Ask the Judge, 06/09/2006: Feature Friday

The Challenge of Mistakes

[Another fine article from Nick Fang, on a subject he and I have both alluded to several times. I'm a strong believer that owning up to your mistakes is the best way to conquer them, and any judge that works with me should have a good sense of not just what they did well, but where their best opportunities for improvement are. Don't hide from your mistakes. They show the road to improvement. Enjoy. -Seamus]

If you've never read the coverage of the 2005 US National Championships, take a moment and read it now. As eventful as the coverage makes Game 2 sound, one thing isn't made clear—the table judge mentioned briefly there was me, and I messed up in epic fashion. Whether this isn't listed because, as he claims, Ted didn't actually notice that part of the exchange (it was rather rapid and confusing); or, as I've suspected, it was because he was being kind to some already distraught judges [Distraught may be a little strong - S], I'm unsure. Today, though, I'm coming clean.

I'd like to be able to say that the story I'm about to tell is the biggest mistake that I've ever made in judging. Sadly, I cannot. It is, however, one of the most interesting and instructive, and I tell it with two goals in mind. First, the incident itself was a situation where I learned a lot about judging principles, and I hope to be able to pass some of those lessons to you. Second, at a meta-level, for readers that are judges, I'd like you to learn to start challenging your own thinking about events such as this. One of the things that the most effective judges are able to do is to self-analyze the mistakes they make and the situations that come up in order to learn from them. In challenging their own assumptions, and in staying receptive to learning opportunities, they gain more out of a situations than people who are content to just skim the surface. I'm hoping that this article will demonstrate this, and help spur you into taking advantage of these lessons, rather than letting them pass you by.

Players, there's something here for you, too. We understand how frustrating it is when we make a mistake and it affects you. While I understand the frustration that causes some of the lashing out at judges that you see sometimes when a mistake occurs, I feel like a lot of this is grounded in an unspoken assumption that judges don't care when this happens. That's just not true. My hope is that seeing the thought process that we go through as we try to improve from our mistakes and avoid them in the future will help you feel better about your judges and help you to put the things that happen to you in perspective.

I also encourage everyone to challenge me on my assessments.

The facts of the story are in regular text, my commentary is indented. As it turns out, Seamus was also involved in this match and he'll add his thoughts as editor's notes.

The staff: Myself—Table Judge. Seamus Campbell—"Floating" Table Judge (standing, rather than sitting, at the match). Sheldon Menery—Head Judge
The scene: US Nationals. Finals, Game 2. Antonino DeRosa vs. Neil Reeves

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the event. There's no question that the stakes were among the highest. That said, it's a mistake to assume that the magnitude of the event has any bearing on the magnitude of the mistake. People tend to pay more attention to big events and later rounds, but the mistake that you make in the second round of your local qualifier can have just as great of an effect on the players as the Top 8 of Nationals—preventing somebody from making Top 8, or from qualifying for the Tour, or changing their rating. It's natural to assume that the mistakes that have a greater immediate effect are more important, but long-term potential effects exist at every level.

In the days leading up to a major event, the head judge will often solicit information as to what the judges are interested in trying, and what they can be exposed to that would most help their judge development. One of my big weaknesses (which will soon become clear) has always been performing effectively as a table judge, so I mentioned to Sheldon that I wanted to get some more experience doing that. As a result, I was slated to table judge the final match.

The DCI Judge program as a whole is placing a high emphasis on helping people to grow by providing them with the opportunities that they need. I have been surprised at how much this holds true at the highest levels, and I think this philosophy is trickling down to local areas as well&madash;at least amongst some of the more experienced regional judges. If you're in a position to be able to provide learning opportunities for other judges working with you, you should do your best to try and do this. If you think there's something another judge can do to help you grow, try asking for it. You might be surprised to find out that you get exactly what you need.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with how table judging worked, here’s how it has generally been done (some reevaluation of table judging proceedures is underway right now). There was a single table judge for each single-elimination match. That table judge sat at the side of the table and was responsible for keeping track of the official game state (life totals, Storm counts, etc...) as well as watching to ensure that the rules were followed correctly. The role that Magic Online plays during a match is a reasonable comparison. I was in this role for this match. Nationals happened at a time where we were reconsidering the best way to handle table judging, however, so for the entire Top 8, we had an additional "floating" table judge that provided additional assistance for each of the matches taking place. Seamus was in this role, and because there was only one match happening, he was effectively an additional table judge for this match.

