PTLA Day 2 - "I Have Ethics"!
by Sam Heckman

Sleep isn't very easy when people in the hallway are screaming about team
sped and banging on the walls. Chuch Heck also stops in to wake everyone
up and use the shower. I sort some stronghold while I wait for the others
to get up and shower. It's around noon, and the plan is to check up on the
tournament and get some food shortly after. Things seem to be running
well at the tournament although Dan Gray jokes that 50 people have been
thrown out (in actuality, dropped). AS usual the feature matches are
excellent, the best being Lan D. Ho vs. Mark Justice in the 3rd round.
Lan wins, giving some validity to the Vegas Odds.

Caroline Liu joins us for lunch at the cafe on the sundeck. Subs and rootbeer
charge me after a rough morning and we go back to the event. I talk with
Bob Maher a bit about his amazing ACD deck. A very discouraged, yet candid
Mike Long tells us how "Tempest has the worst lands since the Dark." Mike
then proceeds to roll on the floor screaming to demonstrate the effect of
Wasteland on the environment.

Alot of the matches on the top tables are fast red, so things are moving
fairly quickly there. The dominant deck is a 4 Scroll (duh), 4 Scalding
Tong, 4 Wasteland deck, that features the amazingly HI-TECH card 
"Giant Strenght". Nate Clarke however ran into time problems in the first
round. Disgruntled by playing against 4 control decks in a row he talked
about how physically exciting it would be if his opponent played a 1st
turn mountain! David Williams was very pumped about winning his match with
a Mawcor... David was so into the game that he received a caution from the
judge! Williams said "I was so into the game that I was standing up and 
slamming the Mawcor onto the table. One of the times I threw it and it
bounced into my opponents face! That Mawcor went all the way, it did 20
damage." Andrew Nishioka discussed the strength of land destruction in
the environment (strong). Andrew also described in haunting detail a match
at worlds where he had to be moved away from a player with horrible B.O.
The soap at hotels for the PT is free, use it!

For the first time this weekend I actualy get a chance to play a bit.
Christa Stenger and I play mixed doubles. My deck was U/G with the highlight
being 2 Ray of Command, Flood and a Binding Grasp. The rest of our card mix
was fairly weak and we end up dropping to get some dinner.

The promenade cafe was excellent as usual and Matt Stenger picks up the
check. Thanks again, Matt! :-)  On our way out, Brian Weissman and Christa
get into an argument over who the sexiest PT player is... Christa says
I am, Brian argues for himself. After dinner Matt and Christa give me
a 4 foot high sign that says "Heckman" and one of the official WotC purple
judge shirts. After all that excitement I settle back into the room for
awhile and for some reason recall Chris Czuba's argument for not wearing
underwear while playing in tournaments "It helps the airflow."

The quote of the day comes from Nate Clarke. While playing a feature match,
Nate's opponent cuts Nate's deck, then shuffles the deck. Nate calls a 
judge over and demonstrates what his opponent has just done. Nate then
says loudly "I never cut a deck THEN shuffle it... I HAVE ETHICS." 

That's all for now, expect some indepth coverage of the final 96 tonight.