“If the dropping player instead does NOT drop and simply not show in the
next round, he will still get the PWP for that round - to which he really
should not be entitled to.”

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe a player losing a match receives no
PWPs. So there really isn't a benefit for them of no-showing a round.

-George FitzGerald
L2, Sarasota, FL

@Carter: Disagree that it's bad PR and that education isn't possible after the fact. Depends on how you frame it. “Dear Player X, you got a match loss last week, you suck,” is very different from “Dear Player X. We noticed that you've been leaving your events early without letting us know that you want to drop. This usually leads to other players having nobody to play for a round without knowing what's going on, and some extra churn for the staff, and we'd all appreciate it if you could take a moment next time to let us know when you're going to leave. Here's how.”

@Michael: Probably logistically very difficult, as Casey says, and ultimately my belief is that the folks that have said this is about education are probably on the right track, this is just another opportunity to educate, no different from the guy who comes up after the round is paired and gets educated at that moment.

@Philip: If this isn't part of Andy/Eric's post tomorrow, I'll follow-up, that's a great point.

One thing I forgot to mention in my previous reply - agree that a fully written out penalty isn't really needed for a No Show, so judges can reduce burden here. At least for me, all I need is “No Show” in the drop column, and a judge name.

EDIT: Whoops, George is right, no PWP for losing, so deleting that portion. However, a similar related idea is potentially interesting, what if you lose some small number of PWP for no-showing?

Edited Nicholas Fang (March 7, 2013 07:50:11 PM)

On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 5:49 AM, Nicholas Fang
<forum-3257@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:
> @Michael: Probably logistically very difficult, as Casey says, and
> ultimately my belief is that the folks that have said this is about
> education are probably on the right track, this is just another opportunity
> to educate, no different from the guy who comes up after the round is paired
> and gets educated at that moment.


The logistics get much easier if a little star is placed on the
results slip to indicate that the player is a chronic no show.

I'm unsure if this is a big enough problem to have this amount of
effort put into solving. I've never seen this affect more than 2 or 3%
of tables. I guess for the guy who happens to have it two or three
rounds in a row at a GP might be pretty pissed though. He's lost the
first 4 rounds and the 3 rounds he was hoping for some fun games in
don't even happen.


–
Gareth Pye
Level 2 Judge, Melbourne, Australia
Australian MTG Forum: mtgau.com
gareth@cerberos.id.au - www.rockpaperdynamite.wordpress.com
“Dear God, I would like to file a bug report”

Originally posted by Gareth Pye:

I'm unsure if this is a big enough problem to have this amount of
effort put into solving. I've never seen this affect more than 2 or 3%
of tables.

Ask any Grand Prix scorekeeper who's ever entered these as penalties properly and I'm pretty sure they will disagree with you. Approximately 115 no shows were registered in Yokohama last weekend, out of 2290ish players, and entering these right now is nowhere close to approximating free.

So a button in WER to mark the player as “Drop - No Show” where the
relevant penalty is automatically entered would be worth while.

And those numbers lined up with the % I estimated, 5% of the players
at the event no showed I'm going to guess at worst that was across
about 3 rounds so around 3% of tables in any given round were no
shows.

Although the drain on judge staff to handle the no shows during the
critical rounds for watching for collusion is worrying.

The problem is that an automatic button wouldn't record a judge's name. I guess if they could default it to use the HJ it would work (or if you can record without a judge name since it doesn't matter for No Show).

The best answer is probably still “educate players”. Announcements starting around round 4 to the effect of “if you don't plan to play the next round, please mark drop on your slip or come up and tell the scorekeeper as a courtesy to your fellow players.” might help.

I could see a penalty of losing PW points at least making the Match Loss relevant, but chances are that the super-majority of people who are No-Showing aren't at all concerned with PW points, so that's about the same to them as “no penalty,” just like the current Match Loss.

Closing topic temporarily.

