ManaNation Radio has launched! And it features the sheer awesomeness of Jon Finkel. Recorded after his win in Kuala Lumpur. This will not be regularly each week, in fact it will be quite irregularly posted, so you'll just have to see when the next one is going to come out.

This episode introduces Jon more to our viewers, talking to him about his life outside the scope of Magic, and then we turn his focus onto Kuala Lumpur, competitive play, and what he recommends players do to get better at Magic.

After the jump we have the transcript of the conversation available for anyone to read!

To discuss the episode visit the forum thread

Trick: Hello and welcome to this inaugural episode of ManaNation Radio. I'm your host Trick Jarrett, holding down the fort while we are without Lee Steht for this but he'll be back on Monday as we do Deck Doctor with Lee. ManaNation Radio is when we depart from video and go purely audio to bring you all the interviews you want to hear. This episode we offer an interview with Jon Finkel to discuss his life outside of Magic, his thoughts on Kuala Lumpur and we pick his brain about playing better. It's all here, on ManaNation Radio.

Trick: So what are you up to these days when you’re not playing Magic?

Jon: I guess for work I gamble for a living. I’m also doing some options trading, the kind of worlds of what I do for fun and what I do to make money tend to blend together.

Trick: Well that’s a good thing to have, I mean, it’s always nice when you can make money doing what you enjoy. Do you watch much TV?

Jon: I do, I watch junk on tv. You know I watch some of the bad reality tv shows like, like American Idol or you know some of the bad ones on VH1 where they basically get people to absolute complete assholes of themselves.

Trick: Yeah, Rock of Love 2 and all of those.

Jon: “Rock of love,” yes, I’ve only seen a couple of episodes of that but I plan on seeing more you know obviously like “The Liar” you know best show on TV. I used to be a big fan of the West Wing, Arrested Development, oh and also It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Trick: Yeah, I’ve only caught a few episode of that but from what I’ve seen it’s great. Do you play any on Magic Online?

Jon: You know, I played for a while but once Morningtide came out I haven’t played on Magic Online since then.

Trick: Well, I think you mean Lorwyn, Morningtide hasn’t come out yet.

Jon: Well you know once Morningtide came out in real life.

Trick: Oh ok.

Jon: I haven’t played at all on Magic Online because Lorwyn is obviously worse.

Trick: Yeah, have you seen any good movies lately?

Jon: I haven’t, you know I don’t see movies super often, I don’t really know why I just end up not. Yeah I think the last movie I saw in theatres was the one that just won the academy award.

Trick: No Country for Old Men.

Jon: Yeah, which I thought was a very okay movie. I could tell it was a very well made movie and there were good acting jobs but at no point did I ever feel invested in it or like I really cared about the outcome as if I could have walked out after an hour and a half and kinda been okay with it.

Trick: It’s a Cohen brothers movie and that’s- they either hit home for you or their okay.

Jon: Yes, I mean obviously many people in the world feel differently. I kind of thought about it, I kinda compare it to “Garden State” which is a movie that like everybody, like a ton of people said it was one of the best movies of the year. Which I thought was kinda average. Actually the last really good movie I saw it was called the “Life of Others” that’s what it was called. And it was just a really well done. I kind of like anything that has a dystopian world. And obviously, you know, this fit in there, I kinda like everyday people struggling against a crushing oppressive environment but just kind of going through their everyday lives.

Trick: The whole sort of cyberpunk dystopian future or dystopian setting.

Jon: Yeah, I never really got super into cyberpunk. Though I did read, you know, Neuromancer, and I guess maybe Snowcrash might be the modern day equivalent. Not really, I don’t know.

Trick: Yeah, it’s considered cyberpunk.

Jon: Okay, so I know plus I probably count other books when I was a kid that I forgot. Just because but yeah I never got super into it.

Trick: So with your gambling, to change tracks, do you play in like the World Series of Poker? Or what is your main game would you say.

