The 2000–01 Pro Tour season was the sixth season of the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour. On 23 September 2000 the season began with parallel Grand Prixs in Sapporo and Porto. It ended on 12 August 2001 with the conclusion of the 2001 World Championship in Toronto. The season consisted of 27 Grand Prixs and 6 Pro Tours, held in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Barcelona, and Toronto. Also special Master Series tournaments were held at four Pro Tours. These tournaments featured huge cash prizes, but were open to only 32 players. At the end of the season Kai Budde was proclaimed Pro Player of the Year, making him the only player to win the title more than once.
New York was second team Pro Tour. Scott Johns made his fifth final day appearance. His team, "Potato Nation", did not lose a match throughout the tournament.[1] At PT New York the master series had its debut. This was a tournament series featuring huge cash prizes, but open only to the very best players in the world. The 25 players with the most Pro Points and the 5 Players with the highest rating in the format of the Masters were invited. Aditionally a gateway tournament was held on the day before the Pro Tour. In that tournament each Pro Player with at least six Pro Points could compete for one of two additional slots.
Prize pool: $202,200
Players: 330 (110 teams)
Format: Team Sealed (Mercadian Masques, Nemesis, Prophecy) – first day, Team Rochester Draft (Mercadian Masques-Nemesis-Prophecy) – final two days
Chicago was the first Pro Tour featuring the Standard format since Dallas more than four years before. In a top eight, which is considered to be one the best ever,[1]Kai Budde won the title against Kamiel Cornelissen. He thus became the third player to win two Pro Tours. In the Masters event Ben Rubin defeated Jon Finkel in the final.
The 2001 Pro Tour Los Angeles was the last Pro Tour held on the Queen Mary, were all previous Pro Tours in Los Angeles had been held. In a final eight featuring three players, who had also been amongst the last eight in Chicago, Michael Pustilnik took the title and thus the lead in the Pro Player of the year standings.[1]
In Barcelona Kai Budde became the first player to win three Pro Tours overall and also the first to win two Pro Tours in a single season.[1]Ben Rubin won the Masters and thus became the only player to win two Masters tournaments.
Tom Van de Logt won the World Championship while the United States took the team title. The final eight featured amongst several rather unknown players Antoine Ruel, Tommi Hovi, Mike Turian and David Williams, who had the dubious honour of becoming the first player to be disqualified from a Top 8.
* John Ormerod did not actually play in the final eight. When David Williams was disqualified he advanced to the eight place in the final standings, though.
Scott Johns
Gary Wise
Christian Lührs
Kamiel Cornelissen
Benedikt Klauser
Erno Ekebom
Tsuyoshi Fujita
Frederico Bastos
Florent Jeudon
Nicolai Herzog
Albertus Law
Yuri Kolomeyko
Andrea Santin
Jan Tomcani
John Ormerod
United States (Trevor Blackwell, Brian Hegstad, Eugene Harvey)
Norway (Nicolai Herzog, Oyvind Odegaard, Jan Pieter Groenhof)