Glumanda
Rulings Compendium Translator
Pooka....what have the Organizers said when you ask about videotaping? Do they embrace it, or a bit hesitant? I'm asking because the community scrutinizing videotaped matches games for cheating and slowplaying has got to be giving someone in Bellevue an ulcer.
I think no one in Bellevue has to get an ulcer over this.
1. I think the discussion about slowplaying is an important one. In my opinion, there is way too much slowplaying in the game and it is not penalized often enough. Videotaping help people discovering that you do not have a local problem with something, but a global problem (because you have videos from maybe different places). Sometimes it is important to see things from another perspective to recognize that something is wrong.
Videotaping could help uncover problems in the game and therefore help TPCi to refine their tournament rules and penalty guidelines which are unfortunately not "living" documents. And I think that could be a good thing.
2. With the increasing videotaping, TPCi should think about a policy if and when videotapes can be used as evidence. MTG has a policy for this which say two things:
i) Videotapes done for the purpose of coverage are not allowed to settle rulings during play.
ii) Videotapes done for the purpose of coverage may be used for investigations after the event.
What does this mean:
You are not allowed to look a videotape to settle a "He said, she said"-argument, but you are allowed to use it for an investigation if one the players purposely lied in that situation.