This is also why I like how the pro tour does it now, once you get to x wins, you're inin and you stop playing. This way intentional draws, conceding matches doesn't work as well as you can see the number of spots left...
I looked into this a bit when this topic first came up; in the US, you can't (for example) play in an RCQ if you already qualified for the RC. But that rule is set by Dreamhack, and each region gets to decide how they handle it. In Canada, I _think_ you're allowed to continue to play in events, which imo is a much worse structure.
I don't think that's super related to this situation, but it's something I'd like to see fixed, because I agree with you. It's just better when you can't play a lower level event if you already qualified, because it reduces the ability for friend groups to "get their friend in."
Ya, it will basically follow the same rules as Face 2 Face for Canada.
Which makes sense. Stores have to buy these RCQ kits, so, getting more people to your store to play, is in their benefit to continue to run RCQs.
When you alienate the crowd of players who would generally pay to show up to your store, you're basically hemorrhaging $.
they got rid of that rule, you can win as many RCQs per cycle you want now. Invites don't get passed down so you could stonewall an entire city if you are lucky and good enough.
It's interesting that they don't get passed down, you would think the final event would have a pre-determined number of seats they planned to fill and would divide them up evenly to be filled by qualification events. Like lets say you had 5 qualification events and each event would give final event invites to their top 3 players. That means the final event could only have 3 people competing if they showed up to all the qualifiers and swept, or 15 people competing if by chance different people won each qualifier. It seems like a pretty needlessly chaotic system to plan around when you could argue that passing down invites wouldn't have much impact on repeat qualifiers chance in the final event as they have already proven that they are operating at a level where they can consistently win over the competition.
So if 8 players with invites make top 8 of an RCQ, does 9th place who didn't even make top 8 get the invite then? Even if you just keep that reward system only for top 8, you get weird scenarios like someone going 3-2, lose in top 8 and still get an invite.
Unlikely scenarios but that's what happens when you implement pass downs. Yugioh used to do that; people would go 5-3, finish outside of top 32 in swiss, and would earn their invites to Nats cause 20+ players in the top 32 already had their invites.
This was what Yu-Gi-Oh did and it improved the competitive scene massively. Now they have changed to not passing down invites mostly because they have had problems with more people than they expect showing up.
Which never made any sense because they should have been setting the number of seats they divvied up to the qualifier events before the season ever started.
not letting people play kills event turnout because people travel to low level events in groups and you are disproportionately culling group leaders / motivated players who qualify early from the entry pools of mid and late season rcqs
Before this year, Canada had two RCs. Facetoface elected to have two smaller RCs because the population is distributed over a wide area and airfare within Canada is idiotically expensive. This is the main reason you could keep playing after qualifying.
What's the problem of letting someone qualified for the next tier of event play?
If they win or re-qualify, just give it to the next person down. Sucks for someone who wants the prestige of "winning" an RCQ, but also, you want a system that allows your most invested players to play.
It's not like someone good enough to win an RCQ is unbeatable, or has an unfair advantage over someone who has not yet achieved that goal.
> ...you want a system that allows your most invested players to play.
So that's basically why it's a region-by-region decision. The idea is that this matters more for some regions than others.
But in the most simple case if you have 1 person who didn't quality and 7 of their friends who did, then in the Swiss rounds of a tournament the 1 person has 7 matchups that are free wins (when the friend who already qualified concedes). And it doesn't necessarily fall under bribery rules because it's possible that there was nothing exchanged; it's in the person who qualified's best interest to help their friend qualify for the same event.
It's shitty and it makes it harder for everyone else in that event to qualify.
>But in the most simple case if you have 1 person who didn't quality and 7 of their friends who did, then in the Swiss rounds of a tournament the 1 person has 7 matchups that are free wins (when the friend who already qualified concedes). And it doesn't necessarily fall under bribery rules because it's possible that there was nothing exchanged; it's in the person who qualified's best interest to help their friend qualify for the same event.
I dont have the numbers either way, but I would guess that situations is insanely rare, specifically to the idea that there is a tournament where you have enough people who have already qualified, that you can get floated through the tournament like that. Moreover, if it happens once, where you get one match win because your friend is already qualified, I dont think that is significantly different than the scenarios we see happen anyways, where people try and cut deals to earn their invites.
I would rather see a clamp down on people IDing, and other behavior like that, versus telling the people most likely to try and drag their friends to these tournaments, "you can't play".
It's maybe more of a philosophical discussion than a practical one.
Tie breaks in Swiss rounds care about the records of other players in the event. If someone has already qualified, they may be in a position to help out a friend by conceding in a match they could have drawn or won. It's better for competitive integrity if every competitor is fully motivated to place as high as they can.
> What's the problem of letting someone qualified for the next tier of event play?
It creates this situation where you have, for example, a Top 8 where two of the players are going to concede to their friend but nobody else. It can be irritating to the players who are hurt by the arrangement but it is what it is.
This is a thing that came to a surprise to me when I recently traveled to this to LCQ for the RC. I’ve played the pro tour, and qualified through the pre>pro tour system they had until 2015 and then brought back in 2019 where you’d have an open 100-200 person tournament with a single slot. I qualified to many of the RPTQs when the PPTQ/RPTQ system existed (similar to now, but you had multiple RPTQs held simultaneously with top 4 qualifying instead of one giant tournament with top 12-32 slots).
In both situations you couldn’t play if you were qualified on either level.
So when I went to LCQ For the Canada RC I assumed I would play against other people for the 8-16 invites, not compete against people who already qualified and don’t benefit from the result other than some prize support tickets. In a similar situation there’s a ton of RCQs now in USA (I believe every store can buy 3 kits, therefore run it 3different times) and a lot of them are charging $10-15 and skipping prize support as entry fees would cover the kit cost and judge compensation. So there’s no incentive to go after qualifying to a 20 person RCQ except to help a friend qualify by blocking.
With these systems in place, I feel pass down invites at the RC level makes sense and maximizes the potential of qualified players and would decrease collusion.
On the pt level in this example it’s also weird to qualify top 12 instead of either top 8 or 16 or create a scaling system.l, it creates less ambiguity.
I went to an rcq last year in Cali where dude was win trading with his friend. They almost got disqualified from the tournament because they reported the match as a 2-0 win for one of the guys before the clock even started counting down. I didn’t hear what BS reason they gave for why they weren’t playing. Guy made cut to top 8, but I’m glad to report he didn’t win either spot to go to the RC.
In practice, that doesn't happen much here in Canada. The Dreamhack rule ends up barring a lot of the most engaged players from local events (to the point of people actively not wanting to win early season RCQs because it would stop them playing local Magic for a few months and they know they can win a slot later)
Yeah this is why I think WOTC doesn't make the decision themselves and instead defers to the regional coordinators. I think it makes a lot of sense because it's the kind of policy that might help one region but hurt another.
Yeah, in Canada if you’re qualified you are still able to play. I’ve missed invites due to teammates it invites blocking for each other and conceding each other into invites.
Half the people I played against at the super qualifier Friday were already qualified for the Saturday RC . Felt bad to lose a game or two to them but if I deserved to be in the tournament I would have won so don’t know what to think .
That’s not quite true. The PT system essentially works by assuming you will ID once you’re safe and skips the whole song and dance. It’s functionally the same as a 15 round tournament with IDs.
The main goal of this, alongside making coverage easier in later rounds, is to stop people who can ID blocking for team mates. It’s meant to level the playing field somewhat.
It does nothing to stop unintentional draws like in the OP. Or agreements to prevent unintentional draws.
Worth noting that the first to x wins system is functionally the same as with IDs in terms of who makes top 8. They're just removed from the swiss instead of drawing the last few rounds
Kind of, yes. He made an agreement that had a 50/50 shot of benefitting him. It ended up not benefitting him and he saw potential benefit in breaking the deal, so he screwed over both himself and his opponent.
> and he saw potential benefit in breaking the deal
This is a very important part. I assume that if he had 0 equity in a draw he wouldn't do this and would in fact honor the deal.
I'm which it is indeed favorable to prove that you can keep your word, when it's a repeated thing (which it is in this case, assuming that he'll keep playing and eventually have opportunity to make a deal again). He just gave himself worse future odds.
TLDR - Eduardo demonstrated he'll break his word if honoring an agreement is inconvenient for him.
Going into the final round players know their stats. They can figure out if they can draw their last round and make top 8, if they have to play, etc. Your standing depends on how many wins you have, and then tie breaks are based on opponent match win, your game win, and opponent game win in that order. Basically for an event, if you beat better performing opponents and you or your opponents win in fewer games(2-0 instead of 2-1), it's better tie breakers for you.
Three things happened here.
1. Both players know that a draw takes them out of top 8. Their tie breaks/stats don't matter beyond winning or losing. The winner qualifies for the pro tour, the loser is out. They agree that if it is going to be a draw, the player who is losing will concede so that their opponent gets the PT invite.
2. Another match is going to be a draw. Suddenly, because Eduardo has better tie breaks a draw means that he'll likely make top 8. He refuses to concede to his opponent and they draw. Keep in mind that this doesn't change the "winner makes PT" math, that is still true so Eduardo denied Brian the PT invite by refusing to concede.
3. In the other match that was going to be a draw, the players decide to use a similar agreement and one player concedes. This means that neither Brian or Eduardo make the top 8 and neither get an invite.
So basically Eduardo made an agreement, and when he realized he might profit more by breaking the agreement he did so. The kicker here is that karma happened and Eduardo didn't make top 8 and he's really sorry that he made the agreement.
The part that elevated the scumbaggery wasn't so much the broken deal - that's a scumbag move but ill just grumble and move past it by mentally filing you as a liar - it's the part where he passive aggressively bitched about not getting an invite by one point.
like that showcases a clear and distinct lack of empathy or remorse for the other player as a human being. like you know what you did and you're only capable of being upset it didn't pay out. The mere implication that you did someone dirty doesn't even register on your radar until others come pounding on your door calling you an asshole.
The complaining is what makes it particularly bad. Anyone who had tried making the PT knows the frustration of grinding qualifiers to hope that you run hot at regionals. Everyone who plays competitively knows the frustration of getting bubbled out of top 8 by bad luck and weak tie breaks.
It's just one of those things Eduardo thought was easy sympathy points, but apparently didn't have the brains to realize was a bad look when you screwed your opponent with your cutthroat behavior.
