Hello all!

Situation: you're judging a Sealed PPTQ (Competitive REL). After the players have cracked their packs, we're in the deck registration portion (prior to the swap)<strike>, when suddenly, time's up! At this point, we're ready to swap and have the players start building their decks</strike>. We've made announcements about the remaining time left to register, and at this point, time's up! Now we're ready to swap and have the players start building their decks. There's a problem: player “Bosh” has not finished registering the contents of the pool. Do we:

A) Wait for Bosh to finish?
B) Move on?

Both situations have their pros and cons. In situation A, we're delaying the entire tournament in waiting for Bosh to finish. Bosh might feel uncomfortable with the judge and the entire tournament watching, which might cause further errors on the deck checklist.

In situation B, we don't delay the entire tournament, and proceed with the swap. The other players have random pools to play with, but Bosh doesn't. The judges do not have a pool to swap Bosh's opened-pool with Bosh's playing-pool. We end up having Bosh playing with the pool he opened, which neutralizes why we're doing the swap in the first place (to prevent cheating by adding cards to the pool).

Fixes for situation B might be to have a few pre-registered pools. But in this instance, we're rewarding Bosh vs the other players. Any errors in Bosh's registration won't be noticed, but other players will be penalized for their pool-reg-errors. Additionally, having prereg'd pools is a burden on the TO; they have to waste product, and they have to spend time for someone to register X amount of pools.

How would you handle this scenario? Thanks for reading, and thanks for the suggestions!

_____________
EDIT: changed the wording, so it doesn't sound like the judge ended the registration portion without a countdown

Edited Kush Singhal (Sept. 12, 2015 05:37:35 PM)

I have run several sealed PPTQs, and in my opinion the best solution is prevention. As players register their pools, make sure that judges are walking around observing them, and identify any players who seem to be going slowly. Keep an eye on those players, and 5-10 minutes before the time is up, send a judge to assist them in finishing up if necessary. Normally you won't have more than 1-2 players like this, and this should get them done in time. Judges are typically not too busy during registration anyhow.

Using this method, you'll rarely have anyone who has more than a couple cards left to register when the time is up. If you do somehow end up with someone who still has a large number of cards to register, I would recommend moving them to another table and having a judge assist with registration, while going ahead with the swap and deck building for other players. Nothing says that a player can't keep their original pool, and more than likely this will be a newer player anyhow, which makes customer service even more important!

Originally posted by Kush Singhal:

when suddenly, time's up

This makes me sad… a lot of problems like this can pre prevented by being pro-active and looking for slow players who might need help during registration. Preventing problems seems much better than solving them, so make sure to have your judges on the floor and check in regularly if anyone encounters a problem with finishing their task in time.

Originally posted by Kush Singhal:

other players will be penalized for their pool-reg-errors

No, we don't give penalties for that, we just correct the error (maybe after checking with the original registrator whether it actually is an error, to prevent cheating by changing cards in the pool and than claiming a registration error).

If you think that with the help of a judge, you can register Bosh's pool quickly enough, just do that. If not, then you solution seem sacceptable: let him play with his own pool. We do a swap to prevent shenanigans, but by no means do we guarantee that nobody plays their own pool!

First of all, “suddenly, times up!” Should never happen. There should be ample warning that time is counting down.
Often I start making announcements with 5 min remaining that if you need help, call a judge.
So if the guy is still struggling at time, and hasn't called for a judge, Welp, that's all on them.
To get things back on track, I would do a combination of move ahead and hold things up. If it's just the one guy, (and you are by yourself) do the swap. Leave his pool where it is, help with the passes. Keep track of where his pool is going to go and assure that player they will get an extension.
Finish helping registering Bosh's pool, send it to where it's supposed to go, and give both players impacted an extension to build. Hopefully the extension will be short enough that it will be absorbed.
Yes, give the player Tardiness. Explain this to him *after* you have gotten things moving again.
Alternatively, you can do one of those “pass to the person across from you to verify the list” as a stall tactic that actually adds value! Several people do it as a standard activity

-Bryan

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Thanks for the input! I should have not used the wording “suddenly” (I will announce 10, 5, and 2 minutes remaining in in registration portion).

I do like the suggestions of being more proactive in helping players; thanks!

Originally posted by Dustin De Leeuw:

No, we don't give penalties for that, we just correct the error (maybe after checking with the original registrator whether it actually is an error, to prevent cheating by changing cards in the pool and than claiming a registration error).

This seems like infraction 3.6 Tournament Error — Limited Procedure Violation. Even example D lists:

D. A player does not note one of the cards she was registering before the deck swap

Please let me know if I'm mistaken. Thanks for the comments!

Truth be told, I've never given a Warning for that… as I didn't realise it's an infraction these days (IIRC, it wasn't some time ago). Then again, the impact of that Warning is zero, unless there's a Top 8 draft and the player commits an infraction there again. But not letting this get out of hand, correcting any errors after checking with the opener of the pool seems more important than administering the Warning… although now that I realise it's in the IPG, I'll apply it ^^

Originally posted by Dustin De Leeuw:

Truth be told, I've never given a Warning for that… as I didn't realise it's an infraction these days (IIRC, it wasn't some time ago). Then again, the impact of that Warning is zero, unless there's a Top 8 draft and the player commits an infraction there again. But not letting this get out of hand, correcting any errors after checking with the opener of the pool seems more important than administering the Warning… although now that I realise it's in the IPG, I'll apply it ^^

I gave one recently at a GP where a player didn't make any effort to register his pool or call a judge to help. Just passed the pool and a blank decklist. The warning helped reinforce to the player that doing nothing was not cool.

Originally posted by Norman Ralph:

I gave one recently at a GP where a player didn't make any effort to register his pool or call a judge to help. Just passed the pool and a blank decklist. The warning helped reinforce to the player that doing nothing was not cool.

Norman, I think that falls under Tardiness penalty, and therefore a GL (unless the TO decides to give them an extension):

“A player is not in his or her seat at the beginning of a round, or has not completed tasks assigned within the time allocated”

Yeah, that sounds like a straight up Tardiness and I'd like to see
anyone arguing that a player making no attempt to complete the task
isn't deserving of a Game Loss. Other players have probably paid for
the SIS for the privileged of having a judge register their pool, why
should he get it for free? (or even worse delay the whole GP while
that other player does his work for him)

On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 12:54 AM, Joaquín Ossandón
<forum-21229-7956@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:
> Norman Ralph
> I gave one recently at a GP where a player didn't make any effort to
> register his pool or call a judge to help. Just passed the pool and a blank
> decklist. The warning helped reinforce to the player that doing nothing was
> not cool.
>
>
> Norman, I think that falls under Tardiness penalty, and therefore a GL
> (unless the TO decides to give them an extension):
>
> “A player is not in his or her seat at the beginning of a round, or has not
> completed tasks assigned within the time allocated”
>
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–
Gareth Pye - blog.cerberos.id.au
Level 2 MTG Judge, Melbourne, Australia
“Dear God, I would like to file a bug report”

Originally posted by Dustin De Leeuw:

Truth be told, I've never given a Warning for that… as I didn't realise it's an infraction these days (IIRC, it wasn't some time ago). Then again, the impact of that Warning is zero, unless there's a Top 8 draft and the player commits an infraction there again. But not letting this get out of hand, correcting any errors after checking with the opener of the pool seems more important than administering the Warning… although now that I realise it's in the IPG, I'll apply it ^^

According to the latest version of IPG, it is not an infraction anymore.

“3.6: Removed Example D. We no longer penalize for pool registration errors.”

I swaer I had no inside information; just think of me as a visionary. It feels good to know that Toby and I think alike :p