As the year comes to a close, I’ve been getting contemplative. 2023 has been a turbulent year in Judge World, but it was also my personal best year. I was lucky to get a number of great opportunities, and some hard work I’d invested over the last while started paying dividends.

After my last event of the year, Dreamhack Atlanta, I took my notebook out of its case and put a clean new one into the decorative cover in preparation for the new year. Before retiring the old notebook to the shelf with my other completed notebooks, I took a flip through. Here are some highlights – hopefully there’s a lesson or two in here.

One thing I started doing in 2023 was keeping better track of my events in my notebook, including event names and dates. This makes it easy to reference if needed – whether someone is asking for feedback, a TO is asking about staffing someone, or whatever else.

February 4, 2023:

My 2023 started strong, with an opportunity to HJ an event for FaceToFace Games in Saskatoon. My first events back after the long pause we all took were in July of 2022, so this was about eight months into the new era of judging, for me. I had done a decent number of events since then, including several Head Judge slots, but I still felt I was knocking some rust off.

Looking at the notes page here (ignore the Warning and the changed match result) we can see I was tracking a number of things:
– Event start times
– Promos
– HJs for each event
– Breaks

The Takeaway: The best way to have a successful event, in my experience, is to prepare. Coming in with a plan can go a long way to covering up for deficiencies in other areas.

 

March 11, 2023:

Getting to Head Judge the Regional Championships in Vancouver was a great treat. This event was held at the same site I had been to in the past for a GP or two, right on the water. It was beautiful. Getting to go back, now in a new role, definitely got me in my feels a bit when I was on my breaks.

This event was also where I started my tradition of adding a smiley face sticker at the start of every event in the notebook 🙂

Thanks to the event photographer, I also got a new addition to my favorite genre of photo – pictures of me judging where I am clearly not the subject of the photo. Here I am investigating a missed trigger while Misplaced Ginger does Grixis things in the foreground:

The most notable moment of this event occurred as we were finishing the swiss and moving into the Top8. After the last swiss round finished, the final eight players were sent to the photographer for some headshots and profiles and whatnot. During that time I looked at the standings and made myself a bracket. The players came back, I got them matched up and gave the usual short speech, and sent them on their way. Just as they were drawing their opening hands, however, I was handed a printed bracket … with different pairings than I had.

I did what I think anyone would do, I think: I immediately began to flop-sweat and panic. This was the most important tournament of my life and now the Top8 players were drawing their hands. A crowd of players was gathered around to watch, and official coverage people were taking notes and pictures. Were the final standings wrong, somehow? Had I misremembered how to make quarterfinal matches from standings?

Trying not to show too much of the inner turmoil, I instructed the players to pause a moment and I went to  see what was going on. It turned out there had been several errors by several people on the event, the end result of which was this bracket that looked incorrect – but we had the right eight players in the Top8, their standings were correct, and I had paired them off correctly. Everything was ok. I took a breath and went back to the players, apologized for the pause, and got them going again.

The Takeaway: Trust but verify. There were several things that I could have checked up on during the short break as the Top8 were doing photos and whatnot, and instead I took it as a break period for me as well. Had I doublechecked everything, I could have caught the errors here and saved myself some embarrassment in front of the players.

 

April 29, 2023:

Rook’s Games and More was the LGS where I first certified as an L1, and it remains (in my surely unbiased opinion) the best LGS. I was always happy to work RCQs and the like for them, especially when I had the chance to work with an L1 who was getting more familiar with Competitive events. Mentoring has always been one of my favorite parts of judging.

At this event I let the L1 mostly lead the way, and I just followed along to provide guidance if needed. I got to shadow them on nearly every call so that we could discuss it in the moment, and I could write them a review afterward.

I’m often asked what I keep in my notebook, or how I can find the time to write out all the details needed to fill out a good review after the event. Well, here you go. The notes here are far from exhaustive but they’re enough for me to remember nearly everything about each call, even now, eight months later. Often my notes are just enough to jog the memory, like the “God Pharoh’s Statue / Bolas’s Citadel” entry here.

The Takeaway: Take notes! Judging without a notebook is like a knight going into battle without their sword. It can be busy at an event, and you don’t always have the time to write out a full sentence, but often just a few words will do the trick. You don’t need to write out an essay to still have productive feedback notes.

 

July 26, 2023:

I passed my second panel on Thursday before MagicCon Barcelona, and was promoted to Level 3! Getting to L3 had been a goal of mine for a long time, and finally crossing that line meant the world to me.

In some ways, a level up is a lot like a birthday. One day you’re X years old, then an arbitrary line on the calendar is crossed, and suddenly you’re X+1 years old instead. Have the mysteries of the universe been laid bare to you? Are you suddenly wiser and more capable than you were the day before?

Of course not.

Leveling is much the same. No one seriously thinks a judge is capable of different things than they were the week before, just because they passed a test and a number got bigger. Learning and improving is a continual process not a switch that is flipped.

On the other hand, birthdays and leveling do have real impacts. Most countries have various restrictions on being able to drive or drink alcohol until you pass some age marker, so even though you are only one day older, it can be a real impact in what you are trusted to do.

Getting to L3 didn’t change the things I knew how to do. I worked an event the weekend before and another one the weekend after, and I don’t feel I contributed substantially more to one than the other just because some paperwork changed.

Like suddenly being able to buy a car, however, getting to L3 did have some real changes in my judging world. Leveling up opens new doors. To illustrate the point I’m fumbling toward here: I was a floor judge on the $75K Open the next day, and during the morning staff meeting the Head Judge designated me an Appeals Judge. I didn’t know anything more than I had the day before, and I performed as well as I would have if I had failed my panel. But getting the level up did open the door, and let me get a chance I otherwise wouldn’t have gotten.

A lot has been said and written about levels over the years. I’m not going to have any brilliant insights that haven’t been seen before. The big thing to me, I guess, is that levels aren’t just bad and arbitrary, and neither are they a perfect system without flaws. The level system is not either or, it’s yes and. Levels contain multitudes.

The Takeaway: IDK, exactly. I’ll keep thinking on it. Hopefully there’s something in there to make you think some, too.

Bonus pics from the MagicCon: