Hello and hello. I'm excited! In a few days Pasi and I will be flying to San Diego for the Pro Tour. We're going a few days early so that we can get adjusted to the time zone difference (10 hours!) and do a little sightseeing (but not too much—I don't want to destroy my feet before the event has even started). I'm looking forward to hanging out with many US judges that I haven't seen for a while, including the rest of the Ask the Judge team. I'm sure this will be a very memorable Pro Tour, and I'm hoping it won't be the GP Amsterdam kind of memorable. Knock on Wood Elemental!
Recently, I've worked mostly local events. The National Qualifier season has just finished—the final events were held last Saturday in Oulu and Lahti. Pasi and I ran the event in Lahti, working for a local event organizer.
The turnout was a bit low; only 29 players (we expected to get over 40, and the TO was expecting even more). The tournament was part of a large gaming event, with many other attractions such as the latest console games, a LAN party, many miniature wargaming tournaments, and even a local celebrity host (Jaana Pelkonen, whose last gig was the Eurovision Song Contest).
Something very rare happened at this tournament: a deck that was stolen was returned to its proper owner. Player A had lost a deck some time before the event, and Player B had "found" it. He was stupid enough to enter the tournament with a deck that was still quite recognizable to its real owner. Player A confronted Player B, and they came into an agreement: Player B could finish the event and then give the cards back. Since DCI Reporter V3 has a sick sense of humor, it paired these two against each other in the next round. Player A won, and Player B dropped from the event after returning the deck (but he forgot to tell the judges that he wanted to drop, so he still got paired for the last round).
If you're wondering why I didn't issue any penalty to Player B, it's because no infraction was actually committed. The section 146. Unsporting Conduct - Theft of Tournament Materials covers applies to materials that are being used in the tournament, either by the staff or the players. It is not my job to investigate whether someone started the event with a stolen deck. If a trade binder gets stolen, that's for the police and the TO to deal with. Accordingly, I informed the TO's staff about what had happened, and they agreed that it was between A and B to sort this out. Since A didn't want to call the police, and was happy to let B play with the deck, there was nothing else for me to do.
Lost decks was the theme of the day: in the last round, a player who had finished his match was watching another game. He had his deck on the table, and when he wanted to put his cards away, he accidentally also grabbed one of the libraries from the match he was watching, because they both had the same kind of sleeves. To make matters worse, both players had green cards, so it wasn't easy to separate the piles.
I fixed this by grabbing the decklists of both players. I set aside the pile that was most likely to contain cards belonging to the match in progress, and then I used the absent-minded spectator's decklist to find out which cards belonged to him. I was left with a small pile of green cards, and after I had confirmed that no deck-ordering effects had been played, the match could continue. No penalties were issued.
Once again, this feels like a situation where you should do something. However, the player who grabbed the wrong deck didn't mean to do so. Sure it was disruptive to the event, but it's also not very abusable. The player isn't going to go around grabbing decks now, because he got off without a penalty. The Penalty Guide no longer has a catch-all "procedural error" category that covers spilled coffee and other incidents. Unsporting conduct covers any intentional attempts to disrupt games. Honest mistakes like this one don't always need to get penalized.
When you approach a situation with the feeling that you need to penalize a player, determine what penalty they should get, and then see which section of the Penalty Guide best matches the situation, you're "reverse engineering" the penalty. You're basing the whole thing on a gut feeling, and while you may end up with the correct result (some guts are often right ["Even a stopped gut is right twice a day"? - Seamus]), it's not good for consistency and fairness. You're also focusing more on the penalty than the infraction. We shouldn't penalize players because we feel that they've done something wrong—we should determine if they have committed an infraction that carries an official penalty, and then issue the penalty with the appropriate dose of education and diplomacy.
Some weeks before, I ran a Pro Tour Qualifier and a National Qualifier in Helsinki. The most exciting thing about these events was the fact that I promoted a new judge to Level 1 at each of them. Both guys scored quite well on the written test as well as my secret "table number test".
When I work with new judges, their first job of the day will be setting up table numbers. I give them the materials (paper, marker, tape), and ask them to make table numbers. It's a simple task that still requires some planning, and it can be useful to see how a person approaches such a job. I want to see them working efficiently (they should get it done quickly), I want to see them working independently (they should be comfortable with making some decisions without consulting me), and of course I want to see a result that works (legible numbers, a layout that makes sense).
At one of these events I had some minor problems with a player who is sometimes borderline unsporting, but most of the time just a little annoying. He was talking to a friend while the friend was playing, and I asked him to please not talk to the players. He was only making some general comments about the game, but I felt that it was a bit too close to coaching and I didn't want him to go too far. His reaction was typical: he started arguing with me, instead of just shutting up. He'll always do what you ask eventually, but he has to argue about it a bit first. He enjoys this. He is the kind of guy who would say "Why? I'm standing here!" if you ask him to stand aside so you can post pairings.
Years ago his behaviour was much worse, especially towards other players. Everyone (the judges, the players, the local store owner) thought he was an annoying kid. He was rude to newbies and anyone he didn't like. When his behaviour was too much, we'd slap him down a bit—but we never took the time to really consider the effects of having an aggressively rude person in the store. I guess we though that time would correct the problem. But now, years later, I still occasionally hear from people who stopped coming to the store, or never visited it at all, because this kid was a regular.
The local judges probably have issued him a few unsporting conduct penalties over the years. Maybe a couple more would have helped. But we didn't try other ways of putting a stop to his behaviour: educating, talking to him or asking him to not come to the store for a while. As a result, he still feels like it's okay to argue with the HJ about a direct order. But... I'll get you next time, Unsporting Player! I will...invite you for a cup of tea and discuss our feelings!
That's all from me this week. I'll be back next month with a report from the Pro Tour, and/or Finnish Nationals. Next week, Jason Lemahieu. Enjoy your Midsummer!
Johanna Virtanen
DCI Level 3 Judge
flame- on Efnet's #mtgjudge
flame (at) bore dot org
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