At our Nationals on the weekend, we had several issues, not unlike that of Jimmy's:
First and foremost, was the top cut issue. I'm sure you have all heard about it by now, but if you haven't, At the start of the day, top cuts would be announced that MA would be 8, SR 4 and JR, 2. At the end of round one those values were doubled. We tried to appeal to the HJ, however, we were told :
Head Judge posting on Croftminster said:
It was explained that it appeared that players would prefer a top 16 cut over a top 8. Considering that, as the head judge, I could decide that information, although the the TOP guide suggested otherwise. Also, there were concerns that there may have been some players who may try to cheat their way into getting the invite, and considering some of the issues that have arisen in the past, by holding a top 16 makes the finals cut a little fairer.
Mind you, masters was a 28 man tournament and many of us had the impression that this was not the case- in fact many players were quite disgruntled at this fact. We had to post on 3 forums to get attention in order to stop it. Thank heavens it was stopped.
Another incident: I am Australia's most knowledgable Pokemon professors and I take full pride in that. A ruling was made about Pokemon Level X- more specifically, Darkrai, Palkia, Dialga etc etc etc- that their Lv.X forms could have DREs and Scrambles etc etc etc put on them because they were considered evolved Pokemon. KNOWING that this was full wrong, I raised my hand to speak (I was playing in the event) and was yelled at by one judge, and simply told "thats the way it is". He ALSO said, that because everyone came into the event under the assumption otherwise, that this would not take effect until after the event was over. I tried to talk to them privately, but their stance was that a well known Head of Pokemon TCG USA (Need I say more?) had called him and verified this. There is a thread in Ask the Masters right now, made by Pikachu*_ proving otherwise.
Thirdly, one of the judges there, was bieng EXTREMELY rude to the players. He was telling juniors and seniors to "shutup or you will get a game loss", Telling off masters that they were being too loud and we should know better. This is the same judge that yelled at me. Myself and another Player had to tell him off to get him to stop, and he was still being ever so bitter.
And, can HJ/PTO stop trading in between rounds at an event? He was afraid of players cheating by switching traded cards into their deck (flawed logic imo, just use your own cards if you wanted to cheat). We have NEVER had ANY cheating issues in the past (except I called one when I was younger and very very immature in 2004), so why the security? The only person ever accused of cheating or being DQed was Jason, who , in my opinion was innocent but the judge in his state hates him (you guessed it, same one that yelled at me and was being a ***** to all the players).
Sadly, being such a small community, we don't have much to work with when we want to argue against these things. On the Sunday morning, before top cut, we had some lecture about chain of command, where we have to go through the PTO, then the OP manager, then top POP, then to the head honcho- things like that are ineffective and take time. We had to rely on the fact that we had one night to work with.
At the start of the event, the SotG was read out, claiming that some players (and names kept coming up- the same names, sometimes mine, sometimes Jason, sometimes others) were not following. It seemed to me like the judges needed to re-read the SotG for themselves, and a lot of players felt the same way at the end of the day.
Is there any advice that other professor's could offer to combat situations like this? I mean, these events aren't common, and things aren't miserable outside of these things- everyone does their best to have a good time, but it's issues like these that sour our events and start to make the world look down on us.
EDIT: I understand, that you can go to the HJ about a troublesome Judge, but when the 2 are friends, and the HJ practically watches him yell at players, threatening them with losses etc etc, its a bit discerning.
:lol::tongue:
