Grabbed this discussion from a german magic forum, and thought it might be worth to pass up for discussion and especially our high-level Judges, who might find themselves in such a situation ;).

For those of you that did not catch the new Premier Event policy, let me outline the (for this scenario important) changes:

a) Obtaining Silver Pro Level grants you an invitation to the NEXT Protour, meaning the Pro Tour immediately following crossing the Pro Point threshold to Silver.
b) Grand Prix with 1200 or more players grant Pro Tour invitations to all players with a x-2 record or better

The threshold to Silver is 20 Points.

Now, consider we have two players, Anton and Karl, who both made top 8 of some GP with 1200 or more players. They are thereby automatically qualified for whatever Pro Tour the GP feeds to.
They also happen to both have 15 Pro Points as of before the GP.
If they loose the quarterfinals, they will get 4 Pro Points (leaving them at 19 Points and thereby below silver) and some amount of money.
If they win the quarterfinals, they will get at least 5 Pro Points (leaving them at 20+ Points and thereby obtaining Silver at this GP) and some bigger amount of money. The difference between loosing the quarterfinals and the semifinals is around 500€ I believe.

But, if they loose the quarterfinals and stay at 19 Points, they have a secured invitation not only to the Pro Tour they qualified for through beeing x-2 or better at this GP, but also for the NEXT PT, because for attending PT 1, they will get (at least) 3 Pro Points, cross the Threshold of 20, and thereby qualify for PT 2.
If they, on the other Hand, win the quarterfinals and loose the semis, they will cross 20 Points at this GP already, and thereby ‘waste’ their Silver-threshold PT-invitation.

Now, it COULD happen that both players decide for themselves that loosing the quarterfinals grants them more Value (one more Pro Tour means more Pro Points overall means a better chance of going Gold and jumping the ‘gravy train’), and then, both players want to concede the quarterfinals.

How would this be resolved?

On Fri May 03 12:48, Philip Körte wrote:
> Now, it COULD happen that both players decide for themselves that loosing the quarterfinals grants them more Value (one more Pro Tour means more Pro Points overall means a better chance of going Gold and jumping the ‘gravy train’), and then, both players want to concede the quarterfinals.
>
> How would this be resolved?

This has been pointed out to representatives of Organized Play as an Undesirable Feature. It seems likely that this will be changed before it is relevant and that therefore it won't come up. We hope.

Feel free to provide insight into what the answer is should that come up. Perhaps let them both lose and give someone a bye in the semis? I'm not sure how else we can resolve it. It's possible the scoring software won't like this solution.

Matt

I agree with Matt that this will most likely be changed before being relevant. The point I want to address is what do you do when both players want to concede at the same time. The way I have always thought of it is they play for the loss. Play the match and the winner gets to put on the slip that they lost (almost like splitting an uneven prize and playing for the odd pack).

I've never actually seen a situation where both players wanted to lose, but
I have imagined it.

I remember back to being a fairly new player once, I was invited to a gpt
and had no idea what it was. First prize for this gpt was just the byes,
and second was a box. I didn't care about the byes, since I had no plans
to go to the gp, but I was concerned that I would make it to the finals
against someone who was in a similar situation.

In the end, I decided to skip the event and let the people who cared about
the byes play for them. But I'm still curious what would have happened.
If my opponent and I sat down and both wanted to scoop, would whichever of
us had said it first got what we wanted?

The rules state that a player can concede at any time, so…..I guess that
would be it. But it still seemed wrong.

Maybe what wizards can do is allow players to choose to take a lower prize
if they want to at a grand prix. If you make first you can choose to have
either the first place prize or the eighth place prize? Seems weird, but
might solve the concerns.
On 2013-05-03 9:18 AM, “Erik Mulvaney” <forum-4073-7161@apps.magicjudges.org>
wrote:

It would also solve the concern if they'd just say ‘crossing silver threshold gives you a PT invite to the next Pro Tour you are not otherwise invited to’ or ‘crossing silver threshold gives you a PT invite to one PT of your choice within the next 12 months’.

Especially the second solution would also solve the other problem with the new policy - cross silver threshold at a GP withoutplaying x-2 (you were at 19 pro points before the Event) - say, e.g., play a GP in europe, cross silver-thresh, be qualified for a PT in the US about a week later.
Good Luck getting a Visa. Might be even more of a problem for other resgions, or going into other regions (China e.g.).

I believe Christian Gawrilowicz (may have have been someone else) spoke of
a similar situation with a win-and-in not too long ago. Both players wanted
to concede to the other. As I recall, the creative solution given was to
have the players play out the match and the winner would have the right to
concede the match to the opponent.

Hopefully the people at OP will come up with a better answer to this
situation, but the given solution is a creative way to solve the problem of
both players wishing to concede.

-George FitzGerald
L2, Sarasota, FL

“Play a best-of-three series, winner of that gets to concede the match” has actually been used as a solution in cases where both players want to lose the current match. In the incredibly unlikely event that it comes up again, that's an option to keep in mind.

Shouldn't players be able to drop between Swiss and Top 8?