We have available to us the Annotated IPG, which breaks down the IPG line-by-line because it's so dense (and from what I've heard we have an Annotated MTR somewhere as well). What if we had an Annotated JAR document?

It wouldn't be because of density/length purposes, because the JAR doesn't have those issues like the IPG/MTR do. But I've seen people get confused on Regular REL policy and how the JAR applies to what and where, and I'm curious as to the effect/helpfulness a document breaking down the JAR line-by-line would be to judges.

My questions are as such:

1) Is there already a resource/resources out there that you think do the job an AJAR (I already love the name) would do, but better? If they exist, would an AJAR be a good consolidation of said information, plus all the other information out there?

2) Would judges find this useful? I can imagine it being a helpful resource for L1's and judge candidates looking to certify, and maybe it can help in illustrating the fundamental differences that Regular has compared to higher-competition events. But I'm one person; others may feel differently.

I'm not thinking something hugely complex and as long as the IPG itself, but more in-depth on the philosophy of the fixes and unwanted behaviors, the giving of GL's for repeated offenses, and so on–something akin to what was done on the JudgeCast RREL episode. I'd like to get some feedback and see if this is worth pursuing, or if some variant of it is.

Thanks!

Hey Matt,

My straight forward opinion on an AJAR is:

The JAR is 2 pages long and easy to find information at a glance. The issue isn't getting people to understand the JAR, it's getting them to read it/know it exists in the first place.

And if getting them to read a 1.5 page doc doesn't work, getting them to read a 7 page version isn't going to work either. And really, the JAR has a AIPG level of detail already in it. If you look at most of the sentences, You couldn't really expand on most of them.

The AIPG and AMTR work because those documents are relatively long and very dense with a lot of significant phrases. The JAR is much more YOLO.

The effort is in making people aware the JAR exists, or helping them remember it

-bryan


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I agree with Bryan that I don't think we can explain the JAR even more than the document itself does already, but another sentence you wrote worries me:

Originally posted by Matt Cooper:

But I've seen people get confused on Regular REL policy and how the JAR applies to what and where

So please, tell us more what you mean by this, as here lies a challenge and an apparent area for improvement!

@Bryan Thanks for the feedback. I think that helps clarify for me why an AJAR is less necessary; I wanted to get some perspective on that because I thought I might've been missing something in my thought process. It makes sense once you think about how hard getting people to read the JAR is, despite its length.

@Dustin This is me bad with phrasing–I refer to the cases where judges think they apply typical CREL policy to RREL events, like handing out formal penalties from the IPG instead of applying the JAR philosophy and fixes. I felt an AJAR would go in detail about why we do things the way we do them at Regular; kind of like the expansions the AIPG does for the philosophy on each infraction/penalty/remedy. I don't believe it's a failure of the JAR itself here–rather, a failure to read and understand the JAR and RREL policy. As Bryan suggested, there might be some area of improvement in making sure people are aware of the resources (such as the JAR) and fully reading through it–including the wall of text at the beginning which discusses the policy–but I'm not sure how to fix/improve it if it is an issue. (The wall-of-text issue would be hard to solve without increasing the length of the document, so I don't think it's that.)

Edited Matt Cooper (Dec. 2, 2015 02:30:25 PM)

Well here's something that might benefit from an AJAR: when is something ‘DEC’ and when is something ‘L@EC’?
Last week I had a candidate apply the JAR's DEC fix when a player picked up the top 2 cards of his library, the second card stuck to the one he was drawing, but stopped before they touched the rest of his hand.

I think that might be a case of the candidate understanding when a card is “drawn” versus when it's not, which I'm not sure is necessarily written down in any of the documents–JAR, IPG, or MTR. I can see where the confusion would be, since it looks like they drew an extra card to someone who doesn't know how we define the point of no return for card draw.

The problem with trying to spell that out in the JAR is that a) the case is different when the player is drawing into an empty hand, and b) the JAR is stretched thin as it is, given it's tight for space to put additional things. (Which is something an AJAR would try to solve by making a detailed optional document to help explain these things, but then we circle back to the point Bryan and Dustin made about people actually reading it.)

I had partially seen this as an opportunity to help L1 candidates understand RREL policy better, so there is value in the point you bring up.

I realize that I'm a bit behind the rest of the conversation, but Mystical Tutor is just starting its lessons on the JAR at this point. It isn't quite an AJAR, but we plan on covering the whole document and discussing key information that could be missed just by reading over it.

http://mysticaltutor.org/index.php/lessons/judging-at-regular