This smells of quasi-pro elitism figuring he'd either steamroll the scrub or at least be ahead when turns ended. Then he saw an angle to shoot when he was in a position where he should concede and shot it. I'm not gonna mind-read and say that Eduardo never intended to scoop to Brian, but he definitely didn't think it was a real possibility.
yeah, no way he would have made that "deal" if he didn't think he had a very good shot of beating Brian. it was a way for him to guarantee he could extract a concession in the event of games going long. the idea that he might wind up in a situation where he would have to decide whether to concede himself probably didn't really occur to him because of his inflated ego.
Word is that Eduardo was also the one who suggested the deal in the first place.
I was there for a couple of hours Sunday, and I heard an announcement over the speakers warning about deals like that. I don't think the official rules forbid them (only deciding a game based on external games of chance is illegal I think?) so I guess it was probably more of a suggestion after this happened.
Which is completely on brand for him, a notorious piece of shit and I am glad he is no longer part of the UK Magic scene. He's one of two people that genuinely made me feel like shit while taking part in a tournament and it had nothing to do with the game.
Pretty sure I traded some Snapcaster Mages with him after losing to him back in the day at a PTQ in Milton Keynes. I left with neither a good nor particularly bad impression of him.
It would have been impressive if he is an asshole all the time. My experience was as follows, I played my first PTQ ever, did somewhat well and after the last round I was chatting to my opponent, telling him how I was happy with how it went considering it was the first competitive event I ever played in and getting prizes is a good result. He overheard and told me that I should just stay at home and that these types of events are not for me, I found out later after talking to other people that one of his friends barely missed out on the top8 on tiebreakers and it was one of the guys that I played during the event, I even lost to him.
The very next PTQ I went to, I was handed an extremely powerful sealed pool from a well known person (not Eduardo) within the MTG community and after starting off really well, and since it was the pool he registered he would check up on me and encourage me, I ended up losing out and finished something like 5-3 and with every loss I was berated for misbuilding and not being good enough to pilot that pool. I was done with PTQs after that and just stuck to drafting at my university and playing pre-releases at my LGS which was an incredible experience. Those two events in relatively quick succession really put me off from competitive Magic for a very long time, it was a really shit experience for a 19 year old who was excited to play Magic as I grew up in a country with very little Magic let alone competitive events.
Dude that sounds terrible, im sorry that happened to you. From my experience you had just bad luck, but maybe im just lucky with the scene here. While there is nothing wrong with enjoying the game more casually, if you ever feel like it, i hope you wont let these experiences stop you from competing some day.
It's all good now, this happened around 12-13 years ago. I have since then gotten back into competitive Magic and am having a blast, I've gotten to know some people at my LGS that I don't usually interact with and some of the other grinders in my area, I have even developed a friendly rivalry with a guy that I somehow end up playing at almost every event. I am yet to have a bad experience since getting back into it.
When I was significantly less savvy and knowledgeable in the game, he convinced me to trade my playset of [[Goblin Guide]] for a single [[Venser, the Sojourner]]. I have regretted that deal ever since.
"deals" in the context of that announcement relates to quid-pro-quo agreements...
Such as "if you agree to concede this match to me, I'll give you X thing/money"
An agreement made such as the one proposed is not, technically, against the rules as the rules state that a player may concede at any time.
There was no quid-pro-quo agreement made, based on the information given in the story between the two players.
Just two players who understood the stakes and agreed on conceding to their opponent if the game was unwinnable at the end of turns.
You're not allowed to make concessions based on random chance, which includes die rolls/coin flips as well as looking at cards that were hidden when the match ended. You are allowed to agree that whoever was behind, based on the board state at the end of the 5th extra turn will concede.
Right, so you can't flip cards off your library to see what you would have drawn either.
You can reveal your hand though, I think? I recall being told you can actually show your opponent your hand whenever you want.
> I recall being told you can actually show your opponent your hand whenever you want.
Yeah there's no rule preventing you from revealing your hidden information (or lying about it – you can say "I have a bolt in hand" even if you don't, just to fuck with your opponent)
Which is funny to me as someone that also plays Yugioh, because both can get you DQ'ed from the event and potentially banned if you do it at a bigger event.
I wouldn't know about every TCG, but YGO definitely isn't the only game with a policy against intentional draws. Even so, YGO's tournament rules are pretty strict compared to how MTG does things.
Tournament policy for the Digimon TCG (as of last May) notes, "[Players are not allowed to intentionally declare a draw match, even with both players’ consent. If players are found to have agreed to an intentional draw, or play in a manner that means the outcome will result in a draw without trying their best to obtain a result, they will be subject to penalty.](https://world.digimoncard.com/event/online_event/pdf/tournament_rules.pdf)" Bandai also does the One Piece TCG, which has a similar [policy](https://en.onepiece-cardgame.com/pdf/tournament_rules_manual.pdf?20230407).
Bushiroad's Floor Rules state, "[Fighters may not choose to end a game or match in a draw even if both fighters agree and even if the game or match is yet to be concluded. As intentional draw is not allowed in the tournament, intentional drawing is considered an infraction.](https://en.cf-vanguard.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Bushiroad-Floor-Rules-1.2.2.pdf)" Bushiroad does Cardfight!! Vanguard and Weiss Schwarz, as well as Shadowverse: Evolve.
Interestingly, the PKMN TCG does allow intentional draws - "[players are permitted to concede to their opponent, or (in the case of TCG tournaments only) to make a single offer to draw the game.](https://www.pokemon.com/static-assets/content-assets/cms2/pdf/play-pokemon/rules/play-pokemon-tournament-rules-handbook-02132024-en.pdf)"
that one really surprises me. Why is bluffing like that not allowed?
It seems like a matter of course, even if its a really silly % point increase, to ask about something like the pt of a goyf and when you hear its over 3 health and you have red open, "oh dang, i missed my chance"
Small corrections/additions - Eduardo was the one that brought up the agreement in the first place.
Brian was playing Domain Ramp, not UW control.
Source - Was standing 3 feet away from them.
And people dont care. People didnt even care when LSV advertised for FTX (and calling people dishonest/trolls/bulls%ters when they tried in good faith to warn him) and the Storybook Brawl NFT scam. This ***** still is beloved by the community.
> After talking about the potential FTX saw in Storybook Brawl, and thanks to our familiarity and confidence in FTX and their leadership, we were excited to team up. As you may know, FTX already sponsors both Limited and Constructed Resources, podcasts I host, and they've been fantastic to work with. This acquisition gives us the opportunity to take Storybook Brawl to the next level, and we are already putting those resources into play - we recently launched our partnership with Untapped.gg, we had a ton of popular streamers put Storybook Brawl in front of new audiences, and we've got a big Organized Play announcement coming soon. Thanks to FTX, we've got plans to make Storybook Brawl the best it can be, and these examples are just the beginning.
LSV
It’s ridiculous that going to time is even a thing at this level of competition when time is something a player can deliberately manipulate to their advantage by slow rolling.
At that level of competition, in the final round of an RC with PT invites on the line, slow play should be enforced by the judges. Players should play with this in mind. Not saying it definitely happens like this, but systems are there to try and prevent it. It's also the "cost" of playing a slower, grindier deck like control at a 13 round tournament.
Does he still play slowly when he is under time pressure on MTGO? And anyway playing slowly all the time can still create advantages for you whether you are ahead or behind.
Assessing his MTGO play is an interesting case because the clock and the absence of a round timer make it impossible to get an advantage from playing slowly.
That’s not true, you can still tilt your opponent by playing slowly. But the point of the question is to ask if he can play faster when he gets in time trouble.
He's famous for slow playing but I watch his stream all the time and he's not really slower than other pros. And in the last episode of his podcast he said that he hasn't has a draw since covid
There's a limited amount of time in the day they have the event location booked for. Just letting gameplay be untimed sounds like a recipe for disaster. Rounds need to be completed in a timely manner.
As far as players deliberately manipulating time to their advantage, well hopefully the judges are vigilant about issuing slow play warnings and/or disqualifications for stalling if that's actually the case.
I think it was EFro who once suggested that draws should just count as zero points for both players instead of one each. I would be in favor of this if judges were more active about issuing slow play and stalling penalties. You don't stop people from drawing, but you give them no incentive to. It would give everyone a reason to play matches out, to play faster, and would help avoid situations like this.
No, draws are bad. Win on time or get penalized. Id be in favor of draws before time being 0 points and draws in turns being 1 each if thats more acceptable. Disincentivizing IDs.
It heavily dissaudes it. Players would have to actually play magic with each other for those 50 minutes, else they get slow play warnings/game losses or even a drop from the event if they aren't at their table without recording the result.
Then if the players are forced to actually play a game, while they can just durdle for 50 minutes, at any point a player with a particularly good hand might choose to start winning instead. You reach a prisoners dilemma.
That would be my hope. Seeing the top players actually playing. Also the player at X-0 that then ID’s into top 8 not getting 1st seed should prove the point. Tournaments should be playing to determine the proper seating of top 8 not the statistical numerology that seats them now.
That's what Flesh and Blood does for their events. Draws help for tiebreaker math but ultimately don't contribute to your overall wins.
It's nice playing out those final rounds and having it mean something
In this system draws are worse than losses (you lost to a loser rather than a winner. OMW is the primary tiebreaker).
You create a whole new can of worms where people argue about who should concede because the worst possible outcome is a draw. You turn every draw into the OP with players holding each other hostage and arguing about who would have won in 3 more turns, rather than the current system which slightly rewards a draw.
This thread is making me realize that a lot of people approach draws like "well, I didn't lose, so I'm better than having lost," rather than "well, I didn't win, so I didn't win".
Which feels very wrong to me. _Winning_ tournaments or prizes should be about _winning_ matches and climbing to the top, not _avoiding losing_ matches and clawing out of the bottom as much as possible.
You also don't always have the ability to not draw. Back in the WAR era, the Nexus Turbofog deck basically had nothing to win with once all the 5feri were gone.
Draws give 0 points in Flesh and Blood, but they give you better breakers.
Stalling out is NOT a good strategy in FaB, and the community appreciates it.
That's fucked up! I know the Bonnells; Brian and his wife Heather have played Magic for years and regularly host drafts at their house.
