This Saturday we held prereleases in our store (as everybody else probably) and at one of those events a tricky situation arose. I was the only judge at the event and I witnessed the following discussion (translated from German) between two players shortly before the end of round 4 of 6. Player A at this time had 12 points and Player B 10 points. Both players were sitting at the tables they had just finished their matches at.

Player A: "Hey Player B. If both of us win our next round we are most likely going to be paired in the last round. If that happens and we draw that game, I am going to win the tournament for sure and you are going to be at least on the fourth place. Don't you think we should draw Do you want to draw if that happens?“

Player B: ”Yeah we could totally do that. Just give me some of your price boosters in that case.“

Obviously Player B didn't see me standing exactly behind them. My first thought was that this is one easy DQ, as Player B offered to draw in exchange for some boosters and Player B did not have a chance to call a judge, since I was already there. But after a short moment of thinking about it, I wasn't sure whether the match they were talking about actually existed. And if I could DQ them for something that is entirely hypothetical. What would you do? Any input is welcome and an official answer would be greatly appreciated as well.

Bonus question: You for whatever reason decided not to DQ them. They are indeed paired against each other after winning round 5, finish two games (1:1) and before the third game is about to end in his favour, Player A asks ”draw?" and Player B agrees. What happens next? The following interrogation finds that no new incentive to draw was given, Player A was top seat even after they drew the game (which he knew) and just wanted to gift a point to Player B because they are friends.

Edited Konrad Eibl (Jan. 19, 2016 10:42:10 AM)

Player A's language - “I am going to win for sure”, “you are going to be at least on fourth place”, “don't you think we should draw” - is strongly indicative of offering a draw/split. He doesn't specifically mention prizes or a split, but it's clear that his intention was to offer a split - why else would Player B “think we should draw”?

Player B has outright agreed to a draw contingent on receiving packs.

This is why all intentional draws between pair-up/pair-down matches are extremely suspect - the incentive is clearly there. Player A is describing the situation that guarantees that A+B will get the most total prizes guaranteed, which is only relevant if the players have a mutual understanding that they will prize split if they draw.

So both players I believe would have committed Bribery if pairings for round 6 had been posted. However, the offer has been made and accepted. Just as I would disqualify for “if we ever get paired today, I'll pay you $50 to concede”, I would likely disqualify for this.

Originally posted by Dan Collins:

So both players

I'm curious about this. Do you really think that player A's implication is strong enough to DQ?

Quite possibly. Without a copy of final standings and without having been
there I'm not going to speak to this particular scenario (and we shouldn't
anyway as it may be an active investigation) but this older thread has some
discussion about how bribery may not be explicit:
http://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/16796/

There has been a better thread I think, but I cannot find it right now or
remember any other details.

Here is another discussion on this topic.
http://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/15377/

What is the diference between this case and id for 1/2nd?

No dia segunda-feira, 18 de janeiro de 2016, Dan Collins <

Originally posted by Dan Collins:

and we shouldn't anyway as it may be an active investigation

It is not an active investigation, therefore I am asking here.

Originally posted by José Moreira:

What is the diference between this case and id for 1/2nd?

In a swiss tournament (no playoffs), the 1st and 2nd players are always under the same rules than the rest of the players regarding bribery. Therefore you should follow what the MTR explains about this:

1. Is legal to ID.
2. Is legal to share prizes, even if they haven't won them yet.
3. Is ilegal to agree to draw, if that decision is in exchange or influenced by the offer of any reward o incentive (including prizes).

This is a really complicated issue, as that reward or incentive doesn't need to be explicit; but needs to exists. Also, the ID may be influenced by some prior agreement, as that's no longer an offer. If you think 1st and 2nd player are agreening to ID in exchange for a split in the prizes, you should DQ them (after investigation).

Under these asumptions, I believe that (at least) Player B sentence is clear enough to implicit an offer for a result. He has been explicit that his decision to draw is influenced by some boosters. Of course the fact that the player don't know if they are playing yet is something to take into account for the discussion. But if we allow it, that would open a way to bribe without consequences. I'm not sure about player A, but still, if he doesn't call a judge inmediatly I would apply a DQ to him too, as per MTR 5.2.