A lot of debate has happened in the last few months about what the proper role of a table judge actually is and how best to make sure that matches proceed with the right balance of player responsibility and judge oversight. While there are differing opinions on the details, one thing is largely agreed upon by everyone—trying to keep tabs on what's happening in play while also being in charge of the official game state is too much for most judges to handle on their own, and requiring this can be dangerous.

Everything's proceeding well until the middle of the second game. Reeves has Vedalken Shackles in play, and DeRosa plays Memnarch. DeRosa turns to me and asks, to begin with, "Can I take his Shackles without losing my Memnarch?" Of course, this question cannot be answered as phrased, as judges are not supposed to answer questions about how you can make something happen, only about whether a play is legal or how a specific interaction works.

I ask him to distill his question down to a rules question rather than one that asks for direction. This interaction ends up being rather muddled—he is sufficiently unclear about the rules that he is having a hard time knowing how to ask about things. In the end, he effectively asks two questions. First, "If he attempts to take my Mennarch, and I respond by taking control of his Shackles, does he still get my Memnarch since I have control of the Shackles when that ability resolves?" Second, "If I attempt to take his Shackles, and he responds by taking control of Memnarch, do I still get the Shackles?"

Right off the bat, though I don't realize it consciously yet, the wheels are already falling off the wagon. An extremely important skill for a judge who's answering a call is the ability to distill down what the player is actually asking. Oftentimes this is straightforward, but when the player is relatively confused, it can take some work. Just as it's important to read card texts and know the text before you answer a question, you also need to be clear on what the question is before you answer it. While this is something I've done here already—distilling down the two relevant questions—the amount of time and questioning it took to get to this point already has me a little bit muddled, which ends up clouding my thinking later on.

If you try and overanalyze the situation, looking at Shackles and trying to work out the various play possibilities of how the stack will work and what might happen, it's pretty easy to get bogged down in a lot of details. At its essence, however, this is not a difficult question, and one that simply relies on the "silver rule"—once an ability has gone onto the stack, that ability exists independently of its source. Thus, taking control of a Shackles after it ability has gone onto the stack doesn't change the fact that that ability will still result in a change of control. If Reeves attempts to take the Memnarch with Vedalken Shackles, DeRosa can't effectively counter this just by responding with Memnarch to take control of the Shackles; when the Shackles' activation resolves, Reeves will still take control of Memnarch.

This is not, however, how I answer. Instead, I tell DeRosa, with no hesitation, "No, if he loses control of Shackles while its ability is on the stack, then that ability will do nothing when it resolves."

There's no other, gentler way to put this. I flat out got this ruling wrong. Countless other judges tried to console me with understanding about how complex the questioning was and how confusing the situation had become, but there's really no excuse. I got it wrong. Even worse, I got it wrong with confidence—at least, outward-facing confidence. This was about to backfire very badly.

This has potential match-altering effects—this ruling makes DeRosa decide not to do anything at this juncture, when in fact this is the only opportunity that he has to successfully take control of the Shackles, if he plays the abilities correctly. As soon as he allows Reeves to untap, Neil can take control of Memnarch and subsequently take back control of the Shackles, a huge swing compared to DeRosa ending up with control of both.

Seamus is standing behind me in the spotter's role and he has been following along during this entire discussion. He has been running through the question in his head and he's figured out the right answer. Or at least, he thinks so, until I deliver my ruling so forcefully; the matter-of-factness of my ruling causes him to second-guess himself, and he assumes that he must be missing something or must be wrong.

One of the things that you'll hear from a lot of judges who are trying to mentor less experienced judges is that it's important to deliver rulings decisively and with self-confidence—don't show doubt or hedge when you deliver your rulings. This is important for a number of reasons; the most important is that it inspires confidence in your players, both in the correctness of the ruling and in the abilities of the judge. At a more abstract level, I call this having a "command presence", and it extends to more than just rulings. It inspires confidence in whatever message is being delivered and makes people feel like it makes sense to listen to it. This is something that your most experienced judges will spend a lot of time working on and something I've attempted to develop over the years.

There's an important caveat to the lesson of delivering rulings confidently, though, which is that it should not be a false confidence. One of the very worst things that can happen is to deliver an incorrect ruling confidently, such that nobody questions it and a mistake happens. So an important corollary that I try and teach along with the message to deliver with presence is that you absolutely, positively must be sure that you're right, and if you're not sure, you should find out for sure first.

This fail-safe fails in this case, however, because I'm not consciously unsure to a level where it trips off my desire to get a second-opinion ... in my muddled state of mind, I'm sufficiently sure that I'm right. Even worse, the extra safeguard of having Seamus watch also fails because of the delivery of the ruling. As he put it after the fact, "Yes, I thought that Nick was wrong, but he said it with that voice—the high-level judge voice that sweeps away any possibility for being incorrect, and it was enough to throw me off." The lesson here: be decisive, but more importantly, be correct. Being decisive and incorrect can lead to disaster.

