Situation:

After the 5th round of a 9 player GPT finishes, prior to the top 4 being paired, those in top 4 agree among themselves to split the prize after the fact. After they all agree to do so, one player asks if anyone else needs the byes, and if not if anyone would mind if they got them. The other players then proceed to concede their games, awarding this player (let's call him Dave) the byes.

My question is this: is this a legal situation, or do DQs need to be issued? Does it matter if the players other than Dave concede or drop entirely?

Players in the single-elimination rounds of a tournament offering only cash and/or unopened product as prizes may, with the permission of the Tournament Organizer, agree to split the prizes evenly. The players may end the tournament at that point, or continue to play. All players still in the tournament must agree to the arrangement.

http://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/mtr5-2/

These are the single-elimination rounds, but the tournament doesn't offer only cash and/or unopened product as prizes.
Players cannot agree among themselves to split the prizes evenly, and by doing so, they break the Magic Tournament Rules.

Certain actions will not be tolerated under any circumstances. Every effort should be made to educate players before and during events; however, ignorance is not an acceptable defence of these actions. Any player engaging in the following must be removed from your event and, at the Organizer’s discretion, removed from the venue entirely:

Determining match outcomes by incentives, coercion, or outside-the-game methods, or gambling on any part of a tournament.

Removing players in this way is called a Disqualification, and we must always try to educate our players on why these actions are unacceptable.

The Bribery rules may be perceived as harsh, but they are here to protect the core integrity of tournaments.

- Emilien

Edited Emilien Wild (Feb. 6, 2017 08:44:11 AM)

And this is a very good reason to offer a flat payout in Top 4 / Top 8 or hand our prizes based on Swiss, just let the players play for the byes/invite. Not a judge decision, it's a TO decision, but we can advice the TO on why having a steep payout after cut to Top X may lead to very sad players.

I thought players were allowed to agree to split prizes but we don't enforce it and issue the prizes as advertised and then after the event the players sort it out sharing the prizes between themselves.

Some further discussion questions I'd like some advice on:

What would be a good way to communicate to players that they can't discuss prize splits in Top 4/Top 8?

What would be a good way to approach a TO about awarding prize based on Swiss standings or making the Top4/Top 8 prizes equal?

What infraction has been committed in the scenario Hank described in the
first post of this thread?

On Feb 6, 2017 9:35 AM, “Emilien Wild” <

I'm not seeing anything about incentives, coercion, outside the game methods or gambling mentioned. Top 8s / top 4s restructure prizes quite often at our FNM (first prize is usually a Tarmogoyf or 120 in store credit, with store credit to 2-4, so it's not a nominal prize). The person who wanted the byes did not offer anything for the byes - he asked if anyone had use for them, and the opponents conceded allowing it to happen (at least from what I'm seeing)..

According to the post, it seems the players agreed to split the prizes. They separately decided to concede to the one player who wanted the byes. It does not seem that there was any offers made for the result of the matches.

I think the infraction being mentioned is that there prizes that include something other than cash or boosters (in this case the byes at a Grand Prix awarded to 1st place at a GPT) That cannot be split amongst the players.

However, none of the ideals in the Bribery rules were broken. No one determined outcomes based on prizes, coercion, or any other method.

I would not be handing out penalties in this situation myself, but this does point out a long standing problem with the bribery rules. One side of this says that all players should be DQ'd, all should lose their prizes, and Dave should not get any Byes. The other side says nothing wrong happened even though Magic did not determine the outcome of the tournament. Are we being too harsh on the players, or is the infraction so harsh that we as judges do not feel it is morally acceptable for ourselves to do this much damage to group of players over something that we feel is injust…

I think that, like pile counting more than once at the beginning of a game and other violations of the MTR, the response should be “You can't do that” with no penalties being assessed.

It isn't an infraction called out in the IPG, so while it isn't supported by policy there isn't a penalty to apply. We should remind players that, while they may do what they want with their prizes after the event and the TO may agree to re-structure the prizes in response to requests from the players, these sorts of splits are not supported by the MTR and so we cannot enforce them.

Edit: I'm actually not sure TOs can agree to re-structure prizes at a GPT, since they are supposed to abide by the MTR as well.

Edited Andrew Keeler (Feb. 7, 2017 09:31:17 AM)

MTR 5.2:

“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.”

This split was 100% legal. The split having been agreed upon, the player's request of a concession was not contingent on anything, and is also 100% legal. Let's not go on witch-hunts here.

Originally posted by Steve Guillerm:

MTR 5.2:

“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.”

This split was 100% legal. The split having been agreed upon, the player's request of a concession was not contingent on anything, and is also 100% legal. Let's not go on witch-hunts here.

This is exactly right.

My understanding is that the purpose of the text Emilien quoted is simply to empower TOs to enforce a prize split where all players agree, and to allow them the option of ending the tournament at that point rather than continuing to the playoffs. In this case, Emilien is correct to point out that the text does not apply (because there is a non-splitable prize on the line), but that merely means that if players choose to split, they are on their honour to enforce the agreement–the TO will still pay out the prizes as advertised based on the top 8 (or top 4) finish.

Of course, a split agreement in conjunction with determination of match results remains prohibited, but that is not what happened in the original scenario.