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Tournament Operations » Post: Group of players showing up late - Is it allowed and encouraged to pair them against each other?

Group of players showing up late - Is it allowed and encouraged to pair them against each other?

June 23, 2014 07:03:09 AM

Jasper König
Judge (Uncertified)

German-speaking countries

Group of players showing up late - Is it allowed and encouraged to pair them against each other?

Hi,

Usually those who enroll up late for a tournament have to start with losses for the rounds that were already started. However, when a group of players shows up late, I've seen them being paired against each other for the current round more than once. This is technically possible, but is it allowed and encouraged? Is there a difference depending on the REL?

Kind regards,

Jasper

June 23, 2014 07:46:16 AM

Dominik Chłobowski
Judge (Level 2 (Judge Academy))

Canada - Eastern Provinces

Group of players showing up late - Is it allowed and encouraged to pair them against each other?

If it's a friendly community, Regular REL event, and the players are only
like 10 minutes late, I pair them. I don't see them gaining any real
advantage from it either, and I'd rather go for positive customer service.


2014-06-23 8:04 GMT-04:00 Jasper König <

June 23, 2014 07:52:32 AM

Gareth Tanner
Judge (Level 2 (UK Magic Officials))

United Kingdom, Ireland, and South Africa

Group of players showing up late - Is it allowed and encouraged to pair them against each other?

If it's the first offence or they've called ahead then I'll just pair them at regular REL (if a group is using it to get away with constantly turning up late it's different)

At Competitive REL if you're not at the event on time you loss your first round

June 23, 2014 06:33:55 PM

Joaquín Pérez
Judge (Level 2 (International Judge Program)), Tournament Organizer

Iberia

Group of players showing up late - Is it allowed and encouraged to pair them against each other?

At Regular REL, although I don't personally see as “positive customer service” (other players could think about “Heh, I usually try to get on time, and those players don't, and they get paired with they friends instead of this random guy I have to play against” and even “Yeah, next time, I'll be late with my friend and get a free 1-1/2-0/anycollusionhere”), it could be reasonably done.

At CompREL, that's a clear deviation from the MIPG. I wouldn't do that. You are late, you TE-Tardiness into GL, ML 10 minutes or more, dropped if no report to scorekeeper. Easy, written, standard, and you get away of any possible favoritisms.

June 23, 2014 07:18:45 PM

Dominik Chłobowski
Judge (Level 2 (Judge Academy))

Canada - Eastern Provinces

Group of players showing up late - Is it allowed and encouraged to pair them against each other?

I don't know about you, but usually players coming to events dislike being
paired against their friends because it means one of them is guaranteed to
go into the loser bracket after first round…

In any case, obviously a lot of this is situational, and you should be more
strict if this is becoming a problem, but I feel if it's not a frequent
issue, it's fine to pair latecomers very early in the round. I actually
haven't had this happen with larger groups of people, but in that case, if
it's going to take an annoyingly larger amount of time to add and pair
them, they might as well wait it out and play EDH till round 2. ;)


2014-06-23 19:34 GMT-04:00 Joaquín Pérez <

June 23, 2014 07:33:38 PM

Jess Dunks
Judge (Uncertified)

USA - Southeast

Group of players showing up late - Is it allowed and encouraged to pair them against each other?

The MTR does not afford TOs the ability to change or order the pairings in tournaments as they see fit in an event. This includes deciding who plays who. Although sometimes we break pairings at events when something goes wrong, it's always to correct an error and protect the integrity of the pairing structure. Pairing players as described in the OP undermines that structure, provides questionable customer service, gives poor player training (Player training is a thing), and allows savvy players and unscrupulous TOs to take advantage of the loophole.

It's also important to provide a consistent experience. So, for example, let's say that two players are 5 minutes late and you enter them paired against each other. Then another player shows up 2 minutes later. It feels very unfair to that player.

June 24, 2014 11:34:35 AM

Andrew Heckt
Judge (Uncertified)

Italy and Malta

Group of players showing up late - Is it allowed and encouraged to pair them against each other?

Indeed. +1 for Jess.
Not randomly doing pairings (or repeatedly randomly pairing results until you get a result you like) is tournament fraud and can, has, and will result in penalties upon those in collusion.

Andy


From: Jess Dunks
Sent: Monday, June 23, 2014 5:34 PM
To: Heckt, Andy
Subject: Re: Group of players showing up late - Is it allowed and encouraged to pair them against each other? (Tournament Operations)


The MTR does not afford TOs the ability to change or order the pairings in tournaments as they see fit in an event. This includes deciding who plays who. Although sometimes we break pairings at events when something goes wrong, it's always to correct an error and protect the integrity of the pairing structure. Pairing players as described in the OP undermines that structure, provides questionable customer service, gives poor player training (Player training is a thing), and allows savvy players and unscrupulous TOs to take advantage of the loophole.

It's also important to provide a consistent experience. So, for example, let's say that two players are 5 minutes late and you enter them paired against each other. Then another player shows up 2 minutes later. It feels very unfair to that player.

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July 6, 2014 10:09:20 PM

William Anderson
Judge (Uncertified)

USA - Northeast

Group of players showing up late - Is it allowed and encouraged to pair them against each other?

Is it acceptable to use either of the following 2 methods to handle a single late player:
1) Pair him against the person with the bye (the person who was granted the bye was chosen randomly)

2) Use WER to choose a random player, that random player has the bye now. Pair the new guy against whomever lost their opponent.

July 6, 2014 10:28:13 PM

Gareth Pye
Judge (Level 2 (Oceanic Judge Association))

Ringwood, Australia

Group of players showing up late - Is it allowed and encouraged to pair them against each other?

William think about the flow on effects. What happens when 10 seconds after
you do one of the above fixes a second late player turns up? Is it fair? I
feel treating all players that turned up on time the same and all players
that turn up late the same to be the fairest situation.


On Mon, Jul 7, 2014 at 1:10 PM, William Anderson <
forum-10809-54f7@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:

> Is it acceptable to use either of the following 2 methods to handle a
> single late player:
> 1) Pair him against the person with the bye (the person who was granted
> the bye was chosen randomly)
>
> 2) Use WER to choose a random player, that random player has the bye now.
> Pair the new guy against whomever lost their opponent.
>
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> If you want to respond to this thread, simply reply to this email. Or view
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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”

July 15, 2014 09:57:51 AM

Rick Miles
Judge (Level 2 (Judge Academy))

Canada - Eastern Provinces

Group of players showing up late - Is it allowed and encouraged to pair them against each other?

Fairness is good, and you are certainly correct Gareth, but player training is by far the bigger issue. I have seen players get away with being consistently late to events at Regular for ages, but when they try to show up late to a Competitive event they flip out because they are handed the loss. I like to use FNMs and other Regular REL tournaments to teach our players, allowing something like this can really mess with that.