ASK THE JUDGE, 09/02/2005: Feature Friday

Thanks for All the Fish

As I mentioned last week, I went up to Milford, MA, to judge the North American Challenge. I had a great time. TJ Collectibles owner Tom Shea was an excellent host. The Judge staff, which included Eric Shukan, Peter Cooper, Nicholas Sabin, Adam Shaw, Arkady Zilberberg, Chris Alexander, and Robert Washburn, was excellent. They made my job extremely easy. Adam even passed his certification exam for Level 1.

We had one particularly interesting incident late in the day. Tom's regular scorekeeper Dawn had turned over her duties to one of the judges at the beginning of round 7. About 15 minutes into the round, I was out on the floor dealing with an appeal and Chris came over to tell me that there was something that required my attention. Dawn had neglected to tell Nick about the faulty keyboard tray (the following day, Nat Fairbanks told me it was a well-known feature of the desk) collapsed. The tray and keyboard crashed into the power strip, there were sparks, and the computer died.

The power strip wouldn't come back on, so we started scrambling to find a new one, and make plans on how we would recover if the computer wouldn't come back up. We had extra copies of DCI Reporter on other computers, and the results slip from the first five rounds, so we could recreate the tournament by using the Ordered Pairing function of DCI Reporter. If you want more details on how to do this, stop into #mtgjudge, and we'll give you the skinny.

About the same time we scared up a new power strip, we checked the breaker box and saw that the fuse had been tripped. We flipped it back on, and were back in business. Results had already gotten entered, and they were recovered as well.

When the crash occured, we had just finished recovering from another little problem. We neglected to drop a no-show from Round 6, who had gotten paired in Round 7. Eric was instrumental in figuring out how to rectify the situation. It would have been easy had the not-dropped player been at the bottom of the pool; it would have been an easy re-pairing (again using the Ordered Pairing function), but the player was in the middle of the field (though not high enough to have an impact on the Top 8). Keeping the not-dropped player from getting a match loss was more important than the standings in the middle of the pack, so we didn't worry about giving his opponent a bye. Problem was there was already a bye, so DCI Reporter wouldn't allow two byes in the same round. What we ended up doing was dropping the original bye, and then re-entering her manually into the standings so she could claim her prizes. In the end, it all worked out. Again, kudos to Eric for his insight during walking through the problem.

On Sunday I ran a seminar for all the judges from Saturday plus two other local Judges, Justin M. and Nat Fairbanks. We mostly went over Judging 101-type topics, and Nat's experience and input was invaluable. There's one thing that we covered there that I'd like to cover here.

I often hear Judges apologize when making rulings, and I'd rather they didn't. "I'm sorry, I have to give you [penalty]," undermines both the integrity of the Judge and the program in its entirety. Apologizing leads the player to believe that they're getting a penalty they shouldn't be or that the Judge doesn't have a choice in giving the penalty or the capability to use his judgment. Although Judges shouldn't enjoy giving penalties, they should feel very comfortable dispatching their responsibilities within the program. If a Judge is giving a penalty, he should already have decided it's the right thing to do--otherwise he wouldn't be giving it in the first place. Being firm and unapologetic sends the signal that the Judge trusts the way the Penalty Guidelines are constructed. So next time you give a penalty, don't apologize; just do what you're supposed to be doing.

Business aside, today an era comes to an end. This will be my last regular column for the best website in Magic.

A few weeks back, I reviewed the last five years of my time here at Star City Games, so I won't go back over all that. But the time has come, the walrus said, to move along.

Don't worry, you'll still see me at the Pro Tour, Grands Prix, and local events. It's just that after five years of writing about Magic, it's time to write about other stuff. Some of you know that I'm writing a novel called "Zolan's Scar," and I want to dedicate even more time to it. I'd like to get finished sometime soon.

Both Seamus, who recently took over the editing, and the inimitable Lee Sharpe will be handling Feature Friday in the near future. Ted will keep you posted on any further developments.

Thanks for all the support and great feedback over the last five years. I'll always think of myself as part of the SCG family. You might still see me from time to time on these pages when something particularly noteworthy happens. Until such a time, good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.