Why is there no ID?

[Cardzmaster2004]

In researching a topic for another gathering area of Pokemon players, I was shocked to discover no mention of Intendional Drawing anywhere in the Pokemon Tournament Rules of any kind. Is this an oversight and in need of correcting or should we be enforcing on players that IDing is illegal and unacceptable in the tournament space? Honestly to me this seems like a P!P oversight and will most likely be changed soon, but I just found this highly odd, considering the fact I've been allowing IDs at the tournaments I've worked all year, even at the Regionals and Nationals level.

 

[Mystery Thing]

It's likely just an implied thing - any system with draws by default needs to have intentional draws. If they weren't, players could just play the game down to a draw.

At a tournament years and years and years ago (like, Neo era) when ties were a thing, I played somebody in the final swiss round of a tournament that was a mirror Light Dragonite match. We wanted to ID, but the TO wouldn't let us, so we started taking turns drawing a card, sitting there looking at each other for 30 seconds, and then using an active Dratini's Shed attack. Over. And over. And over.

After 5 minutes of this, the TO gave us our ID.

So yes, IDs have to be legal. They kinda suck and make the last round (or two) rather anti-climactic, yes. But if there's ties, there has to be intentional draws.

 

[DukeFireBird]

Yup, unwritten "meta rule" as it were. Any system that can have wins, losses, and ties must have some way to implement them with both players acceptance. For the same reason a player can concede a match, both players can ID the match.

 

[P_A]

I guess this comes down to the question of how to play to win. Yes, events have to have a winner. Yes, it would be preferable to have a particular winner that doesn't have to ID to win, but in this system, that sort of defeats the purpose to a degree. Sometimes it is better to ID to have the chance to win the whole event. For that reason, I don't think TPCi will ever acknowledge ID's as being a legal strategy. They would rather see someone win all their matches outright. So yeah, I can't see that being acknowledged any time soon. Just as long as you judges realize that it is somewhat quasi legal, and a useful strategy, and no one is coerced into an ID, then I suppose that's all we can hope for - at least for now.

 

[ShadowCard]

Wasn't it explained in a news article about changes to the tournament structure?

When IDs were first explained to me, it was from the perspective that it is a procedural tool provided to the players that has the effect of speeding up the event by acknowledging that certain matches will have little effect on the event's final swiss standings. It also is less punitive to players who performed very well in the event but a loss in the final round(s) would remove them from top cut.

Focusing more on the first reason, if both players in a game are relatively confident that they will make top cut so the outcome of the match does little to change the event's standings, they ID. When multiple games to this, the round has to wait from less games for a report. In that explanation, it wasn't meant to be a strategic tool. It was a procedural tool to help the event get to top cut faster. It was a way to conclude the event faster in a structure where longer round time and day 2 swiss makes the event longer. I admit that maybe the strategy aspect was implied and I missed it.

Of course, I see the strategy aspect. It was just not the primary focus in the explanation I received.