Randy Buehler ran another Standard Gauntlet in 2015, this time excluding Memory Jar and Academy. ANOTHER Urza’s block combo deck won the whole thing.

This time, a normal double elimination tournament.
Winner: 2015 Red Aggro (Monastery Swiftspear, Abbot, etc.)
2nd place: 2004 Cranial Affinity (no skullclamp)

This was Randy Buehler’s first season of the Gauntlet of Greatness. He used a World Cup soccer style tournament, with a group stage and a knockout stage, and he didn’t bother playing out meaningless group stage matches.
He included Academy and Memory Jar (one last time), two decks I had already basically banned. You can watch the matches on youtube.
Winner: 1999 Memory Jar
2nd place: 1996 Necro

Played this tournament at PAX Prime with the help of Randy Buehler, after connecting with him thanks to BDM, and even got some other famous names to contribute. I recall Sam Pardee played a match or two. Aaron Forsythe battled his very own Angry Hermit deck against Mike Turian who crushed him with Faeries. In the semis, Memory Jar whiffed and helped Mythic put an Obstinate Baloth into play to seal its own doom, which was quite unexpected. Buehler went on to create the Gauntlet of Greatness.

Winner: 1999 Memory Jar
2ndpl: 2010 UW Superfriends
3rdpl: 2011 Shrine Red
4thpl: 2008 Kithkin

This tournament didn’t include Academy or Necro. I was still less knowledgeable about all the great decks of old, and was just playing with decks I happened to know about and wanted to try playing. I had just made my own Memory Jar deck and was eager to pilot it. It won the whole thing. Easily. 

Chingsung Chang was inspired by Peter Jahn’s idea, but had his own ideas about outdated rules and deck selection. See his initial post.

Winner: 1998 Academy.
2nd place: 2010 Mythic Conscription
3rd place tie: 2004 Skullclamp Affinity, 2000 Angry Hermit

He posted some of the match results here and here and shared the decklists he chose.

Winner: 2004 Krark-Clan Incubator (Myr Incubator) Combo
2nd place: 2008 Kithkin
tied for 3rd: 2008 Demigod Red, 2002 Psychatog & 2006 Solar Flare

64 decks single elimination (decks from 1994-2010):

A World Championship winning deck from each year
1994 World Championship deck (before Standard even existed)
Gold-border World Championship decks (1997-2004).
Other decks from World Championships after 2004, either top 8 decks or undefeated in standard portion

Conclusions:

Still unaware of Academy, Memory Jar, and Necro, because they weren’t part of World Championship top 8s, but this is the beginning of my internet research into old decklists.

The combo deck that never faced a counterspell wins. Just fast enough to beat a bunch of aggro decks, and one other combo deck.

Peter Jahn started a tournament in 2010 and blogged about it for StarCityGames… He stopped writing for StarCItyGames before the huge tournament bracket was completed, but he finished it and posted his results months later. His blog was called Yawgmoth’s Whimsy, and he has match reports from the first few rounds. I believe this counts as the first publicly posted Ultimate Standard tournament, since I never shared my earliest tournament results until much later.

He decided not to run the old Memory Jar deck. He did run Academy but it lost to black discard spells in its first matchup.

Yawgmoth’s Whimsy #329
Yawgmoth’s Whimsy #330
Yawgmoth’s Whimsy #331
Yawgmoth’s Whimsy #332
Yawgmoth’s Whimsy #333
Yawgmoth’s Whimsy #334
Yawgmoth’s Whimsy #335
Yawgmoth’s Whimsy #336
brief hiatus
Yawgmoth’s Whimsy #340
The final post:
Yawgmoth’s Whimsy #341

FINAL BRACKET and decklists

Winner: 2000 Angry Hermit
2nd place: 2004 Skullclamp Affinity
Tied for 3rd: 2009 Doran 2.0 & 2010 Next Level Bant

Winner: 2005 Ghazi-Glare
2nd place: 2003 Reanimator
tied for 3rd: 2002 Psychatog & 1999 Red Sligh

Decks that were invited (decks from 1996-2005):

1996 Pro Tour NY collector set decks. Each deck was required to contain at least five cards from each of the legal expansions. I chose the winning deck (Millstone), a deck that had Necropotence in it (but is not a normal Necropotence deck) and a deck with Winter Orb (3 decks).

2001 “Deckmasters – Jon Finkel” which is not even a real Standard deck – it was from a special box set based on a special event, a challenge between Jon Finkel and Richard Garfield.

A bunch of gold-border World Championship decks. I didn’t own any of the 1997 decks at this time, and didn’t have a complete set (4 decks) for some of the other years. I used what I had: 4 decks from 1998, 3 decks from 1999, 4 decks from 2000, 4 decks from 2001, 2 decks from 2002, 4 decks from 2003, 3 decks from 2004 (not including Affinity!).

4 Proxy decks I made based on decks from the World Championship 2005. (The gold-border decks were discontinued after 2004.)

Conclusions:

I was just messing around at the time and was totally unaware of the history of Standard. I hadn’t even heard of Academy or Memory Jar, and didn’t know what a real Necro deck looked like. I knew about the Affinity deck that had been banned, but apparently it didn’t occur to me to proxy it, even though I used proxy decks for 2005. So, yeah, not much of a methodology here, but… this is how it all started!