Ruling [split] TCG Rules Masters (Forum Staff)

Chairman Kaga

Chairman Kaga

ALLEZ CUISINE
Member
PokeBeach already has its Experts and Strategists, but we also wanted to create a group to house people that have proven their knowledge of the TCG rules. So with that, I give you the TCG Rules Masters.

The senior members of this group are Professors with Tier 2 judging experience (State/Province/Territory Championships and higher). Our Junior Members are not Professors yet, but have demonstrated their knowledge to us (both in private interviews and in answering questions on this forum), and thus are well on their way to becoming great ones.

Our current member list (and their judging experience):
  • Chairman Kaga - 2008 St. Louis/Mississippi Valley Regionals; 2008 Kansas States
  • DukeFireBird - 2008 US Nationals; 2007, 2008 California Regionals, 2007, 2008 Nevada States
  • Kronar - Junior Member
You can recognize the members of this group (that aren't already moderators) by their orange username.

These people are the authoritative answer-givers on this forum. Look to them when you have a question. But don't PM questions, please! Post them in the public forum so everyone can benefit -- someone else may have the same question as you!
 
RE: TCG Rules Masters (Forum Staff)

you always beat everyone to answering questions. Lol when ever i look at a question you are like always the first post with the best answer.
Come on let us answer some once and a while.

No no i am just kidding around.

Great thread i will try to post before you get there.
 
RE: TCG Rules Masters (Forum Staff)

Yeah, I might note here that I have judged the 2008 Benelux Championships, which is equal to Regionals. So am I qualified here? >.>
 
RE: TCG Rules Masters (Forum Staff)

I'm very surprised I'm not on this list. lol I'm too lazy to get my proffesorship (and I play too much to really judge often).
 
RE: TCG Rules Masters (Forum Staff)

Excellent concept to provide a vetting process for answers on the forum hopefully without the formality of the Gym Ask the Masters forum, which although definative and indispensible can often be quite slow for resolving grey areas.

BTW, Professor for 2 years, TO, but only Tier 1 CCs judging experience.
 
RE: TCG Rules Masters (Forum Staff)

I envy you being able to judge I am only 14!

You are a good group though. All three have you are very knowledgeable.
 
RE: TCG Rules Masters (Forum Staff)

So what tournaments has Kronar judged?
 
RE: TCG Rules Masters (Forum Staff)

To those that post here often -- please don't take this as a slight. I am still working on more people to nominate, but I wanted to get the group started while I was thinking about it and had some free time. Kronar was the first pick simply because I chat with him every night and I know he knows his stuff.

So for those interested in joining the group, I will say that the qualified candidate should:
  • Be active on the TCG Rules Questions forum
  • Be friendly when responding
  • Provide explanations for their answers
  • Refrain from answering unless reasonably sure of the answer (wrong answers are worse than no answer at all)
If you think you meet those requirements, don't hesitate to send me a PM. There is obviously preference given to Professors, but anyone who can demonstrate excellent knowledge of the rules is free to apply.

poleskitty said:
Excellent concept to provide a vetting process for answers on the forum hopefully without the formality of the Gym Ask the Masters forum, which although definative and indispensible can often be quite slow for resolving grey areas.
Click to expand...

Well, the formality on ATM exists for a reason. They do not post speculation. When the 5 Team Compendium members can't answer it, they take it to Pokemon USA (Mike, Dave, and Jimmer), and if PUI can't answer it, they refer it to Pokemon Creature Lab in Japan for a final ruling. Those are the ones that take a long time to answer. They don't speculate just in case Japan decides to surprise them -- they don't want to take the chance that a bad answer gets recognized as an official ruling, so they can maintain the integrity of the Compendium.

The stringency is mainly an artifact from the Wizards of the Coast, where WotC would often make rulings without regard to Japan, and they'd often end up being wrong. So the policy on PokeGym is, they either get an official ruling, or they don't answer at all.

Now here, I'm willing to take a stab at the grey area stuff, because 90% of the time the official ruling ends up being whatever a clear reading of the cards would suggest. On those rare occasions I can't give a definitive answer, I take it to PokeGym myself.

Aspiration said:
So what tournaments has Kronar judged?
Click to expand...

Someone should go back to the top and reread the definition of "Junior Member".
 
RE: TCG Rules Masters (Forum Staff)

...Yeah, not that sending a PM actually works. -.-
Oh well.
 
RE: TCG Rules Masters (Forum Staff)

I would join the group if I wasn't so lazy at answering questions here. I used to be more active. Maybe I will join if I start to feel like it. Would there even be a need? There are already three members.