Last time we were at an RC together we all went variations of 1-3, 2-3, 4-3 drop so it is awesome to see him succeed to this level. This is the kind of thing that could really quench someone's fire for competition ("I worked so hard for this, and then this guy lied to me and I missed out on an invite").
Brian's got a strong mentality, though, and he's gonna try to roll with this and not let it bother him.
I mean... yeah, scumbag move.
I'd be interested in investigating how much weight an informal promise to concede holds, whether such a promise is in itself collusion, and whether reneging on the promise based on the results of another match is collusion.
Specifically, [IPG 4.3](https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/ipg4-3/) explicitly lists the following example for "Improperly Determining a Winner":
>A player says “Oh no, we’re going to draw, that is terrible for us. If only there were something we could do about it.”
However, the same section *also* states the following:
>if a player asks their opponent to concede because they have an overwhelming board position when time is called, that is not Improperly Determining a Winner
The problem here lies in the fact that they used information *from another match* to make their determination: they had a plan in place, and based on information *outside the game* one player decided to change their mind. However, the change that they made was not in itself a recourse to outside-the-game actions - they simply let the game go to time and the draw occurred regularly.
So what we have here is a weird "reverse" case: players had an agreement to determine a specific outcome of the match, but then using outside information one player decided *not* to do that.
This is probably legal, but it might skirt the edges of what the stated philosophy of these guidelines is, and how sporting conduct should function in the context of agreements on match outcomes. Once you let people lie and renege on agreements like this, you open the door to all sorts of shady bullshit that could seriously compromise tournament integrity; though on the flipside, you could also argue that agreements made before the match to determine the outcome of a match after a certain point *also* create space for shady deals. However, it would be very difficult to police this properly.
Now, all this only speaks to whether or not this was all *within the rules*. In terms of personal conduct, **there is no question this was reprehensible behavior unbecoming of any competitive Magic player**. Let's be clear about that. No question whatsoever that this was primo scumbag behavior.
[MTR 5.2](https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/mtr5-2/) gives us that it is acceptable to use information about the other match when making an agreement. So it wouldn't have been collusion to make a deal after seeing that the other table drew, and as such it also shouldn't be collusion to renege on that promise with that information
> Players may not reach an agreement in conjunction with other matches. **Players can make use of information regarding match or game scores of other tables.** However, players are not allowed to leave their seats during their match or go to great lengths to obtain this information.
I do not think it is possible to word the IPG in a manner that allows for intentional draws or concession in a match going to time, but forbids this behaviour.
I get your thinking but how in the heck is anyone supposed to prove a reneged verbal contract? Do we have to require players sign and notarise agreements?
Just seems like a crazy amount of hassle.
Have a judge sanction it.
These are edge cases that are likely to remain extremely rare. Judges already sign off on prize splits, I don't think it's particularly complicated to inform a judge of such an agreement. This is unlikely to come up a lot.
But I can see how this could add to the confusion. I'm just not sure the alternative is any better.
Magic Pros have been bullying non tournament grinders since days immemorial. Forcing them to concede when they don't have any chance to make the Top 8 or paying them on the side to draw matches. This guy took the scumbaggery to another level though.
MTG competitive scene has so many of these situations it is laughable as a competitive sport.
Making any deal should be a ban for years or life as in many other games / sports.
Sometimes teams are so big in RCQs that at the final tables they are just arranging the results among them, it is BS.
I get the feeling Eduardo was trying to cheat this from the start. Not saying he was cheating in game, just that he was rigging it.
He was the pro player, and was facing off against a relative newbie. He probably had it in his head he would either win outright, or would be far enough ahead he could push his opponent into conceding on turns.
In other words, big f*cking ego. And suddenly being on the losing side of a game he agreed to concede in to a new player probably damaged his ego SEVERELY. Which... Good, hope it's permanently damaged. Hope his inability to accept loss to preserve his fragile ego was worth burning his entire reputation in the community. No one is ever going to trust him again.
Eduardo's just a scumbag, we've known this for years. Didn't he try to solicit sexual favours from an underage player a few events ago for a similar kind of deal (e.g. offer to conceded if she would do "things" with him)? But he did something similar coming out and saying he did nothing wrong with a completely disingenous apology, even blaming her for it
Man, the OP's case is like average level jerk and people are freaking it but this absolutely awful story is buried in the comments? Like soliciting a player, even if not underage, is way worse than lying about a draw.
I would like to see at least one source before getting upset about this though, that's a serious allegation with nothing to back it up right now. A quick google didn't yield any results for me but I'm not sure what to look for with this little info.
Are deals a common thing in competitive magic? Yugioh had a similar situation once before and as a result no one makes any kind of deal in competitive settings.
My wild ass guess with just the context I've seen here is Eduardo offered the agreement and Brian, as the relatively new guy, accepted it without a lot of thought. This feels like something cooked up by someone who's played a decent number of tournaments and expects to be the person winning if they go to time.
Honestly, these sorts of agreements should just be banned at pro tournaments in general. It's one thing to split top prize at FNM, but metagaming the placement system for PT entrance is gross. No matter what choice was made in this scenario, someone was getting screwed.
As much as i think Eduardo's move was scumbaggy, I think that such agreements should not exist and, if found should lead to DQ for both.
If you draw a match, it means you were supposed to draw that match, unless one or both players slowplayed, which should be reported to judged (and to be fair, top tables in qualifiers, when results of specific matches will influence the results, there should be one or more judges nearby to make sure everything is played smoothly).
That's a pretty uncool thing for Eduardo to do. Unfortunately the game is still pretty terrible about concessions and IDs, and I don't really see a good fix. Time limits are necessary because labor is already absurd running a tournament, but I really feel like there should be an alternative when playing for a cutoff. The man should've honored his word and conceded.
That said... I'm not very impressed by Patrick Wu. Dogging someone on social media like that is also not particularly cool. Patrick wrote 8 paragraphs how Eduardo's apology to Brian *wasn't good enough for Patrick*. WTF kind of outrage Olympics shit is this? He seems insane.
Props to Brian for being cool about it and taking the high road. I wish him the best of luck in future tournaments.
I completely agree. Like, fuck this Eduardo dude but also fuck this cultural phenomenon where some random idiot on Twitter harasses you because they didn't think your apology was adequate. Pretty presumptive for an unaffected stranger to think they are owed anything in this situation. Feels more like clout chasing than anything.
Idk why players are allowed to discuss the outcome of a game, at all, in any context, before its conclusion or during said game. All players should be equally punished with a loss, every single time this type of discussion happens, as is the rule in other card games.
If players can’t be held responsible for colluding, then there should be strict rules set in place, to filter out the bad actors from taking advantage of people who don’t understand the position they’re in.
I find it especially silly because it is only able to be done in a particular way. So it ends up penalizing only the new players who don't know the very specific way that it's okay to talk about it, while still having all these situations pop up.
Patrick Wu response is a little complicated when he states that Eduardo "robbed" his opponent from the opportunity to go to the protour by not conceding. He would still be robbing someone else from attending if he conceded.
Maybe passively or indirectly, but you could logic that out to any scenario really. The guy that won the lottery robbed me of winning because he bought his ticket directly before me.
He doesn't owe anything to the other guy, it's no more robbing the other guy of attending than if he just won straight up.
When you make a deal with someone you literally do owe something to them, and if you break that deal and they lose out on something over it, then you have in fact robbed the guy you made a deal with.
It's a robbery because he agreed before the match that under these circumstances, the victory will go to the one with better board. So rightfully by this deal, at the moment Eduardo reneged, Brian was entitled to the victory.
Taking something from someone which they are entitled to is a robbery.
While I am firmly in the camp that dream crushing (not conceding when you can’t get in the top 8 but your opponent can) is absolutely fine (you’re just crushing someone else’s dream if you concede there), that’s not what happened here. A deal was made to avoid a draw, not give one player the win, then one person went back on that deal. That’s scumbag shit.
That's the nature of top 8 formats though no? Even if Brian won the match 2-0 in time he would be "robbing" someone else of that spot. But I think that's disingenuous since here the two players reached an agreement that one of them would concede if they were behind and then one player isn't going to make the PT because one of them reneged on that agreement after the fact.
Exactly. Had he conceded he would have "robbed" the spot on the other table.
And then, someone else would have complained and, depending on who were listening and who is that person friends with, we would have the same drama with different names.
How does that make sense? This is drama because the player went back on his word, not just because someone didn't go to the PT. Pro-players make these kind of tie deals all the time without drama (example: the other table going to time)
A question that's been floating in my mind:
Aren't these agreements themselves very explicitly banned? Like, at the beginning of every tournament (and the beginning of the last round) the judge goes through a whole checklist of things not to do to determine the winner- among them is always very specifically "do not determine a match winner by who would have won".
I understand that there is a bit of skirting around the letter of the law when it comes to concessions and draws that (typically) doesn't break the spirit of the law, but this deal was so directly against one of the clearly stated rules that I was originally surprised they so openly talked about it and have been since surprised that nobody mentioned that.
Arguably grey area. Even the example so many people here are quoting, the reason why its fine to just ask someone to concede isn't fine because of the boardstate part. It's fine because as long as you aren't offering an incentive, a player can scoop for any reason.
Imagine the entire agreement happened the way it was said. HJ hears this agreement at the start. Would anything change, assuming the judge didn't DQ them? If the answer is no, that's a problem in my opinion.
I'm tired of deals like this being made, even in casual FNM. It's unsportsmanlike. Play the damn game. Hockey teams don't decide to forfeit to manipulate the standings, they play to win every game.
Of course I've heard of tanking. They still have to play the game though. And you can't tank in order to split the prizing in half like every single last round at prerelease seems to do these days.
And, tanking is usually the lowest teams losing to gain whatever advantage. Here the current system encourages deals and drawing and conceding at the highest placements to manipulate the standings and prize structure, in an ostensibly competitive tournament.
Wonder if there’s a way to keep players blind about what the record of other competitors is and prevent them from knowing the specific ways to get a qualifying spot, so they just have to always play for the best outcome they can personally get.
The fundamental concept of the Swiss pairings format is that you are always paired against someone with the same record as you. It wouldn’t really be fair if someone top 8ed by beating the weakest players every single round.