Jon: Yeah, um, I don’t talk about it to much. I have played a decent amount of poker. I have played in the world series not last year but two years ago. Main reason to play in the world series of poker like on a hourly basis is it really worth it? Aside from the fact that winning it is worth maybe an extra 15 or 20 million dollars. Making the final table, if you have any sort of a story or charisma is also worth a bunch just in future advertising and sponsorship. You know and like a chance to become like a star, to become famous.

Trick: So with your traveling what’s your favorite place to go? Is there a favorite country or favorite setting? Mountains, beach, urban?

Jon: I’m a big city fan, like I’m fine with a beach, but a week on the beach in the middle of nowhere kinda sounds almost like hell to me. You know, most of my travel is based on where I went for Magic which is always representative of the places I went to. I love London. I love Sydney. I’d say those are two different foreign cities then I’d say to myself well kinda odd that my favorite foreign cities are basically the capital cities of the two largest other English speaking countries. I don’t know except for maybe Canada, and I kinda like Toronto. And I kind of like Cape Town [South Africa.] So I wonder if maybe its just like its something about that that’s getting in there. I don’t really know.

Trick: That’s okay. I mean it’s wherever you feel comfortable. Who’s to judge you for where you enjoy being.

Jon: Yes, exactly.

Trick: So switching gears now from travelling and your life, to Magic. How did it feel to win Kuala Lumpur? I’m sure that was a lot of fun.

Jon: yes, it was definitely a lot of fun. I guess fun is the right word. It felt like kind of a relief like its time because you know I’ve been playing so many, you know, three straight seasons now. Being winless for a while. And the entire time, you know, like I was never in a situation where I was about to get eliminated. So like it was never a “Oh my god I can’t believe I won this.” It was always let me not lose this. Right?

Trick: Right.

Jon: I just got, like everything went my way. So it was like, okay it’s done. But it was never like I was down two games to one and came back.

Trick: It was smooth sailing for most of it. You didn’t lose a round after round three.

Jon: Yeah, I mean and so it was on records. I think I’m actually pretty good at the draft format. But there’s obviously ton of luck involved too. You keep your two land, either your plains plains hand with one white card and four blue cards and you draw an island there second turn. Things like that keep on happening. So yeah, it was just like a very good feeling but I was just more of an accomplishment slash relief feeling than a straight up fun feeling.

Trick: Of course, you’ve played the game for so long and you’re such a competitive player, a well known player, there’s always a certain amount of attention even when you just show up to the tournament so being able to come out and win it means a lot and it’s a relief to know you can when these things.

Jon: Yeah, it was nice, I played in a lot of tournaments. I didn’t do well in any of them. I guess I made the money on the two headed giant one. But it was like funny. I guess I sort of came back but it was nice not to be a joke. There’s the old dude who still shows up for these things but finishes 217th every time.

Trick: When we talked to you at Worlds you actually weren’t sure you were going to Kuala Lumpur or not because it wasn’t in North America. What made you go?

Jon: I mean it aws just convenient for me time wise. You know I like drafting this format. I regretted not going to Zurich. Because I felt like, I guess the fact I wish I had. I didn’t really feel like going so I didn’t go but I was really good at that format. I think of the last three blocks, I would’ve done the best in Time Spiral block. And you know I wish I had to Zurich so I didn’t want to wish I had gone to Kuala Lumpur. Since they refuse to have any draft Pro Tours in the United States.

Trick: Maybe next year. So are we going to see you in Hollywood this year?

Jon: oh I don’t know. I probably will end up going. It’s going to have a lot more with how I feel about it a week before it then.

Trick: You’re much more likely to go to a limited pro tours than any constructed ones.

Jon: Yeah I mean if it is a limited Pro Tour I can basically say I’m guaranteed to go. So yeah but what is it Extended or Standard?

Trick: It’s Extended to qualify and standard for the actual event. So you’ll be playing Standard.