Making up this group is the best thing that has happened in this forum for a long while! Good going Kaga ;)
 
RE: TCG Rules Masters (Forum Staff)

Chairman Kaga said:
Someone should go back to the top and reread the definition of "Junior Member".
Click to expand...

Yeah, okay. I wasn't asking if he was a Professor, I was asking what tournaments he had judged.

BTW, just out of curiousity, why is preference given to Professors?
 
RE: TCG Rules Masters (Forum Staff)

Aspiration said:
BTW, just out of curiousity, why is preference given to Professors?
Click to expand...

Because passing the Professor test is an excellent demonstration that someone has very good knowledge of the rules.
 
RE: TCG Rules Masters (Forum Staff)

^I beg to disagree. I'm way too lazy to actually take the prof test (and I have another test I have to focus on before that one anyways...) but I've seen it from both my dad and my mom (who had to take it several times). Besides the pently section, I could easily pass it. With that being said, the majority of questions are very common sence and many of the questions feature choices that are absolutely absurd. Also, I know for a fact that alot of the judges/professors don't know the majority of rules and don't study up on new rulings and recent updates to the compendium. They think that thier professorship gives them dictator-sorta rights over a tourny and many don't know how to handle many common situations. The following is a post I made right after nats about the judging (and some fixes that nats can definately use):
"This isn't about my record or how I did or even who won. This is about the amazingly horrible job the judges did at this event (and a side dish of having to play my gf in round 4......come freaking on). The BIGGEST thing that they did wrong was completely ignoring my mom's request on a deck check to the eventual winner in the jrs. According to my mom, the kid had marked cards (on the inside of the sleeves) of specific 1 cards, such as his 1 fighting energy and his 1 celio's, ect. She brought this to the head judges attention and he ignored it. Also the ignorance of Tom Shea, brought to the event AT THE REQUEST OF DAVE SWIMER (sp?), by the head judge on this topic is utterly stunning. The ruling against Brian Garcia IN THE TOP CUT is utterly mind boggling. For those who didn't hear, he recieved a prize penalty for rushing his opponet, though he called the judge several times and requested that he speed up his opponets rate of play. After the prize pentaly was issued, a time extention was given, but Brian's opponet pretty much took up the entire extention on his turn alone. What happened to Nick K is just LFMAO. Again, rushing an opponet was happening, right next to a judge mind you, and the judge did absolutely nothing and eventually Nick misplayed and lost the game, most likely do to the kids rushing. My mother was also witness to another kid who was cheating durning his opponets turn (probly busy with claydol or someting, which is another issue I'll address later on) by peeking at the top card of his deck and putting it on the bottom of the deck. The kid realizes he’s been caught and pretends like nothing happened. My mom calls over a judge, who ignores what my mom told him/her and asks the kid what happened. His opponet is obviously clueless as what is going on, so the cheater is free to deny it without a pently. Also andrew’s story (which I’m sure we’ll hear from him) is just a clear example of where this game’s players have gone. One of the biggest issues I had with nats was the amount of time allowed. Obviously the only real way to beat torterra, besides a donk, is stalling the clock. I actually didn’t lose any of my games. I was stalled out all 3 times, although 1 of them I had little to no chance of winning (prized 2 turtwigs. :/). The other two, however, I had the match in 2 turns and my opponets played the clock, admit they were nice and we had good games (or really blowouts and then amazing comebacks). The amount of time used per turn was absolutely insane. Claydol is not like any power we’ve had before. It takes a lot of thinking to decide what cards to lose for its power, which can be magnified by a lot at a tournment like nats. This alone can take up to a minute (a few of my matchs had claydols this long). Time for matches needs to be increased by at least 15 minutes. There were many matchs that had extentions of plus 10 (which, btw, gave me such an enomous headache every single day that it made me want to drop out of every tourny I played in), which makes me wonder why every match couldn’t receive that extra time, espically if one match is going to drag out the entire tournament. So positive suggestions:
1) Get more judges. I know they were there. Have them work it if they want to.
2) Listen to the dang judges under the head judge.
3) EXTEND THE TIME OF EVERY MATCH BY AT LEAST 5 MINUTES.
4) Be fair with rulings; call it in every division the same way.
5) Please, for the love of God, stop announcing every little thing and giving me at headache."
This was another post on the judging at the largest tourny in history:
"this was the worst one i herd the judge was standing right behind john and john places a emp. on his prinplup and plays a master ball the judge makes him shuffle the 7 cards back in becaus he did not state that he was evoleing his pokemon then he plays a master ball he makes him shuffle it back into his deck because he forgot to discard the other master ball and then he called him on rushing because he played a card and use claydol right after to quickly so he got frustrated and lost the game"
 
RE: TCG Rules Masters (Forum Staff)

Papi/Manny, that judge in the Top cut where the rushing happened, I was the judge watching it.
That was not his first evidence of stalling in the match, and when the Head Judge said to write down a rushing penalty, I informed him that there was another one already from the match, the HJ then said, Prize penalty. I was counting all the time in between plays after game 1, and neither player stalled until near then end, and thats when I gave an extension. I gave a 2nd extension to the match also for running the clock, and the other player received a penalty also.

