Adam, what are the provisions and limitations of photos over decklists? I certainly like the idea, but it seems like a bit of a deviation from policy. Furthermore, how far would you take it? A 13-player GPT? 38-player PPTQ? Or just limit it to top-8 drafts, I assume because players necessarily wouldn't be able to prepare their list beforehand? In that case, aren't all limited events still on the table?

The easiest way to get cross pairs in WER is just pair the quarter finals and then seat them using the pairings. That will get you the cross pairings you need.

So you have pairings:
a-b
c-d
e-f
g-h

How does that map to seating? Putting a in seat 1 means b is in 5, but
seats 3 & 7 need to be who will be paired in the semis, but where does
WER show you the semis?

(this could be much easier if I, and all other judges, were allowed to use WER)

So if you are the round and print of the results slips, there will be 4 on a page. seat the top player of each pairing along one side the table and then go back down the other side.

As an example you have the following pairings

Ben
Joe

Bob
Evan

Ellen
John

Chris
Cody

You would seat one side of the table
Ben
Bob
Ellen
Chris

Then going back the other side would be or next to if the table is round.
Joe
Evan
John
Cody

After you enter the results and pair the next round, you just have to check the pairings are correct. Sometimes WER does what it is supposed to and sometimes not.

Edited Ben Petrila (Feb. 24, 2015 01:39:30 PM)

In WER, the choice you want to make when making a random-pair seating (NOT according to final swiss standings) is “Cutoff Method: Random” (As opposed to Cutoff Method: Standing)

Does this sound counter-intuitive? Yes. However, I can personally attest to this correctly generating a draft Top8 according to the MTR.

@Jeff: If I remember correctly, I had no problem seating them randomly.

What I wasn't finding a way to do (except manually) was to cross-pair them using their seat positions which meant the quarterfinals could pair up people that were right next to each other.

Will “your way” correct this?

The method I've described will correctly randomize the players and produce a playoff bracket. It won't be labeled and you cannot print it out (current WER bug), but this is how you would label the players. From this, seat as you would a normal draft.

1 Example Guy
5 Example Girl

3 Example Goblin
7 Example Elf

2 Example Soldier
6 Example Kavu

4 Toby
8 J-Mo

And remember to print the standings before performing the cut so you
can figure out who goes first in each game. (I couldn't figure out how
to view that later)

Originally posted by Yonatan Kamensky:

Adam, what are the provisions and limitations of photos over decklists? I certainly like the idea, but it seems like a bit of a deviation from policy. Furthermore, how far would you take it? A 13-player GPT? 38-player PPTQ? Or just limit it to top-8 drafts, I assume because players necessarily wouldn't be able to prepare their list beforehand? In that case, aren't all limited events still on the table?

I disagree that it's deviating from policy. The MTR requires that players register their decks for Competitive or Professional REL tournaments - while the later sentences implicitly define decklists as the method by which this is accomplished, I think that's more of a logistics demand than a strict policy definition; we can't take pictures of everyone's deck at every limited event.

A top 8 draft, however, is going to be needlessly lengthened if we also require the players to write decklists in addition to building their decks. Photos will accomplish exactly the same goal - taking a record of the player's registered main deck composition and their available sideboard.

I've seen photos used at events before. Most recently photos of pools were taken at the Super Sunday Series finals recently. Then we registered our main decks only in the played column

I'll typically get them to lay out their deck, do a quick 40 count, then snap a photo. Check the photo to make sure the photo is legible. Once I have all the lists and the Top 8 is going, I go back and transcribe them all to paper deck lists. It's a pain in the behind to do, but if an hour of writing them out means everyone gets to go home 30 minutes earlier, I consider it worth the effort.

Filling out a draft's deck list shouldn't take a player 30 minutes. It
should be a lot closer to 5 minutes. The prescribed time for
construction and registration is 30 minutes, removing registration
from that shouldn't mean that round 1 starts seconds after the draft
finishes. 20 or 25 minutes for construction is probably correct.

Is it worth an hour of your time to save 8 players 5 minutes? 5
minutes that the spectators probably want to be able to fetch slightly
nicer food?

Originally posted by Gareth Pye:

Is it worth an hour of your time to save 8 players 5 minutes?

You're not just saving eight players five minutes, though - you're letting all the players, spectators, and staff go home five minutes earlier. And if you're filling in the lists when you would otherwise just be standing around during Top 8, then it's not actually costing any of your time at all, and you get to go home five minutes earlier along with everyone else.

Cutting five minutes off the critical path by making better use of what was otherwise an hour of dead time seems like an excellent idea to me.

Edited James Winward-Stuart (Feb. 27, 2015 10:47:58 PM)