Originally posted by Dan Collins:

Concession for concession or concession for prizes are Bribery and using an outside the game ranking system to determine a winner is IDAW.

This is what I would like to understand here better. By the policy plhilosophy, what do you consider here the more appriopriate infraction? Bribery or IDaW? (yes, i know that it is a DQ anyway…)

Doesn't matter as far as I'm concerned. You can explain both to the player and select both in your investigation report in judge center.

I'd say what you're looking for is Bribery. There is no improper method used (like rolling a die) to determine the winner. Conceding the match to your opponent is legal. The problem is when the concession is offered in exchange for an incentive, and Bribery is the appropriate infraction for that.

There's a limit to how much we can logistically do about such a situation, unless it's really just laid out there for us.

We've seen players conceding to others so that the winner would get extra pro points or SCG circuit points to put them over a certain goal. We know with near-certainty that the player conceding expects (and is right to expect) something in return.

We allow splits, and we allow players to concede to their friends, and they certainly will if they think that friend has a better shot at beating the rest of the bracket. This is basically what they're doing.

So, unless we have outright evidence of this actually happening, I think we'd be really overstepping our duties to try to break up this “team.” I'm not happy with its existence, but what can we actually do?

If there is a claim that a team of players colluded in this manner, an examination of the match results involving players from that team could be helpful.

Short of personally overhearing a discussion between the players there is very little we can do in this situation. If I'm confident it's happening but have no proof I might say something like…

“So I hear you guys are colluding, is that true?”
“No…”
“Okay, so you know that would be a very bad thing, right?”
“Yes…”
“I'm glad we understand each other.”

Case closed. Back to “Pushing in Chairs”(TM).

Bradley - where people are saying ‘We know that this happens’, it is more ‘we suspect that this is a common practice among some number of teams/groups of players, but they all are careful not to drop evidence into our laps on site’. Short of investigating and disqualifying anyone who ever concedes to a friend or team member, there is very little that we can act on here. I don't think that anyone actually knows which teams definitely engage in these practices, or which members of those teams (as team mates paired against each other definitely don't systematically concede and we definitely see them play it out).

I hear you, and I agree with most that collusion of this kind isn't the sort of thing that's likely to be sniffed out on the tournament floor. That said, I'm curious why it's suspected to be happening if there's nothing substantive that the investigation committee could take a look at.

You are allowed by policy to have a prize split agreement with your friends. You are allowed to concede to your friends. You are not allowed to arrive at one in conjunction with the other, but proving that someone conceded because of the details of a prize split agreement when that agreement is never mentioned at the table is basically impossible.

We even allow people to discuss a split at the table, then concede as long as the split discussion has fully concluded before any mention of the concession is made and the losing player doesn't get more than 50% of the prize.

We know things are happening that would fall under normal conversational definitions of collusion and bribery. But demonstrating they meet the policy definition is not always possible or a good use of your time.

Originally posted by Joshua Feingold:

..

We even allow people to discuss a split at the table, then concede as long as the split discussion has fully concluded before any mention of the concession is made and the losing player doesn't get more than 50% of the prize.

…

Not saying isn't true, but could you cite any official source on this?? Really curious. Never been very sure on all this bribery, collusion and split issues… :)

Originally posted by Joaquín Pérez:

Joshua Feingold
We even allow people to discuss a split at the table, then concede as long as the split discussion has fully concluded before any mention of the concession is made and the losing player doesn't get more than 50% of the prize.

Not saying isn't true, but could you cite any official source on this?? Really curious. Never been very sure on all this bribery, collusion and split issues… :)

The official source is the IPG. USC - Bribery and Wagering covers making any agreement that relates match results to prizes (or anything else of value). It does not cover making an agreement to split prizes alone, either as a 50/50 or a PTQ split such as “Winner gets the airfare/invite, loser gets everything else”. It does not make it illegal to concede to your opponent. Players are allowed to do those things individually. If you aren't sure whether some specific agreement is legal, just read the first paragraph of the IPG on Bribery and Wagering.

Otherwise, of course I agree with everything Kim and Josh said. I'm sure players do this because it really is a win-win when you have a group of players who are in on this, however I can't prove it, and it's not worth me going out of my way to try to “catch” players doing it given that even a “suspicious” pattern of match results can only ever be suspicious, not conclusive.

Originally posted by Joshua Feingold:

We even allow people to discuss a split at the table, then concede as long as the split discussion has fully concluded before any mention of the concession is made and the losing player doesn't get more than 50% of the prize.

What is the source for the bolded part? The MTR says “players are allowed to share prizes… as they wish…” There are the caveats about collusion/bribery etc., but I don't see anything about disallowing splits that favour the loser. It's an unlikely scenario, but not impossible (it actually would have happened at an FNM I was 2 weeks ago if the player could have worked out how to phrase the offer ‘safely’).

Edited James Winward-Stuart (Sept. 9, 2014 12:29:20 PM)

But there are so many things that could have preceded a discussion of a
split favouring the loser that makes it clear it was bribery.