Pro Tours are great. Sometimes you need a really good PT to remind you just why you play the game. There are some Magic events that stick in my memory as being some of the greatest times I’ve ever had.
GP Biarritz: was one of my first Grand Prix. I was young, still fairly inexperienced at travelling around the world for the game I loved but it all came together into one amazing series of events. I was living off two Euros a day for food, missed Day 2 on tiebreakers with one of the best sealed decks I have ever opened; but that did not matter! We had an amazing hotel, the company was great, I learnt how to stand properly from Tai Chi master and full time pirate, the legendary Stewart Shinkins, we went to an aquarium, we rolled a foot long cigarette, watched the waves roll in at night on an empty and beautiful beach with the sound of the town’s casino tinkling away in the background. It was great.
Euros in Amsterdam was another such event. Wizards had hired one of their best venues ever, half a stone’s throw away from ‘Dam’s more colorful neighborhood. I played the wrong deck and finished just out of the money, our hotel room was broken into during the night and for some reason none of us woke up, and a friend’s wallet and glasses (how wrong is that?) were stolen. I didn’t go to any strip clubs but man, was that event a blast. Trolling around the cafes you would always bump into someone you knew. Around thirty people from the UK were there. We decided to add to the Hill Street Blues artistic wall display of beer mats, played in a pool tournament with the worst rules ever, played four player hold ’em and smoked cigarettes in a cafe from when it opened till when it closed (only felt like a few hours). I even had the best flight of my life: got on the plane, sat down, and landed all in one five-minute memory!
Another that comes to mind was my PT debut in Tokyo, where a startled sixteen year old with a ten week night class grasp of Japanese headed out to the land of the rising sun knowing no one. I almost missed my flight because I had my hair cut at Reading train station on the way. Met up with a bunch of people I had never met before, stayed on their hotel room floor, built all the best decks in the format and then left the one I wanted to play at the hotel on the big morning. I sat down opposite my first round opponent still sleeving a deck I had borrowed from the helpful traders. Went 3-0, then lost to my best match twice and finished the day a bashful 3-4. Wow, was Tokyo insane.
Japan is one of my top few countries in the whole world. Their culture is so different. I realized just how good it was when Sam Gomersall ticked off Richard Hoaen for throwing chewing gum onto the untarnished pavement, after he had himself, several hours earlier littered on the London Underground without a second thought. We got a taxi to the wrong venue one morning and had to regretfully wade through a comic book convention full of scantily clad Japanese School girls dressed up as their favorite characters. Oh what a problem it was, us all being a head taller than them and them unable to understand our language as we spread out, pointing out the best spottings to each other at the top of our voices. Oh the shameful memories! Sushi, Karaoke, hentai, eating these cool inverted pizza pie style things, the smallest bathroom ever, pretending to be French on a train so we wouldn’t have to pay for a ticket, refusing to accept an English menu in a restaurant so we would not know what it was we ordered after the Americans skulked off to the ever familiar golden arches.
These are what the Pro Tour is made of. This is why I sit here jet lagged to hell and beyond with a reminiscing smile across my face. Yeah, there are times when you do well in the event itself and find yourself standing outside in glorious sunshine with tears streaming down your face as you ecstatically tell your girlfriend you finally made your first GP Top 8, before you head back inside to get a game loss for being late that you simply couldn’t care less about. There are stories about Dizzy Spells and the wrong mana, about drunken French men insulting their own mother, of a vomited-in sink, of kids in bins, of misplaced wallets in Tijuana and late night passport-less border runs.
LA was all set to be one of the best PTs ever. I had planned to put university ahead of Magic for the first time in my life this year because it was my finals and I’ve never made any effort at school before, but this saw me get an inexcusable B for my Maths A level, and I figured it was time to actually pay attention and do myself proud for once in my life. After emptying the bank account to pay for flight and accommodations, it was off to California with the hopes of a money finish and, more importantly, making the precious Level Three of new, or rather the Gravy Train of old, and going to Worlds and Honolulu! I decided it would be worth putting the testing in.
