We almost did not make it to the main event. Yes, you have read it right. We were too relaxed to expect that the venue cap of 800 players would not be met. I based on the previous Grand Prix Hong Kong wherein there were only around 600+ attendees. I then realized that those are of Limited format GPs. The fan base of Modern this time is much higher, given that it is also the season of Modern Preliminary Pro Tour Qualifiers.

It was Saturday last week when I found out that the main event was capped. I instantly lost interest, was devastated, and took the blame on myself. I reasoned out that there were no freebies for the early birds, unlike those of the previous organizers.

Anyhow, it was good news days after during my birthday last Wednesday that Panda Events announced that they will be opening 200 slots on Friday, September 7 at around 6:00pm. That said, I immediately went home after that office on that day and sat in front of my PC, and waited for the 6:00pm time. I remembered that I was having trouble with the internet connection 30 minutes prior to that time and it came back at around 5:50 pm. My friend Ramon was also on standby for the registration and he was more prepared with fiber internet. The clock ticked at 6pm and I immediately clicked on the GP Hong Kong registration page and filled up my info. The order was placed but then I encountered another blunder during the payment page for Paypal. I did not know what really the cause is but when I clicked the Pay Now button, it resulted in a Paypal error. Good thing though I had Ramon do the registration for me. The perks of having a friend with fast internet and a credit card haha. He was able to sign me up before the 200 slots were filled, in just about 8 minutes after 6:00pm. Whew, that was close.

Now that the main issue has been answered, what is next? Probably a whole lot of playtesting and familiarization of the decks in the current Modern metagame. That I will talk about in Part 3.

That is a wrap for now. Until the next blog post.