Hello, everyone,

I just wanted to give you a brief introduction of myself, because I'll be the guest (maybe I should have chosen ghost) writer for Metagame.com today . . . at least if somebody has the opionion that it's worth reading what I wrote.

My name's Oliver Gehrmann, I'm known as "soulwarrior" on the message boards, and right now I'm living in Hamburg, Germany. Some of you might know me, I also covered the Pro Circuit Amsterdam and PC New York. (I was the guy with the white hat.)

Tim will continue to do the main work today, because he got some sleep last night. The first day of this $10K went pretty smoothly. We finished at about 8 pm, so some guys even thought we set up a new record for a very fast Day One.

I tried to get some impressions of the tournament, but yesterday, I was responsible for the coverage of the Pharaoh Tour, a huge Yu-Gi-Oh tournament with more than 1100 players! Our tournament started at the same time that the Vs. guys got to work. Unfortunately, we had no 12-hour day, but a 21-hour day! I got two hours of "sleep" and Matthias, our tournament organizer, had to call me in order to wake me up.

Enough of the explanations and introductions. I want to present you with some facts right now.

Our German Vs. community is growing and growing. UDE Germany organized demos all over the country, so the players had their chance to get in touch with the game. After all the hard work, the community is starting to keep up. We have more active Vs. players in the message boards and the attendance at the events is increasing. The $10K could have had higher numbers, but you should notice that the Pharaoh Tour lured away some of the players who preferred to play Yu-Gi-Oh!

With Vs. Booster Packs being given out to Yu-Gi-Oh players at special events, some of them are starting to take up the game. Although Yu-Gi-Oh! is fun, fast and furious, some of the players get disappointed when they get unlucky. This is where Vs. is perfect, as it shows them a new opportunity to succeed in a more skill-oriented game.

Hopefully, the next year will be a great one for the (new) Vs. players in Germany. While some of our pros like Hans Joachim Höh were able to make a name for themselves all over the world, others are starting to keep up. Don't forget Andre Müller, Reinhard Blech, Maik Stich, Kristian Kockott, and many others. There are a few others that try to step in their shoes, although the footsteps are very big.

Maybe in a few years, we'll have a Pro Circuit in this beautiful location right here in Bremen!