Inside the World's Biggest 'Magic: The Gathering' Tournament

rollingstone.com

33 pointspmcpinto15 comments

The author didn't really went into detail. This tournament was the biggest one in history, but not just for Vegas alone. WotC actually set up three tournaments in three cities accross the world (Vegas, Utrecht, Chiba), the same day. Utrecht and Chiba had around 4,000 players each, and Vegas 11,000.

Utrecht was really well organized. It was the first 'pro' tournament I was attending, and everything went quite smoothly. I strongly advise you to do it if you have a chance (especially during those kind of monstruous events, which may be a bit less pro-oriented than usual).

The main event(s) at Vegas (since it split to two parallel GPs, and then each of those split into multiple sub-events which merged for day two) officially had around 8,000 players prior to drops.

So the weekend saw about 16,000 players in the various GPs themselves, though of course there were more people total when side events and spectators/traders/etc. are counted.

Magic continues to amaze me, it has some serious staying power. It also seems to still be able to attract young players. Analog success in a digital age.

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