Reid Duke Is the Lone MTG Hall of Fame 2019 Inductee
After a brief period of voting and deliberation between the eligible voters, the inductee for the MTG Hall of Fame 2019 class has been announced. Wizards of the Coast revealed the latest class to join the coveted hall where some of the most influential players in the history of the card game reside.
Reid Duke Is the MTG Hall of Fame 2019 Inductee
In a strange twist of events, there is only one inductee this year and it is none other than Reid Duke. Duke earned the right to join the MTG Hall of Fame 2019 class and join the likes of other legends since the prestigious group began about 15 years ago.
In that time, though, there has never been a single year where only one inductee was brought into the fold. There was at least two inductees in every single year prior to this one and this unprecedented event is matched only by the fact that Reid Duke got an overwhelming majority of the votes, too.
Duke received an astonishing 94.28 percent of the votes in total, appearing on that massive chunk of ballots. Simply put, the voters that are eligible for participating in the event are able to select whomever they believe is most deserving of joining the Hall of Fame group for that particular year.
In order to join the Hall of Fame, at least 60 percent of the total voters must put the player’s name down on their specific ballot for them to join the group. In every year prior to this one, there has been no problem for at least two players to get the necessary 60 percent of votes.
Duke Is the Only Inductee This Year
However, for some odd reason this year, there were no players who even came close to getting the 60 percent required outside of Reid Duke himself. At best, there were several candidates who were able to get just over half the necessary percentage but that was far from enough.
Without a doubt, this has led to some strange responses from the community as this is a puzzling situation. However, this could be likened to the fact that the possible candidates eligible for induction into the Hall of Fame was rather large this year with the changes to the overall eligibility requirements.
More candidates were allowed to be inducted because of the massive changes that Wizards of the Coast is making to the Hall of Fame, beginning this year. There were more events eligible for the requirements where a player could place well and it count towards their required number of high placements.
These new eligible events include both old and new events like the Mythic Championship series that began this year as well as the Magic Online Championship series that has been going for some time. With events like these eligible, the possible number of candidates has increased.
With such a massive group of possible players who could have been inducted, it is possible that the voters were simply split rather evenly on who should be inducted this year. That’s why you will see that in the voting leaderboard, the gaps between the candidates is tiny for those after Duke.
Voting Ballot Overall Results
Reid Duke is at the top of the leaderboard as the only one to cross the necessary 60 percent threshold with a whopping 94 percent of the votes. This is actually the third highest voting percentage for a player period since the inception of the Hall of Fame 15 years ago.
Duke follows just behind other legends in the history of the card game like Jon Finkel who, inducted in the 2005 class, has the highest current voting percentage at 97.1 percent followed by Luis Scott-Vargas with an also impressive 95.6 percent of votes for the class of 2013.
However, the difference between those two top performers and Reid Duke is that they both at least had one other player who was inducted the same year as them. For Duke, he is the lone inductee even though the competition did seem to be rather tough this year.
Following after Duke, the percentage drops significantly to the second place person who was Brad Nelson with 36.03 percent. Nelson is an impressive player who’s had a great year thus far and he tied up exactly with fellow player Chris Pikula who also had the same number.
Right after them is Gerry Thompson who just barely fell behind the two with showing up on 35.02 percent of the voting ballots. This is closely followed by Carlos Romao who was able to show up on 34.68 percent of the ballots. From there, it drops a lot more to 17.51 percent for the next candidate Ken Yukuhiro.
After that, it drops even more to 13.47 percent of voting ballots for Marijn Lybaert. From there, the votes continue to be really close to one another and show just how close this race was. It is entirely possible that someone else could have been voted in alongside Duke but it was just too close.
There were four players after all who were within two percent of one another and split the ballots rather evenly. Had there even been one less of them on the ballot, the votes would have possibly been enough to induct one of them.
As such, expect next year to be even crazier with the fact that the winner Duke will not be on the ballot and the top four performers will likely be at the top once again. But with even more insane changes on the way next year for the Hall of Fame, there really is no predicting what the ballot will look like in a year.
As for Reid Duke, this induction into the MTG Hall of Fame 2019 is well-deserved and the spotlight gets to be rightfully all on him this year. Duke is one of the Magic Pro League esports players who has been both a competitor and a commentator at various events throughout his storied career.
He has an unbelievable record of placing in the top eight in 27 major tournaments in total. His popularity this year on the ballot was deserved and only time will tell who will be inducted next year.
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