In retrospect, I started to mentally prepare myself for this SJC exactly one year ago. I still remember a Friday afternoon last year when I received a call from Matt Villamaino, my tournament organizer from Star City Games, who asked me if I was available to head judge this SJC. Since he called me one year in advance, I told him that was plenty of notice for me to organize my schedule in order to volunteer my services for this important event.

Fast forward to this year’s Yu-Gi-Oh! National Championship this past June, where I was talking to other judges about my SJC in October. I had numerous offers to help staff this event, and I went on a massive recruitment drive that weekend. I was absolutely thrilled—I felt this would be a wonderful opportunity for the native Star City Games’ judges to work with and learn from the very best that the industry had to offer.

Six weeks before this SJC, I spoke with two of the tournament organizers from Star City Games, Matt Villamaino and Nicholas Sabin. We were ironing out some last-minute staffing details, and I wanted to make sure that the venue had internet access so that the Metagame.com reporter would not go insane. As the event drew closer, my two TOs always made themselves available (via phone and email) if I had a question or concern.

Ten days before the event, Matt sent me a copy of the venue’s floor plan: a great tool in helping me set up zones for the judges and their respective teams.

One week before the event, I wrapped up the final touches on a Judge Information Packet I was working on. The packet contained the judge team assignments, tournament operations information, certain rulings/cards/game concepts I wanted the judges to be familiar with, and a copy of the damage step chart. I then instructed Nicholas Sabin (my event manager) to send a copy of the packet to all the judges on staff via email.

Here are the judge team assignments I came up with:

Pairings Team:

Simon Choy (Team Leader)

Chris Perillo

John Rocha

Steven Schutt

Result Slips Team:

Joey Harris (Team Leader)

Paul Fahy

Zainal Maloney

Mike Rollyson

Brandon Smith

Deck Check Team:

Chris Goff (Team Leader)

David Case

Charles P. Miller

Neal Nakatani

Donald Schutt

Anthony Wilson

Feature Match Area:

Bryan Gibbons

Judge Team Lead Coordinator/Tournament Floor Executive Manager:

Feroze Ramcharan

Judge Staff Development Lead/Tournament Floor Executive Troubleshooter:

Frank Debrito

As you can see, I did not have a separate team for logistics, since I wanted to make every judge accountable for the condition and cleanliness of the tournament venue. Usually, I combine the result slips and pairings team to make one “paper” team, but in this case I wanted to keep them separate and get Simon Choy’s team out on the floor first. The primary reason I picked Simon for this task was because he gets things done quickly and with uncanny accuracy. I’ve always been amazed at Simon’s machine-like efficiency, and I knew I could completely depend on him to move his team along their tasks and be out on the floor ready to take rulings.

Joey Harris is one of Star City Games' local judges: I’ve mentored him for the past year. Originally, Star City Games insisted that Joey shadow me while I was head judging but I convinced them that Joey already had the base skill set required to manage a tournament of this caliber. I needed someone with Joey’s knowledge and field time out on the floor if I was going to have any hope of running a smooth event. I initially had four people on the result slips team, but a last-minute addition (Mr. Zainal Maloney) appeared, and I assigned him there as well. Hopefully, with five people on Joey Harris’ result slips team, the slips would all be passed out within five minutes of the round start time, which would help the pairings team with floor coverage almost immediately.

Chris Goff is a deck-checking legend. There, I said it. I needed someone who I could totally trust with that aspect of the tournament, and Chris was the only man on my staff who fit that description to the letter. You know how the human body has autonomous reflex actions like breathing, blinking, and digestion? Placing Chris in charge of that deck-checking team was like running that aspect of judging autonomously. I never had to worry about it, because I knew the deck checks were being completed in a professional, timely, and accurate manner. While I knew it was going on, I never had to consciously think about it. Chris had it under complete control.

I initially hesitated on committing one of my strongest assets, Bryan Gibbons, to feature match coverage duty. The knee-jerk reaction is to put more experienced and skilled judges out onto the chaos of the tournament floor. However, the Metagame.com feature match is the “face” of the event for those following the coverage at home, and I needed someone there who I could rely on 150% to make sure that nothing embarrassing or controversial happened. Bryan Gibbons was the obvious choice, and he did a superb job. When feature matches concluded, he would bravely venture forth onto the floor and help out where needed. This was the kind of individual I wanted, and Bryan stepped up.

