere every weekend.  There aren't that many touranments.  It may just seem that way becuase summer is the high point.  It's even easier to play t1 for this reason becuase decks don't rotate out in terms of requiring a totally new card pool so that you can basically play your 4CC deck with slight modifications all year round.

People ARE going somewhere every weekend. People in New England travel 2-3 hours (since thats the universal time to get from almost anywhere) to play a 6-8 hour tournament ALL the time. Spread that how you will, but that's a day that's just *gone*. Do you see what I'm talking about here?

It sounds like your taking it wrong here like you need to somehow defend the fact that your life is free enough to allow you to do things that I cannot. I'm not trying to tell people that going to tournaments is wrong, but I was more curious as to how people can just uproot themselves for 3 major road trips in 2 months. I was also curious how people could make the time to hit a tournament every week. It's not so much that it's a 2-3 hour drive to alot of these events, but the fact that they last damn near 8 hours is another.

I wasn't aware of the fact that there were enough tournaments that one could weekly go to a good tournament.  In fact, if you can point such a person to me, I would be astonished.  Maybe during any particular 2-4 week period there might be such an anomoly, but over the long haul?  Really?  Does anyone here go to a tournament - a big one - every weekend?  Either your grossly exaggerating, or your right - but I find the latter hard to believe.

[Zherbus]

I wasn't aware of the fact that there were enough tournaments that one could weekly go to a good tournament. In fact, if you can point such a person to me, I would be astonished. Maybe during any particular 2-4 week period there might be such an anomoly, but over the long haul? Really? Does anyone here go to a tournament - a big one - every weekend? Either your grossly exaggerating, or your right - but I find the latter hard to believe.

They aren't all big; I never said they were all Waterburys. However, they usually hit 35-40+ people each. This is what many New Englanders travel(ed) to.

-East Hartford, CT May 2nd

-Worcester, MA May 8th

-NJ, May 9th

-Salem, NH May 16th

-Somers, CT May 16th

-Cape Cod, May 29th

-Hadley, May 29th

-RI, May 30th

-NJ, June 6th

-Hadley, June 12th

-Pittsfield, MA June 19th

-Cape Cod June 26th

-Somers, Ct Sunday June 27th

-June 3-4th HOLIDAY WEEKEND, just the same NG has one on the 3rd.

-Scarborough, Maine July 10th

-Salem, NH July 17th

-Pittsfield, MA July 24th

-Cape Cod July 31st

I could keep going I guess.

[Dante]

I'm a part owner and Director of Engineering of a technology consulting company.  We focus on telephony (traditional and IP Telephony), network security, and technology/data center relocations along with our infrastructure base of skills (cisco, etc).  My typical workweek is about 45-50 hours due to the management responsibilities for growing the company (we've had at least 20% revenue growth every year since 1997 except one) and client project work (all our engineering management are high-level engineers...I'm a CCIE.  Our COO is a quadruple CCIE, one of 5 in the world).  A lot of weekends are determined by projects - the first 4 months of this year, I worked 60% of the weekends, but after that it's only been sporadically.

In addition, I'm also engaged and have a lot of friends in the Chicago area (since I grew up here), so I have a lot planned on weekends.  For example, I have every weekend pretty much booked solid until labor day (of course that includes Gencon, but I've had that planned for 9 months).

Plus, I also play Hold Em probably 500 hours a year, which takes time and practice to stay sharp.

Bill

PS - I'm actually in a client's data center right now (7am saturday holiday weekend) waiting to swap out some core switches.....fun fun.

[BigChuck]

Zherbus is right. Being in New england, I, of course, look at all the tournaments that get scheduled relatively close to me(2-3 hours), and there is one almost every weekend. But, I'm pretty sure New England is the only region where this holds true.

[Smmenen]

I stand corrected!  Sheesh!