If you have a problem with the tournament, please feel free to report it in the go-pokemon site.

To take your 5 ideas here

1) Get more judges. I know they were there. Have them work it if they want to.
PUI only has enough room on their roster for the amount of Judges they had. IMO, the amount of judges in masters was about 11 tables to 1 judge.

2) Listen to the dang judges under the head judge.
Players have the right to appeal to the Head Judge (Those appeals should be granted an extension)

3) EXTEND THE TIME OF EVERY MATCH BY AT LEAST 5 MINUTES.
Sure, lets play the extra 5 minutes, and still have the 10+ extensions still hold up the event.

4) Be fair with rulings; call it in every division the same way.
I believe we did this in the event, however, Each section was separated so the 3 HJ's couldn't actually converge on a single ruling. Keep in mind that Juniors are given a tad more leeway as they may be learning the game still

5) Please, for the love of God, stop announcing every little thing and giving me at headache.
What do you mean here?
 
RE: TCG Rules Masters (Forum Staff)

DukeFireBird said:
5) Please, for the love of God, stop announcing every little thing and giving me at headache.
What do you mean here?
Click to expand...

I believe that he means just as he says. At nats. there was quite a lot of unnessesary announcements. The most noticable ones were:
Masters and that is 1 min over
Masters that is 2 min over
Masters that is 3 min over
...
Masters that is 12 min over.

Overall I believe that the judging was ok but the anouncements did become a little annoying especialy since I couldn't hear the announcements 25 precent of the time.
 
RE: TCG Rules Masters (Forum Staff)

^Yeah, thats exactly what I ment. Duke, what top cut match are you talking about? The one with Nick K in the seniors? Nick has never stalled in his life. Hes a slow player. But I know him VERY well and he has far more STOG then 99% of the players today (except maybe Dylan, the senior world champ). He likes to think every play through, and the rushing from his opponet didn't help. If your talking about the masters one (with Brian G.), then ignore what I said above.

1) They only had enough room on thier roster? They have a limited number of judges they can use? I find that hard to believe. If its 11-1 ratio, then they have to be constantly aware of 22 different players and not standing around bsin (I know alot of judges who were doing that.). And when the judges get called away for something, there goes one less judge to cover a wide area.
2) And yet alot of judges were very rude and said no. And when the player did get the head judge, they STILL didn't know the ruling and hurt the player who was getting screwed. It amazes me that US Nats (as well as some of the tales I've heard about worlds) can have such poor judging when they don't know some rules. If your going to judge, please review the compendium beforehand and look up any erratas, ect. Maybe a pocketsized one would be helpful here?
3) I seriously doubt that. I wasn't at worlds, but I haven't seen any completes with the whole 40 minute rounds. :/ Kinda funny how that happened wayyy to late in the season. With something like 35 minutes, people are far less likely to slowplay the clock.
4) I'm perfectly find with the juniors getting a break. However, ALOT of juniors were caught cheating and what happened? Go ask the juniors what happened. :/ Yeah that'll work, since little kids are completely honest (not).
 
RE: TCG Rules Masters (Forum Staff)

DawnOfXatu said:
I believe that he means just as he says. At nats. there was quite a lot of unnessesary announcements. The most noticable ones were:
Masters and that is 1 min over
Masters that is 2 min over
Masters that is 3 min over
...
Click to expand...

Uh, those ARE necessary, so the floor judges can handle matches with time extensions.
 
RE: TCG Rules Masters (Forum Staff)

^Well obviously they need to get on teh ball and organize walkie-talkies to announce that, to make it so players don't go deaf before the lunch break.
 
RE: TCG Rules Masters (Forum Staff)

i stand corrected, I was not in Seniors, I was in masters, and the situation you described happened in masters also.

Also, I agree that walkie talkies are needed for that, Ill bring it up in the op forums for that.

Well, at any rate, Since I didnt see what happened, I cant really tell you anything.

Only that penalties can escalate especially if infracted more than once in a match.

~Duke
 
RE: TCG Rules Masters (Forum Staff)

What TOs and Judges should do for rulings is go on their laptop, (They use them for pairings and what not.) and go to pokegym and look for the question or whatever. (Only if they cannot answer it or someone thinks it is not a correct ruling.)
My TOs do it for tournaments and it really helps.
 
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