Seamus waits for a little while, mulling this over, and finally taps me on the shoulder and mentions that he wants to go check over the whole thing with Sheldon. This is enough to make me wonder if I've made a mistake, but isn't enough to actually make me stop the match. Things continue this way until Seamus confirms with Sheldon that my ruling is incorrect, and they come to stop the match and attempt to correct things as best as they can at this point.

There are lots of important lessons to glean from this. First, Seamus had enough faith in my abilities to not stop the match in progress based on my ruling, but in actuality, this probably [I'd say 'definitely' - S] isn't the right thing to do. It is certainly important not to disrupt the flow of a match by interrupting too frequently, but in my experience (and certainly, for myself in particular), judges are too hesitant to try and stop something that might be wrong, for fear of disrupting the match. A few interruptions are much less of a big deal than letting something incorrect happen in a match, and I believe that with the two experienced judges on the scene, if either one feels like something wrong might be happening, it's worth stopping things for a moment and conferring, something which I wish Seamus had done.

Secondly, I mirrored this same problem, almost in reverse. When Seamus mentioned to me that he was going to go ask Sheldon, that should have been enough for me to pause the match. I should have realized that this hesitation was because he thought something differently than I did, and that should have been enough of a cue to figure things out. Listen to your fellow judges, even when they're not being direct about what they're saying—nobody is perfect and your judging will improve when you're able to pick up on and leverage the thinking of knowledge of other judges.

Additionally, the level of trust that we had in each other, having worked with each other a lot, actually broke in this situation. He trusted that I knew what I was doing, I trusted that he would stop me if I was doing something wrong, and each of us was just trusting enough to not do what needed to be done. What actually needed to happen here was trust enough to realize that we were both looking to figure out what was going on and that we both would have been happy to stop and talk about it, rather than annoyed at having to disrupt things. Especially with judges in your local community that you work with often, it's important to build this higher level of understanding and trust. Trust that your fellow judges are in this for the same reason—that they want things to be right and that the actions that you take to this effect will be seen as good and not annoying.

Almost all of the rest of the story is well told in the coverage. Ultimately, the "right thing" happened because of DeRosa's timely topdeck, so the actual ruling error didn't affect the ultimate outcome of the match. That doesn't change the fact, however, that the mistake was drastic and potentially disastrous.

The part that was left out was the fact that I pulled Antonino aside after the match to explain what actually happened and apologize for making the mistake. This is important — owning up to your mistakes and taking responsibility for them with yourself and with the players is important in upholding your integrity as a judge and the view that your players will have in your tournaments. Fortunately, he didn’t mind particularly much, given the circumstances (this was shortly after he won the match), but the mea culpa was and is still valuable in the long-term relationship that players have with the DCI.

After the fact, Seamus and I talked about this incident with Sheldon, Andy Heckt, and many other judges because it was a story of interest. More importantly, though, we've done the self-analysis of what happened, how things went wrong, and why, and we've spent a lot of time talking with each other about the situation, how we can prevent it from happening again, and how it can help us to learn to work better together and develop the right level of trust between the two of us, trust that is engendered by a common understanding of how we should react and behave in these situations.

Ultimately, the most telling thing about any error is what you choose to learn from it, and what you miss out of by ignoring. The biggest mistakes can be the best growth opportunities, if you allow them to be and take the time to let them be, and as a judge, you owe it to the judge community and to the players that you serve to take the time to improve from your mistakes.

That wraps it up for me this time around. Got any thoughts on this subject? Disagree with anything? Have any questions? Any and all feedback is welcome—please feel free to engage in the forums or send me mail with the link below or directly at mtgjudge@gmail.com. Or, for a more lively and interactive discussion, find me as Agbaar or Ag|Work on EFnet's #mtgjudge channel. You'll always find a lively debate there and many judges with great experience and ideas, including most of the judges you'll read here at StarCityGames. I can't recommend it enough for people interested in learning more (and helping others to learn more) about judging.

Next month: Conventional wisdom in any service industry is that ultimately, everyone's job is to serve the customer. As a player in a tournament that I'm judging, you'd assume the same would apply to you. So why is it that I can say with confidence that I'm not there to serve you? See you then!

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Nicholas J. Fang
DCI Certified Level 3 Judge - Redmond, WA
mtgjudge@gmail.com
Agbaar and Ag|Work on EFnet's #mtgjudge