Article on new Floor Rules for tourney play

[LotusHead]

ChannelFireball's article on new tourney issues

www.channelfireball.com is a new strategy site that many of you have probably heard about.  Lots of it is standard/limited stuff, but there are often very relevant Vintage articles there.

This is one explaining some of the new changes to tourney issues.  Some of those issues have been brought up here, I think, but it's nice to have most of it under one umbrella until we all get our hands of the new rules docs (and commite an hour to reading it all...)

[Yare]

Informing a judge if they believe they have observed a rules or policy violation. At Regular or Competitive REL, spectators are permitted to ask the players to pause the match while they get the judge. At Professional REL, spectators must not interfere with the match directly.

This is a fantastic change, in my opinion. Keeping it to Regular and Competitive REL is definitely the right thing to do, as there is a certain amount of potential for abuse in being able to arbitrarily stop other players’ matches. Rest assured that judges will be on the lookout for attempts to abuse this policy. I think this will fix more problems than it will create, since judges are trained to find players trying to take unfair advantage of policy.

I don't understand how "asking" someone to stop the match can be construed as the power to "stop" the match. The rule does not say the player can stop the match; it just says he can "ask" the players to stop the match. I fully intend to just ignore these requests that the match stop if I find it advantageous for me to continue playing and don't perceive that doing so would break any rule.

Moreover, I don't like this rule change. As a general principle, spectators should not be interacting with the players of a match. Period. That's why we have judges; that's their entire purpose. Additionally, do we really need another delay to getting the match over with, particularly when the player asking that the match stop may be completely ignorant?

[Matt]

Moreover, I don't like this rule change. As a general principle, spectators should not be interacting with the players of a match. Period. That's why we have judges; that's their entire purpose. Additionally, do we really need another delay to getting the match over with, particularly when the player asking that the match stop may be completely ignorant?

Lots of tournaments are run without judges, or without enough judges. Enabling spectators to send alerts to judges is a good thing for those.

[Yare]

Moreover, I don't like this rule change. As a general principle, spectators should not be interacting with the players of a match. Period. That's why we have judges; that's their entire purpose. Additionally, do we really need another delay to getting the match over with, particularly when the player asking that the match stop may be completely ignorant?

Lots of tournaments are run without judges, or without enough judges. Enabling spectators to send alerts to judges is a good thing for those.

That's fine. My understanding is that spectators could go get judges any time they wanted in the past. But to have spectators talking to players about something in the match, eh, not so much.

[Apollyon]

It's an interesting change. As a judge, I like the idea of letting the spectators ask them to pause if they notice something off. Nothing is worse than someone going "Judge, I see XYZ happening over there.", I walk over, it's 3 turns later, and it's too late to back up.

I'm not worried about players helping with the match any more because of this than I am now, simply because it's all about education. Just teach them to say "hold on, I'm going to go get a judge" and that's it.

[Vegeta2711]

I fully intend to just ignore these requests that the match stop if I find it advantageous for me to continue playing and don't perceive that doing so would break any rule.

I am going to thoroughly enjoy penalties being given out to people who do this.

[Yare]

I fully intend to just ignore these requests that the match stop if I find it advantageous for me to continue playing and don't perceive that doing so would break any rule.

I am going to thoroughly enjoy penalties being given out to people who do this.

Again, where does it say "ask to stop" means "can stop"? Or are you just saying people are going to get penalties regardless?

[RichardD]

I fully intend to just ignore these requests that the match stop if I find it advantageous for me to continue playing and don't perceive that doing so would break any rule.

I am going to thoroughly enjoy penalties being given out to people who do this.

Again, where does it say "ask to stop" means "can stop"? Or are you just saying people are going to get penalties regardless?

Let's say someone says: "I think something just went wrong here, I think we should call a judge."
You then think it is to your advantage to just keep on playing, therefor you do so.
Your opponent is meanwhile wondering what went wrong and stops interacting with the game.
The spectator calls out judge and you keep on playing.
Then the judge comes and asks what's going on and the spectator explains you've just drawn three cards from Brainstorm, because you forgot to put 2 of them back on top of your library.
Neither you nor your opponent noticed this, because you were playing so fast and resolving so many spells that it slipped your mind.

What do you think that judge is going to do when you tell him that you ignored the spectator because you thought it would be to your advantage to do so?

[ashiXIII]

I fully intend to just ignore these requests that the match stop if I find it advantageous for me to continue playing and don't perceive that doing so would break any rule.

I am going to thoroughly enjoy penalties being given out to people who do this.

Again, where does it say "ask to stop" means "can stop"? Or are you just saying people are going to get penalties regardless?

Let's say someone says: "I think something just went wrong here, I think we should call a judge."
You then think it is to your advantage to just keep on playing, therefor you do so.
Your opponent is meanwhile wondering what went wrong and stops interacting with the game.
The spectator calls out judge and you keep on playing.
Then the judge comes and asks what's going on and the spectator explains you've just drawn three cards from Brainstorm, because you forgot to put 2 of them back on top of your library.
Neither you nor your opponent noticed this, because you were playing so fast and resolving so many spells that it slipped your mind.

What do you think that judge is going to do when you tell him that you ignored the spectator because you thought it would be to your advantage to do so?

I'm not sure Yare phrased this properly. 9/10 times a spectator notices something wrong, nothing is actually wrong. For this reason, I'd probably ignore them also.