Upper Deck Entertainment Forums

Good morning everyone! The new version of the Upper Deck Penalty Guide has been posted at http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/COMMUNITY/files/28/english/category1006.aspx. This document *WILL* be in effect for Continentals. I would suggest that those attending that event have some degree of familiarity with it.

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Erik Mock
UD Judge Coordinator
WoW TCG Level 3
Player Management Level 4

Thanks Erik!

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Franklin Debrito
Player Management Lv4 / Yu-Gi-Oh! Lv3
VS System Lv1 / Specialist Lv2
World of Warcraft Lv1 / Tournament Organizer Lv1 / Huntik Lv1 / WoW Minis Lv1
UD Forums Moderator

Im justing wondering why Unsportsman-Major went from a match loss to a gameloss.
There are times where a match loss would be the best to handle an ignorant breaking of tournament policies. Take the sencario at DMF charalote where the players took the match slip out of the trournament room and came back in with it. You cant let that match stand since it was not in an area we could control. Both Ian and Alex agreed that both those player recieve a match loss.

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World of Warcraft TCG Rules Lvl 3
WoW Minis Lvl 1
Huntik Rules Lvl 1
Player Management Lvl 2
The force is with you!!

I think that particular situation could be considered a significant and extreme circumstance in which case an upgrade to a Match Loss would be appropriate.

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Erik Mock
UD Judge Coordinator
WoW TCG Level 3
Player Management Level 4

I wish the PG made it very explicit that you still give the Tardiness game loss at 3 minutes, even if you are only playing single-game matches. This has caused too much confusion in the past to not be spelled out.

It does now Aaron
P404 Tardiness
This infraction occurs when a player fails to arrive to his seat after the round started.
It is important that players are on time for their rounds. Tardiness delays the tournament for all players, if they have to wait for the tardy match to get finished. This infraction has two different penalties associated with it: at three minutes the tardy player receives a Game Loss penalty and at 10 minutes the tardy player receives a Match Loss penalty. This penalty also applies to a player who loses his or her deck between matches, and so can’t present a legal deck before the above time limits expire. A player receiving a Match Loss for Tardiness is dropped from the tournament unless he reports to the Scorekeeper before the next round.

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World of Warcraft TCG Rules Lvl 3
WoW Minis Lvl 1
Huntik Rules Lvl 1
Player Management Lvl 2
The force is with you!!

893329:

It does now Aaron P404 Tardiness This infraction occurs when a player fails to arrive to his seat after the round started. It is important that players are on time for their rounds. Tardiness delays the tournament for all players, if they have to wait for the tardy match to get finished. This infraction has two different penalties associated with it: at three minutes the tardy player receives a Game Loss penalty and at 10 minutes the tardy player receives a Match Loss penalty. This penalty also applies to a player who loses his or her deck between matches, and so can’t present a legal deck before the above time limits expire. A player receiving a Match Loss for Tardiness is dropped from the tournament unless he reports to the Scorekeeper before the next round.

Jeremy,

It doesn't explicitly state that you are to assign a match loss penalty for being 3 minutes late in a single-game match. It's simply implied due to the fact that a game loss is a de facto match loss. This issue has come up many times in the past where judges are reticent to give out a game loss in a single-game tournament because they feel that you should only give match losses after 10 minutes.

Oh ok I see what you mean.

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World of Warcraft TCG Rules Lvl 3
WoW Minis Lvl 1
Huntik Rules Lvl 1
Player Management Lvl 2
The force is with you!!

Good point.

My personal feeling is that we stick with a Game Loss at 3 minutes because typically a single game match has a much shorter time limit. A player sitting down 9 minutes late in a 60 minute best 2-of-3 match is less of an impact to the match than a player sitting down 9 minutes late in a 30 minute best of 1 match.

We'll make this point very clear in the planned update before Worlds.

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Erik Mock
UD Judge Coordinator
WoW TCG Level 3
Player Management Level 4

I have question about P701 Manipulating Match Outcome.

What exactly is counted as "manipulating". I know that bribery and random outcomes are not allowed, but what about following situation.

It's beginning of last swiss round. Player A has 5-0 standing and he is playing his mate (Player B) with 4-1 standing. The first player has guaranteed spot in Top8 regardless of the outcome of this match, so he decides to concede to give a Top8 spot to his friend. Is that illegal?

Yes that is legal. A player can concede a match whenever they want to. Most cases its a time issue or its there buddy.
As long as there was no bribe or anything offered at all its ok.

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World of Warcraft TCG Rules Lvl 3
WoW Minis Lvl 1
Huntik Rules Lvl 1
Player Management Lvl 2
The force is with you!!

I would personally consider the following example as an example of "manipulating" a match outcome.

Example:  Player A vs Player B match decide to wait for the match being played by Player C vs Player D to then determine which player should concede to the other (after figuring out tie-breakers).

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Franklin Debrito
Player Management Lv4 / Yu-Gi-Oh! Lv3
VS System Lv1 / Specialist Lv2
World of Warcraft Lv1 / Tournament Organizer Lv1 / Huntik Lv1 / WoW Minis Lv1
UD Forums Moderator

I think I agree with Frank on this one. In a situation where the players are using tie-breakers/other match results/whatever to try to figure out who should lose the match--especially during the last round or two of a tournament--they're obviously trying to manipulate final standings. In the case of friends/buddies/whatever, it's usually to put as many people as possible in the T8.

In my opinion, this sort of situation can be described by the line from the new Penalty Guildines under manipulting match outcome:

"Manipulating outcomes of the match destroys tournament integrity. An undeserving person advances in the tournament at the expense of someone who should have legitimately advanced."

The question then arises: where do we draw the line? What constitutes manipulating the match outcome, and what falls under a player's right to concede a match at any time? Trying to decide whether the players have looked at tie-breakers or are waiting on another match is extrememly difficult, and seems like it would result in situations where a judge has to decide if a player is lying with only suspicion to base the decision on. This is obviously more difficult when the opponent (in cases where friends are playing and both trying to T8, or put the better of them in the T8) doesn't have an incentive to contradict the player in question, and thus provide more than just a suspicion there may be some sort of collusion going on. Considering the severity of the penalty, making random guesses about whether or not the players are colluding is never a good idea. This still leaves us with the problem of collusion, especially at high-level tournaments where you have teams that split prizes after everything is said and done.

Short version: it's really hard to draw a line on this, and it's probably going to happen at high-level events.

I think we implement some sort of policy about not posting standings, even ones with tie-breakers removed (as place is still a good indication of relative tie-breakers) before the tournament has finished. It's not going to completely eliminate the problem, as players can figure out a rough idea of their breakers without a list, but it should make it harder to calculate with certainty who needs to win what match to make Top X.

/long ranting post about tournament collusion.

After studying the new penalty guidelines as a preparation for the upcomings Austrian Nationals I encountered some unclear points or errors:

1. "Illegal Party" and "Failure to De-sidedeck" share the same paragraph number (P504)

If two infractions are wanted to share only one number, I would prefer if it would be "Illegal Deck" and "Illegal Party", but I think this is just an error. ;-)

2. P405 Playing the Wrong Opponent:

"A player misreads the pairings display and sits at the wrong table during a Competitive RL event.
The error is not caught until the round is almost over. That player receives a match loss, and the player with whom he or she has swapped seats also receives a warning for violating policy (failing to verify that he is playing correct opponent)."

Either my English is very bad or this is wrongly put: The player "with whom he or she has swapped seats" is not the opponent, but the second player on the wrong table! Or did I misunderstand this?

3. P409 Outside Assistance

Is a decklist already counting as outside assistance? (Just a decklist without notes "how" to sidedeck, but including the sidedeck list to know the original configuration.)

 

1. You are correct that is most likely a typo that slipped past the edits.

2. It technically can be read as the opponent and most people will make that assumption. However, using proper grammar it is not correct. They could just as easily used "That player receives a match loss, and his or her opponent also receives a warning for violating policy (failing to verify that he is playing correct opponent)."

3. Yes it is considered outside assistance DURING a match. When the match is over, if they want to pull out a deck list or side deck list to make sure they deside properly, that is not only allowed, but strongly encouraged. You just want to make sure that the list is not in your deckbox or with your side deck so that when you are deck checked it is not an issue.

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