At our WMCQ, two players brought to the scorekeeper a result slip with “2:0:2” saying that “We did not actually play those 2 drawn games. We just decided that in addition to the two games we actually played, we will draw two additional games.” and followed up with “Could we add one hundred such games?”

I think the result of that, if permitted, would be that their second tiebreaker (game win percentage) would go down a lot (probably to 0.33) and that the third tiebreaker of all their opponents would slightly decrease (but not to 0.33, unless multiple players in the tournament did this).

I would not allow this, but I would not use any rules to support my position. At Regular REL, depending on the tournament, I might permit this. What would you do?

From MTR 2.4: If a game or match is not completed, players may concede or mutually agree to a draw in that game or match.

Players can agree to Intentionally Draw games, and I've seen it before. If, perhaps because both players are good friends, both mulliganed to 4, and they want to play a “real” game of Magic, they may agree to draw the game they're playing, and move to the next one.

Having said that, I'd be very suspicious of any match slip that was turned in as “2-1-100” as I doubt that they actually played 103 games of magic in 50 minutes or less.

No, Magic is actually played as first-to-two (first-to-three at some
professional tournaments), not best-of-three.

MTR 2.1. :
A Magic match consists of a series of games that are played until one side
has won a set number of games,
usually two. Drawn games do not count toward this goal.

2014-09-15 11:26 GMT+02:00 Bartłomiej Wieszok <

In addition to players being able to concede at any time, players are allowed to agree to a draw at any time. That means they do not have to shuffle and present 100 times to draw 100 times. If both players agree that they would like to draw 100 games prior to playing the games that matter, that is a legal tournament result.

So long as they're not doing it specifically in an attempt to crash WER/DCIR, I have no problem with this. It is a legal tournament action.

Originally posted by Petr Hudecek:

I would not allow this, but I would not use any rules to support my position. At Regular REL, depending on the tournament, I might permit this. What would you do?

Seth Black
Having said that, I'd be very suspicious of any match slip that was turned in as “2-1-100” as I doubt that they actually played 103 games of magic in 50 minutes or less.

I've been known to ask other judges against whom I'm paired, “Hey, want to draw the first hundred games?” while at my LGS's Regular REL events. It often gives us a chance to educate nearby players about legally restarting mulligans and all it costs is the scorekeeper laughing when he hits our match slip.

If two players want to draw any number of games (as long as they're playing at a reasonable pace), I don't see any problem there - all they're doing is nuking their own (almost never relevant) tiebreakers. I can't think of any possible scenario where this would lead to abuse or even disrupt the event (beyond the scorekeeper finding out that you can't enter more than seven draws for a given match in WER).

Originally posted by Petr Hudecek:

I would not allow this, but I would not use any rules to support my position.

This is not something that you get to decide, honestly. Drawing a game or match is, as Steve eloquently put it, is a legal tournament action. Disallowing something that “feels wrong” on no basis other than that isn't a good thing.

John, just wrote and passed my L1 test today; but seeing this post makes me want to do the same at my LGS as an educational point(or if I'm playing against a friend at Regular REL and we both have horrible hands), didn't think that was something that could be done :) Thanks for that :)

> I've been known to ask other judges against whom I'm paired, “Hey, want to draw the first hundred games?” while at my LGS's Regular REL events. It often gives us a chance to educate nearby players about legally restarting mulligans and all it costs is the scorekeeper laughing when he hits our match slip.
>
I think there are other ways to educate player in the same concept without teaching them that it's “ok” to troll the scorekeeper.
-Bryan

I want to say that this borders on tournament fraud, as it messes with those players' opponents' 4th tiebreakers (OGW%) like whoa. I'm not sure that this is true, though, since 4th tiebreakers almost never matter, so maybe it's OK to let it slide?

EDIT: Apparently OGW% is the 4th tiebreaker, not 3rd.

Edited Lyle Waldman (Sept. 28, 2014 10:31:40 PM)

How often do 3rd tiebreakers come up though?

Originally posted by Dominick Riesland:

How often do 3rd tiebreakers come up though?

Almost never. But sometimes they do.

You mean OOGW. Which IIRC is not even a tiebreaker any more in WER.

But yeah, we don't design policy around tiebreakers. The first tiebreaker usually isn't relevant. After that you need pretty contrived examples, especially for tournaments with more than 20 people.

And how often do they come up when the players in question have torpedoed
their own game win percentage (i.e 2nd tiebreaker) as a result of the
draws? Less than that.

The thing about OOGW is that it won't be the players who torpedo their own GW and OGW who are expected to suffer.

But really, OOGW is pushing it in terms of value of tiebreakers. I would be surprised if it was statistically useful, even.