No girls allowed

Zac Hill's Star City Games article was about how Magic players play and act differently when a girl sits across from them in a tournament. So while it is relevant, I'd like to discuss a few issues involving the other chromosome and Magical spells.

Robin is a female Seattle player who is pretty well known among the First Pick Games crowd. She tells me a story about her Round 7 opponent, who is relatively known as well, trying to intimidate her, but justice prevailed and she won the match. Presumably, he thought he could intimidate Robin because she is a girl and presumably would not have the mental toughness to not pay heed to any of that, but it's also not unreasonable that a player might do that to everyone he plays against.

I happen to get paired against this player in the next round, and he's talking about what he played against, and makes a statement like "And then I lost to some girl last round" in a can-you-believe-that tone of voice, at which point I can make a judgment about his intentions in Robin's match. Justice does not prevail in my match, as I mulligan to four in Game 1 (but still make some mistakes) and keep a questionable hand Game 2 and lose.

If he had said "I lost to some scrub", I'd be upset because it was about a friend, but whatever, I'd move on. But the obvious prejudice, after hearing how he acted in the previous match, I found absolutely disgusting and has no place anywhere. If he had made such a statement and it weren't about a friend, I'd still think it's scummy and be a little upset.

While I'm talking about Regionals, I thought it was kind of funny hearing locker room comments about other girls playing in the tournament, when it wasn't exactly a locker room situation since they could be standing behind you watching your match. Maybe that's just me...

Anyway, wanted to jot those down while those encounters were still fresh in my head and there was a relative article out in the Magic article-sphere (was going for a blogosphere-type word). As for playing against them, I try to treat it like a game of MODO (like I'm trying to treat every game) where I don't see faces or even a person. Plus, it would suck to sit down at the Grand Prix across from a girl, start playing loosely because of it, then look at the result slip and say "Oh, YOU'RE Melissa DeTora", down a game and having to win two in a row against a ringer.