Ask the Judge, 01/27/2006: Feature Friday

Another prerelease in the books, and a good one, it seemed to me. My experience of it was a little different from usual, in several regards. First off, I missed day two for the first time since the Judgment prerelease, and the first time since I became a judge. I joined an orchestra this fall (I play cello) and we had our second concert of the season smack in the middle of the Sunday prerelease events, so I bowed out.

That was fine (though I do love my prereleases) because the other change for me was that I wasn't in charge. For the last year and a half, being the senior judge in the Portland area, I've been the head judge for our prereleases. This time, I passed the reins over to Idaho's fine level 2 judge Mike Goodman, who is a man of infinite friendliness and no small commitment to the game of Magic. This was an excellent choice. It gave Mike an opportunity to spend some time in charge, which is well deserved; and it allowed me to slip in the role that I most relish as a judge: training.

Training is one of the primary duties of a level 3 judge; as far as privledges go, the only thing that I can do that a level 2 can't is promote judges*. That doesn't mean that the job of training falls only on my shoulders (and more on that in a moment) but it's one of my favorite parts. There are lots of opportunities for training at a prerelease, too, since that is where (at least in my neck of the woods) we tend to have the most need for workers, regardless of experience level. Unfortunately, it can be a real challenge to find time to just watch your floor judges, or to find time to pull them away from working and chat about the theory of running events and the rules... So I haven't had nearly as much time as I'd like to just watch and talk to people. Giving Mike the head judge role created exactly that opportunity, and so that was my job last Saturday—judge trainer.

I learned a lot, and I hope that our judges did, too. I didn't get to sit down with everyone, but our turnover is low enough, event-to-event, that I expect to cover the gaps next time. Something that I've learned, that I'd like to share with all of my readers who may someday wish to be judges is this:

Not nearly enough of you are reading the Penalty Guidelines

I am of the school of judge-testing thought that is disinclined to actually sit down with a candidate and administer the test until I believe that they will pass it. So I quiz my candidates periodically on rules and policy issues, as well as asking for self-evaluation on the same areas. And I hear, over and over again, "My rules are good but I don't know the Penalty Guidelines very well". I should note, for the record, that I was in exactly this boat when I started working towards becoming a certified judge.

My advice is: read the document. You're not going to magically just absorb the information playing Magic Online. You're going to have to bite the bullet and study. Beyond that, I suggest that you focus on learning the categories of infractions more than you worry about the various penalties applied at different Rules Enforement Levels. Understanding the boxes you're sorting situations into is the first step you have to take, so it might as well be the first step you master. When you don't know what the name of an infraction is, it's hard to connect all the details that you picked up from the descriptions. You need a framework to hang them on.

Back to training. As I said earlier, it isn't solely the job of level 3/4/5 judges to train newcomers. There are plenty of people who'd like to judge who don't live within a thousand miles of a level 3. If you don't live in northern Europe or the United States, your chances of seeing a level 4 or 5 judge other than at professional events is slim. So it makes me very happy when I see L1 and L2 judges applying themselves to helping bring other judges up to speed. At both of the Ravnica block prereleases we've been incredibly fortunate to have L2s working hard to create judge seminars for our judges. We run these on Sundays, and we're still working on the format, but Paul Thompson, Dave Noble, and Mike Goodman have done a great job coming up with topics and handouts for discussion. Unfortunately, since I wasn't around on Sunday, I didn't get to spy on the proceedings, but I saw the prepared materials, and I'm looking forward to our next set of seminars.

I can't say enough about what a benefit these events are for our judging community. If you are interested in running seminars of your own for your judge community, let me know, and we can discuss sharing materials.

I've got to cut myself short, this time, but have a great weekend and enjoy the new set!

Seamus

* That's a partial truth. There are some level 2 judges out there who are allowed to do judge testing for level 1 candidates. But when it comes to testing folks for level 2, or participating in interviews for L3, you're in the purview of what the DCI calls Regional Judges.