Hello fellow judges!

It would be great if you could share your opinions and your thought process on the following scenario.

A team of players sets up a secret agreement. Before a tournament, they create a ranking list among themselves (based on whatever criterion they like, i.e. amount of lifetime PWPs, age, length of socks…). Then, when two members of the team face each other in a tournament match, they play their match, but in case the lower ranked player would win a game, he/she automatically 2:0 concedes to the higher ranked player (for the greater good of the team). After the tournament, the team splits the prizes won in a way that the conceding players get more (i.e. get compensated for their sacrifice).

Thanks,

Milan

Well, if it's a secret agreement, you can't do really much on this :)

Even if some player confesses at the middle of the tournament, as long as they don't fit any Bribery or IDaW issues, you can't punish them for that. A player may concede at any time :)

Edited Joaquín Pérez (Sept. 1, 2014 04:14:48 PM)

To me, the key phrase is “secret agreement”. I do know that such things occur; I usually do not know about them, nor the specifics of them, when I could actually do something about them.

If, after an event, you obtain solid evidence of a bribery situation, you can file an Investigation via the Judge Center, and/or contact Eric Shukan through the Judge Center. If something comes to your attention during an event, then apply policy.

And if you just suspect things like this are happening, accept our limitations and maintain the integrity of your event as best you can.

d:^D

This seems just barely on the wrong side of Bribery so I would issue DQs to everyone who I could confirm involved, although as has been said, if it's secret, then it's secret XD

Edited Lyle Waldman (Sept. 2, 2014 03:26:00 PM)

Minor point:

MTR 2.1: “… either player may concede to or draw with the other, though if the conceding player won a game in the match, the match must be reported as 2-1.”

Adam: yes, that is the reason why the conceding player concedes right before he/she would win a game.

Out of curiosity, why wouldn't this be IDaW? They're using an outside method (The ranking system) to determine the winner of a match (In the event that the ‘weaker’ player wins). If only the ‘stronger’ player wins I'm not sure there is an issue.

The “stronger player” loses all the time. Elite HOF-caliber players don't
win every tournament they play. If you see a problem with the ranking
system determining that the weaker player wins, then the same should apply
to the stronger player.

Personally, if we're not aware of such a system being used, then I don't
see how we can penalize it. Obviously, if one of the players lays the
whole thing out for a judge during the tournament, then we might need to do
something. As far as I'm aware, while this isn't something we should
encourage, we're going to be pretty limited in what we can actually do in
an event in any kind of real-world version of this situation.

I will, of course, defer to Scott on current understanding of policy on this matter. But, my understanding of the history here is that this is a common practice, well-understood and accepted in the community regarding the practices of many teams, and long recognized as being un-police-able and un-enforceable from the DCI's perspective. Even if we were to learn that a team has such an arrangement in place, so long as no discussion or offer is made on site or at the match, we simply consider it a non-issue and outside of our policy.

James, are you saying it's an open secret among part of the magic community that some players will determine the results of any matches they may play prior to the tournament beginning, and furthermore that the DCI has officially chosen to take no action? That is disappointing to me if true. It seems inconsistent with their policy on cheating and harassment.

Similar acts of collusion would result (and have resulted) in a scandal in the realm of baseball or soccer, for example.

The DCI has officially chosen to make it illegal. As said above, if you can prove it, they're engaging in Bribery or IDAW (or both). However, the thing with secret agreements is that we don't know about them, and can't prove that any particular player is part of it or any particular match result was improperly determined. Since these are win-win agreements, I doubt you'll get anyone to roll over on their teammates, and since wiretapping is illegal…I don't see any way that we can proactively prevent this or “crack down” on it. The closest you could get is to put a judge on every match where two players from the same team are competing and hope to see someone almost win game 1 and then concede, which still isn't proof. We've got better ways to spend our time.

The DCI could certainly choose to investigate after the event in question, just as it has done in investigations of cheating and harassment. Since some judges apparently have received word of it, I don't agree that no one will “roll over” on their teammates–someone is clearly talking about it.
If it's a matter of the investigations committee never hearing tell about this manner of collusion, then I could understand why nothing has been done. If it's a matter of the DCI essentially turning a blind eye to this sort of collusion then I might still understand but I'm disappointed to hear it.

I still don't see why this is illegal, even confessing at the middle of the match.

“Yup judge, I concede to him freely because I want him to be in top prizes. He's my friend and tested a lot more. I was here just for fun and artist signatures”.

Note that's quite different from “Hey Joe, concede to me and I'll give you some of my prizes” but no different from “Hey Joe, my dear friend, concede to me, you're not going to win anyway”. USC-minor issues apart and assuming this is respectful and friendly, I don't see why we can punish that attitude.

Yeah, of course, if you convince 3500 ppl to concede to you prior to your event, you can win a GP automatically. Good luck!! :)

Originally posted by Joaquín Pérez:

I still don't see why this is illegal, even confessing at the middle of the match.

“Yup judge, I concede to him freely because I want him to be in top prizes. He's my friend and tested a lot more. I was here just for fun and artist signatures”.

The issue here is collusion, it is against policy for a match result to be agreed in advance for any reward or payment for that result. If a player confesses that they agreed to a certain result for an explicit reward then we have an issue. In these sort of team strategies getting enough support for an investigation/DQ is going to be tough.

Originally posted by Joaquín Pérez:

I still don't see why this is illegal, even confessing at the middle of the match.

“Yup judge, I concede to him freely because I want him to be in top prizes. He's my friend and tested a lot more. I was here just for fun and artist signatures”.

That's fine, but that's not what the first post described. The first post describes a system where players agree to concede to some set of “better” players in exchange for a prize split that rewards them for doing so and in exchange for being conceded to by some set of “worse” players. Concession for concession or concession for prizes are Bribery and using an outside the game ranking system to determine a winner is IDAW.