Head judging a PPTQ as a level 1

| Benelux Judges

Event: PPTQ Amsterdam, Spelletjescafé 2 Klaveren, 31 July 2017
HJ: Michel Degenhardt
HJ-in-training: Alex de Blécourt
FJ/SK: Jan-Jaap Vermeire
Format: Modern
Size: 58 players (over 2 floors)

Head judging a PPTQ as a level 1 for training purposes is a practice that isn’t seen very often and may prove a worthy teaching tool towards taking the final steps on the road to level 2. In this report I will focus on the preparations we made and the lessons I learned, hopefully giving others some guidance in using this useful training method.

Having judged the previous PPTQ in Amsterdam together, Jan-Jaap suggested I head judge the next one held there. After my initial trepidation, I accepted, and we could start to figure out how exactly this would work. Michel was already connected as HJ, so we had everything we needed to get started.

Preparation

First we had to outline some base rules so this would not disadvantage the players in any way: Officially, Michel would still be HJ, and would handle appeals. If at any time he felt the tournament or player experience would be jeopardized, he would take over as HJ. I would handle everything else, including investigations.

We discussed this through e-mail, with the other two judges leaving the organisation to me after giving some useful pointers – foremost among which was: “do not reinvent the wheel!”. Being responsible for the organisation does not mean you need to start from scratch, and there are lots of great resources to be found to help out with this, not the least of which are the judges you’re doing the event with. Luckily I had judged several PPTQs at this location already, so I knew a lot about what to expect, and could keep to the usual structure for the most part.

I sent out a schedule detailing breaks, rough round times, who would be judging upstairs/downstairs, etc. We would try to do deck checks every round, with the judge on break that round taking his break after the start-of-round deck check. To ensure floor coverage we’d attempt mid-round deck checks in the rounds where no judge was on break. Based on earlier PPTQs I had judged at that location, I did not deem it necessary to hand out specific roles for EOR/Paper/Deck Checks. At this point pre-registration had hit the maximum of 64 players, so we knew we were in for a busy day.

The day of the event

So much for preparation! On the day, after checking the location and discussing with my floor judges, I decided to alter the schedule a bit; deciding against using the upstairs/downstairs rotation and letting Jan-Jaap focus primarily on his role as Scorekeeper. We installed the Judge Station upstairs and I made some room for deck checks downstairs.

As we expected the full 64 players (too many to fit on a single floor of the venue, even when standing) I decided to do two separate player announcements as this seemed the most natural thing to do in the circumstances. Moreover, doing two provided an opportunity to gain some extra experience, as I’m still not very good at them! Contents-wise, I checked beforehand what the players were used to with regard to being reminded about rules, bribery and wagering, slow play et cetera. We also decided to introduce myself as Head Judge-in-training and Michel as the actual Head Judge and leave it at that, as the players wouldn’t be helped by knowing about the details of our arrangement.

Once registration closed, 58 players had shown up. Still too many to fit on one floor. Apart from some minor nitpicks, the announcements went well enough. However, the time it took to do the player meeting downstairs had the players upstairs waiting a long time, leaving them impatient and unsure of what was happening. In future I will probably choose to have the announcements on another floor (if that can’t be avoided) done by a different judge simultaneously.

Another thing to keep an eye on during the player meeting is collecting decklists. It is a good idea to decide (and communicate) beforehand which method of sorting to use – doing an alphabetical seat-all for the player meeting (leaving the collected decklists sorted by default) or collecting decklists after pairings for round 1, after which you can either sort them alphabetically or leave the round 1 pairings on top of the stack as a guide to finding the lists you need later.

The first few rounds went quite smoothly (with one exception, which I will get to in a moment) – having the judges’ lunch breaks start after the start-of-round deck check worked very well!

