I might be totally off-base here, but I figured it best to bring this up for discussion. Feel free to tell me I'm totally wrong.

As you may or may not have seen from discussions on Twitter, Play it Forward are altering their system so that it will ignore final round draws when determining who to award the prize to. The tl;dr is that the organiser doesn't agree with the existence of ID and wants to disencentivise them.

Now, PiF awards a prize (a special playmat, and often a GP Golden Ticket) to the highest placing woman/non-binary player at a GP. They are now offering this prize in conjunction with a desire not not have said players ID.

For me, this awfully close to offering an incentive in exchange for a certain result.

It's not exactly Bribery as defined by the IPG, but it's drifting in that direction, in my opinion. Then again, I know I'm not the best when it comes to what does and does not constitute Bribery, and would like some input from those better versed in the philosophy.

This thread appears to have been moved from Competitive REL to Community Corner. Sorry if it was posted in the wrong place, but it's specifically about Competitive REL policy so I figured that was the right one.

Hi, Cayce - I moved it from Comp REL to Community Corner since I expect most of the discussion around it to be more community- than policy-focused. If you're looking for just an (O)fficial answer of whether this is or isn't bribery, we can close this thread and put in a request for one.

Hi John,

Yeah, that's all I'm looking for. It seems pretty iffy to me.

Originally posted by John Brian McCarthy:

If you're looking for just an (O)fficial answer of whether this is or isn't bribery

Originally posted by Cayce Lauder:

Yeah, that's all I'm looking for.

Short answer: N'o'. Toby explains more about ‘O’fficial answers here. (I like to refer to that every now & then, as it's great reading, and often news to many judges.)

Cayce, I understand your interest in this topic, and your reasons for bringing it here are valid, but there just won't be an ‘O’fficial stance on this topic, at least not from the Judge Program's perspective.

In a bit more detail: Play It Forward is an initiative that's completely separate from Wizards, CFBE, or the Judge Program; while we cooperate with their efforts to some extent (scorekeepers printing an extra copy of final standings, a Head Judge paging the PIF “winner”, etc.), it's really out of our domain.

Given that, even if I did think this was Bribery, I have no recourse. I can't penalize Play It Forward - they're not a player, they're an organization. I'm certainly not going to penalize players who make decisions with full knowledge of PIF's stance (unless, of course, they themselves cross the line). As a Judge, I have no jurisdiction re: what Play It Forward chooses to do, no matter what any of us might think of their decisions.

But I don't think this is Bribery, and I don't think it's a concern; it certainly isn't a Judge Program concern. (I understand it's quite the brou-ha-ha on social media; this is not that.)

d:^D