So at REL we have a player who consistently takes a long time to draft. Repeatedly, several times per pack. Without being ‘mean’ to the player, what can I say to make them understand that they have to go faster?
Yes, this is REL
The player can take 1-2 minutes sometimes to decide
It slows down the draft for everyone else, and people are more than willing to explain this during the draft
The player in question disregards almost all comments and continues to slowly draft.

I would love to hear suggestions on how to politely deal with such a person.

Encouraging them to make their decisions faster is not being mean. Just because its reg rel doesn't mean they get to take their time. When I talk to players about slow play I like to remind them that they are essentially stealing time from everyone else in the draft and it is not cool to be that selfish. Of course I pull them aside when they are not in the middle of something to tell them this. Calling them out in front of everyone is poor customer service. Remind them that the clock is for everyone to use equally. Even if your not actually using one.

If the player keeps playing slowly despite repeated warnings, then you eventually have to be the bad guy and issue a game loss. You should warn them ahead of time that this is going to come, though, so that it's not a surprise.

Have you tried talking to them and finding the root cause of their delay?

Are they reading the cards every time?
Do they not know which cards are generally better than others?
Are they a generally indecisive person?

Addressing the root cause with suggestions might help, but it seems that the greater issue is that they don't seem to care.

If they don't care what the other players say, you need to have a one-on-one with them and explain that the JUDGE cares. Althought excessive time making choices in draft is not explicitly stated as a General Unwanted Behavior in the JAR, their behavior is disruptive to the tournament as a whole.

As a judge, the priority is to educate players who exhibit these behaviors. It can be useful to reinforce this
education with more stern penalties such as a Game Loss should the unwanted behaviour continue, especially
in cases where players are likely to upset others.

You can explain calmly and non-threateningly that if it continues to be a problem, you may have to take steps to penalize their continued slow drafting. Be prepared that this may upset them, and they may or may not come back. Either way, it sounds like you need the behavior to end.

I used to have a player like this locally. We ended up calling the drafts to make him go faster. You don't have to single him out, but just say that you will be calling the drafts and that everyone will have to adhere to the time limit. Eventually either he will learn to draft faster, or he will leave the group, allowing everyone else to have a more pleasant draft experience. In my group's case, the problem player left the group, although he didn't bear a grudge against anyone, as he was aware he was dragging the draft.

Thanks guys. I talked to the player today (I didn't expect to see him at the store on a Monday, but the holiday is a holiday I suppose), and he took it really well. Shortly afterwards, we ended up drafting conspiracy. He hadn't yet drafted this and had to read the cards a couple of times. However, at no point did I feel he was going slow. Neither did any other player. He took my talk with stride and I can clearly see that he worked on it immediately. It was a great improvement and I'm glad to see such a result.
Thanks again for your support guys!

Hi Cyril,

I hope you also informed him of your observations and told him you noticed
his improvement.
That would probably help your cause even greater.

Kind regards,
Richard Drijvers


2014-09-02 8:19 GMT+02:00 cyril ford <forum-12254-5bbe@apps.magicjudges.org>
:

Cyril,

Well done! Keep encouraging that player. Positive reinforcement goes a long way toward teaching good behaviors and habits.

In the future, another line of reasoning you can take with a slow drafter is that creating a backlog of undrafted packs can lead to those packs being shuffled together by mistake, an error that can be tough to spot at first, and leads to disruption and feelbads for the whole draft.

I explain zone drafting every week, and yet somehow, packs still get mixed up. It can be frustrating, but encouraging your slower players to pick up the pace can do a lot to alleviate this.