Jon: Yeah I mean standard, I’m more likely to go. I might say every extended tournament is basically some form of hell.

Trick: I can agree with that as I try to figure out what to play at the qualifiers. So I understand.

Jon: I should go to any GP, especially GP Philly but the idea of sitting through two days of extended does not sound like fun to me.

Trick: I understand. So with your drafting in Kuala Lumpur do you have- did you come in with a plan for Lorwyn and Morningtide or did you sort of look at what you were presented with and make the best choices?

Jon: Yeah, more like the latter. I really hadn’t necessarily changed my… I hadn’t really over thought the secondary tribes. Sometimes obviously it does, in certainly changes your evaluation of cards the cards like [garbled] go away but it wasn’t that often that you’d have a choice between two cards and you picked one or the other because of the tribes because of their secondaries, because of their class or whatever. You can think your head and construct scenarios but it is actually pretty rare. Maybe because you don’t even really know what you’re going to open up in the third pack. If you overbuild your deck to be rogues and then you don’t open up any rogue cards it’s just…

Trick: It can be kinda rough, absolutely.

Jon: Yeah it’s just not going to work out. So I mean I like faeries, I like Merfolk. Merfolk are usually going to be, have most of your creatures be wizards, faeries are more roguish but could have wizards. So I kind of want to leave myself open a little bit there. I don’t know if I answered your question or completely talked around it.

Trick: No that was great, I mean you answered in that you recognize the fact that a plan is completely able to be thrown away once you see the first pack so I understand that.

Jon: Yes, and I mean with the third pack if you have a deck that has three rogues, six wizards and two changelings. In it whatever. But if you open up the rogue cards you know you can sort of build for rogues. Whereas if you had the deck with eight wizards, you can feel a lot better when you open your wizard but if you don’t have your wizard card then you’re kind of SOL. Another kind of good thing about it, I think Morningtide made it a lot better, in the original Lorwyn Lorwyn Lorwyn, if you started out with a tribe you could get a few good cards in it but if it is being drafted pretty heavily you could end up being screwed. That’s almost like here you have a second chance. It’s like you were trying to go Merfolk, then you took some faerie cards, you have these merfolk and faeries, with wizards and rogues. Rather than in Lorwyn where it would be a train wreck of a deck because you have two things you’re trying to do in a world where everyone’s trying to build a stupid elf deck with four huntmasters or merfolk deck with two drowner of secrets. Now I can still, instead of going for merfolk or faeries, I’m going to go for one of these subtypes. And so you end up with less of a deck focused on one tribe, because there’s only two packs of Lorwyn. So the games often times tend to resemble more like Magic games with Magic decks where its about having good cards rather than the world where you’re playing 2/1 creatures over 2/3 instant flyers. Of course that still happens a lot but you know.

Trick: Well that’s sort of the nature of the beast with these tribal sets. And I think it’s interesting for Wizards to see with this second attempt at the design style.

Jon: Yea, I mean I felt L-L-L was actually a really really bad format and I think that L-L-M is a pretty good format. So, yes it did definitely need the extra thing to kind of make it a lot less like “Oh I’m getting all the cards I need” or “Oh I guess the guy to my right is also playing Merfolk” and even though I had three good merfolk in the beginning so I stuck with it. I did kind of crappy.

Trick: Well and that’s one thing we actually talked about in the episode this Monday when we discussed your draft and how you stuck with it because you had the early ones but you turned to the Kithkin because they were coming to you and you could see the low curve and you knew the strength that could be there.

Jon: Yeah I mean, a lot of the cards I got kind of late I think I got to the first Skirmisher might have made it into the first merfolk deck, I don’t remember. But I mean a lot of those cards I wasn’t taking over anything that good and it was more like an option. Like one thing I really don’t like about the way they have the formats now and like Time Spiral has far *garbled* if you would just *garbled* way too many playable cards. And you know, kinda crappy when someone has a pool of thirty cards to choose from. They’re all good and the last 10 are about as equally as good until they choose three of them because there’s no real room to do anything wrong rather than actually doing a better job in drafting. And also you know, maybe sometimes, having to play subpar cards that work kind of well in your deck. And things like that. So sometimes you want to be more greedy or take more options on the go in different directions even if you end up with less playable cards than otherwise you’ll probably get enough in your deck. So you know, I took those late cards and I didn’t know if I was going to go kithkin or merfolk or if I had the option to either.

