Hello, all. I'm in a situation where I'm not quite sure how to proceed. Hopefully, the folks here can provide some suggestions.

First, let me tell you the story of two players, who we'll call Ian and Nick.

Nick is a good guy, he's very enthusiastic, everyone at my FNM likes him, and it's generally fairly positive to have him around. However, Nick's friend Ian… well, when Ian walks in the door at 6:30 on a Friday, you can almost hear the eyes rolling.

Here are the important facts about these players:
*Both are university students, from the same country, and very far from home.
*Ian has a car, Nick does not. It is unlikely that one will appear at an event without the other.
*Both have been semi-regulars at the shop for a while.
*Both have been playing Magic for around a year, perhaps less.
*Ian is a habitually slow player. I mean SLOW. Glacially slow. I once watched him spend 45 seconds in the tank trying to decide which land to play turn one. He's a very careful player; his slow play comes from over-thinking the game, from being terrified of making a mistake.
*Ian's Slow Play tendencies have earned him game loss penalties in the past.
*Ian's pace of play improves under pressure, but then becomes glacially slow again relatively quickly.
*Ian's slow play has ostracized him within the store's community. Very few players make an effort to treat him well outside of a match, and to be paired against him is considered a painful and unpleasant experience. He is a nice guy, he's polite, he's generally friendly, but he has earned himself the position of the Black Sheep.

There is clearly a problem here. Ian wants to play, and wants to play well, but his presence is unwelcome, and I can't blame the rest of my players too heavily for this. I was not exaggerating about his pace of play. To illustrate:

Last week (Friday, the 24th), we had two draft pods for FNM (our FNM is always Limited). I was playing in the pod that included Ian, and our other judge was playing in the other pod. I knew that Ian would cause my group to run slower, so I asked the other judge to handle his pod as best as he could throughout the night, so I could focus on Ian, and allow my pod to run at the slower pace that it was going to while not disrupting the other group too much.

The pods began drafting at the same time. During pack 1, Ian and Nick were chatting excitedly with each other in their first language about the awesome new cards in the set, and showing each other cards in their packs that they were excited for. I asked them to stop, as this behavior is clearly unacceptable. They began again a few minutes later, and they did not hear me ask them stop again, so I had to get up and go over to them and directly tell them to cut it out. I also had to ask Ian to speed up his drafting multiple times, as packs were piling up behind him— not just one or two packs, but up to six at a time.

Eventually, we get to pack three. I do my usual reminder of “pack three, pass to the left”. I then look over at the other pod— and they're being paired. In the time it took us to complete two packs of the draft, they drafted all three packs, built their decks, and were being seated for round one.

At the end of the night, the discrepancy between pods was so vast that my round three ended nearly a full hour after the other pod's did.

I hate to be the guy to point fingers and blame it all on one guy, but it really is the disruptive influence of one player. He accumulates Slow Play warnings like nobody I've ever seen. He has received Game Loss penalties. He has had judges sit next to him for spans of 20-30 minutes, prompting him to make a play nearly every time he has priority. If we apply enough pressure to him, he speeds up, then slows down again.

I don't know where to go from here. The bottom line for me is that he is negatively affecting the overall health of my events. He grinds things to a halt, and people don't like him for it. His presence, and the group's reaction to it, darkens the overall mood of an event. I would love to see him improve, I would love to see him become a valued member of the community instead of the ball and chain that he is perceived as now, but I am at my wit's end trying to come up with ideas to encourage that while protecting the overall health of my events.

Help!

I will ask Eric Lee to provide additional context and experiences regarding Ian, as he regularly judges FNM alongside me, and had much more contact with Ian tonight. Eric has been sent a link to this thread.

I am sorry for creating such a long post; I hope that most of this was informative and descriptive of my issue, even though it feels good to vent over it.


Edits: punctuation and grammar.

Edited Tara Wright (Jan. 31, 2015 07:14:22 AM)

So it sounds like you have made reasonable attempts to correct the behavior and the player is unable/unwilling to make adjustments.

