Robert Smith
Founder of TCG Playbook, and the reviewer on every guide.
Robert Smith founded TCG Playbook and reviews every guide published on it. He has been playing competitive card games since Magic: The Gathering launched in 1993.
Upper Deck Entertainment
He was one of the three original hires at Upper Deck Entertainment, the company that brought competitive Yu-Gi-Oh! to the Western world. Before that he was running tournaments for more than 300 players a week, and had bought a 1-800 number out of his own pocket so players could call in for rulings.
At Upper Deck he wrote the official judging handbook that defined how Yu-Gi-Oh! tournaments ran across North America. He head judged and emceed the first Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship at Madison Square Garden in 2003, and did R&D on six trading card games, among them World of Warcraft TCG and VS System. He wrote strategy content for Metagame.com, Upper Deck's competitive platform.
What he does here
Guides on TCG Playbook are drafted from recent tournament results and reviewed by Robert before they are published. That review is what the Reviewed by line on each guide refers to, and it is declared in the structured data on every guide page.
TCG Playbook exists to fill the gap Metagame.com left when it went dark: deep, current strategy coverage built from decks that actually won.