[Free Article] So Many Insane Plays -- 3rd Place at the Waterbury

[Smmenen]

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/17278_So_Many_Insane_Plays_Third_Place_at_the_Waterbury.html

Editor's Blurb:

Monday, March 30th - After diluting his format focus for Grand Prix: Chicago, Stephen Menendian returned to competitive Vintage with a fine performance at the recenty Mana Drain Open. Today, he shared the development stories behind his deck of choice, plus the usual intriguing play-by-play data for which Stephen is famed...

[chrissss]

Nice read, cant get the video to work though.
edit never mind, I thought it was a video, I didn't know it was live stream only with no recording:

[OwenTheEnchanter]

Im pretty sure I would rather play with Opt over Sleight of Hand if you are also going to be playing with Disrupt. But if you feel that Sleight of Hand is that much better then I would prefer Daze over Disrupt. It sounds like Confidants life loss was a problem, I would start by cutting Misdirection because its not that great and its just another 5 in your deck you want to avoid once you have torn apart their hand and have some fighters out, you can also easily cut a Thoughtseize for the 4th Duress as well. Top sounds great in this deck but I wouldn't play more than 1 because you play so few lands and its pretty mana intensive, whenever ive tried to build a deck with 4 Dark Confidant its quickly followed by 1 Sensei's Divining Top. Also I would play 1 Lotus Petal in this deck becuase it lets you play turn 1 Confidant more often and it pumps your Tarmogoyfs (which as you agree is relevant because if you aren't playing against Fish or Stax he will always be a 3/4). Oh and adding stuff like Top and Petal says you get to cast Tinker more often which is nice.

[Xyre]

What did you think about the Dryad? Considering your results, do you think the deck wants more/less?

[Smmenen]

I liked the configuration I ran, and would probably run that again.

@ Owen: I think a big reason to run two tops is that with a top in play you can play 2nd Bob without any fear.    I often did not play a second bob (or a third) because of fear of life loss.   I also tested Daze, and it was good, but I ultimately cut Daze because of tempo loss/metagame I expected.   

[jamestosetti]

Not only is the deck fun to play but it is very good. Somebody was beating me down with that a few months ago. This would take about 20 more matches to give any real results but I took out a goyf for a top and have been winning still. This isn't important because the deck performs without it but I took out some card for an intuition, don't ask me why that card but it just doesn't seem to fail me. I use 3 relic of progenitus  instead of jailers. Anyway congratulations on your finish.

[Neonico]

@Owen : the first thing i would consider to cutt for the confidant life loss problem is Tinker + Leviathan. Then, misdirection for another duress.

Seriously, even with alot of turn 1 library manipulation, how can you support a tinker plan with only 4 artefacts, including black lotus ?
to solve this problem, i thnk that Sensei's divining top instead of one or two sleight of hand could be a good choice, helping you not to draw your robot, filtering your confidant cards, and having a higher artefact count for tinker.

Steve, did you get problems with your tinker plan during the testing process of the deck ?

[Smmenen]

@Owen : the first thing i would consider to cutt for the confidant life loss problem is Tinker + Leviathan. Then, misdirection for another duress.

Seriously, even with alot of turn 1 library manipulation, how can you support a tinker plan with only 4 artefacts, including black lotus ?
to solve this problem, i thnk that Sensei's divining top instead of one or two sleight of hand could be a good choice, helping you not to draw your robot, filtering your confidant cards, and having a higher artefact count for tinker.

Steve, did you get problems with your tinker plan during the testing process of the deck ?

No.

I discussed this issue in the article.

[EngineeredExplosives]

Hey Steve,

I wanted to say first that I like the direction your articles are headed these days.  I’m finding they’re helping me improve my game more and more.  Thanks for that.

I wanted to comment on what you said about Gush in your most recent article.
“There is no reason that Gush cannot be unrestricted. This deck would remain perfectly fair.”

I wasn’t really around the vintage scene the first time GAT became big, 2003 I believe it was, but I saw that the decklists did not feature 4 Merchant Scrolls.  It was 4 Brainstorm, 1 or 2 Scrolls and 4 Gushes.  I do remember 2007 when I started to hate playing in tournaments and eventually stopped altogether.   I heard a lot of people saying ‘until Flash is gone, I quit this format.’  It just wasn’t fun anymore, playing who drew the most broken hand this time or who won the dice roll.  And then what you called the ‘Vintage Apocalypse’ happened.

