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Friday, February 23, 2018

Good Practices #6 - Clomp Around

Of all the strange things that I do in judging, this might take the cake. I couldn't even tell you when I decided upon this course of action. This good practice comes from Professional REL called drafts that take place at Grand Prix and Pro Tour tournaments. During these called drafts, players are seated in pods of 8, and follow the directions of a draft caller judge to pass packs, pick up packs, and select cards. These drafts are run this way to reduce the possibility of draft errors, and to make sure all draft tables finish at the same pace.

One of the biggest concerns during any draft is peeking. If an unscrupulous player catches a glimpse of their neighbors pick(s), that knowledge can give them a huge advantage. Instead of having to read signals via cards in the pack, they just know what color(s) their neighbor is on. Judges on the floor during a called draft, focus their attention on watching for peeking. They stare intently at players, scrutinize the position of the player's eyes, and sometimes even crouch to get a "player's eye view" of the situation. I've seen judges park on a particular table for the duration of a pack, just staring. Sometimes this results in a DQ, and if you're a judge who thinks you've seen some suspicious eye movement, by all means let the stare down begin.

But here's the rub. There are a lot of players. I took a look at a Limited GP that I Head Judged (Milwaukee 2016). 368 players qualified for Day 2. That's 46 pods. Excluding myself and the draft caller, there were 16 judges available on the floor during the draft. That's almost 3 pods per judge. So if you park on one table, that's opening up two others tables that are going unwatched.

This is why my preferred mode when I'm on the floor of a called draft is to be on the move. If a judge near me is in park-and-watch mode, that means I have five pods to patrol. With that many pods to monitor, the efficacy of me being able to watch any particular player is pretty low, but if you can't actually catch a cheater, you can deter them. This is why I intentionally clomp around my patrol zone with heavier than usual footfalls. No, I don't stomp like I'm crushing grapes. Just enough to put it into player's ears that "there's a judge walking around."

One thing I do is pick up the paper wrapper garbage from the packs. (GP and PT packs are opened, stamped, and rewrapped with slips of paper indicating the event.) This is a bit controversial among judges. Some will say that judges shouldn't pick up garbage because they aren't watching for peekers. But I've found that leaning in here is a good way to establish the presence of a judge and deter peeking. Heck, some players will even help you out by passing you their refuse.

In the end, this is mostly just theatrics. Another judge compared it to "parking your state trooper car on the side of the highway with the headlights on." It's very hard to actually catch a cheater this way, but if other judges are parked and focused on that, go for a stroll to fill that space.

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