Okay, I'm pulling on my driveway.

We all know what that means.

It's time for under drive to work.

Okay, today is another episode of 20 years and 20 podcasts, where I talk about all of magic's history year by year.

Today is 2000. We've hit a new millennium of magic. Okay. So not too much went on in January,

but in February, PT Los Angeles, from February 4th to the 6th, where Trevor Blackwell

from the United States defeats Chris Benefell, also from the United States.

The big story, actually, this tournament wasn't even the finals.

The big tournament of the story was Mike Long, during the final round of the Swiss,

there was beliefs that he was cheating.

And so the judges spent a long, long time, but they could not prove that he was cheating, so they could not kick him out.

And he made top eight.

Oh, and people were mad and angry.

And so, uh, uh, the, the, fine, normally the semifinals are early in the morning and not a lot of people show up for it, but they showed up.

There was a giant crowd.

They're just a root root Mike Long's loss.

But he won, and he went to the semifinals. And the semifinals, even more people screaming for

Mike Long to lose. And then in the semis, Mike Long loses. And then no one was there for the

finals. When people always ask me about sort of why I pushed long,

people, long got people in seats. Long definitely got people excited.

They wanted him to lose, they hated him, but he roused people up and it was very charismatic,

and people wanted to watch him.

...