In my opinion, in the time since the restriction of those 5 blue spells, vintage has become fun again.  I’m once again having a great time playing in tournaments.  What’s more, I’m seeing a lot more new players on the vintage scene than I did back then.  And some that gave up on Vintage, like me, are returning to the tournament scene and finding it very enjoyable.

But let me talk specifically about Gush.  I like that Wasteland/Strip Mine is good again, now that it’s a 5/1 ratio as opposed to 5/4.  The autoresponse of Gush to a Wasteland or Strip Mine killed fish decks in that era and greatly weakened Workshop decks.
   “Like the Gifts Ungiven strategies that Tez decks resemble, Null Rod based strategies give this deck fits.”

While Tez may be putting up the best numbers, I like that the top deck has an inherent vulnerability to null rod + stifle + waste/strip.  Just last weekend I was able to use that strategy to beat Tez, Oath and MaskNought and get into the top 8 in a tournament in Montreal.

I also like that Mana Drain is back with vigor and decks are being built for consistency and play skill as opposed to a race to find Flash or Oath of Druids or Yawgmoth’s Will and go off.  I like that in my local metagame, Slaver, Tez, Dredge, Landstill, Dragon, Fish, Combo, Painter, Stax, Shop Agro, Zoo, Faeries (+the rest) and even people’s own creations are all viable decks seeing action in the top 8 of tournaments with large turnouts.

In my opinion, if 4 Gush comes back into the fold, a lot of those decks just become unviable and the diversity that has finally returned to Vintage will lessen or possibly vanish.  Going back to what you said, maybe Gush won’t specifically make Grow unfair, but we know that GushBond can dramatically increase a deck's power level; cases in point are Tyrant Oath and Gush Painter.  Right now nobody is crying out for restrictions like they were of Flash back then or like they are for the banning of Sensei’s Divining Top in Legacy.  4 Gush Tezzeret with an optional Tendrils kill has the potential to create just such a imbalance.

So I have to disagree with you about Gush.  Unrestricted, Gush has shown it can completely tip the scales of balance in Vintage.  Maybe those scales aren’t completely balanced right now, but at least Vintage is fun again.

Gush should be held up like a counter measure for the right time; a possible alternative to restrictions should any one deck become way too dominant.  And I don't think that time is now.

[chrissss]

I tested this deck some more now, and I really like it. I did make a few minor changes that I felt more comfortable with

- 2 Sleight of hand
-1 Disrupt

+1 Divert
+1 opt
+1 Senseis Top

Divert has been more than amazing so far. If they know your deck, which people didn't know before your 3d place finish off course, they play around the Disrupts, and that's where they Diverts really pay off.

the Top I am not sure about, because of mana constraints. Tinker has never been good so far since I always end up with the Leviathan in my hands, and with only a few ways to get it back into the deck, I am not too impressed with it. Although Tinker is a good duress target for your opponents, and it saves other cards from being discarded, because your opponents perceive Tinker as a bigger threat than it is.

[Smmenen]

Hey Steve,  Unrestricted, Gush has shown it can completely tip the scales of balance in Vintage. 

Actually, it hasn't.   The Gush-Bond engine has, but with Brainstorm, Ponder, Scroll all restricted, that engine is dead whether Gush is unrestricted or not.   The ability to combo out on turn one with ease using Gush and Fastbond is over, forever.  Unrestricting Gush will not make Gush-Bond the central engine of the format, as it was a year ago this time. 

Your entire analysis is predicated on not simply Gush being restricted, but Brainstorm, et al.  Which is precisely the point I've made time and again and my chief criticism of the DCIs June 20, 2008 restrictions: that the restrictions were overbroad.    Restricting Flash and Gush when Ponder, Brainstorm, and Scroll are all restricted is completely unnecessary by any reasonable standard.   Restricting either Merchant Scroll or Brainstorm alone would have hurt the Gush-Bond engine and rendered Flash mediocre.   The series of restrictions castrated both.   Restricting Gush and Flash was completely superfluous.  Unrestricting just Gush will not change that.   

This sort of overbreath is not new.  A decade ago the DCI restricting 18 cards in Vintage, at least 1/3-2/3s of which were unnecessary restrictions, as time has proven.   Many of those are now unrestricted, with no negative repercussions as a result. 

