I'm having a hard time lining up that explanation rationally. I agree it is perceptibly lousy on the other players, which is why I'm asking the question; however I'm not seeing an incentive to actually influence a match result as you've described it? (Unless the ID itself is somehow considered ‘influenced’ here, in which case, why aren't all ID/split situations considered this way?)

Originally posted by Thomas Ralph:

No. This is a Serious Problem

Be careful, here…

Two players see that, by drawing, they will ensure themselves of 1st & 2nd - so they report their result to us as an ID. Their match is now over, and we hand them the prize and say “it's up to you to split it” (i.e., that's no longer our problem).

What if they then flip a coin, or play rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock? OMG, that's Improperly Determining … oh, wait, no one's winning, their match is over. Still, it must be wrong, right? Nope…

It's unfortunate that they did something that's looked upon as a Serious Problem (and a DQ offense in a Comp/Pro REL match) - but it's outside the tournament; the match result was not influenced by any improper actions or agreements.

As for the people who “could (presumably) leapfrog the loser” - I'll just repeat something Andy and I have both said, many many times: win more. The opportunity to ID in the last round(s) of an event is a benefit from playing well earlier in the event.

d:^D

Coincidentally, we had this come up last night at our LGS. The shop runs a “Super” Standard event, where only players X-1 or X-0-1 get 3 packs, and the first place winner gets more. This scales with attendance.

Last night the two X-0 players got to the finals and wanted to ID. They did the math and realized that together they got 11 packs and wanted to ID and split them. I explained that they didn't have to ID to split, as one of them would win and get the X-0 packs and the loser would get the X-1 packs, and they can agree to split those even if they're playing the match.

It evolved into a conversation about what Uncle Scott is saying: they've agreed to split them, which means that those packs become THEIRS (plural people). If they want to take that stack of packs home or upstairs or the parking lot and play a game of “let's play a game for each pack and the winner of each games gets a pack”, some other contest, or even a random method, that is their prerogative. As long as they've decided their match

I find it acceptable for players to have the: “Let's ID. We'll get X packs for 1st and 2nd place.” “Oh there's an odd number of packs, what will we do?” “We can play later to see who gets the odd pack.” As long as they turn in their slip, their match is over and they can play for that pack at the table.

I think it's unreasonable that we would be heavier-handed because there's an odd pack for them to split. If it was an even split, they'd just do that, but they can't. The intent is for them to get an accepted medium number of packs to reduce the disparity between winning and losing. I don't think they really care about that extra pack in terms of intent for bribery/wagering/IPW, so why should we be hard on them?

I think this kind of “split and play for prizes” is perfectly fine, but do the players even need to draw as long as they establish the prize split firmly before playing and then play the match normally?

At Gameday at our store I wasn't judging and was playing in the finals. My opponent offered the split, and I agreed, but someone had to win the playmat, so we decided whoever won our match would win the playmat. We played our match and when we were done got our prizes and split them as previously described.

In no way was the outcome of our game determined by the prize, and we agreed to split and prize distribution before playing, but the judge (who I'm mentoring) jumped in and said he wasn't sure but thought we couldn't play for the mat. Everyone standing around agreed we could, since the outcome of the match was independent of the prize.

What you described is fine, Matt.

I had a similar situation come up with my LGS. They recently started running tournaments with the following payout guaranteed:

1st: $100
2nd: $50
3rd-4th: $25
5th-8th: $10

For additional rules, they required preregistration, had a 24 player maximum, stated that players could not split prize in Top 8, and could not Intentional Draw in round 5 (and that round 5 would be untimed, presumably to prevent playing for an unintentional draw). When I pointed out that sanctioned tournaments had to adhere to the MTR, and thus IDs had to be allowed, they chose to hold it as an unsanctioned tournament.

Now, to the best of my knowledge, in unsanctioned tournaments you can use whatever house rules you want, but it seems to me that they were being rather stubborn here. I mean, with cash payout, one would assume that you'd want to ensure tournament integrity by having it sanctioned (and possibly run it at Comp REL). It's just been bugging me: can they have an unsanctioned tournament for the purposes of disallowing IDs?

EDIT: Sorry for thread necromancy, but this seemed to fit in with my situation,so I didn't feel making a new thread was necessary.

Edited Hank Wiest (June 3, 2015 11:14:20 AM)

Originally posted by Hank Wiest:

in unsanctioned tournaments you can use whatever house rules you want

This statement is correct, and overrides any concerns you and I might share about the wisdom of their choices…

d:^D

Also, there's nothing to stop you using the IPG and running the event in a Competitive REL manner even though it's not sanctioned. We ran a mixed format event for a Store Championship 2 day event last year doing just that.

Originally posted by Mark Mc Govern:

What we ended up doing was running it unsanctioned, but adhering to the rest of the MTR and IPG as normal.