Sept, 12 2017
Modern | Time: 9am - 9pm
HJ: David Poon | FJ: Tobias Vyseri, Alice Bailey, Michael Nixon, Todd Bussey, Jovi
Players: 130 | Winner: Terry Steier

This event felt more than a little overstaffed, we had two standby's that ended up getting activated, which, while great for training, felt a little unnecessary.

We had breakfast at IHOP, afterwards 4/6 judges piled into a car while I opted to walk with (follow and get directions from) one of the L1's. I used the opportunity to go over some IPG stuff with him. Also because I have charisma 2 and don't know how to interact with humans in non-work scenerios.

With most L1's I work with usually their rules knowledge is super solid but their IPG is often rather shaky. I've got about 10(ish) questions I regularly go through with any L1 to prepare them for a tournament. The simple things, nothing too weird, just the very common looking at extra cards, mulligan procedure error and missed trigger so that they know the simple stuff.

I used to have a teacher in high school that did something similar, he'd go over a lesson with us and then right after would give us an exam, we'd all basically score perfect because people's short term memories are amazing, and actually applying the information helps people crystallize and solidify it.

When I got to the hall I asked the HJ if there was anything he needed help with, but he only shook his head, so I sat down with the L1's some more and continued to go over IPG stuff.

While I was doing this one of the other L2s on staff came up to me and asked “does so and so's shirt offend you?” I looked over, it was a naked woman covering her breasts with her hands. And I was like “look, I am literally the worst person to ask about this, does it offend me? No, basically nothing offends me.” and he was like “what about the back” I looked over and it said something like 'tits out if you like hip hop' or something. Again I shrugged “it doesn't bother me, but if you thought to ask about it, it is probably something you should address with the TO & HJ” he nodded and went off. Later I asked him what the TO said and he replied “the TO said 'it's 2017, free the nipple'” and I laughed and he laughed and everything seemed fine.

After set up was complete because of the excess of people I put the two L1's on a row each and instructed them to collect decklists in seat order, at the outset I was told by he HJ that we would be handling deck checks like a GP where we would have the pile of list in seat order and a master list by last name and corresponding round 1 seat number.

The thing that was not done was the players were not instructed to write their seat number on the decklists. Which led to some hilarity later, when I was explaining deck checks to other members of the team “so here we have a pile of decklists, so you take your player, cross reference on this master sheet, and then estimate how far in the pile “30” is and start flipping around there” they looked pretty horrified at this system, to be perfectly honest. So horrified that later I went back there and saw that someone had written table numbers on all the lists.

I was told to get two deck checks done per round and I made sure it happened, actually Alice more or less made it happen, I just made sure the making of the happening happened. I was also instructed to ensure that Alice was able to fly solo after round 2 when I was supposed to take over sides (though how many sides you're really going to run into with this kind of player count is questionable at best) and Alice did very well, taking care of all the required deck checks.

I think we only ran a few drafts and Todd ended up taking care of most of them.

For the remainder of the day I just kind of floated around and watched magic. Two interesting things happened, once a player asked me to watch his opponent for slow play. I stood there and watched a storm vs. control and determined that they were both equally slow but not that slow.

I didn't feel like a slow play ruling was necessary, but because of the abundance of staff I asked another judge to take a look. That part was really neat, if I was unsure about something I could ask someone else to either verify or discount my suspicions.

The other thing that happened was a player came up to me later and asked me if I could watch his previous round opponent, he mentioned that his shuffling was a little weird (he felt like the guy could see what was on the bottom while shuffling) he also mentioned something about his opp drawing 4 lightning helix's in a row. Which, could be suspicious, could just be player salt. Either way I investigated later that round, watching this guy, his shuffling was honestly a little strange, I was about to say something when he and his opponent got into a minor argument regarding life totals, I hadn't been watching meticulously but, after listening to each player argue for a little while it seemed pretty clear based on what I had seen and what was in the GY, the player that I was watching for shuffling was incorrect in the dispute. I went through a few questions, asking each player “did these creatures attack last turn?”, “did anything block last turn?”, etc. and had them verify,
I wasn't sure if I should've stepped in, but I let them squabble for a minute or so and it didn't seem like it was going anywhere productive.

Afterwards I brought the entire thing up with Nixon, who is way more experienced with me and asked if he could look into it, and to see what he thought about the whole thing. He said he'd look into it and that was that. It felt a little like passing the buck, but I am constantly worried I'm not judicial enough, if I was alone I probably would've talked to the player about his shuffling and maybe asked a few other questions, but ultimately, more often than not, I give players the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps Nixon might see something I missed.

Later I flew by a lantern control vs lantern control match when I stopped one of the bystanders told me “they're at the part where they're counting each other's libraries.” I laughed and watched for slow play. I But that was unnecessary, they were slow decks in a slow matchup but not slow players!

In the second to last round there was a call with Ad Nauseum, I answered it. The game ended and all was well, I was confident at the time but after a moment I thought “no wait, that doesn't seem right” and I consulted with someone else, and realized I was incorrect and would have to eat my mistake and let the player know the correct ruling. It hadn't impacted the game in which the ruling was made, but I didn't want my erroneous ruling to effect his play choices in other games. The players and other judges were pretty chill about it but I felt pretty stupid.

In the last round there was one table that was spending a rather extended amount of time mulling over statistics and probability. Eventually I told them “you are allowed to talk about probability as much as you want but if you talk about it much longer we're going to start issuing slow play warnings” they were done pretty quickly after that.
Other than that, the tournament ran rather smoothly, rounds turned quickly. Things were good.
My feelings were a little mixed, somehow I felt like I didn't live up to HJ's expectations of me.
But that just means I will need to work hard and improve.