Many years ago, before there was such a thing as MTGO and "going infinite" I learned that the best way to learn how to draft was to actually do it on a regular basis with a group of competent and competitive players. And this we were able to accomplish many years ago at Arena, a gaming shop/café which was open practically 24 hours a day and would hold drafts whenever there were eight warm and willing bodies present.

However, draft night was most Tuesdays and/or Wednesdays, and we drew many of the top limited players in the metropolis at the time (yes DJ, you were also great at that time with your “pick the best card - five-color” decks). And all this despite a hefty entry fee and a rare pool which followed the draft which was usually four rounds long.

The entry fee was to make sure that the winner got double his entry fee back and the second placer got refunded as well and the third placer got the spoils (what was left after the cost of packs – packs as prizes were a strange concept for our group.) After all, everyone would also get three rares although the top placers would get their picks of the best ahead of the stragglers.

This assured us of two things – that players would always try their best to draft the best cards for the decks they were building and not worry about the price of the cards they were taking (although one did keep the uncommons and commons they chose) or making sure they got their money back from what they had opened.

You got your money back by winning – plain and simple. Otherwise, you get some mediocre rares and move on to the next draft. (It was not unusual to get as many as three drafts in one night although the last one would almost always involve the truest of draft addicts or latecomers.) And there were some guys who insisted on a twenty-peso side bet for the games (remember that back then, boosters went for about P110), turning the matches into Magic the Bente. (I think Rey Aguas and Mitch Tatco were the instigators of this scheme.)

And one didn’t get bored waiting for other games to finish (that usually meant DJ or Froggy Ong and heaven forbid that they play each other) because you just hopped on to the first open PC and gunned baddies down or joined a quest (yes, this was the height of Counterstrike and Diablo). Or ate the Savory quarter-chicken for the umpteenth time unless you wanted to step out to eat at the Steak House out back (not to be mistaken with Outback Steakhouse) or even Tapa King (which I think is still there).
But this brings me back to the seemingly-dead art of the rare pool to encourage better drafting. Some teams still practice this in their own locales (I heard it’s a must for Team Spiral’s sessions) and it really makes players get better because they also play all four rounds to make sure they can maximize their choices.

Now we’ve got rare fools who join drafts just to pick up the valuable rares and it’s just a bonus if they can make a workable deck that can actually win games. This pans out sometimes (and two-time national champ Francis Profeta is the master of rare drafting to win) but more often than not, it makes the draft worse for everybody who wants to play it out. Not even a pack a win inducement seems enough to discourage the practice.

If next year’s Grand Prix was limited, I would encourage people to try and go back to those rare pool days but since it isn’t – and standard decks often need lots of good rares, my guess is that rare fools will continue to dominate the local draft tables and limited skills will continue to slide just a bit.