I don’t see what that has to do with what I said. You can do Swiss but maybe there’s a way where you don’t give players access to the standings, don’t have them know if game counts and tie breaks mean they need a win to qualify or just a draw, or know what the guys over at that table need.
Nothing stops them from finding out. People would just go keep track of their prior opponents record. If I'm the final round before top 8 and I know my prior opponents were essentially undefeated, I know my breakers are stacked.
When decklists were secret in large tourneys, pro or semi-pro players had a big advantage because their teams could scouts out the decklists of other players and report them to their team members before the match. This system would probably have similar issues.
The competitive magic community are mostly the same faces. The group of players who devote the resources (money and time) to play a 8+ round tournament are quite few.
If I was going to be that 12th spot but lost because two players made a deal at another table I would be pissed as well. Why is that not a concern here? Aren't deals like this robbing other players of spots?
>When you make a decision to not honor anagreement like this, although you seem to get some immediate benefits, But your "dishonesty" tag will follow you for the rest of your life. After all, the Magic community is a small community. Many stories are told by word of mouth. Eventually other people will be reluctant to communicate with you or have any other relationship with you. Think about how much this will cost you, and you'll see how stupid it is.
GODDAMN. Fucking buried him.
Magic pros spend so much energy playing stupid games instead of Magic: the Gathering. He shouldn't have gone back on his word, but neither of them should have engaged in this to begin with.
ID is fine before the match takes place. Playing the game and a draw actually occurring from both players losing simultaneously is fine. Outside of those two situations, there needs to be rules to figure out who wins after turns. It would fix a lot of issues.
What really blows my mind is we have a Magic companion app and no way to use it to curb slow play. Start timing your opponents and calling a judge liberally I guess until we get real fixes?
This specific event shows how broken the system can be, and while I feel bad for the person who didn't get a PT slot, this deal would have screwed a different competitor out if a spot, so it hard to feel too bad.
I think it's kind of a scumbag move, but I don't like the complete psycho-analysis calling another human being vile over the lack of shown emotion in a tweet. Shit's kinda wack
I mean... if they agreed to conceed and didn't, that's rough. But it isn't the end of the world and certainly isn't robbing anyone of their lifeling dream or whatever. The other guy didn't win just as much as the quasi pro didn't conceded. Even if renegging on a verbal promise is unfortunate.
Going to time isn't winning, right? So didn't exactly lose anything that they had guaranteed.
Yeah I find this hard to be mad about, because the result of the match is the exact same that it would have been had no agreement been made at all.
Like, is it shitty to go back on your word? Yes. But there’s no way to enforce an agreement like this that is relying on one person’s actions, so having then reneg is a risk you take in making this kind of deal.
But nobody is entitled to a concession or a top spot.
Dude didn’t play well enough to win outright, earned a draw in the match, and ended the day with the record and placement he earned.
[https://melee.gg/Tournament/View/68469](https://melee.gg/Tournament/View/68469) yep , they dont apear right now but in the 5 and 6 position there was two players with 0-0-0
The dumbest thing in this whole drama is probably making an agreement in the first place. Play the game out fully without side deals to sneak one or the other in.
I don't know how you come to this conclusion unless you haven't read a word about the situation. The game was played out fully, both players knew that a draw benefitted neither of them, so before the game was played out, they agreed to concede if a draw were to happen. The player who should have conceded went back on his word, which is a bad thing to do, because keeping promises is generally regarded as a positive trait.
They did exactly what you said: they played the game out fully. It resulted with a tie. They went to turns and tied. Hence, why they agreed beforehand that if it went to a tie, whomever was behind would concede.
It's wild how many people don't get this.
Sure, the dude who went back on the deal is a scumbag for going back on their word but the deal never should have occurred to begin with.
It’s pretty common practice at my LGS to offer a draw before game start in the deciding match of 3-0 finish. People will split the packs 3/3 instead of going 4/2, and just compete for the promo pack.
You’re by no means required to take that deal but I think I see if offered in at least 50% of drafts.
Is it okay to screw over another individual at a different table who, if would’ve gotten in under regular circumstances didn’t because you had a promise with your opponent to concede so one of you benefitted instead? If you think so then fine. I think it’s kinda garbage but hey, that’s just like, my opinion man
Everyone who top 8's removes someone else from Top 8ing. If those other players had played better, then whether or not I win my last matchup wouldn't affect their odds of top 8ing.
There's a subset of players that think any intentional draws or concessions "rob" another player of something and are scummy. In my experience they are usually casual players who have dabbled in tournaments. A lot of them are in this thread.
Yeah it really is. Honestly everyone invoöved deserved the backlash or outcome. Play the game, everything else is your own fault if it blows up in your face.
So lying is shitty, let's get that out of the way. Not surprised he's being widely chastised for going back on his word. He did that, period. I don't really have anything else to add so I'm going to leave that here at the top.
_But._
I can understand why he might think that reneging on the deal would be... "morally" acceptable, and it comes down to the **phrasing** of the deal and the **intent** of the deal.
This isn't supposed to be a defense of what he did (and his apology seems pretty shitty for the record). But it's a plausible-deniability view of how I think the situation unfolded.
The agreement was, essentially, **"if we're in turns, the player behind will concede, because that's better than neither of us getting an invite."** I'm taking that as the phrasing of the deal. It's very mechanical, "if X than Y."
But I think the deal could have been phrased differently, in a way that would have made what he did "correct." And I think my phrasing is closer to the intent of the deal. Basically a better way to have phrased it would have been **"if a tie means that neither of us can make it, then the person behind will concede."**
I think it's pretty clear why mine is different. A concession is _contingent_ on a tie being equal. If another game might tie, then this game's tie is no longer equal because of the tiebreakers. That's a really subtle difference and I don't believe the deal was phrased to be deceptive. I can also easily see how someone _intended_ what I said but _said_ the former, because the former phrasing is just more natural. I think my phrasing is the best way for a deal like this to be structured. I don't think it's correct to make a deal that could lead to the person in the overall advantageous spot needing to concede.
I also think this blew up because of the outcome. Since the other table had the same deal going, it makes reneging on the deal look... way worse I guess, because nobody got in. I kinda think it makes sense to try and partition games at this level so that you don't know what's happening at tables around you. In that case it's "optimal" for the player with better tie breakers to never concede, but they might judge the probability of another tie happening as lower than the probability of them going to turns in an advantageous position, and so it makes sense to agree to the deal at the start. I don't love the idea that the decision is adaptive because of outside knowledge and the cleanest way to deal with that is just try and not let that outside knowledge come in. That's probably impractically feasible, but it would help. (Apparently according to the tournament rules, players are allowed to consider information from other matches but they can't leave their seat or go out of their way to obtain information on them.)
Anyway please don't jump down my throat for this take. What he did was shitty, and his apology was shitty, but I think it's really important to dissect what happened here and realize why it happened and how to prevent it from happening in the future. The difference between phrasing and intent is subtle enough that I really to believe it's possible for someone to have said one thing and meant to encapsulate another. Basically I think he should apologize and recognize that he went back on the deal, but I think permanently branding him as a liar is disproportionately harsh and some members of the community are going a little off of the deep end with it.
Best take in the thread for this situation imo.
Besides the outrage over ‘muh honour code’ there seems to just be a lot of pro player bad sentiment in this thread
Maybe if they didn't spend the time to come up with the agreement they would have had time to finish the match.
Like yeah he's a scumbag but in a competition you have to expect scumbags.
This is also why I like how the pro tour does it now, once you get to x wins, you're inin and you stop playing. This way intentional draws, conceding matches doesn't work as well as you can see the number of spots left...
I looked into this a bit when this topic first came up; in the US, you can't (for example) play in an RCQ if you already qualified for the RC. But that rule is set by Dreamhack, and each region gets to decide how they handle it. In Canada, I _think_ you're allowed to continue to play in events, which imo is a much worse structure. I don't think that's super related to this situation, but it's something I'd like to see fixed, because I agree with you. It's just better when you can't play a lower level event if you already qualified, because it reduces the ability for friend groups to "get their friend in."
Worth noting that that rule you mentioned being set by dream hack is no longer going to be a thing when scg takes over.
Didn't know that! Thanks for the info.
Ya, it will basically follow the same rules as Face 2 Face for Canada. Which makes sense. Stores have to buy these RCQ kits, so, getting more people to your store to play, is in their benefit to continue to run RCQs. When you alienate the crowd of players who would generally pay to show up to your store, you're basically hemorrhaging $.
Also, orgs like Apex wanted to be able to give tour points to specific RCQs, but it'd punish you of you won it lol
it also means people who qualify early will have a harder time continuing to compete, practice, and adjust for the meta without an internal team.
they got rid of that rule, you can win as many RCQs per cycle you want now. Invites don't get passed down so you could stonewall an entire city if you are lucky and good enough.
It's interesting that they don't get passed down, you would think the final event would have a pre-determined number of seats they planned to fill and would divide them up evenly to be filled by qualification events. Like lets say you had 5 qualification events and each event would give final event invites to their top 3 players. That means the final event could only have 3 people competing if they showed up to all the qualifiers and swept, or 15 people competing if by chance different people won each qualifier. It seems like a pretty needlessly chaotic system to plan around when you could argue that passing down invites wouldn't have much impact on repeat qualifiers chance in the final event as they have already proven that they are operating at a level where they can consistently win over the competition.
So if 8 players with invites make top 8 of an RCQ, does 9th place who didn't even make top 8 get the invite then? Even if you just keep that reward system only for top 8, you get weird scenarios like someone going 3-2, lose in top 8 and still get an invite. Unlikely scenarios but that's what happens when you implement pass downs. Yugioh used to do that; people would go 5-3, finish outside of top 32 in swiss, and would earn their invites to Nats cause 20+ players in the top 32 already had their invites.
> So if 8 players with invites make top 8 of an RCQ, does 9th place who didn't even make top 8 get the invite then? Why not?
This was what Yu-Gi-Oh did and it improved the competitive scene massively. Now they have changed to not passing down invites mostly because they have had problems with more people than they expect showing up.
I don't disagree, Yugioh is lightyears ahead in terms of turnout. Konami handing out invites like candy is one of the big reasons.
