+100
Nice post Jacob!

From: Jacob Faturechi
Sent: Monday, February 03, 2014 7:50 PM
To: Heckt, Andy
Subject: Re: No intentional draw allowed? (Tournament Operations)


This comes up constantly.

1) Like everyone else said, don't threaten. You will just look silly.
2) Unenforceable rules just penalize the honest people who try to live
by them. They also make it more acceptable to ignore other rules,
because you step over the line, doing unauthorized things tend to be
less taboo.
3) DCI rules only apply to sanctioned events. A TO can do whatever
they want in an unsanctioned event. Make sure that you point out the
distinction in any sort of discussion about this. The TO has a choice
of sanctioning an event according to DCI rules or holding a
non-sanctioned event according to “house rules.” That goes over a lot
better than “you have to do things my way!”
4) Lots and lots of people dislike what they see as not sporting and
collusionary activity. As has been pointed out lots of times, the DCI
rules just prohibit unsporting behavior, they do not require sporting
behavior. You can't call your opponent names. Nothing requires you to
wish them good luck or even talk to them at all.
5) TOs have a lot of ways of encouraging a communal atmosphere at
their events, including booting obnoxious people from the store.
Depending on the atmosphere of the local community, highly competitive
behavior can be considered obnoxious. That is not governed by the DCI.
6) There are many ways of discouraging highly competitive behavior.
Highly competitive players tend to be bad for the bottom line. They
suck up prizes on a constant basis and spend less money in general.
There are a whole host of things that can make highly competitive
players avoid your store while staying within the rules.
A. Flat prize structures. If first place only wins back your entry or
even less, you can't “go infinite.” Competitive players hate that.
B. Do not allow store credit to be used for entry fees. Competitive
players hate that, since they generally don't want to fork out cash.
Which coincidentally happens to be one of the reasons TOs don't like
to have them in the store.
C. Use fewer than the recommended number of rounds for the tournaments
that allow them, do not pair within pods for tournaments that allow
them. Use the alternative play-draw rules for tournaments that allow
them. Use Swiss+1 instead of a cut for tournaments that allow them.
Use sealed rather than draft pools when the tournament allows it.
Competitive players hate all of those.
D. Use alternative prize structures. There is nothing that says coming
first place in the rankings according to WER means you get the most
prizes. You can give out prizes based on number of match wins, number
of rares in deck, number of Forests in the deck, number of opponents
who checked off “this was a fun game” on the result slip, etc. Just
announce the prize structure before you start. I am kind of partial to
a prize structure based on the number of game wins minus the number of
Islands in your deck. :P

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I had mentioned the idea of doing a bounty at one of my local game stores, and the owner said he was told by another judge that it wasn't allowed.

When I asked why, he didn't seem to fully understand himself, but explained something about how it damages the tournament by incentivizing people to play differently in certain matches, and gets people to take extra risks. (at least that's what I remember of his explanation. I was confused by it, so it didn't stick very well.)

If a store has problems with IDs, they should move to pack-a-win. Solves the problem instantly.

Bounties are fine, as long as the bounty is an incentive to win. Consolation prizes for getting beaten by someone are a lot more problematic.

Prizes not provided by WotC are completely in the hands of the TO.
They can incentivize whatever type of play they want.

TOs often do not enter “gunslingers” in their tournament. When someone
like Kibler shows up, they will get their own table and people will
get opportunities to play with them. Often, there is a prize like a
pack for winning.

Please keep in mind that TO priorities are usually very different from
player/judge priorities. TOs primarily want to earn money. Prizes are
there to entice people to enter the tournament. The tournament may
even be a net loss. But, the TO expects to make that money up with
collateral sales.

Casual players spend a lot more money than competitive players and
spend it on more lucrative things. A casual player will buy a playmat,
“worthless” cards that are marked up much higher, artsy sleeves, etc.
A competitive player has a spiffy playmat they won somewhere, only
wants Tier 1 cards (most of which s/he has), sleeves that are unlikely
to have any question of markings, etc.

Let TOs do their thing and let the players vote with their money. Let
WotC worry about keeping them in check if they violate DCI rules.

+1

Jacob is master of this thread.

Jacob - I'm pretty sure that WotC would take issue with a TO using an “inverted” prize structure in which the player with the worst record got the most stuff. We don't want players to be incentivized to scoop all their matches, hence why the MTR doesn't allow the loser to get more in a split arrangement. I believe it is this point that Toby was referencing.

Casual tournaments don't need to be strictly under DCI rules. Usually, players expect it works similarly to sanctioned events, and you probably could argue it's better if they fit from an educational POV, but it's up to the TO, who obviously will try to make comfortable the majority of their players, their clients, who, in the end, are the ones who spend money and let him and his LGS alive.

For things of this sort, often the easiest solution is the best. I know multiple stores who say that X-0-1 get a total of Y packs, and the sum of X-0-0 and X-1-0 is Y+1 packs, where Y is an even number. This is usually (in my experience) sufficient to prevent players from IDing. It also saves the store money in the case that the players want to ID anyway.