At this point, I would just inform Ian at the beginning of the next FNM, that if his pace of play does not improve immediately, this will be the last FNM he will play in at that store. (Obv run that by the TO first). That will solve the problem one way or another. Just be respectful and have this conversation away from other players

It sucks for Nick, but you do not own any part of his responsibility in getting to an event, and that cannot be a factor in how you handle Ian.

-bryan

I agree with Brian in full, but would like to add something that might make this a little easier for you:
Instead of trying to keep Ian happy by allowing him to continue to play Magic at your LGS, think about the X-Ian players at your events you will be making happy by disallowing him to play at your events.

You've made every effort to educate him about his slow play, including what appear to be Game Losses at Regular REL. The education doesn't seem to be getting through to him, so maybe it's time he took a break from events at your LGS for a while.

One final option might be for you and/or some of the players to sit down with Nick. It's possible that Nick can get Ian to understand why his pace of play is not acceptable.

Originally posted by Trenten Novak:

One final option might be for you and/or some of the players to sit down with Nick. It's possible that Nick can get Ian to understand why his pace of play is not acceptable.

That would also my first way to go. I'm pretty sure if you tell Nick that Ian isnt allowed to play at the LGS anymore if he keeps on wasting eons he has an incentive to help his friend to get better(no car = no fnm probably for him)

This sounds like it has reached the stage at which you need to consider your customer service obligations towards all the other players in the store. If you think Nick or another player might be able to intercede more successfully than you, then by all means try it, but I think consulting with the TO and following Bryan's suggestion to sit down with Ian and inform him that any further slow play will result in him being banned from the store is the only remaining option.

Don't make the store ban permanent. Give him a easy test to get the
ban lifted: Complete a 3 game match in 40 minutes.

Many years ago a friend of mine was banned by the most popular store
in my city for this same reason. I believe some players were starting
to pull out of drafting with him or preferring to concede rather than
bother playing with him. Clearly this a problem on a similar level.
The TO handled it very well and while the player wasn't happy about
it, he waitied patiently and attempted to get better while his ban was
in place.

It does sound like this player is at the level of annoyance that the
enjoyment of the other players is more important than keeping this one
(or even two assuming his friend won't be able to turn up, but see if
any of the other players are happy to offer him a convenient lift)
customer.

On Sat, Jan 31, 2015 at 9:55 PM, Thomas Ralph
<forum-15860-0531@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:
> This sounds like it has reached the stage at which you need to consider your
> customer service obligations towards all the other players in the store. If
> you think Nick or another player might be able to intercede more
> successfully than you, then by all means try it, but I think consulting with
> the TO and following Bryan's suggestion to sit down with Ian and inform him
> that any further slow play will result in him being banned from the store is
> the only remaining option.
>
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–
Gareth Pye
Level 2 MTG Judge, Melbourne, Australia
“Dear God, I would like to file a bug report”

Although I haven't run into this situation, my angle is from a customer experience one. I like what the other judges have said here. As you explain why you're asking him to take a break from Tournament Magic, put the focus on the integrity of the tournament (which has no body or personality), as opposed to focusing on what other players are saying. If he feels the pressure to leave is because of the other players, perhaps he won't want to play with those players again. Ian needs more practice with Casual and Kitchen Table Magic before coming back to play at Regular.

Ian should be invited to watch other experienced players as a spectator, without communicating with them during the tournament, to see how decision are made quickly. Remind him his ban is temporary and that he need only demonstrate the ability to play faster, and he's back in. He's welcome to hang out at the store, buy and trade from the store, and even play on the side, but you have a tournament to run, and a time to finish, and he can watch and learn from others.

I wish you luck. Please post back here, if you feel, to let us know how it went. You've put a great deal of thought into this, to be sure, so I hope your mental and verbal preparation get through to him.

