This recently came up on the Facebook wall of a friend of mine who's a very good Magic player. He went to a PTQ and opened a very ridiculous Sealed pool in terms of the dollar values of the cards he opened, and chose to ship the pool during the reg&swap rather than drop and take his $300 (roughly) home, because he wanted to play his 9-ish-round PTQ. The question is twofold:

1) Why do we allow players to drop after opening, rather than DQing the offending players along with a charge of UC - Major (Theft of Tournament Materials) for those who choose to walk away rather than participate in reg&swap?

2) Assuming we want to allow players to keep their pools for whatever reason, why isn't there a system to allow a player to “re-buy” into the event for a different pool if the one they opened was very valuable (cash-wise) and they want to keep it?

Thanks.

Edited Lyle Waldman (Oct. 10, 2013 09:35:50 AM)

My guess is:

1) This is a huge feel-bad for newer players.

2) I don't know card values that well, and plenty of judges would be worse. But besides all that, I would keep rebuying until I got a busted pool that could make top 8.

Concerning question #2, allowing players to re-buy a new sealed deck will take up more time during deck registration and it will slow the event down.

Originally posted by Mark Mc Govern:

2) I don't know card values that well, and plenty of judges would be worse. But besides all that, I would keep rebuying until I got a busted pool that could make top 8.

The theorized system from my friend's Facebook would be that the player would still have to receive, open, sort, and register all in the allotted time, so analyzing the pool and deciding if it were “busted enough” would take too much time and thus be infeasible.

Not to mention probably legally fit the definition of gambling more easily.

Paul Smith

paul@pollyandpaul.co.uk

The first question, it's really an unenforceable penalty and it's not like they are damaging the integrity of the event by dropping early. There's no reason to fill out the paperwork and start an investigation into that.

The second question.

1) Doing this completely invalidates the tournament integrity.

2) Doing this is MORE akin to gambling beacuse you can keep spending money “spinning the wheel” to get what you want to try and win the event.

3) This “system” gives players with more money a distinct advantage.

Strictly speaking, though, it is enforceable; if a player fails to hand in their deck during reg & swap or a judge notices an empty seat during the “swap” portion, the judges can look up who's supposed to be in that seat and apply UC - Major to that player. As for an investigation, what sort of investigation is required? The player got up and left and took their cards. The definition is that a player gets up, leaves, and takes their cards. Seems to fit pretty well. Strictly speaking, we *can* do it, but we choose not to.

Note that I do like the policy as-is; these are simply issues that came up when a bunch of high-level players were discussing it on Facebook, and I thought these questions were interesting enough to bring here to ask about.

Judges shouldn't be put in the position of trying to force someone to stay against their will or leave behind product they (kind of) paid for. It's bad customer service all around and in extreme circumstances could endanger players and judges.

It's similar to when someone asks for a restroom break at an inopportune time. The alternative to letting them go is much, much worse.

As you hear questions from players, try to think about why things are the way that they are. Think about if changing the status quo achieves the goals of the policy while providing a better service to players. A “rebuy” tournament does not provide a better service to players nor does it achieve the goals of tournament integrity in policy. Filing a UC-major or a Theft of Tournament Materials investigation for a guy that drops from a sealed event does not provide a better service to players nor does it achieve the goals of the Theft penalty.

Originally posted by Justin Turner:

As you hear questions from players, try to think about why things are the way that they are. Think about if changing the status quo achieves the goals of the policy while providing a better service to players. A “rebuy” tournament does not provide a better service to players nor does it achieve the goals of tournament integrity in policy. Filing a UC-major or a Theft of Tournament Materials investigation for a guy that drops from a sealed event does not provide a better service to players nor does it achieve the goals of the Theft penalty.

Right.

Regarding dropping, the players in question regarded the customer service issue as a “that's obvious, but we think that's a stupid reason” thing (they're all high-level players, most have played on the PT or at least T8'd a PTQ at least once, and are thus not in the “new player” mindset), hence I was wondering if there was a different reason for it and came here to ask.

EDIT: Regarding rebuying, what exactly is the problem? We still have reg&swap for the cases of people who decide to rebuy until they hit a bomb Mythic or something (rebuying would necessarily take place only in the “reg” portion of reg&swap), so doing such a thing is not likely to be problematic. What exactly is the tournament integrity issue here? I can see the gambling issue for sure (although TBH I'm not sure how rebuying into a Sealed event is different from just opening a bunch of sealed packs at the LGS), but the tournament integrity issue I'm not sure about…

Edited Lyle Waldman (Oct. 10, 2013 11:02:41 AM)

The policy isn't to support heuristics and skill levels, that's all subjective and relative. We shape policy for all players, old and new. The level of experience that your player friends have has little bearing if their ideas are still short-sighted.

Originally posted by Justin Turner:

The policy isn't to support heuristics and skill levels, that's all subjective and relative. We shape policy for all players, old and new. The level of experience that your player friends have has little bearing if their ideas are still short-sighted.

Right, of course. As I said, I think the policy as-is is a good policy, but my friends were interested in the reasoning behind it and I didn't want to give an incomplete answer so I came here to ask. Also, I edited my post above yours; if you wouldn't mind having a look and elaborating on some details I'd really appreciate it.

Edited Lyle Waldman (Oct. 10, 2013 10:59:47 AM)

People dropping and keeping their pools is a necessary evil. Why would we encourage this behaviour by removing the requirement to actually drop?

One problem you’ll have is accepting that there are several reasons and not any one. You can argue with one, but the combination of them is what swayed policy to be what it is.

1) Because we used to think the other way and we got input from organizers and players they felt it was poor. Because it is a better player experience. Because ultimately it doesn’t hurt the integrity of the event if the person buy entry, then instead take and walk away product that is already for sale. Because forcing someone to stay in an event is a very poor experience whether it is because their pool is valuable or because their deck can’t win.

2) Because we do not wish players to “buy the best sealed pool their money can buy”; this effects the integrity of the event. The analysis that a player cannot estimate the chance of their pool at the same time they can assess its value is narrow-minded.



From: Lyle Waldman
Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2013 7:35 AM
To: Heckt, Andy
Subject: Sealed and Dropping (Tournament Operations)

This recently came up on the Facebook wall of a friend of mine who's a very good Magic player. He went to a PTQ and opened a very ridiculous Sealed pool in terms of the dollar values of the cards he opened, and chose to ship the pool during the reg&swap rather than drop and take his $300 (roughly) home, because he wanted to play his 9-ish- round PTQ where he had a 1% chance (if that) of making any money at all. I don't know why he did that, bbut I also haven't played on the Pro Tour twice, so there's that. Anyway, the question is twofold:

1) Why do we allow players to drop after opening, rather than DQing the offending players along with a charge of UC - Major (Theft of Tournament Materials) for those who choose to walk away rather than participate in reg&swap?

2) Assuming we want to allow players to keep their pools for whatever reason, why isn't there a system to allow a player to “re-buy” into the event for a different pool if the one they opened was very valuable (cash-wise) and they want to keep it?

Thanks.

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Do you really need more help to understand why a tournament structure where you can rebuy your pool until you get a good one is bad for tournament integrity? The integrity of a tournament is akin to the fairness. One of the ways we promote tournament integrity in limited events is that everyone gets the same number of sealed product from the same sets. There's a degree of luck involved in what you open and that's part of the event. You want to strip that part of the event away and allow the players with more financial resources buy their way into a better deck while the people who can't afford multiple sealed pools get stuck with what they have despite them all paying the same entry fee for the event? Do you not see how this is lopsided and unfair?