Which never made any sense because they should have been setting the number of seats they divvied up to the qualifier events before the season ever started.
not letting people play kills event turnout because people travel to low level events in groups and you are disproportionately culling group leaders / motivated players who qualify early from the entry pools of mid and late season rcqs
Before this year, Canada had two RCs. Facetoface elected to have two smaller RCs because the population is distributed over a wide area and airfare within Canada is idiotically expensive. This is the main reason you could keep playing after qualifying.
Yup I saw that when I was looking into it. A little weird but makes sense (idk if they cut it off after qualifying for both, my understanding is not).
Nope, you could keep playing if you managed to get two invites
What's the problem of letting someone qualified for the next tier of event play? If they win or re-qualify, just give it to the next person down. Sucks for someone who wants the prestige of "winning" an RCQ, but also, you want a system that allows your most invested players to play. It's not like someone good enough to win an RCQ is unbeatable, or has an unfair advantage over someone who has not yet achieved that goal.
> ...you want a system that allows your most invested players to play. So that's basically why it's a region-by-region decision. The idea is that this matters more for some regions than others. But in the most simple case if you have 1 person who didn't quality and 7 of their friends who did, then in the Swiss rounds of a tournament the 1 person has 7 matchups that are free wins (when the friend who already qualified concedes). And it doesn't necessarily fall under bribery rules because it's possible that there was nothing exchanged; it's in the person who qualified's best interest to help their friend qualify for the same event. It's shitty and it makes it harder for everyone else in that event to qualify.
>But in the most simple case if you have 1 person who didn't quality and 7 of their friends who did, then in the Swiss rounds of a tournament the 1 person has 7 matchups that are free wins (when the friend who already qualified concedes). And it doesn't necessarily fall under bribery rules because it's possible that there was nothing exchanged; it's in the person who qualified's best interest to help their friend qualify for the same event. I dont have the numbers either way, but I would guess that situations is insanely rare, specifically to the idea that there is a tournament where you have enough people who have already qualified, that you can get floated through the tournament like that. Moreover, if it happens once, where you get one match win because your friend is already qualified, I dont think that is significantly different than the scenarios we see happen anyways, where people try and cut deals to earn their invites. I would rather see a clamp down on people IDing, and other behavior like that, versus telling the people most likely to try and drag their friends to these tournaments, "you can't play". It's maybe more of a philosophical discussion than a practical one.
Tie breaks in Swiss rounds care about the records of other players in the event. If someone has already qualified, they may be in a position to help out a friend by conceding in a match they could have drawn or won. It's better for competitive integrity if every competitor is fully motivated to place as high as they can.
> What's the problem of letting someone qualified for the next tier of event play? It creates this situation where you have, for example, a Top 8 where two of the players are going to concede to their friend but nobody else. It can be irritating to the players who are hurt by the arrangement but it is what it is.
This is a thing that came to a surprise to me when I recently traveled to this to LCQ for the RC. I’ve played the pro tour, and qualified through the pre>pro tour system they had until 2015 and then brought back in 2019 where you’d have an open 100-200 person tournament with a single slot. I qualified to many of the RPTQs when the PPTQ/RPTQ system existed (similar to now, but you had multiple RPTQs held simultaneously with top 4 qualifying instead of one giant tournament with top 12-32 slots). In both situations you couldn’t play if you were qualified on either level. So when I went to LCQ For the Canada RC I assumed I would play against other people for the 8-16 invites, not compete against people who already qualified and don’t benefit from the result other than some prize support tickets. In a similar situation there’s a ton of RCQs now in USA (I believe every store can buy 3 kits, therefore run it 3different times) and a lot of them are charging $10-15 and skipping prize support as entry fees would cover the kit cost and judge compensation. So there’s no incentive to go after qualifying to a 20 person RCQ except to help a friend qualify by blocking. With these systems in place, I feel pass down invites at the RC level makes sense and maximizes the potential of qualified players and would decrease collusion. On the pt level in this example it’s also weird to qualify top 12 instead of either top 8 or 16 or create a scaling system.l, it creates less ambiguity.
I went to an rcq last year in Cali where dude was win trading with his friend. They almost got disqualified from the tournament because they reported the match as a 2-0 win for one of the guys before the clock even started counting down. I didn’t hear what BS reason they gave for why they weren’t playing. Guy made cut to top 8, but I’m glad to report he didn’t win either spot to go to the RC.
In practice, that doesn't happen much here in Canada. The Dreamhack rule ends up barring a lot of the most engaged players from local events (to the point of people actively not wanting to win early season RCQs because it would stop them playing local Magic for a few months and they know they can win a slot later)
Yeah this is why I think WOTC doesn't make the decision themselves and instead defers to the regional coordinators. I think it makes a lot of sense because it's the kind of policy that might help one region but hurt another.
Yeah, in Canada if you’re qualified you are still able to play. I’ve missed invites due to teammates it invites blocking for each other and conceding each other into invites.
Half the people I played against at the super qualifier Friday were already qualified for the Saturday RC . Felt bad to lose a game or two to them but if I deserved to be in the tournament I would have won so don’t know what to think .
That’s not quite true. The PT system essentially works by assuming you will ID once you’re safe and skips the whole song and dance. It’s functionally the same as a 15 round tournament with IDs. The main goal of this, alongside making coverage easier in later rounds, is to stop people who can ID blocking for team mates. It’s meant to level the playing field somewhat. It does nothing to stop unintentional draws like in the OP. Or agreements to prevent unintentional draws.
Worth noting that the first to x wins system is functionally the same as with IDs in terms of who makes top 8. They're just removed from the swiss instead of drawing the last few rounds
Gimme some of that r/hobbydrama
Gotta wait those two weeks before posting there!
That’s a good rule
So he lied to someone after making an agreement with them because it no longer benefited them?
Kind of, yes. He made an agreement that had a 50/50 shot of benefitting him. It ended up not benefitting him and he saw potential benefit in breaking the deal, so he screwed over both himself and his opponent.
> and he saw potential benefit in breaking the deal This is a very important part. I assume that if he had 0 equity in a draw he wouldn't do this and would in fact honor the deal.
Yep. It's easy to show principles when nothing's at stake. It's when you have something to lose if you show them that they are put to the test.
It’s important maybe to understanding why he did it, but it doesn’t make him any less of a jerk.
For sure
Ah the prisoners dilemma
I'm which it is indeed favorable to prove that you can keep your word, when it's a repeated thing (which it is in this case, assuming that he'll keep playing and eventually have opportunity to make a deal again). He just gave himself worse future odds.
Except in this case an outside party (another table) can overhear what's going down and decide to screw you over for being a lying POS.
Ahh scorpion and the frog... or in this case the Cunt and our Hero.
TLDR - Eduardo demonstrated he'll break his word if honoring an agreement is inconvenient for him. Going into the final round players know their stats. They can figure out if they can draw their last round and make top 8, if they have to play, etc. Your standing depends on how many wins you have, and then tie breaks are based on opponent match win, your game win, and opponent game win in that order. Basically for an event, if you beat better performing opponents and you or your opponents win in fewer games(2-0 instead of 2-1), it's better tie breakers for you. Three things happened here. 1. Both players know that a draw takes them out of top 8. Their tie breaks/stats don't matter beyond winning or losing. The winner qualifies for the pro tour, the loser is out. They agree that if it is going to be a draw, the player who is losing will concede so that their opponent gets the PT invite. 2. Another match is going to be a draw. Suddenly, because Eduardo has better tie breaks a draw means that he'll likely make top 8. He refuses to concede to his opponent and they draw. Keep in mind that this doesn't change the "winner makes PT" math, that is still true so Eduardo denied Brian the PT invite by refusing to concede. 3. In the other match that was going to be a draw, the players decide to use a similar agreement and one player concedes. This means that neither Brian or Eduardo make the top 8 and neither get an invite. So basically Eduardo made an agreement, and when he realized he might profit more by breaking the agreement he did so. The kicker here is that karma happened and Eduardo didn't make top 8 and he's really sorry that he made the agreement.
The true kicker is, he got karma'd by someone who made the exact same deal as him, and stood by it.
> someone Two someones, technically.
The part that elevated the scumbaggery wasn't so much the broken deal - that's a scumbag move but ill just grumble and move past it by mentally filing you as a liar - it's the part where he passive aggressively bitched about not getting an invite by one point. like that showcases a clear and distinct lack of empathy or remorse for the other player as a human being. like you know what you did and you're only capable of being upset it didn't pay out. The mere implication that you did someone dirty doesn't even register on your radar until others come pounding on your door calling you an asshole.
The complaining is what makes it particularly bad. Anyone who had tried making the PT knows the frustration of grinding qualifiers to hope that you run hot at regionals. Everyone who plays competitively knows the frustration of getting bubbled out of top 8 by bad luck and weak tie breaks. It's just one of those things Eduardo thought was easy sympathy points, but apparently didn't have the brains to realize was a bad look when you screwed your opponent with your cutthroat behavior.
Yeah, all I can say is it's scumbag behavior. Wanting pity and sympathy from other people for failing to screw over your opponent..
This is so prisoner's dilemma I expect one of them to go to jail.
Sounds like assuming the outcome of someone else's match being a draw or not is NOT something you should predicate your deals on.
This smells of quasi-pro elitism figuring he'd either steamroll the scrub or at least be ahead when turns ended. Then he saw an angle to shoot when he was in a position where he should concede and shot it. I'm not gonna mind-read and say that Eduardo never intended to scoop to Brian, but he definitely didn't think it was a real possibility.
yeah, no way he would have made that "deal" if he didn't think he had a very good shot of beating Brian. it was a way for him to guarantee he could extract a concession in the event of games going long. the idea that he might wind up in a situation where he would have to decide whether to concede himself probably didn't really occur to him because of his inflated ego.
And he was the one who suggested the agreement in the first place, which is even more egregious.
Word is that Eduardo was also the one who suggested the deal in the first place. I was there for a couple of hours Sunday, and I heard an announcement over the speakers warning about deals like that. I don't think the official rules forbid them (only deciding a game based on external games of chance is illegal I think?) so I guess it was probably more of a suggestion after this happened.
Word is also that Eduardo has posted in private discords he thinks he did nothing wrong
Which is completely on brand for him, a notorious piece of shit and I am glad he is no longer part of the UK Magic scene. He's one of two people that genuinely made me feel like shit while taking part in a tournament and it had nothing to do with the game.
Pretty sure I traded some Snapcaster Mages with him after losing to him back in the day at a PTQ in Milton Keynes. I left with neither a good nor particularly bad impression of him.