Also: if you think that the format is more diverse now, you are under a false pretense.   Mana Drain decks constitute roughly 45% of Top 8s, as compared to last Spring when Gush decks and Workshop decks were both 25% of top 8s, and the rest of the metagame was incredibly diverse.  Now, a single swath of Mana Drain decks constitutes the same metagame space that both Gush and Workshop decks constituted a year ago.   My proposal to unrestrict Gush is to bring some balance to the current metagame.  People will still play 4 Mana Drain decks and everything else they are playing now.   

But all of these arguments have been repeated endlessly in other fora, threads, and articles.  Let's try not to rehash them here, thanks.

It seems that very few people are interested in trying this deck, which Soly called "Grow-A-Bad-Deck" before the Waterbury.  I wonder if perceptions of the deck are that it is just bad, or that they are just uninterested in trying it, especially with the changes I suggested in the article. 

[chrissss]

Have you tried running 3 Dryads instead of 1 and 2 goyfs?

In all the testing I have done the goyf rarely grows bigger than 4/5, while the Dryad grows insanely quickly. I cut all the goyfs and I dont think I will go back to them in this deck.

For which match ups especially do you think the goyfs are irreplaceable ?

[Smmenen]

There is some good discussion of this in the article, but the basic answer is that Goyf is much better against Workshops and Fish.  And Workshops is your worst matchup. 

[M.Solymossy]

[

It seems that very few people are interested in trying this deck, which Soly called "Grow-A-Bad-Deck" before the Waterbury.  I wonder if perceptions of the deck are that it is just bad, or that they are just uninterested in trying it, especially with the changes I suggested in the article. 

Jimmy's build was much different than yours though, playing 1 daze, 1 disrupt, and stuff like that.  I destroyed him with highly above average hands, but in watching his games,  it seemed Yawgmoth's Will didn't do much for him.  However, your list is much better, and I DO look forward to testing it after the Astro City tournament in Chicago on Saturday.

[LordHomerCat]

[

It seems that very few people are interested in trying this deck, which Soly called "Grow-A-Bad-Deck" before the Waterbury.  I wonder if perceptions of the deck are that it is just bad, or that they are just uninterested in trying it, especially with the changes I suggested in the article. 

Jimmy's build was much different than yours though, playing 1 daze, 1 disrupt, and stuff like that.  I destroyed him with highly above average hands, but in watching his games,  it seemed Yawgmoth's Will didn't do much for him.  However, your list is much better, and I DO look forward to testing it after the Astro City tournament in Chicago on Saturday.

The list I played was like 4-5 cards from Steve's.  Hell, it was Steve's list at the time with Key Vault.  For whatever reason the matches I played didn't go well, but I guess that is just the way it goes.  i anticipate doing better this weekend.

[EngineeredExplosives]

This statistic that "mana drain decks" are 45% of top 8s... What if I said, "In the last year, 45% of all vehicles in accidents [in a particular city] were green.  We can therefore conclude that drivers of green cars are much more likely than any other color to get into an accident.”
The flaw in this statement is that it doesn't list the control variable: what percentage of all cars in the city are green?  If 45% of the cars are green, then it would be perfectly natural that they have an equal representation in accidents.  If more than 45% of the cars are green, then it actually means there is an under representation of green cars in accidents.  If and only if less than 45% of the cars in the city are green does it mean an over representation of green cars in accidents, a skew in what the standard distribution SHOULD be.
 
Alright, back to magic.  What percentage of players are currently playing Mana Drain decks to contribute to this 45% top 8 number?  I would also go one step further and ask of the subset of all tournament players who are of the play skill level required to top 8, what percentage of THEIR decks feature Mana Drain?  Is it greater than or equal to 45%?  I realize you may not have this data, but the 45% statistic seems somewhat meaningless without an established baseline.  I don't see how this statistic, in and of itself either confirms or denies the balance of the Vntage metagame.  What I see is a format where the percentage of players using blue control decks has remained roughly the same.  The composition of those blue control decks is what has changed, shifting away from combo elements (that were restricted) towards control elements that remain unrestricted, the favorite choice being the combination of Force of Will and Mana Drain.  If you really want to compare the two metagames, what is the percentage of decks featuring force of will now compared to before the restrictions.  My guess would be that it's roughly the same.
 