Another angle you can approach this situation from is the idea of calling the draft. We do this quite frequently at my LGS even at regular. Timings are NOT needed to be as fast as a competitive timed draft, but they can be adapted to your store. For my store, we also have some very slow drafters and when I look around the room (2-3 pods) and see that all but 2-3 people are ready for the next pick, I will say “Please pick and pass”. This lets the stragglers know that their time is up. If for some reason the player still doesn't pass it gives you a much more concrete thing to talk about later. It is MUCH easier to have the conversation of “Hey, I gave a direction to pass. Why didn't you?” than it is to talk about pace of play and drafting in a more abstract sense.

As for “glacial” pace of play, there IS an upgrade path for repeated “General Unwanted Behaviors”. Use it.

Originally posted by Louis Annino:

As for “glacial” pace of play, there IS an upgrade path for repeated “General Unwanted Behaviors”. Use it.

In the description, he says he HAS used it, several times, on that one player. The problem is that the penalties aren't changing the way he plays, and his play “style” is bringing down the atmosphere of all the other players in the store. I do like your “Pick and pass” idea, though, for getting through the draft portion.

Ian's desire to win is genuine, but he is set on a belief that there is always a singular, top-ranking, best-pick for his the cards he was just handed, or best-play for his particular situation in the game he's in. Every other decision is sub-optimal to him, and he probably works very hard to find that top play/top pick all the time. He probably suffers from a kind of analysis paralysis, where he can't make a pick or play until he's absolutely sure it's the best one. He's probably trying to figure out all the possibilities, of his own actions vs. his opponent's actions. He's probably trying to figure out the chance of this happening vs. the chance of that happening. It's probably like a chess game in his head, but without knowing what his opponent has in hand and in deck, it's difficult to determine that ideal play. One of the reasons I like Magic is that when I win, I can attribute it to skill, and when I lose, I can attribute it to bad luck. Ian doesn't want bad luck to determine his game.

There are articles all over the Internet about drafting well, and about playing Limited well. He's probably trying to process all he's read in the context of what he's faced with at any point in time, and trying to figure out, like a computer, what Magic theory says he should do. ??

@David: Your situation as a judge here is interesting, and I feel bad for the whole group, including Ian. I would also hope that the players would help him progress, but that's hard to do in a tournament setting, which is why I stand my ground that he just needs more Casual, side-event, kitchen table experience to improve his pace. Again, good luck.

From what I can see, Ian has showed no measurable effort to improve his pace of play, despite multiple trips up the upgrade path. It appears that when Ian is playing at this store, the players are unhappy, the judges are unhappy, and these things should make the TO unhappy (I know I would be). The first thing you need to do is get the TO involved (we appreciate it when you do), and inform them that there is a problem. Assuming the TO is on board, inform Ian (privately) that he needs to quickly develop better habits or he will no longer be welcome back (or let the TO do so, depending on how hands on your TO is). The period of time he would be not welcome is entirely up to the TO.

This sort of problem can, if left unchecked, kill a community (my LGS has had to deal with this at least twice). Your players will thank you for it.

Those of you who suggested called drafts for Regular REL, remember that Regular REL is about having fun. As someone who has been involved with many called drafts (both as player and as judge), I can tell you that they are no fun at all. I would strongly advise against called drafts at Regular REL.

I think others have covered how to handle asking the player to improve quickly or applying a ban. Unfortunately it sounds like you'll lose Nick if you have to go down this road with Ian, but better a healthy environment with neither than frustrating all the other players with both.

As a side note, my group of friends has a player who used to play incredibly slowly. One thing we found that helped him speed up was to team him up with a quicker player for 2HG and playing ‘open’ magic with revealed hands and decision discussions.

Externalising his decision making and listening to others helped him see that they also took almost all of the same things into account, but also highlighted how others were able to decide between lines of play. It also highlighted a few blind spots he had on shortcuts that quicker players tend to develop, my favourites of which were:

> Playing around counterspells from an empty handed, tapped out player
> Tapped out but still ‘thinking’ about what he wanted to cast

This isn't anything a Judge or TO should feel responsible to do with him, but suggesting these as things to do with his friends may help him speed up.