It would have been impressive if he is an asshole all the time. My experience was as follows, I played my first PTQ ever, did somewhat well and after the last round I was chatting to my opponent, telling him how I was happy with how it went considering it was the first competitive event I ever played in and getting prizes is a good result. He overheard and told me that I should just stay at home and that these types of events are not for me, I found out later after talking to other people that one of his friends barely missed out on the top8 on tiebreakers and it was one of the guys that I played during the event, I even lost to him. The very next PTQ I went to, I was handed an extremely powerful sealed pool from a well known person (not Eduardo) within the MTG community and after starting off really well, and since it was the pool he registered he would check up on me and encourage me, I ended up losing out and finished something like 5-3 and with every loss I was berated for misbuilding and not being good enough to pilot that pool. I was done with PTQs after that and just stuck to drafting at my university and playing pre-releases at my LGS which was an incredible experience. Those two events in relatively quick succession really put me off from competitive Magic for a very long time, it was a really shit experience for a 19 year old who was excited to play Magic as I grew up in a country with very little Magic let alone competitive events.
Dude that sounds terrible, im sorry that happened to you. From my experience you had just bad luck, but maybe im just lucky with the scene here. While there is nothing wrong with enjoying the game more casually, if you ever feel like it, i hope you wont let these experiences stop you from competing some day.
It's all good now, this happened around 12-13 years ago. I have since then gotten back into competitive Magic and am having a blast, I've gotten to know some people at my LGS that I don't usually interact with and some of the other grinders in my area, I have even developed a friendly rivalry with a guy that I somehow end up playing at almost every event. I am yet to have a bad experience since getting back into it.
When I was significantly less savvy and knowledgeable in the game, he convinced me to trade my playset of [[Goblin Guide]] for a single [[Venser, the Sojourner]]. I have regretted that deal ever since.
[Goblin Guide](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/c/3c0f5411-1940-410f-96ce-6f92513f753a.jpg?1599706366) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Goblin%20Guide) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2xm/127/goblin-guide?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3c0f5411-1940-410f-96ce-6f92513f753a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Venser, the Sojourner](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/f/8f61a0ea-c2e8-4571-9669-19abd8bbc874.jpg?1581708232) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Venser%2C%20the%20Sojourner) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ddi/1/venser-the-sojourner?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8f61a0ea-c2e8-4571-9669-19abd8bbc874?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
"deals" in the context of that announcement relates to quid-pro-quo agreements... Such as "if you agree to concede this match to me, I'll give you X thing/money" An agreement made such as the one proposed is not, technically, against the rules as the rules state that a player may concede at any time. There was no quid-pro-quo agreement made, based on the information given in the story between the two players. Just two players who understood the stakes and agreed on conceding to their opponent if the game was unwinnable at the end of turns.
You're not allowed to make concessions based on random chance, which includes die rolls/coin flips as well as looking at cards that were hidden when the match ended. You are allowed to agree that whoever was behind, based on the board state at the end of the 5th extra turn will concede.
Right, so you can't flip cards off your library to see what you would have drawn either. You can reveal your hand though, I think? I recall being told you can actually show your opponent your hand whenever you want.
> I recall being told you can actually show your opponent your hand whenever you want. Yeah there's no rule preventing you from revealing your hidden information (or lying about it – you can say "I have a bolt in hand" even if you don't, just to fuck with your opponent)
Which is funny to me as someone that also plays Yugioh, because both can get you DQ'ed from the event and potentially banned if you do it at a bigger event.
In YGO, you can also get a DQ for an intentional draw, which is legal in every other TCG
I wouldn't know about every TCG, but YGO definitely isn't the only game with a policy against intentional draws. Even so, YGO's tournament rules are pretty strict compared to how MTG does things. Tournament policy for the Digimon TCG (as of last May) notes, "[Players are not allowed to intentionally declare a draw match, even with both players’ consent. If players are found to have agreed to an intentional draw, or play in a manner that means the outcome will result in a draw without trying their best to obtain a result, they will be subject to penalty.](https://world.digimoncard.com/event/online_event/pdf/tournament_rules.pdf)" Bandai also does the One Piece TCG, which has a similar [policy](https://en.onepiece-cardgame.com/pdf/tournament_rules_manual.pdf?20230407). Bushiroad's Floor Rules state, "[Fighters may not choose to end a game or match in a draw even if both fighters agree and even if the game or match is yet to be concluded. As intentional draw is not allowed in the tournament, intentional drawing is considered an infraction.](https://en.cf-vanguard.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Bushiroad-Floor-Rules-1.2.2.pdf)" Bushiroad does Cardfight!! Vanguard and Weiss Schwarz, as well as Shadowverse: Evolve. Interestingly, the PKMN TCG does allow intentional draws - "[players are permitted to concede to their opponent, or (in the case of TCG tournaments only) to make a single offer to draw the game.](https://www.pokemon.com/static-assets/content-assets/cms2/pdf/play-pokemon/rules/play-pokemon-tournament-rules-handbook-02132024-en.pdf)"
that one really surprises me. Why is bluffing like that not allowed? It seems like a matter of course, even if its a really silly % point increase, to ask about something like the pt of a goyf and when you hear its over 3 health and you have red open, "oh dang, i missed my chance"
You just have to word the deal correctly. You can get dq'ed for talking about it if you say the wrong things
Small corrections/additions - Eduardo was the one that brought up the agreement in the first place. Brian was playing Domain Ramp, not UW control. Source - Was standing 3 feet away from them.
Will add this to the post, thanks
Magic pros are assholes. A story as old as the game itself. Appreciate you bringing this instance to light though.
And people dont care. People didnt even care when LSV advertised for FTX (and calling people dishonest/trolls/bulls%ters when they tried in good faith to warn him) and the Storybook Brawl NFT scam. This ***** still is beloved by the community.
I just read up on the storybook brawl thing and it just seems like the game was bought by a crypto scam company. Not sure how that is LSVs fault
> After talking about the potential FTX saw in Storybook Brawl, and thanks to our familiarity and confidence in FTX and their leadership, we were excited to team up. As you may know, FTX already sponsors both Limited and Constructed Resources, podcasts I host, and they've been fantastic to work with. This acquisition gives us the opportunity to take Storybook Brawl to the next level, and we are already putting those resources into play - we recently launched our partnership with Untapped.gg, we had a ton of popular streamers put Storybook Brawl in front of new audiences, and we've got a big Organized Play announcement coming soon. Thanks to FTX, we've got plans to make Storybook Brawl the best it can be, and these examples are just the beginning. LSV
It’s ridiculous that going to time is even a thing at this level of competition when time is something a player can deliberately manipulate to their advantage by slow rolling.
At that level of competition, in the final round of an RC with PT invites on the line, slow play should be enforced by the judges. Players should play with this in mind. Not saying it definitely happens like this, but systems are there to try and prevent it. It's also the "cost" of playing a slower, grindier deck like control at a 13 round tournament.
This is also why while I acknowledge Nassif is a great player, I will never be a fan. His slow play is shocking.
Nassif plays at essentially the same speed whether he's ahead or behind. I'm not sure it makes sense to say that he's gaining an advantage from it.
Does he still play slowly when he is under time pressure on MTGO? And anyway playing slowly all the time can still create advantages for you whether you are ahead or behind.
Assessing his MTGO play is an interesting case because the clock and the absence of a round timer make it impossible to get an advantage from playing slowly.
That’s not true, you can still tilt your opponent by playing slowly. But the point of the question is to ask if he can play faster when he gets in time trouble.
He's famous for slow playing but I watch his stream all the time and he's not really slower than other pros. And in the last episode of his podcast he said that he hasn't has a draw since covid
There's a limited amount of time in the day they have the event location booked for. Just letting gameplay be untimed sounds like a recipe for disaster. Rounds need to be completed in a timely manner. As far as players deliberately manipulating time to their advantage, well hopefully the judges are vigilant about issuing slow play warnings and/or disqualifications for stalling if that's actually the case.
I think it was EFro who once suggested that draws should just count as zero points for both players instead of one each. I would be in favor of this if judges were more active about issuing slow play and stalling penalties. You don't stop people from drawing, but you give them no incentive to. It would give everyone a reason to play matches out, to play faster, and would help avoid situations like this.
Would there then be more bullshitting about wanting people to concede since a draw literally helps neither player?
No, draws are bad. Win on time or get penalized. Id be in favor of draws before time being 0 points and draws in turns being 1 each if thats more acceptable. Disincentivizing IDs.
No way to enforce that. If you agree on a draw before time, you can also agree to just wait until turns and then draw.
It heavily dissaudes it. Players would have to actually play magic with each other for those 50 minutes, else they get slow play warnings/game losses or even a drop from the event if they aren't at their table without recording the result. Then if the players are forced to actually play a game, while they can just durdle for 50 minutes, at any point a player with a particularly good hand might choose to start winning instead. You reach a prisoners dilemma.
That would be my hope. Seeing the top players actually playing. Also the player at X-0 that then ID’s into top 8 not getting 1st seed should prove the point. Tournaments should be playing to determine the proper seating of top 8 not the statistical numerology that seats them now.
That's what Flesh and Blood does for their events. Draws help for tiebreaker math but ultimately don't contribute to your overall wins. It's nice playing out those final rounds and having it mean something
In this system draws are worse than losses (you lost to a loser rather than a winner. OMW is the primary tiebreaker). You create a whole new can of worms where people argue about who should concede because the worst possible outcome is a draw. You turn every draw into the OP with players holding each other hostage and arguing about who would have won in 3 more turns, rather than the current system which slightly rewards a draw.
Counterpoint, shouldn't 2-0-1 be a better record than 2-1? If draws are points, draws are become equivalent to losses from an individual perspective
Yes, if draws were made equivalent to losses then draws would be equivalent to losses, that would be the goal.
This thread is making me realize that a lot of people approach draws like "well, I didn't lose, so I'm better than having lost," rather than "well, I didn't win, so I didn't win". Which feels very wrong to me. _Winning_ tournaments or prizes should be about _winning_ matches and climbing to the top, not _avoiding losing_ matches and clawing out of the bottom as much as possible.
You also don't always have the ability to not draw. Back in the WAR era, the Nexus Turbofog deck basically had nothing to win with once all the 5feri were gone.
