Mike Flores

Michael J Flores has been a pundit and expert of Magic: The Gathering strategy since there has been Magic on the Internet; he is the former editor of The Dojo and a sometime professional player. He has written on every aspect of the game, but is most well known for writing arguably the most famous Magic article of all time, Who's the Beatdown, in 1999.

Biography
Flores is credited with the creation of several famous decks, including Napster and Jushi Blue. He has tested with a wide range of famous and successful professional players including Jon Finkel, Osyp Lebedowicz, and Mark Herberholz.

Flores is a somewhat polarizing Magic personality. Though he is the most popular Magic Internet columnist of all time, winning "Writer of the Year" honors multiple times at both StarCityGames and magicthegathering.com, as well as the "popularity contest" Resident Genius award in 2006, Flores is also reviled by a small portion of the Magic community, particularly Eternal players. Flores has played on numerous Pro Tour events, participated in US Nationals, been voted into the 2006 Magic Invitational, and won the 2006 New York Standard Champs with a White-Blue-Red deck featuring Serra Avenger.

Since 2014, he has hosted Top Level Podcast, a strategy podcast focused on Constructed Magic, with Hall of Famer Patrick Chapin. In 2015, he qualified for a Pro Tour for the first time since 2006, and at Pro Tour Magic Origins in Vancouver, he finished 27th, his best finish at an individual Pro Tour event.

Literary career
Mike Flores has been playing and writing about Magic since at least 1995, when he started writing on Usenet. He has subsequently written for The Dojo, Neutral Ground, Brainburst, magicthegathering.com, and Star City Games.

A largely unedited collection of his columns from 1995 to 2005 was published by Top8Magic.com, under the title Michael J. Flores: Deckade.