Hi all,

I played (was not judging) in a pre release yesterday and witnessed what I think might be excessive slow play. Out of a 5 round tournament one player went to time 4 out of five rounds. One draw and 3 times winning the match 1-0 due to time being called in game 2.

I did watch so see if stalling might be an issue but didn't think so. The player just seemed to take forever to make decisions.
I know the player has been thinking of coming out to comp rel events, so I did mention that he would need to play faster if he got into comp rel.

The 2 things I am wondering are did I do the right thing giving the player the heads up about comp rel?
And is there anything I should or could have said to the2 L0's running and judging the event to give them tools to deal with this slow play at a reg rel prerelease?

Just because there aren't penalties at Regular doesn't mean players are free to do what they want. You can still tell a player that they need to play faster.

Naturally at prerelease we have to be careful about esclating things too much - the events have a lot of players who may simply be struggling to make decisions.

That said, its perfectly fine for a judge to prompt (Old term would be caution I guess?) a player to play faster.

In extreme cases (I.e more than the 2 strike policy at comp rel) - the JAR does allow you to give a game loss penalty. The player should however be explicitly warned that this will happen on the next occasion first however..

Agreed. While it a player's experience is important - regular and especially pre-releases are about a welcoming learning environment - so too are the opponents' experiences.

There are many ways to decrease your time spent thinking, but some of these require practice. The one thing I've seen to make the largest difference, is reminding players that they can spend their opponent's turn planning out their next turn. Many players start thinking of what they want to do when start their turn.

I feel like you did the right thing here, mentioning to the player that they'd need to play faster. The one thing I would do differently though is to emphasize to the player that playing slowly is not OK at all levels of play, not only Comp REL. While you can't give Warnings and so on at Regular REL, that doesn't mean it's OK to eat all the clock time and give your opponent draws, that's not fun for anyone. So I would have encouraged the player to play faster in all tournament types and at all RELs, not just Competitive. Failing to do this might (depending on the player) give the player the impression that Comp REL is the place to go after you've mastered your deck and can make decisions quickly, while Regular REL is the “training grounds” so to speak, where you have the leeway to take things at your leisure and eat clock time, which is not what we want.

Edited Lyle Waldman (April 24, 2017 03:47:48 PM)

Even at Reg REL players should play fast enough to allow 3 games in 50 mins. Players who play too slowly to accomplish this are denying their opponents the opportunity to be part of the fun. At Reg REL the judge's job is to facilitate fun and fair games, sometimes that means encouraging players to do things differently.