Czech Magic: The Gathering pro player and Mythic Championship VI winner Ondřej Stráský has taken it to Twitter to announce that he's retiring from streaming, and he shared a statement explaining that since he will be part of the Magic Pro League, the 24 players who are offered contracts by Wizards of the Coast to compete, he wants to cut down his time playing Magic to avoid the burnout.
"You may have noticed I haven't been streaming much lately. Moving forward, this isn't going to change," Stráský wrote. "For the next 8 months, I'm going to be part of the Magic Pro League, which means I will play on average one important tournament a month. After long deliberation I've decided that I want to give competing my all, and try my best to stay in the MPL. I've played a ton of events in the past year and towards the end I felt like I was incredibly burned out. To prevent this I want to cut down on the amount of time I spend playing Magic, and that means cutting down on streaming."
Stráský notes that he still plans to stream occassionally. "This doesn't mean I will never stream, I'm planning to stream the Theros early access event for example," he said.
It can be a tremendous strain when professional players are forced into creating content on streams, and the result is a lot of mental burnout risk and potential for unhealthy stress. It's good that Stráský recognized the perils of that, and hopefully, he will be able to focus more on preparing for the upcoming major MTG tournaments.
"I've seen the impact MPL has on players, it's a lot of pressure, a lot of hard work and a big strain on mental health," Stráský said. "I felt like I've struggled with that in the past, so I'm trying to take steps to prevent suffering in the future. I did enjoy streaming a lot, and it's something I could see doing in the future again, but right now I feel like the MPL slot is an opportunity I simply can't pass on."
Stráský is one of the four newcomers to the Magic Pro League along with Chris Kvartek, Raphael Levy, and Gabriel Nassif. After the 24-year-old Czech player announced his retirement from professional Magic during a disappointing 2017-2018 season, he placed 3rd and 1st at his would-be final Grand Prix events, and subsequently reversed his decision to retire. Last November, he won the Mythic Championship VI at Richmond.
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