Tommi Hovi is a former professional Magic: The Gathering

Magic: The Gathering

Magic: The Gathering , also known as Magic, is the first collectible trading card game created by mathematics professor Richard Garfield and introduced in 1993 by Wizards of the Coast. Magic continues to thrive, with approximately twelve million players as of 2011...

 player from Finland

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

. He was inducted into the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour Hall of Fame

Magic: The Gathering Hall of Fame

The Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour Hall of Fame was started in 2005 to honor the most successful Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour players. The first inductions came on the tenth anniversary of the first Pro Tour event, and new Hall of Famers will be determined annually...

 in the inaugural class in 2005. Hovi was also the first player to win two Pro Tour

Pro Tour (Magic: The Gathering)

The Pro Tour is the highest form of competitive play for the Magic: The Gathering collectible card game. It consists of a series of payout tournaments held throughout the world, each requiring an invitation to participate. Every PT awards a total of $230,000 in cash prizes, with $40,000 going to...

 championships.

Deck

The deck that took Hovi to his win at Pro Tour Rome was of a type that is now considered the most powerful and "broken" in the game's history: The Academy Deck, named after its key card, Tolarian Academy. The card can be tapped to add 1 blue mana to its controller's mana pool for each artifact under that player's control. Decks of this type rely on large numbers of mana-producing artifacts (like Mox Diamond, Lotus Petal, Grim Monolith, and Thran Dynamo), mechanisms for repeatedly untapping the Academy and/or those artifacts (like Voltaic Key and Mind Over Matter), and ways to get more cards into the player's hand (like Stroke of Genius). Time Spiral was a particularly abusive card in this deck type because it replenishes the player's hand, recycles the graveyard, and untaps the Academy at the same time. The game ends when the Academy player generates enough mana to cast a 60-point (or so) Stroke of Genius on the opponent, resulting in the opponent getting "decked" and thereby losing the game. This deck type was so powerful that almost every card in it was put on the Restricted list, and even then, it continued to survive as "Neo-Academy".

Other notable deck (co-)created by Hovi was the Turbo-Stasis deck, which won him the Finnish Nationals in 1996. This deck got worldwide attention when several top spots at the US Nationals 1996 were playing copies of it.

Top 8 appearances

Other accomplishments

• 2005 Hall of Fame
  Magic: The Gathering Hall of Fame
  The Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour Hall of Fame was started in 2005 to honor the most successful Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour players. The first inductions came on the tenth anniversary of the first Pro Tour event, and new Hall of Famers will be determined annually...
  
   Inductee

Following Hovi's induction into the Pro Tour Hall of Fame, Mark Rosewater

Mark Rosewater

Mark Rosewater is a Magic: The Gathering card designer. He is currently Magics head designer.-Biography:Rosewater grew up in Pepper Pike, Ohio, where he attended the Orange High School. Rosewater has a Jewish background. Rosewater has described himself in his youth as a "social outcast", who did...

said that one of his fondest memories of Hovi was from an ill-fated interview conducted by Rosewater. The highly-talkative Rosewater asked several questions, to which the shy Hovi would only reply with one or two-word answers. Rosewater kept talking, trying to make the questions harder to answer succinctly but the interview ended after about a minute with Rosewater calling it off in a fit of laughter.