Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

2006-07 tournament rules docs up!

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DItto

- you have just indicated that you will penalise honest players more than dishonest ones.

- Yes it does hurt the honest players more than the dishonest. I've seen a variety of dubious tactics used at tournaments, by making the mulligan an automatic game loss all we do IN PRACTICE is offer another possibility for the less than honest players to engage in dubious tactics.

- When the dishonest player argues the game loss gets reduced to a warning. They will argue. When the honest, or timid, or younger, or less experienced player, doesn't argue they get stuck with a game loss ?? That sucks.

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The very last thing I would want to do with the penalty guidelines is to have in place a penalty that is nominally a game loss until you argue at which point it is downgraded to a warning. The penalties have to stick. And this one wont. If you hand out game losses for the mulligan error then we end up teaching the players to argue to get a lesser penalty. NOT GOOD.

I dont want anything like the following...

Casual Penalty: Warning.
Competative Penalty: Game Loss
Players Argue over gamestate: Downgrade to a Warning
 
NoPoke:

I understand your point about not wanting to have penalties changed by arguing and it's a good point. I don't want them to be like that either. But if there is no way to tell who's right then it makes it hard. That's why I think it's a good idea to have your neighbors watch or have a judge called over, so that there is some witnesses.

The hardest part about this is, regardless of whether we think a Game Loss is appropriate or not (which for the record I do), if you go and look at the penalty guidelines, where are you going to put "shuffling in a mulligan without showing opponent"? The place it fits is Game-Play Error: Severe.

This is why I think it would be a good idea to make it manditory to call a judge over, so that things can be properly worked out. Or something along those lines.
 
For this entire post, I'm using an In My Opinion qualifier.

NoPoke, the problem is that there is no way to *prove* that the person had a Mulligan hand when he or she shuffled it back in. If there is no way to prove it, then both players get a Warning for Failure to Agree on Play State.

However, if there are witnesses, either nearby players or Staff members or observers, who can (unanimously (I can't spell) for the spectators and/or other players) attest to the game state, then the penalty could be escalated to a Game Loss for the person who shuffled in his or her mulligan, or the warning dropped for the person who shuffled in a legal Mulligan. The other person would still receive a Warning for Disrupting the Flow of the Game.

Case by case, as you have it pointed out:

1) Agree with Ditto. If the Mulligan is not shown before shuffling, then it is a Game Loss. However, it's nearly impossible to prove this without outside witnesses. If it can be proven, then it's a Game Loss. If it *can't* be proven, then it's a double Warning.

2) Again, I agree with Ditto, with the same qualification as case 1.

3) That's a DQ from the event. Willfully attempting to cheat a rule that's been around since the beginning of the game is blatant cheating, and must be dealt with. Same qualifications as 1 and 2.

4a) If you mean that he tries to dupe the opponent into a Game Loss situation, then it would be a DQ for that person for violation of SOG. Same qualifications as 1, 2, and 3.

4b) If it can be proven, then the person who shuffles in a "bad" mulligan would get a Game Loss. If he didn't show the hand, and it can be proven, then it's a Game Loss as well.

4c) That's essentially the same thing as 1-3. It doesn't matter if the player is honest or dishonest. The actions of the player dictate whether or not that player is honest. If it can be proven, it's a game loss.

Any time a bad mulligan can be proven, it's a game loss. Any time a "noshow" mulligan can be proven, it's a game loss. Any time that either of these can NOT be proven, it's a Warning. This is the reason that I advocate the players calling over a Judge to oversee Mulligan situations, regardless of tournament size or staff size. Because of the "if it can be proven" statement, Mulligans should be shown to an independant third party before resolved.

The two DQ options that I outlined are because I HATE players who try dishonest, cowardly, or dodgymaneuvers in order to gain an advantage. It's against SOG, and it's against my understanding of the game. I consider SOG to be the highest law of the Pokemon land, a set of rules that are so completely basic to the game that they barely need stating, except for when people try to violate that spirit. My opinion is that SOG violations are "Regular Violation + 1" in terms of penalty. So, if there is a Game Loss plus SOG violation, then it's a DQ. It's simply something I have no tolerance for, and I will not allow my events to be dragged through the mud because of SOG violations.

Bah, now I'm rambling... Njoy!
 
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"if it can be proven" situations can rarely be proven. In the real world you just don't "know" in most of these situations. So, take out all your "proven" situations and what have you got left? That's what you are proposing, because that's what people will experience.
 
PokePop said:
"if it can be proven" situations can rarely be proven. In the real world you just don't "know" in most of these situations. So, take out all your "proven" situations and what have you got left? That's what you are proposing, because that's what people will experience.
Click to expand...

I agree with you that situations like this ARE hard to prove in most cases, but either way, that still shouldn't change the penalty for something, just because it's hard to prove.

