Ask the Judge, 07/14/2006: Feature Friday

The Greater Good
If you've been reading Magic articles for long, or if you have friends who have played in a number of tournaments, I'm sure you've read or heard of some of the standard judge gripes. The judge who didn't take the time to explain all of the ins and outs of the ruling fully. The judge who wouldn't stay and monitor the opponent for slow play. The judge who wouldn't cut the guy in the bathroom a break, issuing a game loss even though they were just a few seconds late to their match. Chances are, you probably wrote off the judge as being rude, being in a bad mood, or possibly even just as being a bad judge.

The thing is, though, there's a good reason for all of this. Quite simply, judges are not here to serve you.

Let me repeat—Judges are not here to serve you.

Before you all assume that I'm off my rocker or that I'm a terrible judge, I must admit that this statement is a bit of verbal trickery; smoke and mirrors on my part for effect. In actuality, this is not as controversial of a statement as the English language makes it sound. This is more clear when you look at it from the player's perspective. This is what I really mean to say, and this is an important message for all players to understand: Judges are not here to serve me. Instead, judges are here to serve us.

This is a subtle, but extremely important and meaningful difference. It's very easy, when you're in the middle of a judge call, or when you're asking a judge a question, to get wrapped up on how well the answer serves you, personally, at that moment. On how well you feel the judge is treating you, as if you're the only customer that matters.

In actuality, though, any specific call and any specific player is never actually the correct focus, and you'll find, ironically, that the more experienced and skilled a judge becomes, the less likely it is that they'll treat your ruling or your question in that way. Inexperienced judges often fall prey to the common customer service adage that you should always treat the customer that you're working with as your top priority. As judges gain more experience and perspective, though, they learn that this isn't actually the case as far as judging goes.

Judges are actually here to serve a larger community, and they have a responsibility to all players, not just the one that they're talking to at this moment. Because the right thing to do can change when your focus changes from an individual to a larger group, this can cause confusion and tension. There are many cases where the seemingly correct way to treat a situation for the player you're working with will actually be entirely wrong when you step back and look at the broader view. This contradiction makes it very difficult for many judges to look at things in this way, since judges largely want to do what they think is the right thing for the player that they're working with—this is instinctual for anybody who wants to do a good job in what is ultimately a service role. This also leads to the phenomenon that I mentioned earlier—it's easy for a player to assume that a judge is performing terribly, when the actual correct thing to do is just wrong, from the player's perspective.

In much the same way that a judge's scope increases as they increase in level, their awareness needs to grow regarding the larger groups that they serve, and how that affects the way that they judge. Whether that larger group is both of the players in the specific match, all of the players at their store, or—eventually—all of the players in the DCI, a judge ultimately is most effective when keeping the needs of all of these larger groups in mind. While it may not be obvious to players in the heat of the moment, this shift in focus also benefits them and all players in the long run.

Let's expand a little bit about the different groups I mean when I say "us", and what lessons can be learned when we focus on that group rather than on an individual.

"Us" = "Me" + the other player in the match
Rulings that favor one person will have an adverse effect on the opponent: This is relatively simple to grasp, but challenging to keep in perspective. The majority of rulings that a judge makes will affect the progress of a match in a way that will be more beneficial to one player than the other. This means that no matter what, somebody is going to be at a disadvantage as a result of the ruling. More importantly, this means that being "nice" to a player because you want to treat them well as a customer necessitates being correspondingly "mean" to their opponent. Even worse, people naturally remember better the ways in which they got screwed than the ways in which they unfairly benefited—this is simply human nature. In the long run, if this imbalance happens frequently, everyone will end up feeling like they got the short end of the stick.

Practicing good customer service thus cannot hinge around ruling with compassion or lenience, because that "good customer service" comes at the direct cost of another player. Instead, customer service needs to focus on the way you treat people and the way in which you convey messages, not in altering the content of the message that you need to convey.

The only fair way to treat everyone is to rule correctly: So, given that there is a direct tension between the way a ruling benefits one person and how it must hinder the other, how can you possibly treat each customer with the service they deserve? Quite simply, by making sure that you consistently rule correctly; in the short term, while the correct ruling may seem pretty harmful to a player, ultimately they'll be better served by never being cheated out of a situation that should work in their favor by an unscrupulous opponent and a careless judge.

Do not assume that the player who called a judge is the protagonist: There is a natural inclination amongst people to take sides in any confrontation; to assume that one person is in the right and the other person is in the wrong, to have somebody to root for and somebody to root against. In almost all cases, the player that a judge will naturally be inclined to be sympathetic to is the person who called them over, under the assumption that somebody only will call a judge if something wrong has happened to them. For most judges, this is an inclination that needs to be identified and carefully squashed. For any ruling, it's important to start out from scratch, without any assumptions about what is happening and who's right, so that an objective decision can be reached. While this can take some getting used to, any player who's ever been on the receiving end of a bad ruling after their opponent called a judge and cheesed out a decision will thank you for it.