Draws give 0 points in Flesh and Blood, but they give you better breakers. Stalling out is NOT a good strategy in FaB, and the community appreciates it.
FaB doesn't have the same strategies viable and a resource system not as stringent as MtG
That's fucked up! I know the Bonnells; Brian and his wife Heather have played Magic for years and regularly host drafts at their house. Last time we were at an RC together we all went variations of 1-3, 2-3, 4-3 drop so it is awesome to see him succeed to this level. This is the kind of thing that could really quench someone's fire for competition ("I worked so hard for this, and then this guy lied to me and I missed out on an invite"). Brian's got a strong mentality, though, and he's gonna try to roll with this and not let it bother him.
He made a statement about it on his twitter already. Took the high road.
Brian may have been the bigger person and accepted his apology, but I'll always think of Eduardo as a giant shit bag.
I mean... yeah, scumbag move. I'd be interested in investigating how much weight an informal promise to concede holds, whether such a promise is in itself collusion, and whether reneging on the promise based on the results of another match is collusion. Specifically, [IPG 4.3](https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/ipg4-3/) explicitly lists the following example for "Improperly Determining a Winner": >A player says “Oh no, we’re going to draw, that is terrible for us. If only there were something we could do about it.” However, the same section *also* states the following: >if a player asks their opponent to concede because they have an overwhelming board position when time is called, that is not Improperly Determining a Winner The problem here lies in the fact that they used information *from another match* to make their determination: they had a plan in place, and based on information *outside the game* one player decided to change their mind. However, the change that they made was not in itself a recourse to outside-the-game actions - they simply let the game go to time and the draw occurred regularly. So what we have here is a weird "reverse" case: players had an agreement to determine a specific outcome of the match, but then using outside information one player decided *not* to do that. This is probably legal, but it might skirt the edges of what the stated philosophy of these guidelines is, and how sporting conduct should function in the context of agreements on match outcomes. Once you let people lie and renege on agreements like this, you open the door to all sorts of shady bullshit that could seriously compromise tournament integrity; though on the flipside, you could also argue that agreements made before the match to determine the outcome of a match after a certain point *also* create space for shady deals. However, it would be very difficult to police this properly. Now, all this only speaks to whether or not this was all *within the rules*. In terms of personal conduct, **there is no question this was reprehensible behavior unbecoming of any competitive Magic player**. Let's be clear about that. No question whatsoever that this was primo scumbag behavior.
[MTR 5.2](https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/mtr5-2/) gives us that it is acceptable to use information about the other match when making an agreement. So it wouldn't have been collusion to make a deal after seeing that the other table drew, and as such it also shouldn't be collusion to renege on that promise with that information > Players may not reach an agreement in conjunction with other matches. **Players can make use of information regarding match or game scores of other tables.** However, players are not allowed to leave their seats during their match or go to great lengths to obtain this information.
Ah, fair enough. I must have misremembered that section. Good to point out!
I do not think it is possible to word the IPG in a manner that allows for intentional draws or concession in a match going to time, but forbids this behaviour.
You could well be right. Though you could make it USC to enter into agreements and then renege on them, I suppose.
I get your thinking but how in the heck is anyone supposed to prove a reneged verbal contract? Do we have to require players sign and notarise agreements? Just seems like a crazy amount of hassle.
Have a judge sanction it. These are edge cases that are likely to remain extremely rare. Judges already sign off on prize splits, I don't think it's particularly complicated to inform a judge of such an agreement. This is unlikely to come up a lot. But I can see how this could add to the confusion. I'm just not sure the alternative is any better.
Magic Pros have been bullying non tournament grinders since days immemorial. Forcing them to concede when they don't have any chance to make the Top 8 or paying them on the side to draw matches. This guy took the scumbaggery to another level though.
"Pro" magic is fucking embarrassing.
Always has been, you just don't see the embarrassing side as often back then.
MTG competitive scene has so many of these situations it is laughable as a competitive sport. Making any deal should be a ban for years or life as in many other games / sports. Sometimes teams are so big in RCQs that at the final tables they are just arranging the results among them, it is BS.
I get the feeling Eduardo was trying to cheat this from the start. Not saying he was cheating in game, just that he was rigging it. He was the pro player, and was facing off against a relative newbie. He probably had it in his head he would either win outright, or would be far enough ahead he could push his opponent into conceding on turns. In other words, big f*cking ego. And suddenly being on the losing side of a game he agreed to concede in to a new player probably damaged his ego SEVERELY. Which... Good, hope it's permanently damaged. Hope his inability to accept loss to preserve his fragile ego was worth burning his entire reputation in the community. No one is ever going to trust him again.
Eduardo's just a scumbag, we've known this for years. Didn't he try to solicit sexual favours from an underage player a few events ago for a similar kind of deal (e.g. offer to conceded if she would do "things" with him)? But he did something similar coming out and saying he did nothing wrong with a completely disingenous apology, even blaming her for it
Man, the OP's case is like average level jerk and people are freaking it but this absolutely awful story is buried in the comments? Like soliciting a player, even if not underage, is way worse than lying about a draw.
I would like to see at least one source before getting upset about this though, that's a serious allegation with nothing to back it up right now. A quick google didn't yield any results for me but I'm not sure what to look for with this little info.
For sure, but it's weird to me people are just scrolling past this possibility.
Are deals a common thing in competitive magic? Yugioh had a similar situation once before and as a result no one makes any kind of deal in competitive settings.
only in top 8. And they aren't deals, you rearrange the price distribution.
This is why people dont care about "pro" magic
That is a pretty sweet Valakut though.
How sweet is it to go to a PT though?
Back when they exclusive (players and +1s only), free drafts all day for three days was very sweet.
My wild ass guess with just the context I've seen here is Eduardo offered the agreement and Brian, as the relatively new guy, accepted it without a lot of thought. This feels like something cooked up by someone who's played a decent number of tournaments and expects to be the person winning if they go to time.
yea. took a calculated risk but in bad faith
Honestly, these sorts of agreements should just be banned at pro tournaments in general. It's one thing to split top prize at FNM, but metagaming the placement system for PT entrance is gross. No matter what choice was made in this scenario, someone was getting screwed.
The gamesmanship (more than the negative EV, shit terrible life EV, and being generally awful at the game) is what kept me out of competitive mtg
Fuck Eggwardo, all my homies hate Eggwardo
Bottom line, try to win your matches. If you can't, maybe you don't deserve to be on the PT.
As much as i think Eduardo's move was scumbaggy, I think that such agreements should not exist and, if found should lead to DQ for both. If you draw a match, it means you were supposed to draw that match, unless one or both players slowplayed, which should be reported to judged (and to be fair, top tables in qualifiers, when results of specific matches will influence the results, there should be one or more judges nearby to make sure everything is played smoothly).
That's a pretty uncool thing for Eduardo to do. Unfortunately the game is still pretty terrible about concessions and IDs, and I don't really see a good fix. Time limits are necessary because labor is already absurd running a tournament, but I really feel like there should be an alternative when playing for a cutoff. The man should've honored his word and conceded. That said... I'm not very impressed by Patrick Wu. Dogging someone on social media like that is also not particularly cool. Patrick wrote 8 paragraphs how Eduardo's apology to Brian *wasn't good enough for Patrick*. WTF kind of outrage Olympics shit is this? He seems insane. Props to Brian for being cool about it and taking the high road. I wish him the best of luck in future tournaments.
Lol i just wrote a similar thing. This isnt on Patrick, he needed to cool his jets
This is a nice melange of some of the shittiest elements of the hobby. Awful tournament meta gaming and ridiculously overheated twitter drama llamas.
I completely agree. Like, fuck this Eduardo dude but also fuck this cultural phenomenon where some random idiot on Twitter harasses you because they didn't think your apology was adequate. Pretty presumptive for an unaffected stranger to think they are owed anything in this situation. Feels more like clout chasing than anything.
Idk why players are allowed to discuss the outcome of a game, at all, in any context, before its conclusion or during said game. All players should be equally punished with a loss, every single time this type of discussion happens, as is the rule in other card games. If players can’t be held responsible for colluding, then there should be strict rules set in place, to filter out the bad actors from taking advantage of people who don’t understand the position they’re in.
I find it especially silly because it is only able to be done in a particular way. So it ends up penalizing only the new players who don't know the very specific way that it's okay to talk about it, while still having all these situations pop up.
Patrick Wu response is a little complicated when he states that Eduardo "robbed" his opponent from the opportunity to go to the protour by not conceding. He would still be robbing someone else from attending if he conceded.
Maybe passively or indirectly, but you could logic that out to any scenario really. The guy that won the lottery robbed me of winning because he bought his ticket directly before me.
He doesn't owe anything to the other guy, it's no more robbing the other guy of attending than if he just won straight up. When you make a deal with someone you literally do owe something to them, and if you break that deal and they lose out on something over it, then you have in fact robbed the guy you made a deal with.
It's a robbery because he agreed before the match that under these circumstances, the victory will go to the one with better board. So rightfully by this deal, at the moment Eduardo reneged, Brian was entitled to the victory. Taking something from someone which they are entitled to is a robbery.
While I am firmly in the camp that dream crushing (not conceding when you can’t get in the top 8 but your opponent can) is absolutely fine (you’re just crushing someone else’s dream if you concede there), that’s not what happened here. A deal was made to avoid a draw, not give one player the win, then one person went back on that deal. That’s scumbag shit.
That's the nature of top 8 formats though no? Even if Brian won the match 2-0 in time he would be "robbing" someone else of that spot. But I think that's disingenuous since here the two players reached an agreement that one of them would concede if they were behind and then one player isn't going to make the PT because one of them reneged on that agreement after the fact.
Exactly. Had he conceded he would have "robbed" the spot on the other table. And then, someone else would have complained and, depending on who were listening and who is that person friends with, we would have the same drama with different names.
How does that make sense? This is drama because the player went back on his word, not just because someone didn't go to the PT. Pro-players make these kind of tie deals all the time without drama (example: the other table going to time)
A question that's been floating in my mind: Aren't these agreements themselves very explicitly banned? Like, at the beginning of every tournament (and the beginning of the last round) the judge goes through a whole checklist of things not to do to determine the winner- among them is always very specifically "do not determine a match winner by who would have won". I understand that there is a bit of skirting around the letter of the law when it comes to concessions and draws that (typically) doesn't break the spirit of the law, but this deal was so directly against one of the clearly stated rules that I was originally surprised they so openly talked about it and have been since surprised that nobody mentioned that.
