Owen Turtenwald

Owen Turtenwald
Nicknames ORAT
Born (1989-04-16) April 16, 1989
West Allis, WI
Residence Las Vegas, NV
Nationality United States American
Pro Tour debut Pro Tour Valencia 2007
Winnings US$319,120 [1]
Pro Tour wins (Top 8) 0 (4)
Grand Prix wins (Top 8) 4 (21)[2]
Lifetime Pro Points 418[3]

Owen Turtenwald is an American professional Magic: The Gathering player. He has won a number of awards during his career, notably the 2010 Vintage World Championship and 2011 and 2015-16 Player of the Year.[4] In 2016, he was inducted into the Magic: The Gathering Hall of Fame.

Magic: The Gathering career

Owen Turtenwald first came to prominence as a player of Magic's eternal formats, Legacy and Vintage. In the 2007 season, Turtenwald made his first Top 8 at GP Columbus, finishing in second place with a Legacy Goblins deck and qualifying for PT Valencia (where he finished in 18th place with an Extended version of the Goblins deck). In 2008, Turtenwald made the Top 8 of the Vintage World Championship.[5] At Gen Con 2010, Turtenwald won the 2010 Vintage World Championship defeating Bob Maher, Jr. in the finals.[6][7]

Despite reaching the finals of GP Washington DC in the 2010 season, Turtenwald considered quitting, feeling as though he wasn't performing well enough for his efforts.[8] However, he was persuaded to keep playing with the support of Team ChannelFireball. As of 2015, Turtenwald writes articles and makes videos for ChannelFireball.com.[9]

In the 2011 season, Turtenwald made seven Grand Prix Top 8s, an at-the-time unprecedented number for a single season[10] in a wide variety of formats, including Standard, Extended, Legacy, and Limited. However, Turtenwald failed to win any of the GPs at which he made Top 8, a fact that was very disappointing to him.[11] Turtenwald's success caused him to hold the lead in the 2011 Player of the Year race for the majority of the season. On the final day of the 2011 World Championship, three players were in the position to take the Player of the Year title from Turtenwald. These players were Luis Scott-Vargas, Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa, and Josh Utter-Leyton, all of whom were also Turtenwald's teammates as part of the ChannelFireball team. Turtenwald noted a sense of conflict in wanting his friends to do well but also needing them to lose if he was to take the Player of the Year title.[11] Fortunately for Turtenwald, those three players lost their quarterfinal matches; Turtenwald won the 2011 Player of the Year title.[8] In doing so, Turtenwald became the first Player of the Year to not have made a Pro Tour Top 8 in the season in which they won the title.

In the 2012-13 Season, Turtenwald practiced and prepared for tournaments with Team StarCityGames (currently known as Team Pantheon), alongside players such as Jon Finkel, Kai Budde and Reid Duke.[12][13] Shortly thereafter, Turtenwald made his first PT Top 8 at Pro Tour Gatecrash.[14] Turtenwald lost his quarterfinal match against ChannelFireball member Eric Froehlich but still finished in fifth place in the event.

Turtenwald continued to hold the record for most GP Top 8 appearances without a win (11), but in the 2013-14 Season, Turtenwald won GP Washington DC, his 12th GP Top 8.[15] Turtenwald continued this success, winning the next GP in Albuquerque.[16] In doing so, Turtenwald became the sixth player to win back-to-back GP events, the other five players to have achieved this feat being Kenji Tsumura, Kai Budde, Raphaël Lévy, Tomoharu Saito, and Yuuya Watanabe. Turtenwald went on to finish the season with his second PT Top 8 at Pro Tour Magic 2015,[17] where he lost in the semifinals to eventual champion Ivan Floch. Thanks to his fourth-place finish, Turtenwald earned captainship of the US national team for the 2014 World Magic Cup. He also qualified for the 2014 World Championship as the top-ranked North American player.

Turtenwald, alongside teammates William Jensen and Reid Duke, won GP Portland, the very first event of the 2014–15 Season. At Pro Tour Khans of Tarkir in Honolulu later that year, Turtenwald looked poised to make his third PT Top 8, but he got paired down against Yuuya Watanabe in the last round and lost, finishing 11th in the event.[18] At the 2014 World Championship, he finished 13th, but at the 2014 World Magic Cup, he captained the US national team to a fourth-place finish, losing to Greece in the semifinals. Turtenwald ended the season with 55 pro points, good enough for platinum status in the Pro Player Club and an invitation to the 2015 World Championship.[19] He finished second, losing the Championship to Seth Manfield.

Turtenwald's 2015-16 season began with a Top 8 finish at PT Battle for Zendikar. His powerful performance continued throughout the season with three more GP Top 8s and a win at GP Houston that put him in contention for a second Player of the Year title. However, Seth Manfield's late-season performance would put him twenty points ahead of Turtenwald heading into PT Eldritch Moon. In the wake of his Hall of Fame induction alongside Yuuya Watanabe, Turtenwald secured his fourth PT Top 8, finishing in second place, which deposed Seth Manfield as Player of the Year and World Magic Cup captaincy. His finish with 98 points was the first for Player of the Year to finish above 90 points since Kai Budde in 2002; he became the third player to have two Player of the Year titles, after Budde and Watanabe.