"Us" = "Me" + the other players in this tournament
Whatever time you devote to one match is time you take away from the others: Of all the issues I'll mention in this article, this is probably the one that I still have the most trouble with myself (and, while I obviously can't go into any detail, this was something that they probed for during my Level 3 advancement interview, which should demonstrate both that this is something that the DCI cares about and that they really are paying attention to judges' strengths and weaknesses). Simply put, there are pretty much always relatively few judges staffing a tournament relative to the number of players. This means that the attention and available time of any of the judges is relatively constrained; typically there just isn't enough to go around in order to cover everything that you might want the judges to do. So, whenever a judge is issuing a ruling, or watching a match, they're spending attention that then can't be spent elsewhere on the tournament, which ultimately means trading off paying attention to the needs of many in order to serve a few. This doesn't mean that judges shouldn't take their time and do a good job handling questions and rulings or overseeing matches that require it, but it does mean that they should be careful to devote as much time as is necessary, and no more.

While I am one of the biggest proponents of educating players to understand why things work the way they do, rather than just telling them what happens, there's a limit to how much of this is useful during a match, in the middle of a round. One of the most potent tools in a judge's arsenal in this regard is the ability to issue a fast ruling and defer the explanation for another time. "Here's the answer to your question. If you have any questions about why, or if you want to discuss it in more depth, please come see me after the round is over." This allows you to convey the information that is needed to unblock a match or a player at that moment and continue with their match, but also makes further education possible if they wish, later, when you can devote more time to the question without holding up the rest of the tournament. As a bonus, it also helps players to feel confident about your answers (you clearly have more thinking backing up the answer itself) and to feel like they are important (as you are willing to, when you have time, devote however much time they need to get all the answers they want).

A good metric to keep in mind—is the time that you're about to spend explaining this ruling or concept to a player worth the possible questions that aren't getting asked or answered on the floor because you're not there? Is the time that you're delaying this match worth the possibility of the rest of your players all waiting longer at the end of the round because the match runs long? If so, then by all means continue with what you're doing. But if not, make sure that the players have what they need, make sure that everything is in order, and then move on; the details can come when they don't affect so many other players.

Every decision that you make regarding one player in a tournament can trickle through to affect the others: Sure, it's very kind to let in the player who shows up late into the tournament, so that they didn't travel for nothing. This can very easily feel like the right thing to do. But what about the player that shows up a minute later that doesn't make your now-arbitrary cut-off? What about the players who planned ahead, sacrificed sleep, and went out of their way to show up on time? And what about the player who gets knocked out of Top 8 contention because the player that you let into the tournament late beats them on a fluke draw? Nothing that a judge can do for one player is without consequence for the others; sticking to consistent rules and principles, ones that are equal for everyone, is the only way to make sure that nobody gets unfairly disadvantaged.

"Us" = "Me" + the other regular players in the area
Consistency breeds comfort: One of the best things that a judging staff can do for the health of tournaments in their area is to push for consistency in the way that tournaments are run. The local player base feels more comfortable and is more inclined to play when they know exactly how things work and what they're getting themselves into. Conversely, they feel less confident that tournaments are worthwhile when everything seems haphazard and ephemeral. Consistency, however, necessarily stifles your ability to make special case decisions for individual players. I don't mean to say that these kinds of things won't happen—there certainly are special cases and other considerations that need to be taken into account. However, judges need to learn to stick to their consistent rules and take a hard line when it's necessary, even when it doesn't feel like the nicest thing to do, in order to ensure a long-term, consistent experience for their players. While they may not like it if they end up on the unfavorable end of a decision, you'll find that a negative, predictable decision will ultimately be better received than the occasional positive, wildly unpredictable one. Nothing is more frustrating than not to know what to expect.

Sticking to DCI standards helps prepare your players for tournaments in other areas: This is an area that we're still working with across the DCI. Time and again, I've heard from players who come to play in my tournaments from other areas about how differently things seem to be run from where they usually play. Sometimes the changes are positive. Sometimes they're negative. Every difference, though, makes it harder for them to succeed in their new environment. For small things, like how time is tracked or the way in which pairings are posted, adaptation is relatively easy. For bigger things, though, ways in which you've deviated from DCI policies are just ways in which your players can get burned when they enter an area that hasn't made the same deviation. The penalty that you were lenient about and that you didn't train your players to worry about might just be the one that knocks them out of the tournament in the next city over.

(To be fair, this works in reverse as well—your players can know how things are supposed to work and get burned by bad deviations in other areas... this serves as another reason to stick to the policies—to serve any newcomers to your community well.)