Arguably grey area. Even the example so many people here are quoting, the reason why its fine to just ask someone to concede isn't fine because of the boardstate part. It's fine because as long as you aren't offering an incentive, a player can scoop for any reason. Imagine the entire agreement happened the way it was said. HJ hears this agreement at the start. Would anything change, assuming the judge didn't DQ them? If the answer is no, that's a problem in my opinion.
I'm tired of deals like this being made, even in casual FNM. It's unsportsmanlike. Play the damn game. Hockey teams don't decide to forfeit to manipulate the standings, they play to win every game.
You forgot one thing: Sports don't go to draw in time.
Hate to break it to ya, but have you heard of tanking?
Of course I've heard of tanking. They still have to play the game though. And you can't tank in order to split the prizing in half like every single last round at prerelease seems to do these days.
And, tanking is usually the lowest teams losing to gain whatever advantage. Here the current system encourages deals and drawing and conceding at the highest placements to manipulate the standings and prize structure, in an ostensibly competitive tournament.
Yeah sure, a sports team never sends their B or C team to matches that didn't matter for standings. ;)
Wonder if there’s a way to keep players blind about what the record of other competitors is and prevent them from knowing the specific ways to get a qualifying spot, so they just have to always play for the best outcome they can personally get.
Yeah, you just have them not play next to each other. I have been in in tournaments that did that for the last round of swiss.
The fundamental concept of the Swiss pairings format is that you are always paired against someone with the same record as you. It wouldn’t really be fair if someone top 8ed by beating the weakest players every single round.
I don’t see what that has to do with what I said. You can do Swiss but maybe there’s a way where you don’t give players access to the standings, don’t have them know if game counts and tie breaks mean they need a win to qualify or just a draw, or know what the guys over at that table need.
Nothing stops them from finding out. People would just go keep track of their prior opponents record. If I'm the final round before top 8 and I know my prior opponents were essentially undefeated, I know my breakers are stacked.
When decklists were secret in large tourneys, pro or semi-pro players had a big advantage because their teams could scouts out the decklists of other players and report them to their team members before the match. This system would probably have similar issues.
> After all, the Magic community is a small community. I mean I donÄt think the magic community to really be small
The high level competitive play community is pretty small though
The boys club is exclusive yes
The competitive magic community are mostly the same faces. The group of players who devote the resources (money and time) to play a 8+ round tournament are quite few.
Those two pairs shouldn't be seated in vicinity of each other
Why does the tournament work like this with draws? There shouldn't be incentives to have a player concede to avoid a draw.
If I was going to be that 12th spot but lost because two players made a deal at another table I would be pissed as well. Why is that not a concern here? Aren't deals like this robbing other players of spots?
>When you make a decision to not honor anagreement like this, although you seem to get some immediate benefits, But your "dishonesty" tag will follow you for the rest of your life. After all, the Magic community is a small community. Many stories are told by word of mouth. Eventually other people will be reluctant to communicate with you or have any other relationship with you. Think about how much this will cost you, and you'll see how stupid it is. GODDAMN. Fucking buried him.
Magic pros spend so much energy playing stupid games instead of Magic: the Gathering. He shouldn't have gone back on his word, but neither of them should have engaged in this to begin with.
Let mtg be a game, fairplay, fun and luck... I see this just as a fight betwern baby men, with too many ages for their brain, full kid fiesta
So he was only ever going to abide by this agreement if it benefitted him lol What a fucking scumbag
ID is fine before the match takes place. Playing the game and a draw actually occurring from both players losing simultaneously is fine. Outside of those two situations, there needs to be rules to figure out who wins after turns. It would fix a lot of issues. What really blows my mind is we have a Magic companion app and no way to use it to curb slow play. Start timing your opponents and calling a judge liberally I guess until we get real fixes? This specific event shows how broken the system can be, and while I feel bad for the person who didn't get a PT slot, this deal would have screwed a different competitor out if a spot, so it hard to feel too bad.
I think it's kind of a scumbag move, but I don't like the complete psycho-analysis calling another human being vile over the lack of shown emotion in a tweet. Shit's kinda wack
Eduardo sounds like an asshat.
I mean... if they agreed to conceed and didn't, that's rough. But it isn't the end of the world and certainly isn't robbing anyone of their lifeling dream or whatever. The other guy didn't win just as much as the quasi pro didn't conceded. Even if renegging on a verbal promise is unfortunate. Going to time isn't winning, right? So didn't exactly lose anything that they had guaranteed.
Yeah I find this hard to be mad about, because the result of the match is the exact same that it would have been had no agreement been made at all. Like, is it shitty to go back on your word? Yes. But there’s no way to enforce an agreement like this that is relying on one person’s actions, so having then reneg is a risk you take in making this kind of deal. But nobody is entitled to a concession or a top spot. Dude didn’t play well enough to win outright, earned a draw in the match, and ended the day with the record and placement he earned.
I want info about the top 5 and 6.. they had both a double dq?
Woah, what? Both 5th and 6th were dq'ed?
[https://melee.gg/Tournament/View/68469](https://melee.gg/Tournament/View/68469) yep , they dont apear right now but in the 5 and 6 position there was two players with 0-0-0
The dumbest thing in this whole drama is probably making an agreement in the first place. Play the game out fully without side deals to sneak one or the other in.
I don't know how you come to this conclusion unless you haven't read a word about the situation. The game was played out fully, both players knew that a draw benefitted neither of them, so before the game was played out, they agreed to concede if a draw were to happen. The player who should have conceded went back on his word, which is a bad thing to do, because keeping promises is generally regarded as a positive trait.
They did exactly what you said: they played the game out fully. It resulted with a tie. They went to turns and tied. Hence, why they agreed beforehand that if it went to a tie, whomever was behind would concede.
The agreement in the first place is stupid lol
It's wild how many people don't get this. Sure, the dude who went back on the deal is a scumbag for going back on their word but the deal never should have occurred to begin with.
So at an FNM, going into a draw which awards no prizes, you have never, ever asked someone to scoop or offered to scoop yourself?
It’s pretty common practice at my LGS to offer a draw before game start in the deciding match of 3-0 finish. People will split the packs 3/3 instead of going 4/2, and just compete for the promo pack. You’re by no means required to take that deal but I think I see if offered in at least 50% of drafts.
Is it okay to screw over another individual at a different table who, if would’ve gotten in under regular circumstances didn’t because you had a promise with your opponent to concede so one of you benefitted instead? If you think so then fine. I think it’s kinda garbage but hey, that’s just like, my opinion man
Everyone who top 8's removes someone else from Top 8ing. If those other players had played better, then whether or not I win my last matchup wouldn't affect their odds of top 8ing.
There's a subset of players that think any intentional draws or concessions "rob" another player of something and are scummy. In my experience they are usually casual players who have dabbled in tournaments. A lot of them are in this thread.
The same can be said about the one that you scoop to. If he played better, he would have won without your help.
Sure, but its my help to give and I can give it to who I want to. If not scooping helps a friend top 8, I would do that instead.
Are you really comparing an FNM to an RC? The context is totally different.
Of course, your convictions should be much, much easier to uphold with lower stakes, no?
Moral absolutism is fucking stupid, obviously one should hold different standards for different contexts.
Yeah it really is. Honestly everyone invoöved deserved the backlash or outcome. Play the game, everything else is your own fault if it blows up in your face.
So lying is shitty, let's get that out of the way. Not surprised he's being widely chastised for going back on his word. He did that, period. I don't really have anything else to add so I'm going to leave that here at the top. _But._ I can understand why he might think that reneging on the deal would be... "morally" acceptable, and it comes down to the **phrasing** of the deal and the **intent** of the deal. This isn't supposed to be a defense of what he did (and his apology seems pretty shitty for the record). But it's a plausible-deniability view of how I think the situation unfolded. The agreement was, essentially, **"if we're in turns, the player behind will concede, because that's better than neither of us getting an invite."** I'm taking that as the phrasing of the deal. It's very mechanical, "if X than Y." But I think the deal could have been phrased differently, in a way that would have made what he did "correct." And I think my phrasing is closer to the intent of the deal. Basically a better way to have phrased it would have been **"if a tie means that neither of us can make it, then the person behind will concede."** I think it's pretty clear why mine is different. A concession is _contingent_ on a tie being equal. If another game might tie, then this game's tie is no longer equal because of the tiebreakers. That's a really subtle difference and I don't believe the deal was phrased to be deceptive. I can also easily see how someone _intended_ what I said but _said_ the former, because the former phrasing is just more natural. I think my phrasing is the best way for a deal like this to be structured. I don't think it's correct to make a deal that could lead to the person in the overall advantageous spot needing to concede. I also think this blew up because of the outcome. Since the other table had the same deal going, it makes reneging on the deal look... way worse I guess, because nobody got in. I kinda think it makes sense to try and partition games at this level so that you don't know what's happening at tables around you. In that case it's "optimal" for the player with better tie breakers to never concede, but they might judge the probability of another tie happening as lower than the probability of them going to turns in an advantageous position, and so it makes sense to agree to the deal at the start. I don't love the idea that the decision is adaptive because of outside knowledge and the cleanest way to deal with that is just try and not let that outside knowledge come in. That's probably impractically feasible, but it would help. (Apparently according to the tournament rules, players are allowed to consider information from other matches but they can't leave their seat or go out of their way to obtain information on them.) Anyway please don't jump down my throat for this take. What he did was shitty, and his apology was shitty, but I think it's really important to dissect what happened here and realize why it happened and how to prevent it from happening in the future. The difference between phrasing and intent is subtle enough that I really to believe it's possible for someone to have said one thing and meant to encapsulate another. Basically I think he should apologize and recognize that he went back on the deal, but I think permanently branding him as a liar is disproportionately harsh and some members of the community are going a little off of the deep end with it.
Best take in the thread for this situation imo. Besides the outrage over ‘muh honour code’ there seems to just be a lot of pro player bad sentiment in this thread
Maybe if they didn't spend the time to come up with the agreement they would have had time to finish the match. Like yeah he's a scumbag but in a competition you have to expect scumbags.