Scheduled to take place Sept. 1-5, 2004, at the Festival Pavilion at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, the event will draw more than 300 individual and team competitors, as well as thousands of fans and casual players participating in side events and watching the top player action throughout the championship weekend.
$1 million will be awarded to players competing in the World Championship and concurrent "Player of the Year" race over the course of the weekend. Many of the competitors at the Magic World Championship are winners of national tournaments held in their countries this spring and summer.
"The Magic World Championship is very much about national pride," said Chris Galvin, vice-president of organized play at Wizards of the Coast, in the company's press release. "This is the 11th annual Magic World Championship and the event continues to grow, attracting more countries each year. The Magic World Championship has become the premier competition in the trading card game world."
In addition to the pride of taking home the World Champion title, players will be competing for an individual first-place prize of $35,000 and a team first-place prize of $30,000, with each player on the three-person team taking home $10,000. In addition, a cumulative prize purse of $600,000 will be paid out among the top 50 players in the Player of the Year race, which also will be held at the World Championship.
Magic is a strategy game that combines elements of chess and fantasy baseball or football, according to the release. Your cards are like chess pieces -- except there's an endless array of pieces to choose from to strategize and customize your deck of cards and your game. And like fantasy sports, you're managing a team of players.
"Magic players are smart. Unlike other games where you merely have to outthink an opponent within a particular rules system, in Magic players must modify the rules themselves, by selection of their deck of cards, to overcome their rivals," said Magic creator Richard Garfield, who will host the opening ceremony at this year's World Championship.
Comprising Team USA will be: Craig Krempels, 22, of Hackettstown, New Jersey; Bill Stead, 20, of Gainesville, Florida; and Ben Zoz, 18, of Lincoln, Nebraska. Billy Postlethwaite, 18, of Orlando, Florida, who finished 4th at the U.S. National Championship, will serve as an alternate.
In the individual competition, expect to see top U.S. pros such as Osyp Lebedowicz of New Jersey and Brian Kibler of Atlanta, Georgia. Top international pro Kai Budde, who has earned more than $300,000 playing MAGIC, also will be competing. And reigning World Champion Daniel Zink of Germany is expected to defend his title at this year's championship.
For fans who can't travel to San Francisco for the Magic World Championship, the event will be webcast live on http://www.magicthegathering.com/. The live webcast will feature play-by-play action, daily updates, and in-depth commentary and analysis.
Magic: the Gathering spawned a new genre of games when it was introduced in 1993 and continues to be the gold standard of trading card games, with many other popular trading card game titles based on MAGIC's game-play style. Today, Magic is played by an estimated six million players worldwide in more than 70 countries, with approximately 140,000 officially sanctioned tournaments each year.