Situations

The round 3 deck check turned up a fairly basic failure to de-sideboard. Wrapping up the rest of the process, Michel went on his break, leaving me to give the penalty – and that’s where doubt hit. I thought, “It’s surely a Game Loss. But wait – hadn’t it changed recently?” Michel had gone by this point, so I decided to look it up in the IPG – and managed to completely miss the Upgrade path, thereby convincing myself it was a Warning after all and I had been wrong. I gave the penalty to the (pleasantly surprised) players, and went about my business. Oops.
After discovering my mistake some time later and talking it over with my fellow judges, I decided against correcting the mistake and giving the game loss after all.

Round 5 turned up a situation I had been waiting for – a non-trivial backup that I, as stand-in-HJ, was responsible for! The matchup is Lantern Control vs. Tron. The Lantern player (let’s call him Anton) has a Lantern of Insight and a Ghoulcaller’s Bell on the battlefield, and activates the Bell. The Tron player (Niels) activates his Chromatic Sphere in response (and a judge is called to clarify that it is indeed a mana ability and can’t be responded to), revealing a Chromatic Star on top. Anton then takes his turn, draws the Sphere revealing a Relic of Progenitus, plays and cracks the Sphere drawing the Relic, plays the Relic and… JUDGE! The Ghoulcaller’s Bell activation on the previous turn didn’t resolve.

After the customary GRV and FtMGS warnings, I was left with the decision of whether to back up or leave the situation as is. Normally, backing up that many draws would damage the game state a lot more than not backing up, but in this case all draws were known due to the Lantern, and there was no shuffle effect on the battlefield or in hand. So I backed up. Everything rewound nicely, but Niels argued the card revealed beneath Relic of Progenitus shouldn’t be known. I told him that considering the situation, we would not be shuffling that card away, figuring that would cause the situation to play out differently. He appealed this decision, and I called Michel to give the final verdict.

Stumbling over my words to explain the entire situation to Michel, the ruling took a lot longer than it should’ve, had I taken a moment to consider the relevant information and clearly explain the appeal, rather than the entire judge call. In the end though, my ruling was upheld and the players could play on, albeit with a significant time extension.

Reflection

The six rounds went by quickly, and soon it was time for the top 8 announcement! …Crap. Completely forgot about that one. Announcing the names was easy enough, but giving the speech about prize splitting caught me unprepared and, afraid I’d mess up on something that could get players DQ’d, I handed that over to Jan-Jaap.

While the top 8 was going on we had a debriefing session, which I always value (and now more than usual) for giving and receiving feedback about how the day went. Still feeling a bit apprehensive about the mistakes I made, I was pleasantly surprised to hear the others thought it went well. However, I did get a few good pointers:

  • Take a moment to collect yourself when faced with an unexpected situation. During the appeal and top 8 announcement I clammed up, went ahead anyway and the result was less than ideal.
  • Let judges know you shadowed them. During the tournament (when available), I made sure to shadow whoever was on the floor with me when they were taking calls. However, I didn’t actually let them know at the time. Giving direct feedback, even just a quick thumbs up, is always valuable even for experienced judges. In this particular case, I was focused more on being watched by more experienced judges myself – but even then, and more so when HJ-ing, I should have made sure to notify them even when everything went right. Feedback isn’t just for pointing out weaknesses!
  • Use roles more. This was an interesting one, as I’ve noticed during other tournaments with different judges that they preferred a looser setup. It boils down to this, however:
    • Make sure you know your judges’ preferences on this, as some will feel more comfortable with strict roles and knowledge of what to expect, and others thrive when they’re able to pick up whatever needs doing.
    • Even when not handing out specific roles, make sure everyone knows where the final responsibility about certain tasks lies, as the person in question can make sure to check whether the task has been done even if they did not do it themselves.

All in all it was a very valuable experience, not only due to fulfilling a role I was unfamiliar with and the situations that arose, but also taking away a lot of the apprehension I had about certifying for level 2 and suddenly (potentially) being responsible for head judging local PPTQs. For which this experience provided a much-needed boost to my confidence.