Yuuya Watanabe

Yuuya Watanabe (渡辺雄也) is a Japanese professional player. Along with Kai Budde and Owen Turtenwald, he is one of only three players to have more than one Player of the Year title, winning it in 2009 and 2012. He is considered the 2012 World Champion, as he won the inaugural Players Championship event, later renamed the World Championship. He won the 2017 World Magic Cup as a member of the Japanese national team. At the Pro Tour, Watanabe has placed second twice, at PT Return to Ravnica and at PT Amonkhet, as well as three additional top-eight finishes. Watanabe also has seven Grand Prix wins, tied for first with Kai Budde and Shuhei Nakamura. In 2016, he was voted into the Hall of Fame but was removed in 2019 after being disqualified from Mythic Championship II in London for using marked cards.

Professional play
Watanabe started playing Magic when Invasion was the current set, and started playing the occasional Grand Prix tournament in 2004. Early on the first day of competition at Grand Prix Kyoto 2007, superstar Kenji Tsumura suggested that the then-unknown Watanabe would win the tournament. Famously, this was exactly what happened; Watanabe piloted a Blue-Red Urzatron deck to victory. This qualified him for his first Pro Tour, PT Yokohama 2007. He didn't do well there, but his performances at the subsequent Pro Tours, including 22nd at PT San Diego alongside teammate Shuhei Nakamura, and 21st individually at PT Valencia. A decent 61st-place finish at the 2007 World Championships earned Watanabe the 2007 Rookie of the Year title. He then stated that he would then go on to attempt to become the Player of the Year.

In 2008, Watanabe finished 3rd at the Japanese National Championships, and as a part of the national team, he finished 4th at the team portion of the 2008 World Championships. However, it was in 2009 that Watanabe really established himself as one of the game's top professional players. He started a string of top-eight finishes, starting with the 2009 Japanese National Championship (runner-up), then GP Bangkok (6th), GP Niigata (8th), GP Prague (runner-up), GP Melbourne (champion), and culminated with his first Pro Tour top eight at PT Austin, where he finished 6th. This stretch of results propelled him into 1st-place on the Player of the Year leaderboard, a lead he held onto to claim the 2009 PotY title, making good on his challenge two years earlier.

In the next couple of years, Watanabe remained one of the top players on the scene, primarily having success on the Grand Prix scene. He won back-to-back events in 2011: GP Shanghai and then GP Pittsburgh. In 2012, he won another two Grand Prix, GP Kuala Lumpur and GP Manila. Watanabe qualified for the exclusive 16-player 2012 Players Championship, which he ended up winning, taking down Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa in the semifinals and countryman Shōta Yasooka in the finals, earning $40,000. As the tournament was later renamed the World Championship, Watanabe is considered to be the 2012 World Champion. He also became the 2012 Player of the Year by virtue of winning the title, as the title that year went to the winner of the Players Championship. However, even if this had not been the case, Watanabe would have been the Player of the Year, having earned the most Pro Points in 2011–12. He followed up the success with a runner-up finish at Pro Tour Return to Ravnica a couple of months later.

Since then, Watanabe was until 2018 the only player to have qualified for the World Championship every year in its current iteration (six times from 2012 to 2017), and he has also been Platinum in the Pro Players Club every year. Additional Pro Tour top eight finishes happened at PT Khans of Tarkir in 2014 and at PT Amonkhet in 2017. His team, Musashi, won the inaugural year of the Magic Pro Tour Team Series, and as a member of the Japanese national team, he won the 2017 World Magic Cup. In December 2018, it was announced that Watanabe would be one of the 32 players joining the upcoming 2019 Magic Pro League.

In 2016, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame.

In April 2019 he was disqualified from Mythic Championship II in London for using marked cards. He was subsequently banned for 30 month from DCI-sanctioned events and removed from the Magic Pro League as well as the Hall of Fame.