At one of the last Grand Prix I atended this year, some side events had prize structures that involve X-tickets per match won. In some cases, that involved that 2 players were at the last round about to draw, and they desperatly looked at me, because they wanted to share their wins, and avoid loosing them for drawing. I explained the situation, but it left me with a bad feel. Even more, I really dislike that prizes incentive bribery.

Luckily, later this year the prize structure of GP BAs was quite nicer, with 500 tickets for players with 15 points (in a 5 round torunament); 180 if you had 12; and 340 tickets if you had 13. I would like to suggest this approach to TO's that like this kind of prize structure, as a way to prevent this kind of problems.

I know this is more of a TO issue, but it's important that the tournament as a whole doesn't incentive behaviors we really want to avoid :)

Edited Joaquín Ossandón (July 21, 2015 03:11:50 PM)

Some TOs dislike intentional draws, and design their prize support to encourage players to play Magic in a timely manner and complete their match rather than drawing.

TOs are prohibited from disallowing IDs, but are allowed to incentivize players to play Magic rather than draw. It may have some undesirable collateral by hurting the prize support of players who genuinely wanted to play but ended in a draw.

If they turn to bribery/improperly determining a winner, that is on them. We should focus our efforts in events (especially for events as you describe) at recognizing when a match is going to draw that DOESN'T WANT TO DRAW and step in to say: “Remember, you cannot bribe or determine a winner by any means other than Magic or concession. That concessions should not involve any offers, explicit or implicit.”

If you feel this is a concern for an event, talk to the TO and see what their rationale for the prize structure is.

While I am very much in favor of the practice, do note that setting the ID record (e.g. 4-0-1) to the mean prizing does not rule out these scenarios. These can still occur when a player gets paired up/down.

For example, in the GP BAs prize structure, 3-2 paid 20 tickets and 3-1-1 paid 100. If a 4-0 and a 3-1 intentionally drew, they would receive 440 (340+100) tickets cumulatively. However, if the 4-0 wins, there are now 520 (500+20) tickets in the prize pool.

To prevent such occurrences, one would need to place more constraints on the prize structure, which may go against player interest.

Thanks Greg, haven't thought of that :)

Originally posted by Greg Lauro:

To prevent such occurrences, one would need to place more constraints on the prize structure,

I was with you 100% until here…

Originally posted by Greg Lauro:

which may go against player interest.

…where I got a little lost. Prize structures can be tough to figure out in a sensible way, and it's often easy for TO's to miss out on the errors that lead to bad incentives. But it's hard for me to imagine how players' interests are served by a tournament that gives out more prize for them losing than for them winning.

Originally posted by Eli Meyer:

But it's hard for me to imagine how players' interests are served by a tournament that gives out more prize for them losing than for them winning.

Any tournament would need even leveled prizes that go up the same amount for each win in order order to prevent the possibility of someone getting more for losing than for winning. Imagine the following compensation structure:

5 wins : 36 packs
4 wins : 24 Packs
3 wins : 12 Packs

If a 4-0 plays a 3-1 there will be a total of 48 packs in the mix for two of them.

When the structure looks more like this:

5 wins: 48 packs
4 wins: 18 packs
3 wins: 6 packs

If the same two play you're either looking at total 54 packs or 36 packs depending on who wins.

The big difference here is that the first example prizes out 276 packs per 32 players. The second example pays out 204 packs per 32 players. As a TO, I'm incentivized to run the option that prizes out two less boxes over the one that prevents people from wanting to concede and split prizes. Either that or I have to charge another $5+ per person in order to prize the event evenly. This doesn't even include draws throwing things further out of whack.