For Dave Spears, PC Anaheim is redemption. Namely, redemption for a performance in PC Indy that he had beat himself up over for too long. Dave went 3-4 at PC Indy, narrowly missing Day 2 and a shot at the money. His sorrow went far beyond his personal performance—letting his team down made the Day 2 miss hurt that much more. The team is Team Realms, the "solid group" of Vs. System players who gather on the Vs. Realms online forums, where Dave goes by his wacky pseudo-persona "En-Kur". Dave is a leading player on the team, finishing second at the Wizard World Texas $10K to fellow Team Realms member Rob Leander, each of them playing a new Curve Sentinels deck that took the entire tournament by storm. Dave is also one of the Top 10 Constructed players, ranking ninth in the world. Yet Dave is ever humble, saying, “I’m not the best player in the world. I’m lucky and successful, but I make a lot of mistakes. I just happen to be surrounded by a lot of great players I learn from. Don’t confuse me with a great player just because I have a Top 10 rating.”

If you don’t know Dave, you may think of him as being full of it, but I guarantee you that he is 100% sincere. Sure, he thinks of himself as a good player, but he truly feels that he has a lot to prove before he can call himself a Pro. “I think a Pro Vs. player is someone who makes money playing. I’ve won $2,500, but I’m sure I’ve spent more than that. If I make Top 32 tomorrow, then I can say I am a Pro. I have a Pro attitude but don’t think of myself as one. I don’t really consider anybody a Pro card player unless they actually support themselves—and I don’t really do that . . . yet!”

Behind the card-playing façade, Dave Spears is the owner of Mind Games, a comic and hobby shop in Florence, Alabama. His story is truly one of an entrepreneur. He grew up reading comics and sold his comic collection to pay for his first year of college. He started playing Magic, and although he was not successful enough to make the Pro Tour—even after four years of trying—he made PTQ Top 8's often enough to amass a huge collection of cards. He realizes now that in order to be highly successful, he would have had to play full-time and surround himself with great players, something he was unable to do. He was able to make a living from Magic on the other side of the game, however, when a friend of his sold him a $10,000 collection for about $1,000. He amalgamated the collection with his own, and liquidated it to raise the cash to open his own store.

His store is very successful, having put two competitors out of business, though Dave admits that the first store closing was as much the result of the owner's incompetence as it was Dave’s competition. The big factor in Dave's success, he tells me, is that “there’s not a lot to do in Florence—you can go to movies or hang out in the store. Parents appreciate being able to drop their kids off and know where they are. That can make the store a kind of ‘babysitter’, but that’s not a problem.”

Mind Games started as a game shop, but when a comic shop closed down, he assimilated all of their customers and now primarily sells comics. “TCG's come in waves, and comics are steady.” Still, he does sell TCG's and tries to play them as often as possible—particularly the Vs. System game. He says he doesn’t play as much as some might think, but knowing good, serious players from the store helps, as does always having someone to play with.  If he does well, he’s thinking of turning the store over to a partner, and opening a second one outside of Alabama, perhaps in Seattle.

The comics are what really ties Dave to the store, and to Vs. He particularly likes the way the game handles the characters, both through great flavor text and through comic sensibility. “Vs. does a good job of getting at the comics. So many b-characters show up in comics—like the other day, I was reading Excalibur and Unus was in it . . . and Unus was actually pretty cool!”

Unus was apparently cool enough to spur Dave into playing a TNB blitz deck—the same one that fellow Team Realms members Rian Fike and Shane Wendel are playing. When I asked him why he chose that over the Curve Sentinels deck that brought him so much success, he said he wasn’t sure. “I’m a very fickle player . . . to be honest, we were just sitting at the airport, and Shane and I were playing TNB, and it just wrecked. Curve Sentinels? Only Bastion is really ‘broken’ about it, and I hate a deck that doesn’t have any action until turn 6. I knew TNB would get me at least 6-4. Everyone thinks Common Enemy beats TNB, but it really doesn’t. You just take too much damage worrying about Boris, Mystical Paralysis, etc.”

And Dave isn’t big on Common Enemy. He’s also not big on Big Brotherhood, agreeing that it might as well be dead. “Is BBH dead? Even with Insignificant Threat, it just doesn’t beat Titans. I think Fantastic Four beats it and BBH are just unplayable against Teen Titans. Especially Brave & the Bold—it just kills them. Titans is too powerful right now. Teen Titans Go!? It’s ridiculous.”

So why not play Titans then? “It’s a very difficult deck to play. And I thought there’d be a lot of Titans hate today – Total Anarchy, etc. Besides, I’m nowhere near as good as Rob (Leander), who is playing Titans. But I think Titans is the best deck by far.”

And for the future? With Andrew Yip working for UDE and abandoning Dave, who refers to him as Sexy Asian Yip in his milder moments, Dave is “starting a new line of clothes featuring Yip—Cowboy Yip t-shirts we’re all going to wear in Amsterdam.” As for future sets, he’s drafted the Man of Steel set about a dozen times and finds it really robust. “The only team I don’t really like is New Gods—I like New Gods defensively, but I’m too aggressive a player for them. There’s a lot of good cards, though – but it’s definitely not a ‘new player set’ because every card has a paragraph.” He said he’s not going to consider the set too carefully for another couple of weeks, when he’ll start preliminary testing for PC Amsterdam.

As for Dave the player, “I don’t really play for fun any more; I play to try to win as much money as I can. I’m not opposed to working for UDE some day if they needed my talents—it’s a steady income, and you get to work in the industry and design.  If I don’t consistently win money, I’ll do something like that. I’m 32 and I’ll have to eventually grow up.” But for now, he’ll keep going until he hits a roadblock, and then simply find another way around.