Ok So I called my rep at Wizards and as stated earlier he read this word
for word to me.


“Players may drop from a tournament at any time. If a player drops from a
tournament before the first round of play has started, he or she is
considered to have not participated in the tournament and will not be
listed in the finish order nor receive participation Planeswalker Points.
Players choosing to drop from a tournament must inform the Scorekeeper by
the means provided for that tournament before the pairings for the next
round are generated. Players wanting to drop after the Scorekeeper begins
pairing for the next round will be paired for that round. If a player does
not show up for his or her match, he or she will be automatically dropped
from the tournament unless they report to the Scorekeeper. Players that
repeatedly and/or intentionally drop from tournaments without informing the
scorekeepers of those events may be the subject of DCI penalties up to and
including suspension.”

So when I explained about only having 8 players what do you tell the other
7 he said the exact thing that I said with a bit of a twist. He said to
inform the player of this rule in the MTR and let players know that when
they pay and enter the turnament for a draft ect. that when you are seated
to draft or at the point of the start of the turnament parings will be
made. if at that point they do not show up to table or leave in the middle
of picking cards they are givin the lose and droped.

So it boils down to when the pairings are made. if you wait till after the
draft to pair then you have to drop them and it is no longer a sanctioned
turnament but if you pair before they start (witch will be relevent for the
MM2 drafts) drafting the packs then if they drop it is still sanctioned and
they are given the lose and dropped.

He also said take note of the last sentance as if they do this repeatedly
it could be subject to dci penalties. This comes down to someone leaving
because of drafting good cards vs someone with a family emergency. I guess
would be the Owner T.O. or Judges descresion on that point.

Hope this helps and glad I was not doing it wrong all this time just have
to better inform the players upfront.

“”AJ, that if this does happen, you just re-sanction the event as Casual
(which has a four-player minimum) - players miss out on a couple
planeswalker points, but most probably won't care, and they'll still get to
play without violating sanctioning guidelines.“”

This is not possable with say a FNM as if you do not run sanctiond
turnament you pre release alotment from wizards drops dromaticly it is
directly tied to you fnm participation.

Originally posted by A.J. Reimann:

This is not possable with say a FNM as if you do not run sanctiond
turnament you pre release alotment from wizards drops dromaticly it is
directly tied to you fnm participation.

That logic sounds suspiciously close to places that just add people who aren't there to events in order to hit the right numbers.

Also, just because the tournament was no longer able to be run as
sanctioned doesn't mean it can't be run. You can still pair players. They
can still play. You can still hand out prizes. The only real loss is a few
planeswalker points. If someone leaves during draft, the loss of
sanctioning isn't going to impact anything else.

Nick Short
L2
Chicago, IL, USA

I do think that this issue is more common than people are giving it credit for. I have seen several times people open a pack in a draft with 2 valuable cards, and in many cases, those people dropped from the tournament. You can talk all you want about discouraging that sort of behavior, but really, it is unreasonable to expect a player to give up a large amount of monetary value for the good of the sanctioned-ness of the draft.

I understand official policy, but perhaps it is something to think about that people can pay and enter a draft fully expecting it to count for planeswalker points (which many, many players do care about rather a lot for GP byes), then have the draft suddenly not count. I can see that being quite unfair to the players, where they are not being given the value that they were initially (and reasonably) expecting. That seems like really terrible customer service to me, and I know a lot of people who care enough about planewalker points and operate their playing on a really tight budget for whom this could be a substantial setback.

With an 8-player draft, pairings are (can be / should be) set once everyone's seated. Arguably, if a player drops during the draft, he or she is already paired for the first round, so your event can still fire as a sanctioned event.

Just to be safe, announce that as you seat the players - and don't use random pairings. (That's even worse than “lands in front” - LOL!)

d:^D

On Sun, May 17, 2015 at 6:31 AM, Nick Short
<forum-18351-e802@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:
> Also, just because the tournament was no longer able to be run as
> sanctioned doesn't mean it can't be run. You can still pair players. They
> can still play. You can still hand out prizes. The only real loss is a few
> planeswalker points. If someone leaves during draft, the loss of
> sanctioning isn't going to impact anything else.

Or invites to the RPTQ. For some players the intangible prizes that
are conditional on it being sanctioned is 100% of why they have turned
up and paid their money. WotC, your local business laws and the player
who drops can put you in a place where several people are going to
lose which ever option you pick. The pair as they sit to crack packs
option sounds like the best solution.

A question that arises from this: in a Swiss draft tournament with two 8-player pods, should pairings be done non-randomly (or rather, should seating be done non-randomly)? I'd never realized that was the case, although I agree it seems preferable.

Sent from my iPad

Justin - I like to seat randomly, but always pair across to maintain the integrity of the draft. If you break pods to pair after three rounds, you'll be doing a typical Swiss pairing (randomly within similar records).

d:^D