Originally posted by Joaquín Ossandón:

I'm not sure about player A, but still, if he doesn't call a judge inmediatly I would apply a DQ to him too, as per MTR 5.2.

Remember, in the original scenario the judge was right behind them. Do you step in immediately and DQ B, or would you hang out and listen for another 30 seconds to give A enough rope to hang himself?

Originally posted by Eli Meyer:

or would you hang out and listen for another 30 seconds to give A enough rope to hang himself?

I'd be much happier if we could step in before B uses enough of his rope, and save them both.

d:^D

I was called for consultation in this scenario and I would like to point out my view of the situation.

At first, it looks like classic bribery, which would result in a DQ for Player B, but never for Player A.
Player A had no chance to accept or reject the offer, so DQ'ing him would be unfair.

On a second thought though, things aren't that simple.
The match in question is not even ensured to happen at that point, so that is just a hypothetical discussion going on there. It might be a very shady hypothetical discussion and both player certainly should receive a few very stern words from the judge, but in the end it's just hypothetical.

Let me exaggerate a bit, to make it clearer.
After round 1 of a GP, two friends sit at a table and having a similar conversation. The discuss a possible prize-split if the play each other in round 15 for top 8. Would you DQ them for that discussion? I don't think so, because the discussed scenario is so unlikely. But what would happen if they have the discussion at round 10 of the same GP? Is it now likely enough to be considered a real bribery attempt? Up until which round N out of M rounds this discussion is considered a bribery attempt?
This leads me to the conclusion that the only time we really can apply bribery is if N = M.

Also consider this: If a player walks up to you and tells you that he considers offering his opponent a prize-split in exchange for a result during the next round, what would you do?
Hopefully you would educate the player and explain to them how this kind of behavior is illegal and damaging. You would never ever DQ this player, even though he expressed a hypothetical intention to commit bribery at a future point in time.

Originally posted by Jan Gräfen:

Also consider this: If a player walks up to you and tells you that he considers offering his opponent a prize-split in exchange for a result during the next round, what would you do?

This is a little different from the rest of the examples. As long as no other player is in earshot, there's no way to interpret a question towards a judge as offering a player incentive to change a match result. A player could tell me he came to a PPTQ with $100 cash planning to buy his way to the invite; so long as he tells me in private, and so long as he has not yet made this offer to any other players, I would not issue a penalty (though obviously, I'd make it clear that his plan was completely unacceptable and watch him carefully during the rest of the event)

I will attempt to save the situation by stopping the conversation immediately and educate the players about the serious problems there. There is zero tolerance in bribery but here I believe we can prevent the issues developed into DQ(s).
One possible way I will do to prevent this is including Serious Problem in your players' meeting to let players aware of it.

My Answer for Bonus Question:
The outcome on the match slip should be 1-1-1.
You can check MTR2.4 for more information.

Implicit and Explicit meaning are tricky, I am usually very careful when it comes to splitting, but there was a draft (just a little 8 man side event) that I played in, in which I was going to the finals to play another individual I believe is a judge, and we agreed to split as we knew it was going to be us, and we both wanted to call it a day (we were playing to kill time while others riding with us finished out the main event). He says let's get the match started for planeswalker points.

At this moment I misspoke and said “If we are splitting you can just have the win.” When I should have said “SINCE we are splitting you can just have the win.” I had a formal investigation launched against me and I was VERY displeased with the judge at the time since he didn't even tell me about the disqualification at the time and even gave me my prize support.

This is all just an allegory to bring about the idea that a player may misspeak and or not be able to walk the line of;
if-since.
give me packs-split prizes withe me.

I am also something of a bleeding heart when it comes to regular REL.

Ben: if I'm remembering previous discussions correctly, I believe their match should be reported 1-1-3… If I'm wrong, I'm sure someone will correct me.