Nov. 26, 2009
Billy Postlethwait holds a handful of cards that won him $50,000 playing the World of Warcraft trading card game, which he honed at his job in Winter Park.
Photo by Isaac Babcock — The Observer
By Abraham Aboraya
Guest Reporter
A journalistic quest to find Billy P., the reigning World of Warcraft Trading Card Game champion, ends at 3592 Aloma Ave., Suite 10, better known as Cool Stuff Games.
There, William Postlethwait — Billy P. to his friends — comes out and shows me through the Cool Stuff Games warehouse, a maze of tall metal shelving overfilled with boxes of cards and board games.
Then Postlethwait sits at a table usually reserved for weekend and weeknight card tournaments. The $50,000-richer world champion is wearing a hooded jacket and, frankly, seems a little short for a Mage.
"It's kind of crazy," he said. "It's kind of funny — that much money from just a card game."
Postlethwait won the World of Warcraft's Trading Card Game world championships early this month. And while he's won $4,000 or $5,000 from other card games, the $50,000 bounty and glass trophy were the best he's ever done playing cards.
Never heard of World of Warcraft? It's an online role playing game, which, as of December 2008, had 11.5 million people playing it every month.
Never heard of a Trading Card Game? It's like poker on steroids.
Players can buy either packs of cards or individual cards from retailers, and start by choosing their hero (like Boris Brightbeard or Omedus the Punisher). Players build decks of 60 cards around the hero from the literally thousands of cards available to them, all based on the characters and adventures in the online game.
Then, you test your deck against other WoW players at shops such as Cool Stuff Games, where Postlethwait works full time while finishing his finance degree from the University of Central Florida.
Postlethwait and his friend began testing and building decks two months before the tournament, ending with a Mage deck. He said about 60 percent of the players there were playing with Mage decks. "Ours was a little different, so I guess our testing was a little further than other people's," Postlethwait said. "That was maybe the difference. It was really good against other Mage decks, which was a big deal."
The big tournament is the World Championships, which offers $250,000 in cash and prizes. During the rest of the year, they hold Realm Championships across the country, which don't offer cash for the winners, but does give out $500,000 in prizes.
It's all part of the Battlegrounds program, and Mike Girard, who manages the Organized Play Programs for Upper Deck, said Postlethwait has been a top player in the tournaments before.
"He's one of our top players," Girard said. "He's a great player. He's a very analytical thinker. A lot of our good players are. In the middle of a game, they'll be able to see and predict what's going to happen three or four turns ahead. That's why he's so good."
Postlethwait and his competitors brought their 60-card decks for Day One of the competition on which he went 7-1. The second day of play is meant to test the players' ability to build a deck from scratch.
Game cards come in 20-card booster packs, which, statistically, are 70 percent common — and, therefore, less useful — cards. Eight players are put together, and one person opens a pack of cards, looks through it, takes one card and passes the rest to his right, continuing until they run out.
That's called the draft, and Postlethwait only lost one game during draft play. Girard said that's because he can remember what cards were available and then predict what style decks the others are likely going to favor.
"If you're getting passed packs with no Alliance players in it, you know people to your right are probably drafting Alliance, so you have to make sure you adapt to what's being passed to you," Postlethwait said.
Overall, Postlethwait said he likes playing the World of Warcraft game, but he doesn't know if he'll keep it up forever. That's because, frankly, there aren't as many players in the area as, say, Magic the Gathering.
So what's Postlethwait planning on doing with the money?
"I'm actually looking toward maybe buying a house. So maybe that would be good to use, since you can actually get a decent house right now for a really good price."
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