Let's look at the tier 1 decks during the 2nd era of Gush:
Flash - no gush, pact over Drain
Tyrant Oath - gush, Mana Drain
GAT - gush, Mana Drain
Dredge
Workshops
and towards the end of that era, Painter - gush, Mana Drain
 
What was the percentage of people playing Gush in that time period and how close was it to the 25% representation in top 8s?  I really can't be sure.  But in my local metagame, when Flash, Tyrant Oath and GAT got neutered, the majority of players of those blue based decks decided to play another blue based control deck.  One other statistic is needed to complete this argument: what was the percentage of people playing mana drain decks WITHOUT Gush when Gush was restricted?  Those two pools of players have since combined to make up the total Mana Drain field as we see it now.  Fish, Control Slaver, Landstill, Drain Tendrils, etc are still around just like before, only now they're doing better and being thrown in with the “Mana Drain Decks”.  Going from 4 blue based control decks frequenting top 8s to anything more than 4 is increased diversity, not decreased diversity.
 
And really, is the increase in Mana Drain decks a surprise?  Something had to fill the void left by Gush and Flash, and Drain seems the logical choice.  It's unrestricted and a huge tempo boost, only defensive first and then offensive later where Flash and Gush were offensive immediately; they forced you to act immediately or lose.  The GAT lists were all basically a choice between the number of Duresses vs. Drains you wanted to run with your 4-6 remaining slots, with duress winning out over drain towards the end.  You were playing 8 duress GAT towards the end if I remember correctly.  And when 12 cards got ripped from the deck (3 gush, 3 scroll, 3 brainstorm, 3 ponder) what else was going to fill those 12 slots and take over as the card to build decks around?  It had to be Drain, it was simply the best unrestricted option for tempo boost in the format, with at least break even card advantage.

I’ve already written too much for one post, so let me respond to just one more thing for now. 

Your entire analysis is predicated on not simply Gush being restricted, but Brainstorm, et al.

Let me be clear.  I am not arguing about that specific 2007 engine which is as you say, dead forever.  What is relevant now is what is available in the card pool vs. 2003, when Gush was deemed to need restriction in the first place.

In the last 5 years there have been many printings which can, in theory, support a chain of gushes that form a critical mass with or without Yawgmoth's Will.  Taking a look at the 2003 lists, Isn’t GAT more powerful now than in 2003?  How many cards have been added to the card pool to offset the loss of 3 brainstorms and 1 merchant scroll?  Imperial Seal, Grim Tutor, Ponder, Gifts Ungiven, Strategic Planning, Sensei's divining top, Dark Confidant, etc…  (and others like Personal Tutor and Serum Visions that are 2nd rate but available).  Gush has been broken both times it was legal.  I have zero doubt that it will be broken a third time if unrestricted and I wanted to voice my opposition to your statement.  Dream Halls, Chrome Mox, Mox Diamond, Black Vise, Voltaic Key, Mind Twist; unrestricting those cards made sense.  But this one just doesn't.

Reference: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/5613_Thats_Gush_BoysWhy_Gush_Needed_To_Be_Restricted.html

[jamestosetti]

       I think this deck is being underestimated or being brought to the wrong metagame. I play it and it is a killer deck. The only thing I would personally change is using a trygon predator instead of qurion dryad because it can be pitched to force of will and can have a devastating effect on most any match. I would also use extirpates instead jailers in the s/b and I would s/b 2 more tarmogoyfs. I'm not so sure Steve's exact list is the best for smaller tournaments but would be better in larger ones. He has already proven that once. I don't think there is any need for a top because once you get used to the deck you see that the sleight of hands are your tops and you need them all for force of will and misdirection. I think we could argue over changes in this deck all day but I think it's more a question of what metagame and what size tournament.

       Where this deck shines is it's abiltiy to come up with the right card pretty fast. It also runs 6 discard spells wich is very ruff on tps and almost any other deck. It is nearly always ready to pitch to fow and runs very well with very few mana.  I think some people may not like this deck because it lacks sheer power or impressive draw engines. This deck seems like a highly specialized fish varient and it requires some patience to play. I don't think it will draw alot of popularity because it seems unlikely to shine in small tournaments but that does not mean it isn't an effective deck. I think it is a great choice for medium to large tournaments.

[ChemEng]

This sort of overbreath is not new.