With this in mind though, that's why I think it would be best to make sure there are witnesses the best that you can, either by calling a judge over or asking your neighbors to verify or something. That way we lessen the chance of it not being able to be proven.
 
Ice'Cold said:
I thought observers are forbidden under the new floor rules?
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Thus why it would have to be a neighbor, staff member, judge, or PUI employee that would have to see, since there is no one else.
 
I agree that the penalty should be a game loss. But I believe that there wont be evidence that allows the penalty to be safely applied.

So the practical outcome, which isn't always the same as the desired outcome, is that players will learn that they should argue over the mulligan and end up with a warning. As much as I may think that the error best fits the severe category I know that in the field I'll be handing out warnings and not game losses.

But there's more: the other implication is that there will be an increase in arguement at tournaments as a direct consequence of setting the penalty at a game loss. Now I don't want to encourgae arguement at my tournaments. Not everyone backs down when they feel agrieved or wronged.
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So as much as I may agree that the penalty best fits a game loss as currently written. I appeal to a higher principle that we need penalty GUIDELINES that we can apply in practice. What is the point of a guideline that can rarely be applied. At best it will confuse, at worst it will cause inconsistancy and arguemnt to increase.
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Try a thought experiment. imagine US Nationals with the game loss. At the start of each round roughly 1/3rd of the tables should mulligan.

What is the implication for staff numbers if you decide to have all muligans observed? I end up with wanting 50+ floor judges to cover the 200+ tables, anything less and there will always be a large degree of doubt over what happened. With more typical staff ratios I expect that not every mulligan will be observed.

If I then assume a 100% honest field then I get the unwanted outcome that some muligan errors get a game loss and some warnings. The moment there is a lack of uniformity you will end up with accusations of bias and favouritism. And if the field isn't 100% honest it only gets worse.

Next I imagine how the future will look if the penalty isn't a game loss. Here's a proposal for an alternative penalty guideline.

1st Offense Warning. (no penalty for the non-mulliganing player)
2nd Offense Game Loss.

The number of players with a mulligan warning should be low at the beginning of any round. Thus it becomes reasonable for judges to pay particular attention to those tables. It makes it possible to insist that players who have a mulligan warning should call a judge. This is only practical because the opening penalty is a warning.

I agree that the penalty should be a game loss, but I don't see that level of penalty having anything other than a negative effect on the spirit of the game. I don't see that penalty making events run more smoothly. I dont see that penalty actually catching the small number of players who will try to exploit the game loss.
 
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NoPoke:

OK, point well made.

What about the US Nats numbers though? Can anybody remember how many players in each age group and how many judges/floor staff we had? Cause if a 400 person tournament had 3 head judges (one per age) and each age group had 4 judges/staff, then for 1/3 of the 400 to mulligan each judge would have approx 15 secs to make sure each mulligan was shown. I know there were more than 400 at US Nats, but I have no idea how many judges/floor staff there was. Quite a bit, but that's not a number. If it's anything close to my example though, I think we would be ok.

What if we just made it to where you have to have your neighbors verify that you showed your hand to your opponent, and if there aren't any neighbors (for whatever reason), that you have to call a judge? The neighbors don't have to see the hand, they just have to watch the opponent get to see the hand.

Either way, what if for pratical purposes we say 1st offense Warning, 2nd Game Loss. If someone shuffles it in without showing and you call a judge over to give the Warning, the player would still argue that they did show, which puts us back to our double Warning predicament.

Is there any way to get out of the double Warning predicament? Other than introducing a new "rule" like showing neighbors or judges/staff?
 
Ditto said:
Either way, what if for pratical purposes we say 1st offense Warning, 2nd Game Loss. If someone shuffles it in without showing and you call a judge over to give the Warning, the player would still argue that they did show, which puts us back to our double Warning predicament.
Click to expand...

As a player: Speaking for myself even if I believed I had shown my muligan I am much more likely to accept that I need to be much clearer in my showing a mulligan in future. Why? Because the anticipated penalty is a warning! A warning doesn't knock me out of contention.

Both players are much less likely to argue since the penalty for arguing with the judges is more than a warning.

Now as a judge I come over and find the players bickering? well unless it is heated I'm likely to caution the players over the bickering along with giving out a warning to the player that muligans. I'd explain that the muligan player has to pick up a warning because the bulk of the responsibility for the muligan rests with him/her.

FWIW I think that reducing the anticipated penalty to a warning makes the double warning much less likely. As there is now more to be lost than gained by the disagreement.

[Oh is it muligan or mulligan??? one 'el' or two???]
 
Thus another point, under the new raking system US nationals should be a "closed" event with a minimum ranking required to participate (that should be kept reasonably low, maybe 1700?). This would eliminate the infinite rounds of swiss, and require less judging than say a 400 person event.
 
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