Achievements

 Season   Event type   Location   Format   Date   Rank 
2007 Grand Prix Columbus Legacy 19–20 May 2007 2
2009 Grand Prix Minneapolis Sealed and Booster Draft 13–14 November 2009 5
2010 Grand Prix Washington DC Standard 22–23 May 2010 2
2011 Grand Prix Atlanta Extended 22–23 January 2011 8
2011 Grand Prix Denver Sealed and Booster Draft 19–20 February 2011 3
2011 Grand Prix Dallas/Fort Worth Standard 9–10 April 2011 3
2011 Grand Prix Providence Legacy 28–29 May 2011 5
2011 Grand Prix Singapore Standard 4–5 June 2011 4
2011 Grand Prix Santiago Sealed and Booster Draft 22–23 October 2011 3
2011 Grand Prix San Diego Sealed and Booster Draft 12–13 November 2011 6
2012 Grand Prix Seattle Sealed and Booster Draft 3–4 March 2012 8
2012–13 Grand Prix San Jose Team Limited 9–10 October 2012 3 [I]
2012–13 Pro Tour Montreal Standard and Booster Draft 15–17 February 2013 5
2013–14 Grand Prix Washington, D.C. Legacy 16–17 November 2013 1
2013–14 Grand Prix Albuquerque Standard 23–24 November 2013 1
2013–14 Grand Prix Barcelona Team Limited 1–2 March 2014 3
2013–14 Pro Tour Portland Standard and Booster Draft 1–3 August 2014 4
2014–15 Grand Prix Portland Team Limited 9–10 August 2014 1
2014–15 World Magic Cup Nice National team 5–7 December 2014 4
2015–16 Grand Prix Detroit Team Limited 15–16 August 2015 3
2015–16 Worlds Seattle Special 28–30 August 2015 2
2015–16 Pro Tour Milwaukee Standard and Booster Draft 16–18 October 2015 5
2015–16 Grand Prix Atlanta Sealed and Booster Draft 13–15 November 2015 2
2015–16 Grand Prix Houston Standard 27–28 February 2016 1
2015–16 Grand Prix Washington, D.C. Team Limited 12–13 March 2016 3
2015–16 Grand Prix Minneapolis Standard 28-29 May 2016 6
2015–16 Pro Tour Sydney Standard and Booster Draft August 5–7, 2016 2
2016–17 Grand Prix San Antonio Team Unified Modern April 1–2, 2017 2
2016-17 Grand Prix Cleveland Team Limited June 24–25, 2017 1
2017-18 Grand Prix Providence Team Limited September 30–October 1, 2017 2

Last updated: 09 April 2018
Source: Event Coverage at Wizards.com

Personal life

Turtenwald lives with fellow Pro Tour Hall of Famer William "Huey" Jensen.

Notes

^I Turtenwald finished third at Grand Prix San Jose 2012 with teammates Conley Woods and Eric Froehlich,[20] and although the cutoff was to the top 2 teams instead of the usual top 4 for team events, it has been recognized as a counting Grand Prix top 8 finish by Wizards of the Coast.[2]

References

  1. ↑ "Top 200 All-Time Money Leaders". Wizards of the Coast. 2014-07-15. Retrieved 2014-08-04.
  2. 1 2 "Lifetime Grand Prix Top 8s". Wizards of the Coast. 2014-07-28. Retrieved 2014-09-26.
  3. ↑ "Planeswalker Points". Wizards of the Coast. 2014-08-04. Retrieved 2014-08-04.
  4. ↑ "2011 Pro Tour Player of the Year Standings". Wizards of the Coast. 23 November 2011. Retrieved 24 November 2011.
  5. ↑ Stark, Bill. "Feature: Vintage Championship Top 8 Coverage". Wizards of the Coast. Retrieved 25 November 2011.
  6. ↑ "Gen Con 2010". Wizards of the Coast. 6 August 2010. Retrieved 24 November 2011.
  7. ↑ Turtenwald, Owen (29 October 2010). "X and Owen – Winning Vintage Worlds 2010". Retrieved 25 November 2011.
  8. 1 2 Price, Nate (20 November 2011). "Player of the Year: Owen Turtenwald". Wizards of the Coast. Retrieved 24 November 2011.
  9. ↑ "Owen Turtenwald". ChannelFireball.com. Retrieved 30 April 2015.
  10. ↑ David-Marshall, Brian (20 November 2011). "Video Feature: Day Four Wrap-up". Wizards of the Coast. Retrieved 24 November 2011.
  11. 1 2 Turtenwald, Owen (22 November 2011). "Owen's a Win – Player of the Year". ChannelFireball.com. Retrieved 25 November 2011.
  12. ↑ David-Marshall, Brian. "Owen Up to His Promise". Wizards of the Coast. Retrieved 29 November 2013.
  13. ↑ "The Team". StarCityGames.com. Retrieved 29 November 2013.
  14. ↑ "Pro Tour Gatecrash Coverage". Wizards of the Coast. Retrieved 25 November 2013.
  15. ↑ "Turtenwald Finally Triumphant in D.C." Wizards of the Coast. Retrieved 25 November 2013.
  16. ↑ "Owen Runs it Back!". Wizards of the Coast. Retrieved 25 November 2013.
  17. ↑ "FLOCH IMMORTALIZED AT PRO TOUR". Wizards of the Coast. Retrieved 2014-11-19.
  18. ↑ "FINAL STANDINGS". Wizards of the Coast. Retrieved 2015-08-03.
  19. ↑ "2015 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP COMPETITORS". Wizards of the Coast. Retrieved 2015-08-03.
  20. ↑ "Grand Prix San Jose Round 17 Standings". Wizards of the Coast. 2012-10-14. Retrieved 2014-09-08.
Preceded by
United States Brad Nelson		 Pro Player of the Year
2011		 Succeeded by
Japan Yuuya Watanabe
Preceded by
United States Mike Sigrist		 Pro Player of the Year
2016		 Succeeded by
Brazil Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa
Preceded by
Josh Utter-Leyton		 US National Champion
2014		 Succeeded by
Mike Sigrist
Preceded by
Mike Sigrist		 US National Champion
2016		 Succeeded by
Incumbent
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