As you may have noticed, I did not give Feroze Ramcharan or Frank Debrito regular floor judge assignments. I designated Feroze as the head judge if I was gone from the floor for an extended period of time. In addition, throughout the event, he acted as my main point of contact with the team leaders. If I needed something done on the floor, I had only to tell Feroze and he would convey my directives to the appropriate parties. Because of Feroze, I could better concentrate on maintaining/running the event from a holistic viewpoint, and consequently conserve my own energy for those situations and appeals that required my personal attention.

Frank Debrito was mainly there for staff development. I wanted him to follow the other judges and observe them when they gave rulings. Then, when he had a chance, he could give them constructive feedback (pros and cons) on what he observed. Also, because Frank is such a talented and experienced judge, I pretty much gave him carte blanche on how he chose to spend the rest of his time out on the floor. If the situation arose, Frank did what needed to be done: picking up garbage, pushing in chairs, taking rulings, maintaining crowd control, taking up result slips, etc. He was truly my “jack-of-all-trades” for this event, and I was very fortunate to have him on staff.

I should also mention that I was lucky to have two scorekeepers for this event. My main scorekeeper was Chad Daniel and his assistant was Aaron Clutter.

On a final note, Jeff Piroozshad acted as the UDE representative on site. He is a certified Level 3 Yu-Gi-Oh! Rules Knowledge judge with a great deal of tournament experience who knows what it’s like to be on the floor and take rulings and manage players. Jeff was also kind enough to assist the deck check team with the initial deck checks at round 1 of the event.

Our judge meeting started bright and early at 7:10 a.m. It was apparent that the judges were ready to do their jobs: they all looked well-rested and full of energy. Since this staff included people from all over the country, we went around the room introducing ourselves.

After the introductions, we got down to business. Here’s a rough outline of what I went over in my meeting.

• Split the judges into teams

• Mentioned the roles Bryan, Frank, and Feroze would be responsible for

• Covered judging conduct

• Defined the term “active judging”

• Told judges not to cluster in order to maintain coverage of the floor

• Covered procedure on how to take a judge call

• Covered how to write penalties on a result slip

• Covered how to collect the result slip

• Slow play—what to look for and how to deal with it

• Made everyone responsible for maintaining the clean look of the tournament area

• Placement of pairings boards

• Covered crowd control/spectator issues

• Stressed that only team leaders should interact with the scorekeeper

• Covered theft

• Covered food stipends

After the general meeting was over, I pulled the team leaders aside and explained my plans for dividing up zones on the floor. I also asked them to carefully observe the judges under their command, so we could give them meaningful feedback on their performance after the event. Finally, I instructed the team leaders to come up with a schedule for food breaks among their team members, and to coordinate with Feroze so the floor situation didn’t suffer when the staff took their breaks.

We sat the players down for the obligatory meeting and my TO, Matt Villamaino, welcomed everyone to the SJC (we had 541 players and ten rounds of Swiss). He then pointedly reminded the players to watch their belongings, and told them where to go if their items went missing (the lost and found area, by the side events stage). He then introduced me to the players (mangling my last name in the process) and I was off with my announcements. They were for the most part typical run-of-the-mill stuff, though I did stress certain things to the players while I had their attention.

• I told the players to be courteous to each other, and that it was not worth getting upset over a card game. I even said, “Contrary to popular belief, Yu-Gi-Oh! is not serious business, so please keep that in mind before you start to get emotional about it.”

• I stressed the importance of the match result slip. I told them that for this event, the judges would collect the slips in order to confirm the winner of the match and determine whether anyone intended to drop. I also told them that if I caught anyone attempting to turn in the slip themselves, I would give them a game loss for not following directions and disrupting the orderly flow of the event. For those of you who feel that the threat of a game loss was too harsh, I can’t say I blame you. However, after consulting with Frank Debrito (who told me he uses this same line at his events and never has a problem with the slips because of it), I thought it was worth trying out. That line turned out to be effective after all, because not once in all ten rounds did the slips go missing, and the players all closely followed the protocol I had laid out for them.