Intro
Welcome to Snap Judgments! Generally speaking, the various Feature Friday authors set out to make Feature Friday articles reasonably substantive and comprehensive. But not all worthwhile topics are long ones. Snap Judgments is a new, intermittent Feature Friday column that dives into some of these smaller topics, sprinkled together with some reader polls and surveys, answers to reader questions, and any other surprises that come along.

So, without further ado ...

Polling
Sprinkled throughout this article are a number of polls that we'd really appreciate your answers to. Please feel free to answer any subset of these that you wish, even if you don't want to answer them all. Answers can be sent to mtgjudge@gmail.com or posted in the forums.

Who Are You?

A long standing question amongst the Feature Friday writers is what the breakdown is in readership between players and judges. Knowing this would allow us to better tune our columns to what is likely to interest you. So, tell us ...

                Poll #1: When it comes to DCI Sanctioned tournaments, are you ...
                                (a) Only a judge (We assume you still play for fun or casually ...)?
                                (b) Only a player?
                                (c) Both?

Parental Consent
If you've ever been involved with registration at a reasonably large tournament (in the most extreme case, a Prerelease tournament), you probably will recall ending that tournament with a large stack of DCI registration forms. What you might not recall is that you probably also ended that tournament with an equally large stack of parental consent forms, the vast majority of which were blank, since they didn't need to be filled out. Or, if your staff decided to tell players to dispose of that part of the form themselves, you probably do remember those forms floating around the tables and floors for the rest of the day.

What you might not realize is that those forms are tremendously useful, and that not a single one of them should be returned to you or left on the floor unsigned. Not because of what they are intended for, but for what they can be repurposed for.

You see, every parental consent form contains another printed copy of the DCI number that the attached DCI card possesses, which makes it a great backup card for the myriad people who will someday lose their DCI card and come to a tournament without it. Suggesting that they store away the parental consent form as a backup copy of the number, in a sock drawer or other safe place, can do you wonders in reducing the number of lost DCI numbers over time.

Area Codes
Speaking of DCI numbers: relatively recently, all DCI numbers have been expanded to be a full ten digits. The last time a full expansion happened was when an eight-digit standard was established; at that time, any shorter length numbers (generally six digits or less) were prepended with a check-digit (used to catch data entry errors in DCI Reporter) followed by enough zeroes to pad out the number to eight digits, followed by the original number. For example, a four-digit number XXXX would become Y000XXXX, where Y was a check digit calculated based on the other seven digits. The move to ten digits was accomplished the same way, with another new check-digit and a zero prepended to the other eight.

The details of this are useful to know for a few reasons. First, with this change, results slips are now always printed with the full ten-digit number on them. For long-time players who are used to checking to make sure that the number printed on the form is correct (a good habit), and who aren't used to seeing long numbers and puzzling out how they might match their own, this will tend to look like an incorrect number. If you're one of those players, hopefully this clears things up for you. If you're a judge, letting your more experienced players know about this might help clear some confusion.

Secondly, if you can train your players always to give you the full ten digits rather than their original, shorter number, you preserve the functionality of the check-digit when entering numbers into the system. This goes a very long way toward preventing data entry errors.

Finally, though ten digits are harder to remember than eight (or six, or three...), they're actually much more useful. What other common number is ten digits? Phone numbers with area codes! Players may not remember their numbers, and they may not have good enough habits to carry their DCI cards around, but these days, who doesn't unfailingly carry their cell phone with them everywhere they go? Suggesting that players enter their DCI number into their phone as a phone number is probably the best measure you can take to ensure that they always have that number with them.

ZIP Codes
All that notwithstanding, it's inevitable that there will still be players that show up to tournaments without their DCI number. For small tournaments, this isn't a big deal, as the necessary lookups or new number registrations can be handled before the tournament begins without unnecessarily delaying things. For a large tournament, though, trying to get these fixed up in advance can delay the tournament, so this task usually gets postponed, resulting in a "Field of Joes" (named after the dummy numbers, which begin with "JOE", that are used by DCI Reporter to represent unknown DCI numbers).

As any experienced Tournament Organizer will tell you, a Field of Joes is a huge nightmare waiting to attack. In order to submit a tournament in DCI Reporter successfully without extra work, none of the players in that tournament can have a missing DCI number. Here are some tips on how to avoid this for larger tournaments.

Ask players whether they truly have no way to find their number: Some players may be in the habit of just telling you to look their number up because it saves them some time and effort, not realizing how much of a burden this can be on tournament staff. Just letting them know that looking up their number isn't trivial and asking if they have some other way to retrieve their number can spur them into tracking it down. Calling home for a forgotten card can often work.

