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Michael Long is a former professional Magic: The Gathering card game player. He was a highly influential and controversial Pro Tour mainstay for a number of years in the late 1990s. Despite making four Pro Tour top eights and winning Pro Tour Paris in 1997, Long's legacy is the subject of much controversy due to allegations of cheating and unsportsmanlike behavior.^[5] In 2003, he began selling "MTG Secrets", a book and DVD guide on how to play Magic. More recently, Long founded Area51Marketing.com and Area51Lifestyle.com.

Contributions to the game

Mike Long's Prosperous Bloom (or Pros-Bloom) deck, which he piloted to a Pro Tour championship at Paris in 1997, is widely recognized as the first successful combo deck in tournament-level play. The deck was centered around a card-drawing and tutoring strategy (Prosperity, Infernal Contract, Vampiric Tutor) contributing to a mana engine (Cadaverous Bloom, Squandered Resources) that eventually led to a 20-plus damage Drain Life spell for the victory. Prior to this, no combo deck was consistent or powerful enough to earn any major tournament success.

By winning the 1998 Magic Invitational, Long became the third pro player to create a card for inclusion in a future Magic expansion and have himself drawn into the card's art.^[6] The card, Rootwater Thief, was printed in the Nemesis set. It is the first Invitational card that does not depict its creator as the card's subject creature, instead depicting Long as a rower being ambushed by a humanoid sea creature.

In 2005, the possibility that Long could be inducted into the Pro Tour Hall of Fame reignited debates over whether Long's overall impact on the game was positive or negative. Head Magic Designer and former Pro Tour organizer Mark Rosewater, who is allowed to submit a Hall of Fame ballot, voted for Long in his first two years of eligibility. Explaining his decision, Rosewater wrote, "Mike made the Pro Tour exciting. He made it tense. He made it more interesting than any other player on the list [of inaugural Pro Tour Hall of Fame candidates]."^[7] In another article, Rosewater wrote that Long was "the best" at star building and that his reputation as the Pro Tour's greatest villain consistently evoked passion and emotion among tournament followers, which often brought large turnouts to normally low-profile games and events. Rosewater wrote that while few people counted themselves as fans of Long, many came to watch him.

Long began writing strategy articles in 1998. Through his M:TG Insider website, Long built a community of players who use and discuss his decks and concepts. In 2005 professional poker player David Williams played several of Long's decks at major tournaments.

Long is also responsible for designing a Vintage format combo deck that used the storm mechanic. The deck used Burning Wish to fetch Yawgmoth's Will out of the sideboard and set up a kill with Tendrils of Agony. The deck, called Long.dec, resulted in the restriction of both Burning Wish and Lion's Eye Diamond, which was a key mana engine in the deck. Subsequent Vintage combo decks that use tutoring to set up a Tendrils kill have retained the "Long" name, although the original deck was rendered unplayable by restriction. A version that used Death Wish was called Death Long, and a more current version with Grim Tutor is called Grim Long. Another storm combo deck was called Pitch Long because it used a high number of spells with the alternate casting cost of losing (or "pitching") a card in the caster's hand.

Playing style and controversy

Long's detractors do not generally dispute that he was a talented Magic player. Instead, he is a controversial figure because he used a great deal of mind games and psychological tricks, was frequently accused of cheating, and has been disqualified and suspended from sanctioned play for cheating on the Pro Tour.

Mind games and psychology

• In the finals of Pro Tour Paris 1997, Long was playing Mark Justice. In one game, Long, piloting his Prosperous Bloom combo deck, faced a situation where he would lose unless he could win on his current turn. According to Gavin Verhey and Patrick Chapin, in order to get his combo to go off, he needed to discard his sole copy of Drain Life, the only card in his deck capable of dealing damage and thus killing his opponent. After doing so, he promptly lost that game, as he had no way to win. However, what Long hoped to achieve here was to convince his opponent that he had more than one copy of Drain Life in his deck, and that he was simply unable to draw it. In game five, Mark Justice cast Coercion and saw Long's sole copy of Drain Life. However, due to Long's crafty play in game one, Justice believed that Long had more than one copy of Drain Life, and operating under these false pretenses, Justice had Long discard a different card, allowing Long to win the game. Long ended up winning the game after drawing his entire deck and showing Justice that he only had one Drain Life.^[8]

Controversy

• At the 1998 U.S. Nationals, Long was caught with a key card, Cadaverous Bloom, on his chair during a game.^[9] The head judge, Charlie Catino, issued a match loss to Long, who went on to finish second in the tournament.
• During a crucial round of Pro Tour Los Angeles in 2000, Long was given a warning for improperly shuffling his deck.^[10] Long made a comment to his opponent, Darwin Kastle, designed to keep Kastle from shuffling Long's deck before starting the match. Distracted by Long's banter, Kastle only cut Long's deck, despite intending to shuffle because there were rumors before the round that Long's shuffling was suspicious.^[10] Many players, including Rob Dougherty, a former Magic judge who attended that event as a player, accused Long of deliberately cheating by not randomizing his deck to keep copies of the card Howling Wolf evenly distributed. Dougherty wrote an article laying out his case against Long. Dougherty contended that Long's pregame actions were not shuffling but instead pretending to shuffle while stacking his deck. The judging staff, Dougherty asserts, was not familiar enough with catching cheaters to understand what Long was doing.^[11]
• During the US Nationals Draft Challenge held at United States Nationals in 2000, Long was disqualified without prize and given a one-month suspension for presenting a deck that was not sufficiently randomized.^[12][13]

Top 8 appearances

Last updated: 31 July 2009
Source: Event Coverage at Wizards.com

References