Trick: Right.

Jon: And then I opened up a Wizened Cenn and said okay I’ll… Yeah I thought of playing with Kithkin because it was got actually egregious towards the end right as I got a Skirmisher third to last pick. You know, it was like okay, I’m going to try to go this way but you know with the first two I was like okay… *garbled* multiple ways opened up.

Trick: When you’re preparing for a limited Pro Tour in a certain format do you go out of your way to draft different style decks or is it just continually drafting seeing what comes to you?

Jon: I mostly just draft for fun, I don’t really go out of my way to try different decks. I kinda go out of my way to try to draft blue. Just because I enjoy playing blue more.

Trick: Well blue is the color of magic, for the most part, it’s the one… it’s the icon.

Jon: Yeah, I mean and I might be able to do slightly better if I tried a different strategy although interestingly enough in the drafts I do here I have a pretty good overall record and in some ways drafting a lot of decks that are sometimes similar might be good sometimes even if you’re… you know sometimes you’ll have worse drafts you’ll at least know when you have 70% of the time it works out okay you’ll have a better idea how to play it. And what mediocre cards are actually pretty good based on what other cards you might have. I really can’t make a good argument for it, I mean, if I drafted other sorts of decks more often it probably would increase my chances of winning.

Trick: Well it’s all in how you do it. There’s 1000 things anyone can do to play better. I was asking specifically what you do and that’s a fair answer. Moving away from Kuala Lumpur and that, what do you think is the toughest aspect of playing professional Magic, is it the travel, the preparation, the long tournament days or is it something else?

Jon: I would say, I mean for a constructed tournament it has to be tons of preparation which I am personally not a fan of. You know, a limited pro tour it’s playing your deck, having some mental stamina. You really just got somewhere four time zones away or ten time zones away. And you know, you’re not getting quite enough sleep. You’re playing twelve hours a day. Against people who are pretty good, just not making too many mistakes and keeping your focus.

Trick: One of our viewers asked, if you were invited to the Invitational, would you go again?

Jon: Where it is?

Trick: To the invitational?

Jon: Yeah, where is it?

Trick: Depending on where it is? Oh ok.

Jon: Yeah it would depend on where and when it was. I was thinking of that, I don’t know how the invitational works anymore but the fact I won this Pro Tour might actually get me an invitation to it.

Trick: It could, it could very well.

Jon: Do they still vote for it?

Trick: Yes they do.

Jon: Well, maybe, yeah, is the voting based on Pro Points stuff like that?

Trick: I don’t believe it is.

Jon: It’s all voting?

Trick: I think it’s all voting, the initial ballot might be related to Pro Points but I don’t believe it has anything more than that to do with it.

Jon: I would say that unless it conflicts with something or is in some place I really don’t want to go like Cleveland, you know, I would probably go to the invitational. I play Magic to have fun and I think it’s one of the more fun events.

Trick: I think so too!

Jon: You know, yeah, I guess if there is anyone out there vote for me! Unless it’s in Cleveland. And if you’re from Cleveland, no offense to your city. Right.

Trick: It’s a very pretty city it’s just not for you, I understand.

Jon: Yeah actually I’ve heard great things about Cleveland recently. It’s one of those cities they joke that doesn’t fully deserve it. Although Pittsburgh, don’t get me started on Pittsburgh.

Trick: Fair enough. Are you happy with the way your first invitational card came out? Is the Shadowmage Infiltrator what you wanted or is it some morph of it from R&D?

