It's Thursday night, and I'm writing this just ahead of packing to head down to Grand Prix San Francisco of San Jose (with apologies to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim), where I will spend the weekend working as the Head Judge shadow. It's been a hectic week for me. I'm rolling out a new product at my job. We're having Serious Discussions About Where We're Headed at Free Geek (where I serve on the Board of Directors). And Ferrett and I are hammering out the details on a new system to help make sure that years and years of archival Ask the Judge questions accumulate only a minimum of cruft.

A couple days ago Ferrett emailed me to let me know about some changes he'd made to the review system and to ask for feedback on them, among other things. I let him know that I was going to be fairly busy until after my HJ shadow stint and I might not be particularly responsive to emails until then. His reply:

"Head Judge shadow? I didn't know they made those. Could you let me know about those questions anyway?"

I haven't answered him. But it did suggest that shadowing might make a good Feature Friday topic.

Before I tackle the subject of high level (Grand Prix or Pro Tour) shadowing, let's talk about the subject in general. Shadowing is an important part of the judge repertoire. Not all judges practice it, but I'm pretty sure that all the good ones do. Not everyone knows it by that name. I've been doing it (through no fault of my own) since I started training as a judge.

I was at a Pro Tour Qualifier in sunny Sacremento, California. Don Barkauskas was the head judge, and I was a brand new, freshly minted Level 0 judge (by virtue—if I can be said to have had any virtue as a judge back then—of having shown up to work, and nothing more). Don had me set up table numbers, assist a bit with registration; nothing terribly complicated. The event—Odyssey Block Constructed, if memory serves—got underway, and Don and I chatted a bit about my rules knowledge.

A hand flew up and a cry rang out. Judge! We headed over to the table to see what was up. Don quickly elicited the story: Braids, Cabal Minion was on the table. Someone drew without sacrificing.

That's, uh, pretty much the whole story. Not an uncommon one, back then.

Don pulled me away from the table. "What do you think we need to do here?"

To say I was startled by the question would be accurate. To say that I had no freakin' clue about the answer would be an understatement. I told Don as much (helpfully peppering my words with interjections carefully chosen to paint me as thoughtful and knowledgeable, like "uh" and "er"). We headed back to the table, Don delivered the ruling, and we retreated to discuss my understanding of the Penalty Guidelines (nonexistent, essentially).

That's shadowing. One judge observes another at work; at key points they confer.

What did we get out of that judge call? Many things:

• I got to watch an experienced judge handle a judge call, issue a penalty. This is behavior that I can emulate.
• I got some specific details on how to handle that situation, which would come in handy over the rest of the day.
• Don got some data on my PG knowledge, which is useful because he needs to evaluate when he's going to test me as well as when he's going to trust me to switch roles and handle a judge call myself.
• I got some data on my PG knowledge. The reasons I might need this are left as an exercise for the reader.

That's a pretty decent little list. You can get similar amounts of knowledge transfer through just talking about situations, but it takes longer, and requires a lot more effort. As a judge engaging in mentoring or evaluation of another judge, you still need to do the talking stuff, but there's no question that shadowing is a more efficient form of mentoring.

One of the great things about mentoring is that it works well for any arrangement of roles. I was pretty clearly unprepared, at the start of that tournament, to be taking any judge call more complicated than "Judge, where's the restroom?", but after a couple hours of watching Don work, we were ready to reverse the roles and let me stammer at players for a bit, instead of just stammering at Don. We'd take a call, I'd ask some questions, confer with Don, ask some more questions, confer with Don some more, and I'd issue the ruling.

That's pretty much the gist of shadowing. I'd boil down the key points to the following: it's almost always useful to watch other judges working. Either you see something they could do better, or you observe someone handling a situation well and you take something from it about how you could incorporate their approach into your own. Often you get both.

When you're the more experienced judge, you have the opportunity to force the less experienced judge to commit to a position, even when they don't know what the answer is. This is intensely valuable. You develop (in the mentored judge) the critical thought process that judges are forced to employ all the time, as well as forcing them to share their current understanding.

I can't say exactly when the DCI as a body realized how well this technique works, but starting a couple years ago, it became quasi-official policy for high-level events that (as much as is practical while still maintaining floor coverage) judges should observe each other handling calls and making rulings. And the ultimate embodiment of this policy is its application to the top spot at Grand Prix events (and to a lesser extent, Pro Tours).

At just about every Grand Prix these days, Wizards brings a head judge and a head judge shadow. The head judge wears the familiar red and black stripes, and the shadow wears non-judging attire and simply follows the HJ around for the whole weekend. The most common arrangements are for a level 4 or 5 judge to HJ and an experienced L3 to shadow, or vice versa. Either way, the job of the shadow is to stand back and watch the HJ work, and be available for consultation on issues as needed.

This weekend, John Carter will wear the stripes, and I'll watch him work. He'll periodically put me on the spot and solicit my opinion. While my strongest performances as a judge have emphatically not come at Bay Area Block Constructed events, I'm optimistic that I'll only be caught flat-footed and stuttering a few times.

Coming down to the GP? Feel free to drop by and say hello. And until I see you in San Francisco San Jose, or here (probably next Friday)... keep shufflin'.