Take their ZIP Code: If they know that they have a number and have no way to look it up, it's essential that you take down the ZIP code that they registered their number under so that you can use it to narrow down the correct number in the DCI Reporter lookup function. Particularly with more common names, there can often be several people with the same name and the ZIP code is the only reasonable way to differentiate. For larger tournaments, a good way to do this is to have players fill out a registration sheet and turn that in along with their registration fee to enter the tournament. Having a ZIP code field there will get that information painlessly.

Use previous events: An alternate way to look up numbers more easily is to keep around the records of past tournaments on the scorekeeping machine. Then, ask whether the player has participated in any other tournaments run by the same tournament organizer. If they have, and you have the right files, you can go back and look up their number that way.

Make them write the number down after lookup: If you've managed to look up somebody's number, make sure to get them to write that number down, especially if they've already lost their DCI cards. This may not be a requirement, but if the player comes back for more tournaments, you'll thank your former self for having had the foresight to do this, and you'll save yourself a lookup down the road.

Tell them to get their numbers combined: If their number couldn't be found, have them fill out a new DCI card. Then, tell them that when they get home, they should visit http://wizards.custhelp.com in order to contact Wizards of the Coast customer service. The customer service folks can look up the various numbers that a person has registered and combine them under a single number.

Handle the leftover JOE entries early: Don't wait until late in the tournament to handle the unknown DCI numbers. Ideally, they need to all be handled during the first round, and failing that, certainly by the second. This includes looking up what you could and sending a judge around to get information from the ones you couldn't (which might mean getting the number that they knew but forgot to give you, or having them fill out a new card). After the second round, the number of people who might drop from your tournament will make it very difficult to catch all of the unknowns, which just leads to headaches down the road when it's time to submit the tournament.

Re-what?
Adelle plays Orcish Cannonade targeting Neil's Mana Skimmer. Then, Neil plays Psionic Blast targeting Adelle's Pardic Dragon.

                Poll #2: Did Neil just ...
                                (a) Play Psionic Blast in response to Adelle's Orcish Cannonade?
                                (b) Wait for Adelle's Orcish Cannonade to resolve, then play Psionic Blast?

                Poll #3: With respect to Poll #2 ...
                                (a) That answer was so clear by common knowledge that there is no confusion.
                                (b) That answer was just a guess and the question should have specified.

Statute of Limitations
It's been a while since US Nationals 2005, where this event occurred, so some of the details are lost to time. Even without details, though, the story has some valuable lessons worth sharing.

Though I spent most of the event manning the main event floor, one of the most important things that the judges at a major tournament do is to make sure to spend some time at the side events area. Generally, while the main event at US Nationals or a Pro Tour is staffed by the DCI, the side events area is staffed at least in part by local judges organized by the local premiere tournament organizer. This means that the judges there may have less experience than those who have been brought in to run the main event. For the more experienced judges, spending some time seeing how things are going at side events and providing advice can be a big boost to morale there, as well as provide some great learning opportunities for judges that might not have had as much broad exposure to judging.

At this particular event, as I headed over to the side events area, there was a Pro Tour Qualifier happening and I happened to arrive just as the head judge was discussing something with the tournament organizer. I asked the judge what had just happened and was told that last round, there was a spectator that had mentioned to him that one of the players was cheating. A floor judge who had gone over to watch the match also witnessed some suspicious behavior and believed that there might be some funny business afoot, so the head judge had taken the player aside to do an interview as part of an investigation.

In the end, the judge was frustrated. Although he felt strongly that cheating had occurred, he wasn't able to produce proof. And as time went on, he was more and more sure that something bad had happened, but things had already progressed to the next round, in addition to not having concrete proof.

There are two useful lessons to take from this situation, even without the details. First, you do not need 100% undeniable proof positive in order to disqualify somebody for cheating. The mantra that somebody is innocent until shown guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, used in criminal proceedings in the US, is so prevalent (in the United States, at least) that most judges believe that this is the standard that we have to use when conducting investigations. The truth is that DCI events aren't a court of criminal law, and that isn't the right standard to use. US civil cases provide better guidance here, where the standard is a "preponderance of evidence." Which means that even if there is some doubt, a strong belief and strong evidence that cheating was likely is sufficient to disqualify somebody. This case certainly met that standard.

Secondly, there is no "now or never" statute of limitations on cheating. Even if it took a round, if new evidence turned up or something else came up such that the head judge is now sure that something shady took place, it's perfectly reasonable to enact the disqualification at that point. Ultimately, even though it would ideally happen as soon as it was discovered, everyone is better off for a cheater being removed from the tournament, whenever it happens.