Every Sunday, you can find "Magic" in the Frist Gallery

While most students spend their Sundays catching up on homework or recovering from a night out at the Street, Ethan Berl '13 prefers to head over to Frist Campus Center armed with a deck of Magic Cards.

"Magic is a way I can relax with friends at the end of the week," Berl said.

This "Magic" that Berl enjoys on Sundays is actually a thriving trading card game called "Magic: The Gathering," which simulates a battle between various magical forces and creatures. The game has numerous complex cards and rules and is, according to Berl, extremely strategic and mathematical.

Berl is part of a group that meets every Sunday in the Frist Gallery to play Magic. These meetings, called drafts, are a way for members to play both for fun and to acquire new Magic cards. Games start at 2 p.m. and often continue until dinnertime. Members who play especially well win prize packs.

"Princeton is full of people naturally drawn to these types of things," Berl noted. "It really does help to have a strong mathematical and strategic background."

There isn't, however, a huge presence of Princeton students in the group, which includes students from nearby community colleges and high schools.

"Princeton students don't know that there is a group of people that meet and play the game," Max Jacobson '13 said. Jacobson, who started playing Magic in eighth grade, said he found the group on Google.

"A lot of times you might not know someone plays Magic unless it comes up in conversation," he said.

Jacobson noted that though games such as Magic are often viewed as "nerdy," he does not find this to be the case at Princeton.

"Princeton has the most accepting people in the world," Jacobson said. "They don't really care if you're nerdy or if you had some type of high school classification."

High school, according to Jacobson, was quite different. He explained that a friend of his was interested in learning the game but decided not to sign up because of peer pressure from her friends.

"Some people will say that they don't want to play because of the people around them," he said. "At Princeton, no one thinks badly of me just because I play the game."

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Berl, who started playing Magic last summer, said some people called him a nerd for picking up the game.

"A lot of people might kind of look down their nose," he said, "thinking we're antisocial or kind of freaky."

Despite this, Berl said he doesn't feel awkward playing the game at Princeton because he feels that Princeton is "a pretty open place."

"I'm sure there are some people who would look down on it, but I don't really care what certain people may think," he said. "I would not be any more embarrassed to play magic than to play chess. This is just one part of me - it doesn't define me."

Sam Perez '10 summed it up quite nicely. "Obviously it's nerdy, but this is Princeton; it's not that big of a deal," he said. "I think there are a lot of valid benefits to playing the game. It's definitely a mental exercise. It's not just tomfoolery - not like World of Warcraft."