Jon: It was basically, you know, I was going for the card I wanted that was too powerful and I was like I really want my card with black Mana. As far as the creature theme it was exactly what I wanted. Unfortunately it was printed in the same set with possibly the best creature of all time, certainly the best creature to cost a colorless a black and a blue, which was Psychatog.

Trick: Yes.

Jon: And so, you know it didn’t quite see the play it did. And I wasn’t nearly as good as Bob was at getting them to agree to an absolutely ridiculous card. But the card was exactly how I wanted to be. Obviously, especially in the modern era as the creature just gets better and better. It just doesn’t quite stand the test of time. But that’s okay.

Trick: That’s alright. That’s part of being a Magic card.

Jon: Yes.

Trick: Do you mind if I ask you about your opinions on Wizards’ changes to organizational play or do you not really follow that?

Jon: Sure.

Trick: What are your thoughts on it? Have you followed the report from Kuala Lumpur?

Jon: I know they cut a Pro Tour. I think, personally, they used to have two draft Pro Tours a year and I thought that was a lot better. I understand that Magic is a, that the Pro Tour is something they’re doing for marketing. And the people who follow it tend to be more interested in constructed tournaments and constructed decks. Especially like with the, not like the people right at the pro level or PTQ level but everybody else. That being said I think that it’s pretty clear that draft is much more skill testing format.

Trick: Right.

Jon: But that was a while ago. Now as they slowly cut down the Pro Tours, it’s certainly going to be difficult for them to have marketable stars which is what they wanted with the Pro Tour. But I think that to some extent it almost already happened. Which is possibly why they did that. All the best players in the world are Japanese. Right now. It becomes.. they’re much less marketable to Americans and Europeans. That’s just the way it is when there are language barriers.

Trick: Absolutely.

Jon: I can understand why they did. It’s certainly the kind of thing that, that could become a tipping point where a lot of people decide it’s not really worth it to go to these events and less of the whole Magic players who play an intellectual sport thing. Which then makes it less relevant. It could be the kind of thing that devolves into the beginning of the end. On the other hand, maybe spots that are taken up by people who decide not to go, they should have more PTQs and new players get to play and win maybe it makes it more popular there. Obviously as a player I am not happy with it. But I guess it is a business decision and I can understand that.

Trick: Okay. Well as our final question, probably the most obvious one is: what advice can you offer to someone who is trying to get better at Magic?

Jon: Yeah, over the course of my life I’ve been asked this question more times than any other. I’ve never really had a good answer to it. Well I;ve probably been asked ‘what do you want to drink’ more often? I mean, look, Magic is a game of options. Obviously you want to do whatever you can to give yourself the most options. I mean, that’s kind of obvious. In terms of getting better, you have to keep an open mind, you have to play with players who are better than you; you also have to listen to players who are worse than you. When I was the best player in the world, I would listen to and ask for and respect the advice of a lot of players including players who weren’t even onto the pro tour. And maybe I wouldn’t always agree with it but getting all these points of view are helpful. You know, the biggest thing is going to be playing with good players. And you must respect the opinions of the people not only who are better than you but the ones quote-unquote worse than you. Besides that you have to play often, you have to focus. You have to have the mentality that if there is a good play and a better play, that’s not the way it is, the way it really is there is a correct play and everything else. If theres a good play and a better play then the good play is actually bad. There’s the better play which is whatever maximizes your average chance to win, and there’s everything else.

Trick: Absolutely.

Jon: The correct play makes it so that you win this time, and the other play could have won it for you. But if you did it 200,000 times you know the correct play win you the game more often.

Trick: Right, okay. Well Jon thank you for your time and congrats again on your win in Kuala Lumpur. We look forward to having you on ManaNation again.

Jon: Alright, sure, thank you very much.

Trick: Have a good night.

Jon: Alright you too.

Trick: Lee and I would like to thank Jon for his time for the interview and we’re eager to have him on the show again to share his insight into the game.

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