I’m just back from GP Valencia where I’ve acted as Main Event Scorekeeper. 1076 players did not prove hard to deal with, results entry-wise, and that gave me some time to get interested in how judges fill a result slip.
Note: Grand Prix events still use DCI-Reporter, although it is planned to be replaced eventually. I’ll update that article whenever appropriate but, meanwhile, there are a few things to say.
Writing on the back of the slip
The short version
Judge (First Last), Player (Last First), Category of infraction, Description, Penalty
That’s what most of us have been told. And that’s what most of us do. This is linked to the Penalty window of DCI-R. Using that order makes it natural for the SK who will find the first 3 elements from left to right on the top part of the window, he other two being available just below.
Some things aren’t intuitive: Judge is First Last, Player is Last First. There’s no reason besides “That’s how the software has been coded”.
Oh, and write your name in readable capital letters. Do not sign. After all, besides you and your friends, who knows what your signature looks like?
The longer version
Once this order is accepted, there are quite a few things to pay attention to, especially when it comes to the infraction’s description.
It’s obviously pretty pointless to describe the entire board position for explaining a GRV, but some details need to be explained: Writing “he saw an extra card” as description for a LEC penalty is barely paraphrasing. Here are some thoughts about a couple infraction descriptions.
Looking at Extra Cards
- Knowing from which library that was is essential: When a player reveals a card from the opponent’s deck that’s a much stronger advantage than flipping that player’s top card over while drawing a card.
- Knowing when it happened is also very relevant: If a player mistakenly reveals a card from his opponent’s deck before game 1, that can affect his mulligan choices. If that’s before game 2, the potential for abuse is lesser, although still existent.
When we are reviewing a player’s penalties, these precisions are important. If you, as a judge on-site, should not assess the severity of the infraction (except when calling this Cheating), details are important for possible post-event action.
A player committing LEC once per tournament will only get a Warning each tournament, which means no direct action. However, if we then review that player’s penalties, it becomes important that we can differentiate a clumsy player with his own deck from a “clumsy” player with his opponent’s deck.
Writing card names
I think the word is widespread: You should not write the name of the card on the back of the slip. But I’m not sure it is clear that this applies mostly to DDLP penalties.
Writing card names on the back is not bad per se. It’s just bad when it refers to private information the opponent did not have access to.
Therefore, when you issue such a penalty, you should simply write “Listed 39 cards MD”, “Listed the same card twice”, “forgot to desideboard”, etc. This does not transpose to situations like GRV. For instance, in Valencia, I got the following comment for a GRV: “Drew a card instead of his opponent.”
The combination of GRV as an infraction + Drawing cards as a comment made me ring a bell. After investigating a bit, the situation was as follows: Andy cast Fate Foretold on his opponent’s creature then killed the creature. Andy read Fate Foretold as if he would draw the card, but he was not the creature’s controller. He therefore drew a card illegally.
Oh, by the way, that should have been Drawing Extra Cards since there was neither a GRV or a CPV going on prior to the error. But the fact a Warning had been issued tended to suggest the contrary.
Writing on the front of the slip
Reporting No Shows
When a player does not show up for his round, he is automatically dropped unless he comes to the SK station to mention he does not drop.
To differentiate these cases from regular drops here’s my suggestion on how to fill the slip:
- Let the player at the table write 2-0 at the appropriate places, as if the match had been played and sign. The reason behind is that SKs turn the results into a code they type on the computer:
2-0 at table 15 is 15[Enter]1 for instance
Therefore, just seeing No Show breaks that habit and slows down result entry. SKs can live with it, but at 1600+ player event, slowing down is barely an option. - Then, instead of ticking the drop box, write “No Show” there. That’s visual element the SK can easily turn into ALT+R or ALT+D (upper or bottom player dropping). Write down your name next to the “No Show”
Highlighting Penalties
I feel most SKs focus on the center of a Result Slip, since they can find the most relevant info there: Table number, result, drops, etc.
Therefore, putting a star on the upper right corner of a slip makes it possible for the SK to miss the penalty, especially if he doesn’t store the slips upside down. This is usually where judges indicate the additional time, hence not an area the SK is likely to check.
Put the “W” or the star right next to the player’s name.
If you put that sign anywhere that’s not next to the player and you forget to write the player’s name (or have an arguably readable handwriting, which can happen), this makes it harder for the SK to enter the penalty.
Kevin Desprez.