I've been in drafts where players have used their smartphones to pull up TCGplayer mid-draft to check the sell price of whatever rare they've opened. I'm not really comfortable with this, but I don't actually see any policy in the JREL document that disallows this (assuming the players are able to do so quickly enough that they don't hold up the draft). Fellow judges, have you seen this? How do you deal with it?

The electronic device policy is available in the MTR and applies to all
RELs.
I would kindly ask the player to put their phone away during the draft.
Repeat if necessary and of course keep disruption to a minimum.

Failure to follow instructions can lead the player toward the serious
problems section of the JARR. As this is regular use your best judement
about device usage and policy.

The electronic devices policy actually doesn't apply at Regular REL, subject to head judge/TO modification:

2.12 Electronic Devices
At Competitive and Professional Rules Enforcement Level during drafting, deck construction, and playing of matches, players may not use electronic devices capable of taking and storing notes, communicating with other people, or accessing the internet (with the exception of taking brief personal calls with the opponent's permission).

At Regular Rules Enforcement Level, electronic devices are permitted, but players may not use them to access
information that contains substantial strategic advice or information about an opponent's deck. Device use during
a match other than brief personal calls must be visible to all players. Players wishing to view information
privately on electronic devices during matches must request permission from a judge.

The Head Judge or Tournament Organizer of a tournament may further restrict or forbid the use of electronic
devices during matches.

Eli, what's the concern you have? This is something that I've seen and even done myself before. As you say, unless it's holding up the draft, I haven't had a problem with it.

You could put a copy of your store's buylist near each of your draft pods to help your players access the info more easily, but this shouldn't take more than 20-30 seconds at the most and shouldn't need to happen more than once or twice a draft – most cards seem to fall into the “obviously worth money-drafting” or “will be abandoned on the table after draft” categories.

Originally posted by Joe Wiesenberg:

Eli, what's the concern you have? This is something that I've seen and even done myself before. As you say, unless it's holding up the draft, I haven't had a problem with it.

Well, I know that some stores I've been at have asked players not to do it–though I don't know if that's something the TO's have requested or a policy put in place by the local judge staff.

Also, it's a bit of a “tell”–if my opponent looks up a price and then the rare is missing from the pack, I know that my opponent took a card that she is probably not playing in her deck, so I shouldn't be reading signals from the pack.

Finally, I've gotten judge calls about whether it's okay in the past and I'm not sure whether the best response is “go for it” or “please don't hold up the draft” or “let me check with the TO, this isn't a judge issue”. In a few isolated cases I've even been asked to look up a price on a players' behalf, though I've always said no.

@Joe: This section of the MTR which you so kindly posted is what I was referring to (which as it states does apply at regular REL:

Originally posted by MTR:

At Regular Rules Enforcement Level, electronic devices are permitted, but players may not use them to access
information that contains substantial strategic advice or information about an opponent's deck. Device use during
a match other than brief personal calls must be visible to all players. Players wishing to view information
privately on electronic devices during matches must request permission from a judge

And in this case the player would be viewing information privately during the draft portion of a limited event at regular REL. So again I reiterate, kindly ask the player to put the phone away, until after the draft is completed as looking up prices during a draft is potentially disruptive to the draft and would not be visible to all players during the draft portion (no I will not argue about the feasibility and logistics of sharing a phone with @8 players in a draft pod). At which time the player can then look up any card/price they wish.

Originally posted by Nicola DiPasquale:

@Joe: This section of the MTR which you so kindly posted is what I was referring to (which as it states does apply at regular REL:

MTR
At Regular Rules Enforcement Level, electronic devices are permitted, but players may not use them to access
information that contains substantial strategic advice or information about an opponent's deck. Device use during
a match other than brief personal calls must be visible to all players. Players wishing to view information
privately on electronic devices during matches must request permission from a judge

And in this case the player would be viewing information privately during the draft portion of a limited event at regular REL. So again I reiterate, kindly ask the player to put the phone away, until after the draft is completed as looking up prices during a draft is potentially disruptive to the draft and would not be visible to all players during the draft portion (no I will not argue about the feasibility and logistics of sharing a phone with @8 players in a draft pod). At which time the player can then look up any card/price they wish.

The section you emphasized specifically mentions matches.

I feel this is an issue that falls into the “This will take up time from the draft and cause it to go longer” category. Be polite, and help the player see why a draft taking an extra minute or two per pick will have poor results for everyone involved.

Nicola, that last line you bolded does use the phrase “during matches”, so I believe that a player's default expectation would be that they could use their devices during a draft.

But ultimately I also think you have hit on exactly what Eli was looking for: The truly relevant line is the one that gives the head judge and TO the power to further restrict use (which, uh, also does say “during matches”…but I guess we'll ignore that part!).