I wanted to come in and let everyone know that we do value all penalty entries, even those that don’t result in a disqualification. We haven’t used them as extensively as we could in the past couple of years, but that is something we plan on changing in 2013.

One of our goals for this year is to make some parts of the investigation process more proactive, but we need data to know who to look at. Penalties are the main data point for this project. We need your help, especially scorekeepers at Competitive level events, to make sure we have as much accurate data as possible.

The first thing we need to do is teach players why this particular situation is important before we start taking action against them. What are some ways we can go about doing that?

Announcements at the start of the tournament, and at the beginning of each round starting maybe round 4 to the effect of, “If you don't plan to play the next round, please mark drop on your slip or come up and tell the scorekeeper as a courtesy to your fellow players.” might help.

@Eric - So Im fine with recording ML Penalties for Tardiness if there is a reason behind it. If you are saying that WOTC is going to begin to use these numbers and maybe try to find a way to disincentivize (is that even a word?) players from No-Showing, then great! And if WOTC is serious about tracking them, an Update to WER would make it that much better. (If ~50% of your penalties in an event are No-Show, why wouldnt you make that easier)
But if these specific penalties are going into a big black hole, then all they are doing is creating busy work for the scorekeepers. Users of a system, even judges, arent going to perform an action that they see no value in, especially if its time consuming or tedious.

I do agree Judges can step up their efforts to educate players prior to the event. Sure, it can fill the time that we currently use for explaining the new MT policy (cause everyone is familiar with that now…right) I dont think anyone can argue that it isnt a fine idea.

Education is a nice thought, but if there's no advantage to the
players it's unrealistic to expect them to do extra work… especially
as they've usually just lost another match and are in a negative frame
of mind.

Some TOs give out participation gifts at registration, e.g. a few
packs per player… as I understand it, there are legal benefits to
this in some jurisdictions.

If getting players to properly register when they drop is a high
priority, my suggestion would be that players be given their “thankyou
gifts” when they drop instead of when they register. In places where
the margins are thinner, there are alternatives. At a stretch,
players could be entered into a raffle when they drop properly, which
is a small incentive but may be enough.

Gavin:
Entering a player in a raffle when they drop provides no incentive to a player who is leaving the venue.

Additionally, it requires the player who dropped to follow the result slip back to the scorekeeper.

It may be worth noting that in the US-Northeast region, we have been not reporting no shows for a great while. Which is somewhat what you get when the RC and most active L3 at the PTQ level recommend against entering the tardiness match loss penalties into the system.

Edited William Anderson (March 14, 2013 09:41:28 PM)

Hopefully that RC and active L3 have seen this thread and the request to enter the penalties, so future no shows will be recorded. WotC is aware that there has been inconsistency about this in the past, which is why they said they don't plan to look at previous no shows for future action, but intend to do something about future no shows.

Still, educating players and appealing to their common decency is the best way to get them to record drops properly. It won't stop no shows completely, of course, but habitual no showers might see some kind of negative consequences from that behavior at some point (but only if we all agree to record them appropriately). :)

OK, I am back from SCG Birmingham and I want to post here my little experiment done at the event.

At the beginning of the day the HJ announced in his opening remarks how to drop from the event correctly and that if players did not drop from the event, they would receive a penalty. Then, at the beginning of round two he announced it again (because players typically start dropping at the end of round two) and again later in the the tournament.

272 players played in Birmingham. 176 of those people dropped from the tournament. 173 of them dropped properly, leaving only 3 no show tardiness penalties on the day. Conservatively, I believe that the announcements saved us somewhere between a dozen and two dozen no show infractions.

I understand that one point does not a trend make. Therefore, I would like to see this experiment done at other events, including larger events such as Grand Prix, to truly gauge its effectiveness. Also, I would like to have a control group of events who don't make the announcements.

Also, this could be added to tournament policy:
“At large events, the DCI recommends that tournament officials educate all players by announcing how to correctly drop from the event and remind them that leaving the tournament without dropping will result in a penalty.”

Where's the “like” button?

Sent from my iPhone