All right, I’m hoping last week’s article was informative and answered questions you may have had on the dark, dark subjects of disqualification and suspension. I’ve noticed that the reasons one can get disqualified or suspended are also frequently misunderstood, so I’m planning to focus on some of them over the next while.
"Don’t do that!" some players will cry. "You’re just telling players how to cheat!!" Well, I suppose some people could use what I tell you here to figure out ways to try and get around the rules, but I’m rather of the opinion that they already have their sneaky tricks. What I want to do here is educate that part of the player base that doesn’t fully understand these infractions. There is (sadly) a lot of misinformation floating around out there — despite my ongoing quest to get everyone to read and understand the policy documents, we’ve still got too many players who are relying on the Ask The Internet™ approach to finding out what they can and cannot do at a tournament. I am sorry to say it but, while Ask The Internet™ has a lot to offer in terms of convenience, it ranks rather poorly in guaranteed accuracy.
Now then! As the title indicates, today I’m going to explain Bribery, Collusion, and Concession. These terms aren’t nearly as well understood as they ought to be, and I’ve honestly been quite shocked at the notions some players have been embracing as fact when it comes to these penalties. Misinformed players end up committing infractions, and that negatively impacts the tournament, makes the judges’ jobs that much more difficult, and gets the player a penalty he or she will not enjoy. No one is happy. Let’s have less of that by clearing away some misinformation, shall we?
The first things I want everyone to read are the following excerpts from the Upper Deck Penalty Guidelines. First, an explanation of Upper Deck’s penalty theory as expressed by the term "Intention" (I added the bold and italic highlights):
"P-4 Intention
The guiding principle for UDE events is that honest mistakes will be addressed in a fair, educational manner by the judging staff. Cheating or severe unsporting behavior will receive zero tolerance. With the exception of Unsporting Conduct penalties, the penalties listed in this document assume that the player committing the infraction did so unintentionally. If the head judge determines that the player is intentionally committing infractions to gain an unfair advantage in the game, the infraction should be considered Unsporting Conduct—Cheating, and the appropriate penalty should be applied."
Everyone caught that, right? "With the exception of Unsporting Conduct penalties." Saying, "Well, I didn’t know I couldn’t do this," isn’t going to get you out of an Unsporting Conduct penalty, because there is not an assumption of (and honestly, when you think about it, there cannot be) lack of intention. I don’t think anyone can successfully argue that they didn’t intend to say, "I’ll give you an Emergency Teleport and a mat if you scoop."
Now, here is an explanation of Unsporting Conduct, from the same document (again bold and italics are mine):
"Unsporting Conduct—Cheating (Penalty: Disqualification without Prize)
Cheating is the highest display of unsporting conduct a player can exhibit during a tournament. Cheating includes, but is not limited to, intentionally misrepresenting the game state, rules, or policies; reporting inaccurate information to tournament officials; and bribery. A statement must be sent to the address given at the beginning of this document outlining the incident leading to this penalty.
Examples:
-A player offers booster packs to her opponent in exchange for conceding the final round."
The example given here is bribery.
I’ve heard a lot of player definitions of bribery over the years and they are frequently lacking, if not outright inaccurate. Bribery is offering anything — money, a ride back from the event, cards, your sister’s phone number, a playmat, a scoop during the next tournament — anything at all in exchange for a win. You heard me, anything at all. Let’s say that one more time — come on, all together now — "Bribery is offering anything at all in exchange for a win." Oh! Let’s add in another important point; here we go! — "Bribery is offering anything at all, to anyone at all, in exchange for a win." I’ve heard players assert that it’s only bribery if you offer cash. I’ve heard players claim, "I’m not bribing him; he’s a friend so it doesn’t count. It’s only bribery if you offer stuff to some guy you don’t know." Wrong, wrong, WRONG. Offer anything, to anyone, and you are committing bribery.
