You are playing a Competitive REL Legacy event and, after you have finished your match, Anthony comes to you to ask you a question about a ruling he just received:

He was solving a mulligan and drew again 7 cards and looked at them. Both players immediately realized the mistake and called Marcus, the only judge in the event who is a L1 judge with little experience. Marcus gave Anthony a Game Loss for Game Play Error- Drawing Extra Cards while the right infraction/penalty should have been a Warning for Game Play Error – Improper Drawing at Start of Game.

That player tried to appeal but as it was only one judge, it was denied. Anthony is asking for your help, he wants to know if the Marcus gave him the right infraction/penalty.

How would you handle this situation regarding Anthony? and regarding Marcus?

And what if you were the affected player? What would you do?

Judges, feel free to discuss this scenario here!

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First of all, when Anthony comes to you, you still don’t know Marcus’ version, you just know Anthony’s so you just have half-truth about what happened so we really shouldn’t be too eager to jump immediately by saying “that is the wrong ruling”. In this case, you should talk to Anthony and help reinforce the authority of Marcus as the Head Judge so the tournament won’t suffer more due to this. Telling Anthony which is the “right” ruling for that infraction won’t be the better approach as he will surely engage with Marcus using the information you provided and that will only bring more problems than solutions.

You could take an uncompromising position with any part claiming that you are a player in that event, not a judge. A clear “hey, I’m not the judge today” should suffice. Although Anthony deserves to know the right ruling, we believe this is a task for the responsible judge (Marcus) and any intervention without knowing all the facts might harm the integrity of this event.

You should also talk to Marcus privately so you can give him some feedback and to inquiry about what happened. You could approach gently by asking something like “hey, here’s what I heard – is this accurate?” … “oh, well, did you know that …” and then educate him in a nice manner. Help him realize that we are subject to make mistakes at any time and that will be a nice gesture to come by and explain the player how he/she went wrong and apologizes, that way he’ll grow and you’ll grow as well by giving some mentoring. After all, remember that he is an inexperienced L1 judge and he surely haven’t had enough contact with IPG and that is very hard to handle a tournament by oneself. Giving him a harder time won’t benefit anyone.

We, as judges, are expected to exhibit a fit behavior no matter what is our role in an event, and our main focus must be to keep the event fair and fun to everybody and to collaborate with the integrity of that event as well. We all have made a wrong ruling sometime, but the best way to keep a good customer experience is realizing that and be responsible for it. By going to talk to Anthony, Marcus can make him feel better and gain respect as that will show him as a god judge who worries about his tournament and about growing as a judge. We shouldn’t talk about other judge ruling with a player as that will only bring more problems to that judge and to the event, especially as we weren’t there at the moment of the calling.

After (hopefully this is the case) Marcus decides to talk to Anthony, we should go with him to serve as backup and to prevent any kind of heated discussion that might arise. By being there we can provide both of them support and show concern and willingness to help recover a nice tournament environment. And then Marcus will gain knowledge and respect and Anthony will feel that he is being taken into consideration.

After that, if we feel that Anthony is handling it in a good manner and is interested, we might encourage him to learn more about the Judge program and give him some headlines about us and what we do, and we might be having a new future L1 candidate among us.

We are a team, all judges have a responsibility among others to share their knowledge and help grow each other. Providing and receiving a Feedback by a fellow judge shouldn’t be considered like a bad critic but as a way of improving myself and others. Remember that Marcus is a non-experienced L1 judge who is judging by himself a CompREL event, he might be worried about doing it we ll, we should reassure him so he can also enjoy the event. Provide him feedback in an courteous manner and help him to move on as well.

If you are the affected player who got the bad ruling, you can always request to discuss with the judge away from the table. Be nice, polite and accurate by explaining why his ruling is not the one that should be so he/she can maybe change the ruling when you appeal and he can explain to your opponent why this is the right ruling and why he got confused. It is very important that everything is well supported by the rules so it won’t appear like you are influencing the less experienced judge to try to “get your way”.

Thanks to everybody who participated on this discussion. As a finisher, please read Eric Shukan’s excellent article about this at http://blogs.magicjudges.org/articles/2012/12/12/when-judges-are-playing-not-judging/
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