Particularly with Juniors, I find that flips are sometimes not high enough, spin too few times, land on the floor (or the players nearby), and even on other tables. When this happens once, I caution. When it happens again, I warn. Third time I make them use a dice. I've had players disrupt as many as 4 other games with bad flips and beyond the delay of all games involved, it always causes distraction and conversation at adjacent tables.
Also, I sat at a table one day and a player demonstrated to me (not in regulation play) by flipping a regulation coin (easily 25 times) and called every single one of them correctly in the air. You can learn this stuff. I made him swap coins and so he used one of mine and continued doing the same thing. He plays with dice to avoid accusations by the way. I pay special attention to coins in tournament play now.
Try as I might, I can't flip it properly and still accomplish this same feat. I guess I'll never be a magician. <grin>
I feel like you haven't read the thread. YOU CAN'T GIVE A PLAYER A CAUTION OR WARNING FOR FLIPPING A COIN. No matter what. If you want to give them a caution or warning for something else, then state what you're giving them a caution or warning about. But you can't do it just because they accidentally flipped it off the table. The rules say that they reflip in that case, not get a caution or a warning.
I think that this is the main point that everyone's missing. Yea, I understand that the rules allow the flipping of coins and that Japan doesn't want to change it.
However, science has shown that coin flips are probably the easiest randomizers to manipulate because the physical motion by which the randomization happens is not as stochastic as say, a dice roll. I always use dice to prevent any accusations of cheating, but I'm able to flip a Pokemon coin as "heads" with approximately 2/3 success. (If you live in the NY area and want me to demonstrate, I'm more than happy to.) That's why I'm always super cautious when my opponent insists on flipping coins.
I think whoever the decision makers in Japan are should seriously take a look the ease at which coin flips can be manipulated.
Science says that if you do any action exactly the same, under exactly the same circumstances, then the result will be the same, whether you're flipping a coin, rolling a die, or blowing up a planet. The fact is that it's so ridiculously hard to do this without machinery and a completely controlled environment that I promise you that a player can't do it in a tournament setting. ANY TIME SOMEONE CALLS A COIN RIGHT MANY TIMES IN A ROW IS JUST COINCIDENCE.
I have no idea why, but for some reason people have this illogical disdain for coins. It's completely irrational and has no basis in fact at all.
REGARDLESS of that, even if it was scientifically proven that coins land heads 100% of the time, IT DOESN'T MATTER. Why? Because Japan has said that coins can be used, and that's that. It's so irritating that there's this holy war over coins vs. dice when they're exactly the same and in the end it doesn't matter anyway.
---------- Post added 03/16/2012 at 11:40 AM ----------
Two questions:
1) Were you and Ditto at the same event?
2) If so, are you saying that there was no blanket ban on coins as a class and that players were ruled to use the dice provided at the event? This doesn't mean that players chose to ignore the rule by the judge and used coins or other dice anyway, but that if the judge was asked, the ruling handled down by him was that only the dice provided could be used.
I have no idea who that person is, but let me elaborate on how the situation played out, since people seem to have this thought that it matters to this discussion (hint: it doesn't).
Fast forward to the part in the tournament that actually matters.
Round 7:
I'm playing my round 7 opponent and he flips a coin for some card effect. A judge who was passing by saw this and told my opponent that they need to use the official die from now on. I said to the judge, "It's ok, it's an official coin." The judge looked puzzled and set a provided die on the table that the judge was carrying and said, "you need to use this." I said, "but official pokemon coins are always allowed over dice." The judge said, "the head judge told us you can only use the die we provided." I asked to appeal to the head judge. The judge went and got the head judge while my opponent and I continued playing. When the judge and the head judge came back the head judge said, "the only randomizer you can use is the die we provided, no other dice or coins." I said, "so you're ruling that we can't flip a coin even though the rules say that we can?" The head judge said yes. I said OK.
So for anyone thinking that the judge didn't actually ban all coins, you're wrong. Anyone thinking that I'm just whining cause I didn't get to use my coin, you're wrong (wasn't even me using a coin that started this whole thing, was my opponent). And of course, anyone that thinks anything in this story actually matters to this conversation can see how it's irrelevant.
However, we can see how important this conversation is, since there has been multiple people who still stated that they do incorrect procedures even AFTER ShadowCard and myself came to an agreement over wording, PokePop gave an official ruling, and Biggie confirmed the ruling. This is why this thread is important, because people still don't understand how the rules work.
