Ask the Judge, 02/10/2006: Feature Friday

Who's Keeping Score?

Chatting in the IRC channel #mtgjudge (a great resource for aspiring judges and rules gurus) recently, we landed on the topic of scorekeepers, which it seems to me is a poorly understood role in the tournament Magic community. That's a shame; the quality of your event's scorekeeper can have a huge impact on how smoothly the tournament you're playing in or working at can run.

The role of the scorekeeper is described in the DCI Universal Floor Rules:

Scorekeeper: The scorekeeper is a tournament official whose responsibilities include receiving and recording all match/game results, constructing player seatings, ensuring accurate entry of match/game results, withdrawing players from the event, and so on. Tournament officials, such as the head judge or tournament organizer, may also be the scorekeeper for the event.

There are a couple other references, but nothing substantial. The head judge and tournament organizer have a lot of leeway in assigning more responsibilities (or, more often, more simultaneous tournaments) to a scorekeeper. As noted in the description above, the scorekeeper may do double duty as a judge or organizer. The rapport between head judge and scorekeeper will frequently allow the scorekeeper's role to grow or shrink as needed fairly flexibly. Despite all the paperwork that the scorekeeper does, the position doesn't come with a lot of requirements.

There are three components to a great scorekeeper, by my estimation:

• Multitasking—The scorekeeper's job is to do a lot of small jobs, and to make sure that they're completed at appropriate times. As an SK improves, it's likely that he or she will be called upon to fill the extra time created with... scorekeeping more events. At a prerelease, an experienced SK may be handling two or three flights, plus data entry for a number of drafts. That's a lot of printing!
• Anticipation—The great scorekeeper never has to be reminded to print slips; when you go to retrieve them, they're already there. The great scorekeeper sometimes faces the referee's dilemma: when they do their best work, nobody notices them.
• Subject Expertise—The software used to run DCI tournaments has a lot of what I will euphemistically call "quirks". The best scorekeepers know them inside and out. They know when a repair is totally necessary, and when they can help the head judge start the round and then manually fix specific problems (this skill can save incredible amounts of time, particularly at large events like Grand Prixs, where the sheer number of competitor makes pairing problems a constant issue).

Unlike judging, there's no formal certification for scorekeepers. You show up, spend some time with someone who knows more than you, and then do your best not to make too many mistakes. Scorekeeping can be a rewarding position for the Magic player who wants to help out at tournaments, but doesn't have the time or rules expertise to commit to judging. The basics can be picked up after a couple rounds of Swiss play. At that level of training, I'd expect a new scorekeeper to be competent to run a small event with backup available (like a flight at a prerelease, where your senior scorekeeper will also be running flights). The pace is a little more relaxed than working as a floor judge (though the pressure can be greater: the scorekeeper is typically a bigger potential bottleneck than a floor judge, since there's less redundancy).

The downside of scorekeeping, compared to judging, is that there are less opportunities for advancement (even a Grand Prix or Pro Tour has just a single scorekeeper). Some areas may even give priority for the scorekeeper role to certified judges. But for people looking to help out at a prerelease, it can be an ideal role, and one which provides a nice springboard into judging. Talk to your local tournament organizer or senior judge if you're interested in trying your hand at it. Another good place to find out more is the efnet IRC channel #mtgjudge, where you can regularly find a number of people who have logged way too many hours with DCI Reporter (hi Cari!).

That's all for this week. Check in next time for a fresh column from Lee. Keep shuffling!

Seamus