I wrote a series on how to do deck checks last year, and I always meant to follow it up with an article detailing the jobs you’ll do when you’re working on other judge teams. There are three others that need discussing—the match slip team, the pairings team, and the logistics team. This week, the spotlight shines upon the hard-working match slip team.
Sometimes each “team” is only one person, and sometimes there might be four or five judges on each team. Whatever the size of the team you’re working with, there are important parts of the job that you have to accomplish as quickly and accurately as possible. If you’re new to judging or to a specific team, you might not be totally familiar with what you have to do. In this article, I’m going to go over the basic tasks you can expect to perform—so when you do get placed in a new situation, you’ll feel more confident about it.
The match slip team is responsible for getting the match slips cut up neatly and distributed to all the tables as quickly as possible. There are several steps in this process, with speed and accuracy of equal importance—it’s not as easy as it seems!
This team needs to stick close to the judge station when the end of the round is announced. If there are any missing slips, the scorekeeper will pass on the table numbers to the slip team, and they can go and check the table—perhaps the match is still going on, or the slip is lying abandoned on the table, or the table is empty and somewhere there’s a player wandering around with a match slip in his or her pocket. The players at that table can be paged, the slip can be located, and the tournament can move on.
Now then, here’s a basic lesson on how to not kill the match slips:
1) Take the slips out of the printer tray. The “designated cutter” needs to stay near the judge station, to receive the slips as they come off the printer. Wait until they’ve completely finished printing before taking them out of the printer tray. If you take them prematurely, you might get the slips out of order or miss some, and then you’ll have to play an emergency game of “Find the Missing Match Slips,” which isn’t nearly as much fun as it sounds. They print out in order, so don’t mix them up.
2) Cut the slips. This is where it can all go horribly, horribly wrong, so be careful! Most large events provide a guillotine-style paper cutter to slice up the slips, and if you don’t mind what you’re doing you’ll a) ruin the slips or b) cut off one of your fingers. We don’t want to see either of these happen. If you are the designated cutter, test the cutter before the event to make sure it’s in good working order, and to find out how many sheets it will cut at one time—if you try to cut too many sheets at a time, you will end up with a hacked up mess and they’ll have to print them again. Practice if you aren’t used to using one, because it’s really easy to screw this up.
When you put the slips in the cutter, please make sure they’re facing the right way. I have known judges who cut the slips in half the wrong way—right down the middle. That’s nearly impossible to explain, so pay attention to what you’re doing!
Don’t put more in the cutter than it can handle, and make sure your cuts are clean and straight. Keep the blade pressed tightly against the board when you bring the cutter down, or else you’ll probably cut the names off the top or the signature spaces at the bottom, and have frayed, ragged edges to boot. Trim the extra paper off the top and bottom of the pages, too—the scorekeeper bundles up the slips to store them, so they should be of uniform width.
Pay attention to the order in which you’re cutting the strips. Like I said, they come off the printer in order, so if you just slap them down on the table haphazardly, they won’t be sequential. Keep them in order as you cut them.
When you’re done cutting, close the cutter arm and lock it in place. Don’t leave it standing up in the air waiting to inflict a terrible injury on the next unsuspecting soul to walk by. Close the arm, and push the little hook that will hold it down. Imagine how horrible you’ll feel if someone loses an arm, and it’s all your fault.
3) Distribute the slips. If you’ve got more than one person to distribute slips, great! Divide them up and get them on those tables! Go! Go! GO!
The match slip team lead should check each round to see if there are any table reassignments, such as feature matches or seating accommodations made for players with limited mobility. Move the slip to the table where the players are actually sitting—forgetting to do this is a mistake I’ve seen several judges make.
As you place the slips on the tables, verify that you’ve got the right slip at the right table, just in case something went wrong during the “cut the slips” part of the ordeal. It takes hardly any time to glance at the slip and then glance at the table number, and it prevents a lot of trouble later on when the players find out they’ve all got someone else’s match slip.
I’ll throw this out there for what it’s worth—smaller judges make better match slip distributors when the venue tables are packed closely together. It seems obvious, but sometimes head judges overlook it. This is why I spend a lot of time on the match slip team—as long as there’s at least four inches of space between the tops of the chairs, I can squeeze through. People come from miles around just to watch me do it.
Get them handed out as quickly as possible. The players need them when they sit down, so they can verify that they’re playing the correct opponent. Judges need them on the tables so they can write down game or match loss penalties for late players, or record time extensions for deck checks and the like. If players don’t get a slip, it screws up scorekeeping too. You can’t run a large sanctioned event efficiently without a match slip at every match, so get those slips on the tables!
Next time, we’ll give the pairings team their moment in the sun! While these stalwart judges don’t risk life and limb with dangerous cutting equipment, they do run the risk of a terrifying tape-gone-very-wrong disaster, so you don’t want to miss a moment of that article. It could happen to you, people. Come back next time and learn how to protect yourself. See you then!