When did legal jargon become accepted into the Magical lexicon?

[Smmenen]

This sort of overbreath is not new.

When did legal jargon become accepted into the Magical lexicon?

"Overbreadth" is legal jargon and not simply english?   

This statistic that "mana drain decks" are 45% of top 8s... What if I said, "In the last year, 45% of all vehicles in accidents [in a particular city] were green.  We can therefore conclude that drivers of green cars are much more likely than any other color to get into an accident.”
The flaw in this statement is that it doesn't list the control variable: what percentage of all cars in the city are green?  If 45% of the cars are green, then it would be perfectly natural that they have an equal representation in accidents.  If more than 45% of the cars are green, then it actually means there is an under representation of green cars in accidents.  If and only if less than 45% of the cars in the city are green does it mean an over representation of green cars in accidents, a skew in what the standard distribution SHOULD be.
 
Alright, back to magic.  What percentage of players are currently playing Mana Drain decks to contribute to this 45% top 8 number?  I would also go one step further and ask of the subset of all tournament players who are of the play skill level required to top 8, what percentage of THEIR decks feature Mana Drain?  Is it greater than or equal to 45%?  I realize you may not have this data, but the 45% statistic seems somewhat meaningless without an established baseline.  I don't see how this statistic, in and of itself either confirms or denies the balance of the Vntage metagame.  What I see is a format where the percentage of players using blue control decks has remained roughly the same.  The composition of those blue control decks is what has changed, shifting away from combo elements (that were restricted) towards control elements that remain unrestricted, the favorite choice being the combination of Force of Will and Mana Drain.  If you really want to compare the two metagames, what is the percentage of decks featuring force of will now compared to before the restrictions.  My guess would be that it's roughly the same.
 
Let's look at the tier 1 decks during the 2nd era of Gush:
Flash - no gush, pact over Drain
Tyrant Oath - gush, Mana Drain
GAT - gush, Mana Drain
Dredge
Workshops
and towards the end of that era, Painter - gush, Mana Drain
 
What was the percentage of people playing Gush in that time period and how close was it to the 25% representation in top 8s?  I really can't be sure.  But in my local metagame, when Flash, Tyrant Oath and GAT got neutered, the majority of players of those blue based decks decided to play another blue based control deck.  One other statistic is needed to complete this argument: what was the percentage of people playing mana drain decks WITHOUT Gush when Gush was restricted?  Those two pools of players have since combined to make up the total Mana Drain field as we see it now.  Fish, Control Slaver, Landstill, Drain Tendrils, etc are still around just like before, only now they're doing better and being thrown in with the “Mana Drain Decks”.  Going from 4 blue based control decks frequenting top 8s to anything more than 4 is increased diversity, not decreased diversity.
 
And really, is the increase in Mana Drain decks a surprise?  Something had to fill the void left by Gush and Flash, and Drain seems the logical choice.  It's unrestricted and a huge tempo boost, only defensive first and then offensive later where Flash and Gush were offensive immediately; they forced you to act immediately or lose.  The GAT lists were all basically a choice between the number of Duresses vs. Drains you wanted to run with your 4-6 remaining slots, with duress winning out over drain towards the end.  You were playing 8 duress GAT towards the end if I remember correctly.  And when 12 cards got ripped from the deck (3 gush, 3 scroll, 3 brainstorm, 3 ponder) what else was going to fill those 12 slots and take over as the card to build decks around?  It had to be Drain, it was simply the best unrestricted option for tempo boost in the format, with at least break even card advantage.

I’ve already written too much for one post, so let me respond to just one more thing for now. 

Your entire analysis is predicated on not simply Gush being restricted, but Brainstorm, et al.

Let me be clear.  I am not arguing about that specific 2007 engine which is as you say, dead forever.  What is relevant now is what is available in the card pool vs. 2003, when Gush was deemed to need restriction in the first place.

In the last 5 years there have been many printings which can, in theory, support a chain of gushes that form a critical mass with or without Yawgmoth's Will.  Taking a look at the 2003 lists, Isn’t GAT more powerful now than in 2003?  How many cards have been added to the card pool to offset the loss of 3 brainstorms and 1 merchant scroll?  Imperial Seal, Grim Tutor, Ponder, Gifts Ungiven, Strategic Planning, Sensei's divining top, Dark Confidant, etc…  (and others like Personal Tutor and Serum Visions that are 2nd rate but available).  Gush has been broken both times it was legal.  I have zero doubt that it will be broken a third time if unrestricted and I wanted to voice my opposition to your statement.  Dream Halls, Chrome Mox, Mox Diamond, Black Vise, Voltaic Key, Mind Twist; unrestricting those cards made sense.  But this one just doesn't.

