The end of Day 1 at the 2009 World Championships in Rome Italy has arrived, it has been an illuminating day with many surprise pieces of tech coming out to help shake up the Standard landscape, but before we get to that, we also had the induction ceremony for three new members of the Pro tour Hall of Fame: Antoine Ruel, Kamiel Cornelissen and Frank Karsten. These three gentlemen are all excellent Magic players and have more than earned their spot in Magic's history - congratulations to you.

Disqualification

Onto the rest of day 1, the real news aside from all the juicy deck tech is the disqualification of Charles Gindy. This disqualification takes the defending team champion United States out of contention for the 2009 title, leaving Todd Anderson and Adam Yurchick to fight for the individual title. Todd Anderson you know from his 8th place finish at StarCityGames5k Nashville, and his wife's win of the same event.

We don't know the details of Charles Gindy's disqualification other than it was a Fraud penalty, and reportedly had to do with the misrepresentation of the game state somehow involved with his Master of the Wild Hunt. But we don't know anything definite.

Player of the Year

It looks that the Player of the Year race has taken an interesting turn, the yearlong leader is Yuuya Watanabe and he had his share of problems with the games today. Reportedly the Japanese players may be suffering from the flu and that could affect his and their performances. At the end of the individual rounds, day 1 having been standard, Tomoharu Saitou and Martin Juza are the new leaders, fighting each for the ability to take the title.

Individual Standings

At the end of the Standard day 1, there are 7 players sitting pretty at 6-0: Joel Calafell of Spain, Marijn Laebert of Belgium, Alexey Antonenko of Ukraine, Cynic Kim of Korea, Bram Snepvangers of the Netherlands, David Reitbauer of Austria and Tomoharu Saitou of Japan. But the story continues into the 5-1s with the top two by tie breakers being Makahito Mihara, the 2006 World Champion and Martin Juza the Player of the Year hopeful.

Of course the fans are watching Brian Kibler to see how he does, he's been on a tear this year since his return and he ended up being 4-2 in Standard. He feels confident though a bit let down that he didn't continue his streak of undefeated day 1s.

For the individual champion, I think I have to go with Tomoharu Saitou, he's been on a tear and is fighting to take that Player of the Year title as well.

Team Standings

With the USA, an early favorite, now out of contention it falls to Brazil with their all star team of: Carlos Ramao, Paulo Vitor Doma da Rosa and the lesser known Aristides Camara. Behind them in third is the perennial favorite Japan with: Yuuya Watanabe, Shuuhei Nakamura and Yuuma Shiota. In second place for team scoring is Germany on which the only big name is Sebastien Thaler. I have to say that I think Brazil is my favorite to win the Team title this year.

Through all of this we've had some very exciting decks come to light through the deck tech features coming from the likes of Rob Dougherty, Conley Woods, Martin Juza and Luis Scott-Vargas. It's a fantastic array and indeed more exciting innovation in the Standard format. We'll be posting deck lists as we get them so check back to ManaNation frequently!