In some GP, 8-man draft hold in this way.

Judge pass tournament paper and 24 booster packs to 8 players, and said.
“ draft and play game, when the tournament is finished, go back and get prize”

in this case, players should control the tournament by them-self.
Does it qualify as being managed?
I think that judges has to call announce about this event, and pairing, and receive result every round.
because players pay money, it is sanctioning tournament, it is special event for all.

The pairings is on the sheet, since it's single elimination and no time limit I don't see any problem with it. It would be the equivelant of having to escort players to their seats and not accepting result slips during tje main event.

We're not abandoning their tournament. If players have questions, they can still call for a judge like normal, and a judge will come over and respond. These 8 mans are being run at regular REL, and while you'll sometimes get some players who have never been in a draft (in which case, instruct them on how drafting works is always good), most of the time in my experience you're getting eight people who know what they're doing. All you really need to do is gently remind them how the tournament works, tell them who their first round opponent is, encourage zone drafting (and recommend they don't let too many packs pile up) and let them take care of the rest. And since they're single elimination, the tournaments finish pretty quickly.

In the past, when I'm running 8 mans, I'm usually carrying around a clipboard with all of the tournaments I'm watching. When a player reports the results, I ask them which tournament they're in, record their result, and tell the winner who their next opponent is. If their next match is not ready, I recommend they stay in the area so that when their opponent is ready, they can begin immediately. Otherwise, yeah, they kind of just run themselves. It might be nice to sit and watch a draft happens, but at the GPs I've been at, tournaments are firing constantly, so you don't really have time to sit and watch them draft: you get their tournament going, then get ready to get the next tournament going.

I don't see a major problem with the approach. In most cases the players will want to get on with it themselves anyway, and as Nathan says there should be a judge available to answer questions, give people their next pairings if they can't figure it out, and so on.

as you say, it may be no problem about running event.
(surely, judges should to continue to check the area.)

I want you to tell the difference between the event and free casual play.
I think it looks almost same.
almost players can ready 24 packs and prize, and play magic in any place.

players gather GP and pay cost for join event that nobody feel unrest.
then, in this way, they are disappointing may be.
I sad about it.


by the way, it may be not role of judges to control event and entertain player.

Well, I didn't and don't travel around Europe to just draft against random people when I could be participating in a huge 1000+ players event happening in the same venue. That being said, everyone knows that it's more expensive to side event draft at a GP than at their LGS, while also being a time filler waiting for your friends to finish the day etc.

So I don't really think there is that much problems with side events not meeting expectations, since I can't really comprehend what you really should expect other than a “8-man single elimination draft” with REL Regular when signing up for that.

As a player, I'm usually more interested in the judge staying out of it. It's rare that I am in an event with new players, but when it happens, it works out fine. No matter how attentive the judge is, unless we are his only event, the players are always going to be able to run it quicker and more efficiently. It's really annoying when you have to go find a judge to figure out who you play next. I usually feel that we're mature players and we don't need someone to babysit us because we've done this a thousand times.

All that said, I still expect the judge to be able to answer questions in a timely fashion to settle rules disputes. This is where I become annoyed as a player. Some events stretch judges way too thin.

My only thoughts on this are about losing paperwork. I have been to events where the players have lost the paperwork or have not shown back up at the conclusion of the event with their brackets. I'm on the bandwagon that players should be responsible but losing paperwork still happens.

Generally just having a Judge to take down results clears this problem up and puts a Judge in that area to field Judge calls.

Sent from my iPhone

I'm curious if this is a problem that players have raised, or just a perceived problem from the judge side? I personally haven't ever heard a complaint about judges not being adequately involved in 8-player events from the players. Is this something you've encountered in your area?

Originally posted by Josh Stansfield:

I personally haven't ever heard a complaint about judges not being adequately involved in 8-player events from the players. Is this something you've encountered in your area?

I ran into it at a side event at GP Vegas earlier this year. It took a good amount of wandering to go flag down a judge who wasn't in the middle of something. But everyone took it in stride. Things were on a slightly different scale there though =)