@Pop: Hmm.. Didn't think that one through >.>
@Prof Clay: Perhaps my examples were a bit extreme, by "liberally" I meant to convey that a Judge was supposedly giving them out in the Juniors division as said by the OP, without consent of the HJ and without any sort of guidelines within the rulings. Seems like a liberal decision on his part.
Anyways, my point remains: If there is not standard set for a Judge Ball, what's to say that it'd be issued after 3 mulligans instead of 5? If I'm playing against someone who is being Judge Balled, I want every possible chance of drawing my mulligan card. Discretion plays so little a role without a proper standard. Sure, if the mulligans are taking up to 20 minutes to complete, then the Judge made a proper decision is issuing the Judge Ball. However, if I'm playing an opponent who is just
slow instead of actually having a hard time drawing a basic, then I feel like I'm being cheated out of mulligan cards. One player may have gotten a mulligan 3 times by then, another perhaps 8, depending on how fast they are going.
If we can get a standardized ruling of a Judge Ball being issued after X amount of mulligans, this wouldn't be a problem. Could it still take longer than 20 minutes? Sure, but IMO it's just fair. Even 1 extra card could drastically change the outcome of an event. Even having X amount of mulligans, but no longer than Y amount of time seems fair to me (which would prevent someone who is a fast shuffler from giving their opponent much higher number of mulligans than a slower shuffler, but still keep things timely).
Then play more basics, you're getting penalized in a sort of way for playing a deck with an inconsistent start. It's not given out liberally but only when the pace of the game is broken by it or hasn't even been established because you can't pull a basic. If you believe it's given whenever the judge feels like, ask them why are you doing this? Judges are supposed to make the ruling and give you a reason as to why. The fact that funny bears son only drew three is probably chalked up to the opponent taking lengthy shuffles and it ate up enough time to get to the five minute mark(2 minutes for setup+3 more once the round has started). The fact that he only drew three has nothing to do with anything.
If you read my posts above, you would see that getting a mulligan even 3 times in a match is very realistic even in a 12 basic deck at least in one game in a decently sized tournament. The OP posted that a Judge Ball was issued after 3 mulligans, so I based the scenario around this.
shen said:
...in a 12 basic deck it seems like you would have a 19% chance of a mulligan, and thus a 0.7% chance for 3 consecutive mulligans. That's about a 1 in 143 chance. of In a high tier event, playing so many rounds, you're bound to hit that. Heck, 60 players and after 3 rounds you should have had this happen already. After 6 rounds, twice
It has nothing to do with running a deck with so little basics, I find examples given in this thread such as Durant to be extreme. They're not accurate at all for a realistic expectancy of a Judge Ball, even a deck with 3 times the basics can expect it.