Hi all,

Interesting conversation came up in local judge chat.

You're at a competitive-level event, and you overhear two players talking, one of which says: Roll for prizes?
The other players says sure. They roll a D20 each, and then sit down and start playing magic.

You ask the players what they were doing, and they respond they were rolling to see if they winner or loser of the match would get the prizes - E.G they wanted to redistribute prizes they had not yet received in the tournament, but in a random way.

Note they were not rolling to see who gets the prizes, but rather if who wins gets the prizes vs loser getting the prizes, and all this is done before pregame procedure.

Is this a penalty? Infraction etc if so?
What about at Regular REL?

Making it so that the loser of a match gets more prize is suspiciously
close to bribery in my book as it incentivizes conceding the match.

This is either IDAW, or just isn't going to happen, in my mind; I don't see this happening early in a tournament where players don't know yet what their potential prize outcomes will be, and if it's happening later (particularly in the finals), players are now incentivized to manipulate their match result for the sake of better payout.

Even if I somehow end up not snap-DQing someone, I am very likely to put the fear of god into them; if they want to roll off for their prizes, they can do it after the tournament, and avoid all perception of wrongdoing.

Would't this be a form of gambling and a DQ'able offense? 4.4 doesn't mention determining prizes in this fashion but it is still a random outcome just like spnning a roulette wheel.

Edited Jason Crone (June 10, 2015 09:00:08 AM)

I'm thinking the same. Although there's nothing illegal technically
speaking, I feel there's a really fertile ground for cheating of bribery,
and it's quite close to IDAW. Due to the random prize assignment, one or
both players could be tempted to concede in order get better prizes, and
I'd be because of a dice roll, so, nasty situation, and possible DQ.

2015-06-10 15:57 GMT+02:00 Jason Crone <

I don't see many legal ways that players would arrive at this behavior. I would want to know what led them in this direction. If they're going to play the match out anyways, how is there any incentive for either party to agree to randomly determine who gets the prizes?

Something is missing. I suspect they agreed to some sort of concession, because one guy specifically wants the planeswalker points, and weren't intending on actually playing the match.

Thanks guys.

I'd like to clarify how this came up.
I asked a question that was intended to draw out an answer of “DQ for IDAW”.
My question was phrased: “You are a judging an FNM, and you overhear a player saying ‘Roll for prizes?’. What do you do?”

One Judge pointed out he could be offering to roll to redistribute prizes, and that got us questioning whether that was still a DQ.

Likeliness this happens in a tournament? Probably close to zero, but I found it interesting nonetheless.

Originally posted by Thomas Wood:

Likeliness this happens in a tournament? Probably close to zero

Yep - but this thread still did a good job illustrating why players shouldn't even try to tiptoe near that line.

How many responses leaned towards DQ? How small was the difference between DQ and not, for most of you?

The same phenomenon occurred in another recent thread, where the suspicion was the players were guilty of Collusion. Again, the number of “DQ!” replies was telling.

Often, players will ask us “how do I walk that line without crossing over?”; our best answer, as Judges, is simply “Don't even approach the line.” If they ask why, you can talk about how it's not really a line, it's a very grey area that morphs depending on circumstance and the judge(s) involved.

If they push for an answer, don't try to help; let them know that they're probably already too close to that line for their own good, and they should stop trying to circumvent the rules.

d:^D