Eli, I think all of your potential responses are fine. I don't share your concerns about players doing this, but you have the ability to work with your TO to ask players not to do it if that's what you'd like. I would argue that allowing players to spend a reasonable amount of time doing a lookup is a better outcome than the player taking longer to ask a store employee to look it up, or feeling pressured into making a financial decision without accurate info. Ideally, yeah, we're all here to draft, but for budget-conscious players there is another element to it.

I don't want to get too far off track, but I also think signaling is not necessarily impacted by money-drafting. It's often correct to recognize that a missing rare isn't a signal in the first place. Someone price-checking a rare ahead of you and taking it doesn't mean they aren't playing it in their deck, it means they put a higher value on its price than on having other potential picks in their deck. It could still be totally playable, so reading too much into that as a signal can be dangerous. As an example, I might take a dragonmaster outcast over rolling thunder because outcast reaches my personal value threshold, but still end up in red because I want to play it. Your argument is interesting, though, and I do think it's more applicable to pack 2 than pack 1. I think for pack 3 it is a lot less relevant barring some last-minute color-switching shenanigans.

The most obvious potential problem that came to my mind was: what if the
player decides they're allowed to look at things besides the card prices?
Such as, say, a pick order list?

Now, that's a little off-topic, but I think it speaks to a larger concern:
let's not have the players looking at anything that isn't the cards in the
pack they're currently musing over. Surely the perspective of other
players is of concern as well. How are the other 7 players supposed to be
sure of what the phone guy is looking at? I certainly wouldn't allow a
player in a draft access to a paper buylist for the same reasons, and
letting someone access their phone seems like a much bigger potential
problem. I don't see a reason to allow this particular behavior, and the
potential for abuse and delay is a concern.

We're overthinking this.

If someone at a Regular draft is able to check prices in a non-disruptive way, let him/her at it. After more than a few picks, it'll probably become disruptive.

If someone is being disruptive/slowing down the draft, ask them to speed up, out of courtesy for other players.

Originally posted by Thomas Ralph:

We're overthinking this.

If someone at a Regular draft is able to check prices in a non-disruptive way, let him/her at it. After more than a few picks, it'll probably become disruptive.

After more than a few picks, there won't be any valuable cards to look up. With how long it takes some people to draft, I could probably list the card on TCG with my smartphone and have it sold by the time my next pack is available.

Originally posted by Thomas Ralph:

We're overthinking this.

If someone at a Regular draft is able to check prices in a non-disruptive way, let him/her at it. After more than a few picks, it'll probably become disruptive.

If someone is being disruptive/slowing down the draft, ask them to speed up, out of courtesy for other players.

The problem is that it might become disruptive if the internet connection is slow or if everybody does it for his first pick. Acting then is too late because the disruption already happened and you cannot “undisrupt”. On top of of that, there's also the problem of players potentially having access to strategic advice, for example pick orders.

Using the phone during a draft for anything else but answering a quick private call is a no-go for me.

I allow it if people ask and I'll even look it up for them. Slowing down the draft too much is a bridge I'll cross when we get there. A lot of FNM players are naturally slow drafters anyway, the price-check pick is likely not going to be the slowest pick that draft. I'm not giving the player a feel-bad just because there's the potential of disruption.

Originally posted by Jasper König:

The problem is that it might become disruptive if the internet connection is slow or if everybody does it for his first pick. Acting then is too late because the disruption already happened and you cannot “undisrupt”.

But then you know and can prevent it next time right? Depending on if it's the location that has a slow connection, or a specific person with a slow connection, or a group of players that do it too often. Is it really a disaster if this happens once and can't be undisrupted?

Originally posted by Jasper König:

On top of of that, there's also the problem of players potentially having access to strategic advice, for example pick orders.

With this being regular there's much more serious potential for abuse, so this aspect doesn't carry much weight for me.

I'll just weigh in and say I like the TO's buylist as an option. It makes it openly accessible, saves time over the other options, and the TO is probably happy about the extra attention.

In smaller drafts of 1-2 pods, I'm happy to provide price checks as I would oracle text. Until a certain number of players, I've found that to be minimally disruptive.

This sounds like one of those things where it's really up to the judge's (and the TO's) discretion. As stated previously, the MTR doesn't explicitly prohibit this.

I would personally be okay with it to a point. Most players would check during pick 1 to see if their rare is worth anything, and even then a number of players can tell whether their rare is bulk or not offhand. However, much more beyond that becomes excessive, and I might ask the player to put their phone away. It's really a by-feel thing; you can usually get a sense for when price-checking becomes excessive.

That said, if it's a persistent problem (like it's slowing down the draft significantly) or the TO has an issue with it, you're free to ask the players to table their phones (draft pun intended) for the duration.