Just wanted to chime in with two thoughts on Adam's posts.

First, I generally advocate against interjecting oneself into issuing a
penalty – in other words, don't use the first-person “I.” While judges
are probably trying to be personable by doing this, I feel that doing so
actually has a high likelihood of making the judge appear punitive or
vindictive, rather than friendly.

Second: The very first sentence of the IPG proper is “Judges are neutral
arbiters and enforcers of policy and rules. ” One of the ramifications of
this is the idea is that judges are responsible for *applying* penalties
and remedies, but it is the players who have fundamentally *earned* the
penalty through their actions (or inactions).

Moreover, except in clearly defined cases, we don't have latitude to choose
whether a particular set of actions should or shouldn't merit a penalty;
this is pre-defined for us by the IPG. The benefit of this is spelled out
in the IPG itself: “If a judge makes a ruling that is consistent with
quoted text, then the complaints of a player shift from accusation of
unfairness by the judge to accusations of unfair policy.”

To say “I'm letting you off with a (W/w)arning” is totally the reverse of
this philosophy. As such, I would recommend avoiding it.

Thanks Paul. I understand your point.

The phrasing, “I'm letting you off with a warning,” was supposed to be play on a police officer pulling you over for speeding and saying, “I'm letting you off with a warning.” The phrasing doesn't need to be literarily that. “It's just a warning,” would be more appropriate.

Again, there is no big W small w warning here. A warning is a Warning.

I tend to use wording like “you have earned this warning / GL / etc. from this action which violates XXX policy in YYY document.”

If they look scared about a warning, I explain to them that we just track it to know if you're repeating this error.

They typically need more explanation for GL.

I have been evolving for a long time in shops where players are really afar from any competitive events et do not understand the philosophy behind most of sanctions given in tournaments because they have that weirb brain shortcut that whispers to them that giving them sanctions is sowehow saying that they are cheating. This also reflects in the reactions that “casual” players get on their faces when the opponent calls a judge and feel immediately attacked.

That is why I also agree that hiding in a way what infraction and how the associated penalty you are precisely giving is telling those people to keep their irrational fear of the sanction. Imagine now how they could react when they get 3 of those “just warnings”.

I almost always use the following pattern when I am giving a ruling and people have not been offended so far in PTQs and PPTQs :

-“Okay, what you did here is not allowed by the rules of magic. This is called (blabla). This is how we are going to fix this situation : ( blabla ). This infraction is finally associated with a warning that I will write on the match slip. To avoid getting any further ones in future, please be more careful.”

The thing is I think avoid the “I give” and “you did wrong” that might make things appear more personal than they are. I also think that saying “is not allowed” is better than “you break a rule”.

This also comes along with the classic saying “what can I do to help you” over the “what did go wrong” or “what is the problem here”. Ultimately, go through things calmly and be careful how you say things but do not minimize/emphacize what is hapenning.

I also think that this situation is going to be more and more common since PPTQs are bringing competitors within local stores. This is a good opportunity to well educate players about competitive infractions and sanctions.

Edited Théo CHENG (Jan. 5, 2015 04:24:46 PM)

I'm curious if anyone has any data on the average percentage of players new to the competitive scene in larger Comp REL tournaments. Obviously you'll see a greater number of less experienced grinders in Standard and Limited tournaments. But if we're looking at 15%-25% of players in big events being new to the environment I could see it becoming best practice when giving a warning to ask something like “Do you understand what this penalty means?”.

This could also open the door for people to ask questions about the specific infraction they've committed (eg, why am I getting a penalty when my opponent messed up?). It doesn't take much time for an experienced player to say “Yup, got it.” But it also gives an opportunity for someone to say “Could you explain what FtMGS means to me?” without having to stop you to ask for an explanation.

When I'm ready to issue the ruling and come to the part about the penalty, I usually say something like this:

“So, this action in an infraction called [XX}, and the recommended penalty for that infraction is a warning, which is appropriate here. It doesn't affect anything in the game right now, but if you get more warnings that could be a problem later. Please try to be more careful, and good luck!”

The “good luck” at the end I find tends to cheer them up :)

-Eric

That's the message I'm going for, but you've stated it much better Eric.

Hi all,

In the cases above I didn't mention that I gave the FtmGs to Anna, as I was sure that if the GRV was correct the FtmGs was correct - and I feel that FtmGs are usually not relevant except as a tracking feature, so I didn't put it in my original post, sorry.

I did mention it later as I wasn't sure if it was correct to apply it.

As for the penalties, the player in question knows what a warning entails, and what it means. In addition this was the final game of the final round before Top8, and he was in a very bad position to make top 8 (he was very much losing the deciding game) AND this was his first warning. I felt pretty confused that he was so annoyed about receiving the warning, but I let it stand because I felt it was warranted.

I'd also like to mention that it turned out if I had applied the GRV to Anthony in the first case, later on I would have had to upgrade another GRV he made to a game loss, so it ended up being a fairly important call to not penalise that player in that situation.

Thanks for the feedback guys, I feel that I need to take a little more time with each call, as I think I'm rushing things a little bit and that is making the customer service lackluster, and I will follow the advice given in this thread.