We showed up to amazing weather and possibly the best hotel I have ever stayed in. Walking around in a hoody with the feeling I might get arrested at any minute amongst a sea of tuxedos and ball dresses, as I passed the wall of photos depicting the first ever Oscars on my way to the sauna/Jacuzzi/pool/gym/steam room complex, then heading back to our room that was large enough to do laps around. Meeting up with the Belgians and some of the French, throwing all of our decks together and coming up with the best decks at the PT (Golgari Madness – Siron, Good Loam-a-Tog – Shinkins (sorry Kenji, his version is far better), Aggro Rock – Raph). Antoine winning the whole thing, Billy losing in the finals despite what we shall call a dubious Top 8 showing (sorry bro). Celebrating the win and Toutoune’s birthday in a dodgy Japanese restaurant that didn’t serve alcohol, heading out to Hollywood before realizing that I was wearing shorts and would never get into the club, buying a pair of jeans at 11.30pm in four minutes from the Virgin Megastore on the Boulevard for $70 before realizing that it was Halloween and you could get in wearing anything.
Watching Tsuyoshi Fujita trying to use his Pro Player Card as ID despite being thirty-one! Dancing with a girl dressed solely in paint, abusing one’s accent to boost one’s ego, being too drunk to remember no one paid you back for the round you bought. Heading off to Venice beach in the most beautiful weather, temperature around 30’C, meandering down the beach with the sun on your back, shoes in your hand and surf lapping at your feet. Sitting outside a cafe drinking what turned out to not be Strongbow, smoking Shishah, randomly meeting the Swedes, forgetting to get Shinkins a photo of him and the parrot, watching a gang fight break out Jerry Springer style – lead piping, cans of soup, be-it-or-be-it-not-a-transvestite, cute waitresses, trashed bikes and late-arriving cops.
But sometimes the sh** hits the fan.
LA had all the potential to be the best memory ever. Sometimes memories are tarnished. Sometimes the game gets in the way. This is not a Gadiel-esque whine. This is about something that happened by the judges and the DCI that was wrong. It is not a tale of mana screw or of runner, runner gutshot. It is about something that went wrong that shouldn’t have, it is about an issue that needs to be brought to public attention.
I’m a philosophy student, so I like extreme cases. I also like concepts like freewill and subjectivity. So when I hear my opponent say “I concede” and then to hear the table judge overrule his wish, it strikes me as something deeply wrong. I’ve dived in at the deep end, some might say the wrong end, but this is the fundamental point that I want to make before I set out the scenario and then list all of the other things that went very wrong with the ruling that knocked me out of the tournament. Yes, that’s right, I was knocked out of LA, not by a player, but by a judge, maybe more than one judge. Here is my tale:
Round seven of the Day 1, I found myself in the unfortunate position of being 3-3, clinging to my dreams, needing to win out to make Day 2 for the cash and those last few PT points I needed to level up. A draw would knock both me and my opponent out of contention. Brett Reason, my opponent for the round, showed up late; late enough to really delay the start after the pre-game preparations, but not so late as to earn himself a game loss.
We start playing and it soon becomes obvious that Brett is playing painfully slowly – maybe he was tired or jetlagged, maybe the pressure of playing in his first Pro Tour was getting to him, maybe he was stoned or maybe he is just a naturally slow thinker; whatever the case, he was one slow dude. I call a judge to watch for slow play because it was too painful to sit there and watch. It wasn’t even as if he had difficult decisions to make… For instance, the turn after I Cranial Extract him, his hand is Putrefy and Pernicious Deed, he untaps and plays a land fresh off the top and then thinks for ages. I have no creatures or artifacts in play, he has nothing that requires mana and I’m playing Domain, a deck that relies heavily on having a Collective Restraint in play. He must have thought about what to do for a good couple of minutes until I prompted him to hurry up, especially as I knew his options. No penalties were given for slow play so I guess either the judging was sloppy (cough) or he sped up.
