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Competitive REL » Post: Bribery/Wagering

Bribery/Wagering

Jan. 23, 2013 03:55:52 AM

Adam Cetnerowski
Judge (Uncertified)

Europe - Central

Bribery/Wagering

And if you're going straight Swiss, follow Uncle Scott's advice: award
prizes by number of match points NOT standings.

Adam

Jan. 23, 2013 04:31:44 AM

Jorge Monteiro
Judge (Uncertified), Tournament Organizer

Iberia

Bribery/Wagering

Originally posted by Jorge Monteiro:

b2)Player A “I'll give you the boosters I'll win for 1st place if you concede and I win the trial!”Player B “Ok”

The thing that makes me wonder is that, in the quoted scenario, we know there is a “legit” way for player to get what they want (propose the split byes/boosters and player B drops) BUT the player doesnt, so he is (knowingly or not) commiting bribery. Even if we see it and prevent it, should we punish his intent? (and player's B for accepting)

Feb. 25, 2013 02:42:33 PM

Jose Luis Arrieta
Judge (Level 2 (Judge Academy)), Scorekeeper

Brazil

Bribery/Wagering

I'm just reading about this topic and I wanted for you guys to evaluate this scenario:

On the final round of a Swiss Tournament, on table 01 are paired a player with an undefeated score of 4-0-0 and the current 2nd place with a score of 3-0-1 (Wins-Losses-Draws). They agree to a prize split and decide to call a judge about their decision, but since they want to maximize their prize earnings they want to report the match as a concession in favor of the player with 10 points. (That way they would end with 12 and 13 points and thus obtain 1st and 2nd place, rather that a possible 1st and 4th/5th if they decided to ID since they would end up with 13 and 11 points, allowing players with 12 points or 11 with better tiebreakers to take the 2nd and 3rd place.).

So in this case since they already decided to split to whatever combined prizes they could obtain, are they entitled for an extra time to think what could be the best outcome for the match? Is that considered a DQable offense? or should I just have reported the match as an ID? . At no moment during my observation I heard anything about a prize offer in exchange for a result but rather how to increase their prize payout since they already intended to split whatever prizes they obtained and just wanted to overthink what result should be reported by analyzing the previous round standings.

Feb. 25, 2013 04:18:06 PM

Scott Marshall
Forum Moderator
Judge (Level 4 (Judge Foundry)), Hall of Fame

USA - Northwest

Bribery/Wagering

Jose - while their intent isn't quite the same as what we usually see, in cases of Collusion, it's still a violation of MTR 5.2
Originally posted by MTR:

Players are allowed to share prizes they have not yet received in the current tournament as they wish and may agree as such before or during their match, as long as any such sharing does not occur in exchange for any game or match result or the dropping of a player from the tournament.

Now, if the players explained to you what they wanted to do, and asked if that was OK? I'd probably educate them at Regular REL … but this is something they're still expected to know at Competitive REL. (That burden of education is really on all Judges!)

Feb. 25, 2013 04:54:33 PM

Dominik Chłobowski
Judge (Level 2 (Judge Academy))

Canada

Bribery/Wagering

Can I get a clarification on where the exchange is after they have already
decided to split evenly no matter the result?


2013/2/25 Scott Marshall <forum-2630@apps.magicjudges.org>

Feb. 25, 2013 05:09:59 PM

Jose Luis Arrieta
Judge (Level 2 (Judge Academy)), Scorekeeper

Brazil

Bribery/Wagering

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

Jose - while their intent isn't quite the same as what we usually see, in cases of Collusion, it's still a violation of MTR 5.2
MTR
Players are allowed to share prizes they have not yet received in the current tournament as they wish and may agree as such before or during their match, as long as any such sharing does not occur in exchange for any game or match result or the dropping of a player from the tournament.

Now, if the players explained to you what they wanted to do, and asked if that was OK? I'd probably educate them at Regular REL … but this is something they're still expected to know at Competitive REL. (That burden of education is really on all Judges!)

Scott, I didn't get from your response if that was a DQable offense or was something they were allowed to do. I guess they grey area for me is that if it's OK for them to submit a match result that would evidently allow them to gain the most of the prize payout even if that result is on detriment of other players in that tournament. That of course after they decided to split the possible prizes they would earn.

Dominik Chlobowski
Can I get a clarification on where the exchange is after they have already
decided to split evenly no matter the result?

These players decided to split the prize payout before calling for the judge and then asked me if they could submit a result different than ID after they both agreed to split prizes. That's when they discussed whether or not it would be better to submit an ID or a match win for either one of them and whether that result would be better for the prize payout.

Edited Jose Luis Arrieta (Feb. 25, 2013 05:10:39 PM)

Feb. 26, 2013 02:25:59 PM

Dominik Chłobowski
Judge (Level 2 (Judge Academy))

Canada

Bribery/Wagering

^The clarification I asked for was directed towards Scott Marshall for exactly the reasons you mentioned in your reply. ;)

Feb. 27, 2013 06:17:56 PM

Roger Dunn
Judge (Level 1 (Judge Academy))

USA - Northwest

Bribery/Wagering

I am now studying this forum to be prepared for a Competitive tournament in August. I'm trying to follow the thread, but I have to ask a question: What the heck is an ID? It's obviously not for IDentification. I'm guessing the “D” is for…draw? But the “I”?