I don't recommend the strategy outlined by Lyle here. Structures where
players can't split in the last round frustrate players (they seem unfair)
as well as causing the following issues:
*Bribery (If you concede to me now I'll concede to you next time)
*Randomly determining a winner (We're out of time, but if we draw we lose
value - let's roll to see who wins)

In the long run it is a huge net negative for a TO to disincentivize IDs in
this way. Players want to split. They're going to split. I think it's silly
to try to legislate against it - you won't stop IDs, and you won't come out
ahead.


On Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 8:32 AM, Lyle Waldman <
forum-8256-213d@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:

> For things of this sort, often the easiest solution is the best. I know
> multiple stores who say that X-0-1 get a total of Y packs, and the sum of
> X-0-0 and X-1-0 is Y+1 packs, where Y is an even number. This is usually
> (in my experience) sufficient to prevent players from IDing. It also saves
> the store money in the case that the players want to ID anyway.
>
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–
-Eric Levine
Level 3 Judge
Amherst, MA

Originally posted by Eric Levine:

I don't recommend the strategy outlined by Lyle here. Structures where
players can't split in the last round frustrate players (they seem unfair)
as well as causing the following issues:
*Bribery (If you concede to me now I'll concede to you next time)
*Randomly determining a winner (We're out of time, but if we draw we lose
value - let's roll to see who wins)

In practise, the way a “split” works in this case, is that if X-0-0 + X-1-0 gets Y+1 packs for even Y, generally the players will split Y packs evenly, play the match, and the winner of the match gets the last pack. If the match goes to time, then the players will come to some sort of agreement over who gets the last pack, or one will scoop to the other “officially” and then continue playing the match while the TO is organizing end-of-tournament details to see who actually “wins”, or something of that sort. In my experience, the incentive of 1 pack isn't worth getting yourself DQ'd over by trying to do sketchy things, and usually the players find a way to handle it without getting into IPG territory. However, YMMV and so on.

I think as Adam and Darren, it would be pleasant that a pro goes to a local tournament, an FNM or some event that's low level or importance. That's very motivating for other players, to a TO, i think that the idea as been always to impprove the local environment, always looking for impprove prizes, better marketing for their events, and other stuff.
Based on that, forbid the competitive instances in your store. As some of you has said people, there's always a way to impprove, but looking for ways to avoid competitive players play the events, thats the kind of things that should be avoid.

Just as a side note, I happen to own the shop (Sky High Comics) that Kibler for years called his home shop. He still tells the joke that he is more likely to win a Pro Tour than FNM there :)

I agree with flat prize structures. I had a big problem with really competitive players and IDs at my FNMs many years ago. I tried adding an achievement program (similar to some of the pre-release achievement cards). I did this for the entire Shards block (I remember one of the achievements was to run a deck with 4 Tortoise Formations, which everyone in my store thought were the worst card printed at the time!). If, during the months after the set was released, a player completed all of the achievements (none had anything to do with winning FNM) that player would be awarded with a total of 36 packs. I had great turn-out for the events, but it still didn't trim the competitive players, they just didn't participate.

I switched to a flat prize structure and that has done much better for me. There is another store in the county that focuses on the competitive players and usually only the top 4 or top 8 will receive prizes at their FNM. I consistently have players for each of my two formats each week, but everyone gets prizes as long as they finish the tournament. I usually give one pack down to last place and any additional packs I start at the top and give an additional in brackets so that 1st gets a pack more than 2nd, who gets a pack more than 3rd and 4th, etc.

I really like the players that are attending my FNMs now. They are friendly and welcoming to new players. I do have some competitive players that still attend my FNMs because they enjoy the more relaxed atmosphere, but they usually don't bring Tier 1 decks and they are more than willing to play every match!

Regarding splits where there is a total pool for 1st and 2nd place of (X+1) + X packs, or something like a foil card for first place on the line - is it reasonable and acceptable for players to agree to a split, ID to ensure their swiss standings, and then play for that additional minor incentive?

Part of me says yes, as they haven't actually put anything on the table that wasn't already there, but another part tries to make a logical extension to wagering and/or trouble with the clauses regarding prize splits that require splitting evenly.

It also extends from here into trouble considering that these players could also theoretically “game the system” by IDing, but not actually agreeing to a split, and then playing for the entire 1st/2nd place prize pool (either as winner-take-all or as the original prize bracket may have been shaped) without risk of losing their swiss rank in tiebreakers, which at least seems like poor form, if not actually an illegal act by our standards.

Originally posted by Nathaniel Lawrence:

Regarding splits where there is a total pool for 1st and 2nd place of (X+1) + X packs, or something like a foil card for first place on the line - is it reasonable and acceptable for players to agree to a split, ID to ensure their swiss standings, and then play for that additional minor incentive?

No. This is a Serious Problem (influencing match outcomes by incentives) and would result in disqualification. One of the reasons this is not allowed is that it's pretty lousy on the other players, one of whom could (presumably) leapfrog the loser, if the players played out, into 2nd place.