Now then, collusion. Collusion is what happens when more than one player collaborates to decide the outcome of a match in any way other than legitimately playing it out. It often involves someone scooping to someone else, but did you know it’s also what happens when one player bribes another, and the bribe is accepted? Well, it is. Offering a bribe which is turned down makes a player guilty of bribery. Offering a bribe which is accepted makes both players guilty of collusion. Most players associate collusion with team members who are trying to manipulate the results of a tournament to get teammates into the playoffs, but collusion can happen between any players who do anything other than actually play out a game in order to determine the winner.
All right, the third term I want to discuss today is "concession." Unlike bribery and collusion, concession is not a tournament infraction — it is a legal option in tournament play. Let’s see what the tournament policy has to say about "concession" (you know it, bold and italics are mine):
"22. Game Concession
Players may concede a game or match at any time, provided that the concession does not involve compensation in exchange for the concession. Players may not offer their opponents any type of compensation or bribe in exchange for a concession."
There are as many opinions on concession as there are players and judges. Some feel it’s unethical to give up a win to someone else in order to help advance them in the event, rather than playing it out and sending the winning player along. Others believe that a player with less of a chance of advancing to the playoffs should automatically scoop to a player who might, instead of "sabotaging" that player’s chance at topping on the chance the player who might advance loses the match.
Personally, I don’t like conceding unless I physically need to quit the tournament, because I think players should actually play in order to determine the final standings, but I’m aware other people think differently. However, all I really want to do here is define concession, so we don’t need to debate this — concession means one player agrees to end the match and give the win to the opponent. According to policy documents, this can happen at any time during a game or match.
While we are on the subject of concession, I’d like to explain prize splitting, which should not be confused with bribery or collusion. Prize splitting happens when players agree to divide up the prizes for a single-elimination finals playoff, rather than playing out the match. Notice I said "finals" — per Upper Deck policy, prize splits are only allowed during a single-elimination final playoff. Also, the players must negotiate their prize split in the presence of the Head Judge — I cannot over stress how important this is. Players shouldn’t even broach the subject of a prize split, unless the Head Judge is present, to make sure there is no perception of impropriety. A prize split can only include the prizes being offered for the event — additional prizes, money, or anything else cannot be included or it becomes (everyone, all together!) bribery or collusion.
Familiarize yourself with what the Tournament Policy document has to say on the subject of prize splits:
"29. Prize Splits
Players in the finals of a single-elimination tournament may agree to split prizes that would normally be awarded to the first and second place finisher in any way, provided that the negotiation of a prize split is done in a presence of a the Head Judge. Players may not offer additional product, cash, or other incentives that are not officially part of the first and second place prize pool during a prize split. Players may not concede in exchange for prizes. Players have the option to drop before the finals of a single-elimination tournament, after prize negotiations, in order to preserve their rating."
I’ve explained the terms, but before we leave the subject, I do think we should spend a paragraph or two talking about why bribery and collusion are considered Unsporting Conduct — Cheating. I have heard many players’ views on the subject, and there is a percentage that thinks bribery should be allowed. Granted, a number of the players making up this percentage have been suspended for bribery, but we can still take a look at some of their arguments. These are generally along the lines of, "I didn’t cheat; cheating is stacking or drawing extra cards and stuff like that, so I shouldn’t be punished as a cheater." "I didn’t hurt anyone or hurt the tournament so I don’t see why it’s such a big deal." "My opponent had worse tiebreakers than I did and it was a total jerk move of him to not just scoop to me — he totally ruined my chances of topping."
This is the thing, folks — we go to a tournament and we play according to the random pairings of MANTIS in order to establish a winner for the event. We do not go to a tournament in order to buy our way to the top spot. If we cannot earn the top spot by actually playing out the matches and having the tiebreakers to back it up, we should not be declared the winner. If bribery and collusion were an acceptable way of determining the winner of an event, what would be the point in, you know, playing cards? We could save everyone lots of time and effort by just starting up a Top 8 spot auction instead of Round 1.
Whether or not a player shares this belief, by registering in and playing in an Upper Deck sanctioned event, he or she is agreeing to abide by the terms of conduct which state one cannot offer or accept bribes in the tournament. Argument over! Players must abide by the policies if they wish to participate in the event, and that ought to give everyone an even bigger inducement to go read them, right?