Feb. 27, 2013 06:19:37 PM

Scott Marshall
Forum Moderator
Judge (Level 4 (Judge Foundry)), Hall of Fame

USA - Northwest

Bribery/Wagering

Intentional Draw = ID

May 3, 2013 05:25:40 AM

Jorge Monteiro
Judge (Uncertified), Tournament Organizer

Iberia

Bribery/Wagering

Originally posted by Adam Cetnerowski:

And if you're going straight Swiss, follow Uncle Scott's advice: awardprizes by number of match points NOT standings.

This seems a nice solution for our local FNM swiss evens but just help me with one advice. How do you handle draws in this prize system?

I mean, If I set a prize table like:
12 pts = X boosters
9 pts = Y boosters
etc…

This will be extremely prejudicial for draws. Two players drawing will be the same as both losing in what concerns getting prizes, right?
It could be an incentive for faster playing but sometimes players are doint their actions in perfect reasonable time and still draw at the end of time. I wouldn't want to “punish” those players just because they had an unlucky long game.

PS: sorry if it's slightly deviating from topic.

Edited Jorge Monteiro (May 3, 2013 05:26:14 AM)

May 3, 2013 05:33:14 AM

Adam Cetnerowski
Judge (Uncertified)

Europe - Central

Bribery/Wagering

I like (X+Y)/2. This does mean that you need to make X and Y both even or
odd. I know that some people award down (so 10 point => same as 9 points).

On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 2:27 PM, Jorge Monteiro <
forum-2630-423b@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:

> *Adam Cetnerowski*
> And if you're going straight Swiss, follow Uncle Scott's advice:
> awardprizes by number of match points NOT standings.
>
>
> This seems a nice solution for our local FNM swiss evens but just help me
> with one advice. How do you handle draws in this prize system?
>
> I mean, If I set a prize table like:
> 12 pts = X boosters
> 9 pts = Y boosters
> etc…
>
> This will be extremely prejudicial for draws. Two players drawing will be
> the same as both losing in what concerns getting prizes, right?
> It could be an incentive for faster playing but sometimes players are
> doint their actions in perfect reasonable time and still draw at the end of
> time. I wouldn't want to “punish” those players just because they had an
> unlucky long game.
>
> PS: sorry if it's slightly deviating from topic.
>
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Adam Cetnerowski
Gdansk, Poland

May 3, 2013 05:34:11 AM

Richard Drijvers
Judge (Uncertified)

BeNeLux

Bribery/Wagering

With a draw, one person has “1 point more than (s)he should” and one person
has “2 points less than (s)he should”.
So someone will have 10 points instead of 12 and someone will have 10
points instead of 9.
This gives you 1 times X plus 1 times Y boosters to divide between these 2
players.

That should solve your issue.

-RichardD

2013/5/3 Jorge Monteiro <forum-2630-a3d5@apps.magicjudges.org>

May 3, 2013 06:36:38 AM

Jorge Monteiro
Judge (Uncertified), Tournament Organizer

Iberia

Bribery/Wagering

My main purpose is to avoid those last round IDs between the 2 X-0 players because…

1) small FNM swiss tournaments easily get the single-elimination feel since a player that loses on 1st or 2nd round knows they're out of the possibility of getting at least 2nd place since the X-0 players will ID on the last round.

2) more splits/IDs imply bigger chance of bribery (unadverted or not) happens.

With those solutions, those last round IDs will still happen, unless I'm interpreting wrong.

May 3, 2013 06:49:25 AM

Rob McKenzie
Judge (Level 5 (Judge Foundry)), Scorekeeper

USA - North

Bribery/Wagering

100% what Adam and Richard said, I'm just going to use examples because
some people like to see numbers plugged into the math to make sense of
things in their heads.

The store I handle builds our prizes with draws listed for any events that
pay out for swiss for the top few draw results. Our four round swiss
prerelease, for example, has the following payout:
4-0 = 8 packs
3-0-1 = 6 packs
3-1 = 4 packs
2-2 or better 1 pack

The goal is to make undefeateds not have some incentive to bribe - drawing
is the same as play/split evenly, so they are free to make whatever
decision they want without a lot of pressure. Some people just want to ID
and go home, and we don't want to punish those people, while some people
really want to play Magic, and we don't want to punish them either.

As you can also see, regular REL payouts are very flat, to encourage people
to keep playing. Losing first round AND second round can still make prizes
at the prerelease, so nearly everyone stays in all four rounds. We do FNM
similarly.


~Rob

May 3, 2013 06:59:31 AM

Jorge Monteiro
Judge (Uncertified), Tournament Organizer

Iberia

Bribery/Wagering



Well, I am a fan of flat prize payout but - without getting into social-economics, store-policy or other touchy subjects - sometimes the prizes are not easy to flat out.

In those situations, a loss in early rounds will remove you from interesting competition while compared to another player that luckly didnt get his hard match-up until the last round where he can ID.

But this is getting largely out-of-topic (even if my purpose is to try and find a system where “bribery for IDs” wouldnt make sense) so I'll leave it be for now.