Reference: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/5613_Thats_Gush_BoysWhy_Gush_Needed_To_Be_Restricted.html

There is alot of armchair sociology going on here and not alot of real statistical analysis.  You throw around assertions as if they are facts.   What I've stated is factual, most of what you state is perceptual, or what you perceive in your metagame, etc.   Yet as we know, people's impressions of metagames are very distorted and inaccurate, because they remember/encode information that is salient.   Case in point: Dave Feinstein's claim that Gifts was l 40% of his metagame, when I proved that it was about 8-15% of the metagame and 18% of top 8s  (http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=33389.0 )

Many of the arguments you raise were already discussed here:  http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=37195.0 (the thread I was referring to earlier).   Even if Mana Drains were 50% of the field, and only 45% of top 8s, that's still a dominance problem, if it persists over time, and the DCI tends to take action when there is a dominance problem.   If Mana Drains were 80% of Top 8s, but actually 90% of the metagame, even though Mana Drains are techincally "underperforming," it would be hard to say that they aren't dominant.   The response, one would expect, would be that a greater proportion of the metagame would switch to the better performing deck.  But if they didn't, because, for instance, the mana drain decks were better adaptive, then that would be a signal to do something about Mana Drains.   Also, you are factually incorrect that if you aggregate Drain decks in the Gush era and Gush decks than you equal the percentage of Drain decks today.  A simple review of my metagame statistics articles bears this out.  In any case, I addressed this point, and other related points, in more detail in the thread linked above, and as I said earlier, there is no need to repeat them in this thread.   

You also repeat the same mistake I criticized you for making before, but that you appear to claim you no longer are: which is that your analysis consistently refers to a time when Brainstorm, Scroll, and other now restricted cards were unrestricted as a baseline for making your case that Gush should remain restricted.  That makes little sense.  Gush has never proven, by itself, that it deserves restriction, since its usage has always been paired with cards that make it good: such as Brainstorms to support a light mana base and Merchant Scroll for a robust draw engine, and a actual combo engine with Fastbond. 

       I think this deck is being underestimated or being brought to the wrong metagame. I play it and it is a killer deck. The only thing I would personally change is using a trygon predator instead of qurion dryad because it can be pitched to force of will and can have a devastating effect on most any match. I would also use extirpates instead jailers in the s/b and I would s/b 2 more tarmogoyfs. I'm not so sure Steve's exact list is the best for smaller tournaments but would be better in larger ones. He has already proven that once. I don't think there is any need for a top because once you get used to the deck you see that the sleight of hands are your tops and you need them all for force of will and misdirection. I think we could argue over changes in this deck all day but I think it's more a question of what metagame and what size tournament.

       Where this deck shines is it's abiltiy to come up with the right card pretty fast. It also runs 6 discard spells wich is very ruff on tps and almost any other deck. It is nearly always ready to pitch to fow and runs very well with very few mana.  I think some people may not like this deck because it lacks sheer power or impressive draw engines. This deck seems like a highly specialized fish varient and it requires some patience to play. I don't think it will draw alot of popularity because it seems unlikely to shine in small tournaments but that does not mean it isn't an effective deck. I think it is a great choice for medium to large tournaments.

Yes, apparently people do not realize that this is a real deck, despite my only losing to Ichorid (anomalously) at the Waterbury. 

[HungryHungryHeifer]

Delayed reply, but I didn't really start posting on here until about a day or two ago; I was able to read through most of this article, and I just wanted to say that I am happy to have been briefly mentioned. I really want to become better known to the vintage community, and I guess getting hit on is an effective way to accomplish that! Paul Mastriano is ruthless in his technique. I couldn't help but notice that he approached not only myself, but also every other female who entered the room. Highly entertaining to watch. Anyway, I look forward to seeing you both at events in the future, and hopefully by the time I do, I will have become slightly better and might actually get to play against you.

[Smmenen]

This article is now free, in case anyone is interested.