Word of mouth is stronger than you think: The things that a staff does in one tournament will generally spread through the local player base more vigorously and more quickly than you might expect. What happens at a tournament and the actions that you take will spread, to be discussed throughout your player base. This, coupled with the fact that people are much more likely to remember and discuss the ways that they were slighted than the ways that they were assisted, leads to the phenomenon that much ill will and a lot of bad perception is often created whenever a judge makes any decision that feels good because it helps a player out, but (unbeknownst to the judge) hurts another player. The negative publicity will simply travel farther and faster than the positive. This will do little but agitate players and undermine a judge's credibility, which isn't worth the perceived benefit of providing a little bitter "service" to the player at hand.

"Us" = "Me" + the rest of the players in the DCI
Rulings set precedent: This is true at all levels of judging, and at all sizes of event, though certainly more seriously and more widely at the higher levels and bigger events. Everything you do, and every ruling that you make, becomes something that a judge did, and this has lasting repercussions. It's easy to become the other judge, who "told me that it works like this," or who "said that it should only be a warning." Players tend to believe the things that judges tell them, and assume that what they say is how it works, even when it's wrong. When a bad decision gets made for the sake of making the player that you're talking to happier, word of that decision will spread, and become part of the canon for the way things are supposed to work. Every judge that I know has had to justify why they're doing something the correct way in the face of the mistaken [Or misunderstood... -Seamus] ruling that some other judge at some other time made. Those bad rulings have a way of persisting and making everyone's job more difficult.

One of the things that judges starting to work at higher-level events will often mention is that the Pro Tour seems like an easier job than a Grand Prix, and that particularly the Head Judge often seems to have less to do. And yet, when you ask the most senior judges, who are in those Head Judge positions, they'll tell you that the Pro Tour is more pressure. One primary reason for this is the precedent that they set with everything that they do. People are paying attention, and people are assuming that whatever you do is right; this is true from the Pro Tour all the way down to your local events.

Before you make that ruling which "harmlessly makes this player feel better", ask yourself this: "Is this how I always want this to be ruled? Do I believe that this is how it should always work?" If the answer to that isn't yes, then you should reconsider. There's no such thing as a one-off decision that you make, just as a special case for this instance; the memory of the player base is far too strong for that.

Everything a judge does reflects on Wizards of the Coast, the DCI, the DCI Judging Program, and all judges: The things that every judge does directly helps to shape the view that players have about all judges. Consistently making good, fair rulings will help engender the feeling that all judges do the same, and that players can go to tournaments and know that they will receive the result that they earn, not one that is falsely bestowed upon them by a fickle judge. On the other hand, consistently making rulings on a whim, rulings that are more concerned with being nice to the player who's asking than being right, will cause players to think that all judges will do the same, and will undermine trust in the system and its results. As a judge, it's important to remember that the choices that you make will make the job of other judges easier or harder, and your job is similarly eased by the fairness and competence of other judges. This overall confidence in the system and its fundamental fairness is far more important to the overall health of the player base than any momentary happiness they get from having been treated more nicely than they should have been.

In Summary
Ultimately, if you take one message away from this, it should be this: Judges, remember that you serve a very large community, and it's important that you make decisions that benefit everyone, not just the person that you happen to be talking to at this moment. In doing this, you ultimately do an even greater service for that player. Players, remember that in the grand scheme of things, the number of rulings that involve you calling over a judge specifically for a match that you're playing in is trivially small next to all of the rulings that are happening to other players, in other matches, all the time. Which means that while your ruling may feel most immediately relevant to you, it's actually far more important for you and for the health of the game that your rights as a player and the fairness of the overall system is being upheld across all of the other rulings that you don't get to see.

One last thing: let me make it clear that I don't mean to say that judges don't have to do a good job of serving individual players, treating them with respect, listening to what they're asking and what they're trying to say, or anything else that stems out of general politeness and respect for other people. Nothing that I've said here is an excuse for blowing off a player or for treating them rudely. Players are the lifeblood of the program and they certainly deserve to be treated as well as judges can manage. Just remember that treating players in the best manner possible doesn't always mean treating any specific player in the way that they might think that they want.

That wraps it up for me this time around. Three months in, I'm particularly interested to hear from people whether or not this column is providing them useful food for thought. One thing that I've considered particularly important is to stick to philosophical issues that are useful for both players and judges, and I'd appreciate hearing whether or not I've been successful at this and if not, what I might do to increase the relevance of these articles for everyone. So please, drop me a line!

Next month: A subject that is frequently controversial and largely misunderstood. A rule that is essential to tournament logistics, but not an actual rule in Magic at all. The penalty that everyone wishes that Magic didn't need. In depth with one of ... the ... most ... difficult ... ... things ... ... ... in ... ... ... judging. 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