This time around we have another report from a Judge Booth at a Born of the Gods Prerelease in Tel Aviv, Israel. Zohar Finkel organized the booth and shares his experiences:

Hello fellow judges

For this event 20 questions related to Theros were selected from the sheet, printed, and numbered from 1 to 20.

Every player registering for the Prerelease got a “Judge Booth Ticket” which he/she could use once to visit the judge booth and take part in that side event. Once there, after a short talk and introduction he would get 3 dice rolls of a 20D MTG life dice, and would need to answer the corresponding questions (of course if he got the same question twice, he would reroll). Different foils and promos were provided by the TO and divided into 3 piles based on value. If the person got all 3 questions right he would get to pick a random card from the pile with the highest value of cards, 2 questions right – the medium value pile, and 1 question right – the least value pile. If he got no questions right, he would still get a card from the last pile just for participation, but wasn’t told that in advance. To save time and add more interaction, players were allowed to participate simultaneously up to 3 people, and later on only up to 2 (more on that ahead).

Results – about half of the people in the event (close to 40 out of 80) used their tickets. Usually when people sat at the booth, others crowded around them and seemed to show interest. While this on itself is positive, my small concern is that if those people later on get the same question they will already know the answer without even needing to think about the question. Most of the times people got all 3 answers right and hence got the highest value cards. This could be because many of the questions selected were relatively easy, or because with 3 people present, there was usually a smart and dominant one who the other 2 followed, sometimes even changing their answers to match his. In order to try and “combat” that, the maximum amount of people allowed to take part simultaneously was reduced to 2 later on.

Still, by the end of the event all of the cards from the highest value pile were gone, and I had to give cards from the middle pile as first prizes instead. Also worth noting – One of the L0s (going towards L1) showed interest in running the judge booth, and after a short explanation how to run it, and going over the questions himself, was allowed to. Sadly later I found out he got one of the questions wrong, and so mislead a few players. But overall this didn’t lower the success of the booth overall.

 

Thank you very much Zohar for sharing this with us! It is great to see how the judge booth can add value to an event for all parties: The TO, the players and the judges.