Fast forward and it’s one game a piece and time is short. We have a table judge watching the game. I’m going at him as quickly as I can with my Meloku leaving 2UU up so that I can counter whatever he might topdeck with the two Evasive Actions he knew were in my hand from some earlier Gifts Ungivens. Time is called. I realize I can never lose this game as I have Extracted almost everything of relevance in his deck apart from his Pernicious Deeds and Putrefys (as I can recur Meloku thanks to my in-the-bin Genesis). He gets three of the turns and I am stuck to win with just two*. I count my land and realize that even if I go all in I cannot kill him thanks to some earlier Ravenous Baloth action. Frustrating. On my first turn, I say something like, “Dude, there’s no way you can win this game is there (I know what he has left etc), especially given I have all these counters in hand. Sucks that we’re running outta time etc.” to set the stage so he is more willing to concede when the turns run out. Take note, as this conversation will come up later.
It gets to the fifth turn and he draws a land and there’s nothing he can do except attack with his Sakura-Tribe Elder to nibble me to some irrelevant life total. We start talking, here is the conversation as best as I can recall:
Q: Would you like to concede?
Brett: Ummmmmmmmm….
Q: One of us should really concede and it’s not like I can lose this game, Meloku and his merry men are lethal next turn. A draw knocks us both out of contention, you know that right?
Brett: Really? That’s bad. Oh, ummmmmmm… Rating…
Q: Dude, this is the PT, rating really doesn’t matter, and you won’t be losing that much anyhow, I mean…
Brett: Oh, ummmmmmmmmm… [he continues to um and talk about the situation as he scoops up his cards (I might add that the game state was still recoverable as it was only his graveyard into cards in play piles, but this is a moot point)].
Judge: Stop! The game is a draw. The player has scooped his cards – the game is over.
Q: What the hell?
Brett: Wuh? Oh. I concede.
Judge: The game can no longer be conceded.
Q: Head judge, please.
At this point, the table judge made another error. He went to find the head judge whilst leaving both players alone at the table! Surely, on at least a minor scale, there could have been the possibility of collusion occurring whilst he was away, to get either Brett or I to alter our stories that the head judge would ask of us. I had to tell the judge to wait at the table so that this would not be the case and to send another judge in his stead.
Gis (the head judge) came over. He discussed the situation away from the table out of my hearing with the table judge. He came back to our table to say that they needed time to discuss this some more. At this point practically all the judges in the room congregate like a flock of bizarrely striped ravens some distance away and debate the issue. For twenty minutes. At this point we are the only players left still sitting and time is standing still.
Gis eventually returned to table and informed us that the game was a draw. I was pretty outraged. I asked him why. Here is an exact quote of what he said, “Basically, you got f***ed.” I asked why again, another direct quote, “If it were up to me, I would have ruled otherwise.” What!? How can a rule’s final decision not be up to the head judge? Is he not the absolute authority and last word? I ask him who it was up to if not him, and he nods towards the table of ravens which included most of the DCI’s head honchos.
That’s my tale. A concession gets overruled. Let me point out a few errors that were made by the judges. First, the table judge should have said, “What is the match result?” instead of “It’s a draw.” Second, when I appealed, Gis only listened to the story from the table judge – he did not interview either of the players at any time. I don’t think my opponent said more than five words after he had tried to concede. Third, when the table judge was reporting the story, he had said that I asked for a concession on turn 2 of extra time (when I instead was just pointing out the inevitability of the board position to my opponent) and as players are only allowed to ask for a concession once, I was now made to look like I was hassling. Those are the most obvious errors made. There were more, but they were only discovered the next day when I had a long conversation with Andy Heckt, Wizards’ Network Manager in charge of, amongst other things, “coordinating player needs” and “judge procedures and policy.” I must point out again how grievous a mistake it was that neither of us were interviewed. One of the advantages of the table judge is that he lends a third and slightly less biased view point than either player can, but in this case it would have been possible to see that both players were in a agreement (Brett, if you read this, please post your thoughts on the matter in the forums).
My conversation with Andy brought a lot of points to light. The most important of which was the reason behind the ruling. As best I as I can phrase it: the Pro Tour is a podium to which all other tournaments look to, in rules more than in a lot of other aspects. Therefore, it is important that there is a universal ruling unity. In PT: Philadelphia there was a case where one player (A) had attacked with a lot of creatures, the other player (B) had taken the damage and had written that he’d gone to zero life on his score pad. B then scooped up his cards, as he believed the game over. It turned out that the attack was not lethal and that B was not dead. The game state was apparently still recoverable, but it was clear to the judges watching that it had been B’s intent to concede. How does this apply to my situation? The DCI want to enforce that a concession cannot be rewound and that the scooping of cards is the clearest form of concession there is.
I might argue that the scooping of cards merely signifies the ending of the game. In the above scenario, it was clear that B was scooping his cards up because he believed himself to be dead. In my situation, the final result of the game was still ambiguous. Was he scooping his cards up because he was conceding, as his words would later imply? Was it because he believed the game to be a draw? Did he even believe that he had won? I certainly scoop my cards up after I’ve attacked my opponent for lethal damage, am I then conceding? In our situation, Brett was still audibly discussing the result of the game whilst he scooped his cards, so which takes precedent? A player’s verbal activity or his physical actions, given that both were taking place simultaneously. It is pretty standard procedure to give someone’s speech priority as we interpret it as a direct display of someone’s intent – “It is the expression of identity”. It was clear once the table judge had declared the game a draw that neither player had been aware that they had ended the game, given Brett’s confusion at the judge’s intervention it was clear that he had not thought he was ending the game by his action, especially given that he was still discussing the game’s outcome. Why in our case was the game a draw from the scooping of cards rather than a concession as it had been in B’s case?
More importantly, is the Philly case even correspondent to this one? Andy said that the judges were trying to protect the integrity of the Philly ruling, but it seems that the Philly ruling, as with most of the rules, was ruled because it was obvious what the player’s intent had been. I don’t think Brett’s intent could have been made any clearer than when he said “I concede.” The rules of the game are there for the benefit of the players, just like governmental laws are there for the sole benefit of the citizens. They are there to clear up doubt and to enforce punishments when something wrong has occurred. When the state misapplies a law, they get sued and compensation is awarded. The high court is there, in part, to enforce changes in the law. Both Gis and Andy admitted that the wrong action had taken place, that serious errors had been made, and that either way it was a lose-lose situation.
However, I think they missed something. They said that they made the ruling so as to reinforce the message about scooped games that had occurred in Philly, but that ruling was there to clear up situations about intent. The intent of someone who scoops their cards, as they ruled in Philly, is that they are conceding. Again, it seems far more correct to me, that a player who scoops his cards is simply acknowledging the end of the game. The intent behind the scooping can be different. However, in this case, the intent was made abundantly clear as soon as the judge forced the issue.
One of my favorite ways of deciding what one should do when faced between two options of similar merit is to flip a coin. My reason behind it is not to give each option an equal outcome like in the Diceman, but rather, when the coin lands, you have a reaction to its outcome. Your reaction is normally either one of pleasure or displeasure. When the coin lands, you are made aware of which outcome you really preferred prior to the flipping. It makes you aware of what you really wanted when before you were clouded by indecision. I mention this because that is what I feel happened when the table judge erroneously enforced the result of the game. It shocked Brett out of his myopia of procrastination and made him realize the decision he was had previously been vacillating over. It became abundantly clear to him what outcome he would have reached if given due time and he immediately voiced his decision. It is easy to see why he was taking some time to make the decision; it was his first Pro Tour and he was having to come to terms with the fact that it would end in failure – that is not an easy thing for someone to do, the acknowledgement of the end of a dream.
To conclude, because of the podium perspective the DCI were trying so hard to maintain, the judges felt it was better to uphold the objective ruling (concerning scoopage) in contrast to the subjective ruling (Brett’s will) as it was a “lose-lose” situation. They were not properly informed due to their own mistakes and, as a result, misinterpreted the situation. It was, in essence, not a lose-lose situation, because the Philly ruling was not even applicable to this case! The whole issue is instead about intent and even though the Philly ruling was about intent, it was ruled in favor of B’s intent. They should have wanted to ensure that what filtered away from LA to local judges everywhere was not that scoopage entails a concession but rather (to overstress the point) that it entails the end of the game, the scooping player’s intent being the rule of thumb if it can be clearly discerned. Intent is subjective and as a result cannot be made as an umbrella ruling except to acknowledge that it is intent that is the key. What I am trying to bring to public attention is that the ruling that was made went against both players’ intents when it was not needed to. It harmed the very players that the rules are meant to protect in the first place.
