Well then it isn’t work and my argument doesn’t apply.
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MtG Booster drafts and sealed deck tournaments were my favorite venues. I won so many that I felt my prize values exceeded my entry fees. Thus, I felt like the hobby paid for itself.
I got accepted to UofM-Ann Arbor and EMU as a Biology major and a Chemistry minor. UofM was my first choice, but they dropped the ball on my financial aid paperwork, and because I did not want to wait a semester for them to reprocess my paperwork, I ended up going to EMU.
So I used to do a 50 minute commute to Ypsilanti to take classes.
When I discovered MtG, I also discovered a thriving Magic scene in downtown Ann Arbor at two different stores: The Underworld (a basement level comic store) and Campus Collectables.
At both stores there were what I would call “a group of of rich college kids,” who liked to do impromptu, unofficial booster drafts, which they called “a gentleman’s draft.” Losers got to pick and keep one of the cards that they drafted and the winner got to keep all the other cards. I won so many of those drafts that I felt like a bit like a card hustler.
I attended an informal lecture on game design by Richard Garfield at UofM with some of those players, and Richard liked some of my questions so much that he invited our group to lunch, where we also took turns playing Magic with him.
I did something similar, because I was accustomed to buying boosters for Magic, and I got to where I would average 5-6 wins per draft. I remember making spreadsheets for my best drafts to analyze the best mana curves for each class. At some point, I thought this is a waste of money, because I did not really own the cards, and they had no resale value like my Magic cards did.
This is why I created two more HS accounts, giving me 9 collections to play with by playing on all three servers. Because I had access to so many quests, it allowed me to play an infinite amount of Arena for free without actually being an “infinite player.”
And now everyone knows why Zee has so many HS collections.
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I dropped out of EMU. I stayed in the dorms until they literally kicked me out. I was big on illegal activities back then.
I blew all my money at RIW Hobbies in Livonia. Many a draft in the green room.
Unfortunately I was playing against much harder targets. One does not simply hustle Michael Jacob, Dan Clark and Gabe Walls.
The rare win did feel really good though.
Okay now you’re just bragging 
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I agree, since I have also played against all three of those guys. It’s possible, that I faced one or more of them at a Star City Games tournament to win my first mox. I think I was playing either a Shadowmage Infiltrator deck or a 5 color Mystic Snake deck during the Invasion Block—so around 2001?
I played some at Pam’s RIW Hobbies as well from 1999 to 2001. There was some great competition there. I would play the Standard tournaments and afterwards, I would hang around to do some booster drafts. Pam would sometimes include some packs from other games in the prize pool, and I have a few unopened Stars Wars packs sitting on my computer desk right now from one of those events.
In Ann Arbor, Pat Chapin would make me work for my wins. 
That was a very nostalgic time for me. I met Brian Kibler and Jeff Donais back then. I had such high hopes for Jeff Donais‘s influence on HS, because he was such a good MtG judge, but those hopes failed to come to fruition.