The Formats were Standard at 10:00am with a turnout of 43 players; Shadows over Innistrad Sealed at 1:00 with a turnout of 50 players; and Standard at 3:00 with a turnout of 14 players. We had two head judges, 1 overseeing the standard events and active on the floor, and the other overseeing the sealed event and handling logistics and scorekeeping with the TO’s. We had 3 Floor Judges; our End of Round lead, a Judge Candidate, and Myself as the Paper Lead. The Judge candidate was assigned to shadow me on the floor.
This was the first time any of us had put on an event at the hotel, which initially set up 10 chairs per table, leaving not enough room for comfortable gameplay. One of the Head Judges and I arrived early enough that rearranging the chairs didn’t crunch our set up time too much. There was a PA system in the front corner where we set up the judge station and registration. The room was devoid of clocks, so one of the TO’s brought a projector for us to put the round clock up on, however we did have a few technical issues with the projector. Luckily, the judge candidate that was with us works in computer support and was able to make it all work, culminating in us having 3 different round clocks using google timer being projected against the wall so you could see it no matter what event you were in. It was very clunky to operate but it got the job done.
The sealed event was incredibly popular, and despite the swap method being around for a few months by now, was still new to a good amount of people. Ben, the Head judge for this event, had me print out deck registration sheets on two different colors of paper to make it more clear who was supposed to open packs during the registration process. This PPTQ located in the center of the room, making it obvious how bad the acoustics were there. An entire table missed the start of round due to not hearing the Head Judge, to which I had to give time extensions for. This was Ben’s first PPTQ as a Head Judge, but his experience of putting on PPTQs as a tournament organizer showed in both the confidence of his instructions and organizing of the triple event at large.
The second standard event was mostly people from the 1st who did not make top 8, due to the first rounds happening at the same time. The rounds were quite fast, wrapping up before the sealed moved to top 8. The most notable thing about the event was an occurrence with player and fellow judge Rodney Bedell, that we referred to as “The Iron Deck.”
This was the first time I had dealt with multiple competitive events at the same time, and in addition to my role as paper lead I was being shadowed by the judge candidate. This allowed me to feel more comfortable in a leadership role while still being relatively new to competitive REL. Just going through the process of explaining how to act on the floor and present yourself to players help solidify why I do certain things during an event. I’m still getting a handle on the IPG and filling out warnings, but with each competitive event I do i feel like I’m making a substantial leap forward.
During first round of pairings, I had a little trouble balancing taking a player question and making sure the pairings got posted, so there was a few second delay, but after that I made sure to be on top of it and make getting the papers out a priority. Having multiple events running concurrently gave me a good deep dive into paper, balancing my time, and delegating when necessary (especially during breaks). There was never a lull once the second event got going, since there was always either a round ending, one starting, or a round in progress with
Thank you so much for reading and please let me know any feedback you have
– Tony
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