If you look at the decisions that must have faced the judges at the time when they were looking down at the situation from their podium, they would have been faced with two options: lose or lose (as they saw it). Closer examination of the “lose” option they did not take makes one wonder how they interpreted it as bad. Neither player walks away from the game feeling violated, as I can assure you was the case, rather they would acknowledge that a player’s intent is of crucial import. What did the judges actually stand to lose by ruling otherwise? The ruling would not have harmed the podium they stood upon, nor would it have sent any message rippling down through the currents to lower judging that was anything but positive! As such, the option they took shows a misunderstanding of the situation, a need to enforce a ruling (scoop=concede) that is not even correct and if anything that a player’s intent was overruled for all the wrong reasons. So when faced with what was a win-lose situation, they opted for the loss rather than the win, opting instead to undermine the very fabric the rules are based on – intent.
Rather than present all the information from my, very likely biased, point of view, I asked if Andy Heckt would say a little on the matter. Although no compensation was forthcoming, here is what he had to say:
“The ‘raven of judges’ was Gis realizing the matter might have further, longer-reaching, consequences and seeking advice. PT Philly’s was “if shaking your opponent’s hand and saying good game isn’t a clear indication the game is over – then what is?”, this situation was “if picking up your cards is not an indication the game has ended, what is?” If i’ts 1-1 and game five of extra turns ends with both players still alive, it indicates a draw. You can’t concede completed games; matches must report all games actual resolution or its fraud.
That argument was compelling during the discussion. It was my argument. The DCI officials and Gis didn’t have a more powerful one, so Gis went with it, even though we all disliked what it would result in. As you say, we found out more information and errors that occurred in the follow-up the next day after several hours of talks with you, the table judge, and an hour of re-thinking how best to balance the ‘podium’ to the individual decision. Complex decisions often get too simplified later, thus simple decisions are often the best. My mistake was in believing we couldn’t still communicate a clear message while considering the complexities.
You bring up ruling by player intent. We have two rules when applying player-intent to a call:
1) The intention of the player at the time when he could legally have made the decision must be clear.
2) A player may gain no advantage because of his sloppy play.
In all technical respects we followed our policies in this decision. We made technical mistakes that meant #1 was not given proper investigation. What was Brett’s intent when he began picking up his cards and #2 was that one of the players should have conceded before the last play of turn five was made.
The failing again was not realizing those mistakes early enough and giving the podium effect too much of the balance to the individual “justice” of the match in dispute. Justice often being that either both parties are equally happy, or equally unhappy with the decision.
I learned what many judges also have experienced. That making the wrong call feels horrible, not because you made a mistake – we know these happen and we learn from it – but because a wrong decision has cost another person/team something you can no longer correct.“
My trust in the game has been deeply shaken. I know I will think twice before I devote weeks of my time to test for a PT and lots of my money to get there, when it might not even be a mistake I make that will dictate how I finish. This is a public issue involving judging policy, the nature of the rules, what Wizards’ needs to do when they screw up to protect the players and what can be done to remedy all that has gone wrong; please respond in the forums – this article is written so that people can express their opinion so that what went wrong can be set right.
To finish with another quote from Andy – “Many players think that a judge is a rules expert and that all the answers are written down somewhere. It far more about keeping a tournament fair and running while encouraging the fun that exists. The philosophy and intent of the rule is more important than the technical details.“
* Why do we only get five extra turns rather than six? Why does one player get more than the other? Especially when tournaments where a timer is visible, it is all too easy for the player in sight of it to delay the ending of his opponent’s turn so that it will be he that gets the advantage. Simply thinking in his endstep and flicking through the cards in your hand, or taking a little bit longer to find that land you want to put into play off your Flooded Strand is enough to reap a huge advantage. It is assumed that the player whose turn it is when time is called has full control over his turn, when it seems almost more applicable that the other player has more control over when the turn actually ends. Even if the player was in full control of his turn, why should he be penalized just because it was his turn that was in progress at the end rather than his opponent’s – maybe he lost the coin flip at the beginning meaning the five-turn ruling makes the coinflip even more important. It does not matter whose turn was the last turn in the time, for that time was to be used equally by both players, so the number of extra turns should be equal too.