From MTR 5.5:

Players must maintain a pace to allow the match to be finished in the announced time limit.

Consider the following cases:

Andrew and Nathan finish the first two games of their match very quickly and begin their third game with 40 minutes remaining on the round clock. Reasoning that they will have no problem finishing their match in time, Amy begins to play extremely deliberately, taking a significant amount of time to make every decision. However, she is not taking so long that it seems likely that they will run out of time, even if Nathan also played that slowly.

Amy and Nelson start the third game of their match with six minutes remaining on the round clock. Andrew plays extremely quickly in the interest of finishing. Nathan continues to play at a pace that would be reasonable for the first game of a match in a 50 minute round, but will almost certainly prevent the game finishing before the end of the round.

Is Andrew's pace acceptable? What about Nelson's? Guided by the IPG definition of the corresponding infraction, I'm inclined to answer no and yes, respectively.

Slow Play - A player takes longer than is reasonably required to complete game actions.

But, I'm curious to hear other opinions. Should the expected pace of play change given the amount of time that remains in the round?

I agree.

I believe the quoted MTR rule is just a tournament rule. If a player does
not maintain a pace to allow the match to finish (which is what Nelson is
doing), he is breaking a tournament rule, yes, but there is no infraction.
I wouldn't even educate the player because I think in this case we should
follow the spirit of the rule (play at a reasonable pace) rather than the
text.

Slow Play, on the other hand, says that players have to play “at a
reasonable pace” or else face the penalty. What is reasonable pace is
decided by the judge. If Andrew takes, for example, 20 seconds per play,
for several consecutive plays, I would consider it Slow Play (though apply
a caution, first, of course). In the second case, Amy can play quickly, but
we cannot force Nelson to give up his “reasonable time” just because not
much time is left in the round.

Petr Hudecek, L2




2012/12/16 Dillon Plunkett <forum-2257@apps.magicjudges.org>

Originally posted by Dillon Plunkett:

But, I'm curious to hear other opinions. Should the expected pace of play change given the amount of time that remains in the round?

In this case, I believe that the answer should be no. Let's take the latter scenario, where there is only 5 minutes left in a round. We shouldn't force a player to make hasty (and probably incorrect) decisions by saying: “since there's only 5 minutes left, you now only have 5 seconds to make a decision versus 20,” or something of the like. As long as the player isn't stalling or taking too long to decide upon an action, then we're fine. Whenever I observe a match, I do my best to ignore the time remaining when observing for Slow Play. This helps prevent players from unsteady judge calls on what is and isn't Slow Play.

I feel like Slow Play penalty comes with such a double edged sword. While I agree that players with complicated decks or deliberate play take longer to complete their turns, I can't help but push some requirement onto their opponent to call a judge over around the 10 min mark. In my limited experience the majority of slow play situations come up with 5 min left in the round and thus lacks an agreeable resolution. I recently has someone call for me at an event with 5 mins left in the round and say “my opponent's playing really slow, I don't want to get him trouble because he's a nice guy, but we are still in game one”. I expressed the need to speed up to the slow player and advised that in the future the overly patient individual should call a judge significantly sooner in a match.

I guess the point of this is that it would behoove us as judges to announce prior to the start of an event that players concerned with the possibility of going to time need to request a judge much sooner in the match.

Originally posted by Dillon Plunkett:

Should the expected pace of play change given the amount of time that remains in the round?

Nope. Just as it's unreasonable to expect a player to speed up their play dramatically, in the last few minutes of a round, it's also unreasonable to allow a player to play very slowly in the first few minutes of a round.

However, it is not unusual - perhaps even normal? - for players to try to play a bit faster when they become aware of the clock as a factor in their match. Similarly, it's very common to see players slow their pace once time is called, and those five extra turns can really drag out. (That's one reason why, at larger events, we always try to have a judge on every outstanding match as or even before time is called.)

But back to the original question - the pace of play should be reasonable throughout the round. When pace of play slows noticeably, judges tend to start thinking about Stalling. And, when pace of play increases rapidly, mistakes get made - so judges get to think about various infractions. Neither outcome is ideal.

In your original scenario, the first example, we can't say Andrew is Stalling - because he's not trying to take advantage of the time limit - but it's not fair to anyone that he's slowed his pace of play so remarkably. Encourage him to play at a more reasonable pace.

Second example, if Nathan's pace of play is acceptable “for the first game of a match”, then it's acceptable, period.

More generally, the original quote refers to the entire match, not a specific point. You're expected to maintain a pace that would allow for a normal match to be played in the (usually) 50 minutes.

Originally posted by Toby Elliott:

Does the time it takes for us to call slow play increase when someone is in top 8 or there is no round limit?

No. What changes in the untimed rounds, is that Stalling is (normally) not possible.