Regarding Intentional Draws, And The Issues Around It
Forums and Facebook posts have been completely up in arms about a recent occurrence in the Winter Regionals: the instance of players intentionally drawing, or IDing, during Swiss rounds. For those who haven’t seen it, what this basically comes down to is two players consenting to declare the match a tie rather than playing the match, with the judge’s approval, and moving on from there.
Let me begin with a simple request: if you’re only reading this to see my side, then either affirm your own beliefs or look for holes in my arguments to bash me in the comments, I strongly suggest you skip down to the last paragraph. If you actually want to have a coherent discussion on Nugget Bridge forums, or just read about a few misconceptions, continue.
I have two goals with this article: the first is to address misconceptions about intentional draws that players should be aware of before bashing others, and the second is to offer my two cents regarding a solution.
Misconceptions About the Intentional Draw
The reason that this is wrong is that the rules state otherwise, and players should know better
I want to state up front that I’m conceptually against legalizing intentional draws. I think they don’t serve the purpose they are intended to do well enough to keep around, and I have read from others that, despite enforcement being inconsistent, the Tournament Organizer Chris Brown (AlphaZealot) intended them to be against the rules.
From a moral standpoint, the question of whether or not to ID is obvious. The problem with IDing is not that it is expressly forbidden in the rules; some judges, independent of how the written rules are interpreted by the players, are inconsistent in deciding whether or not this is okay. The reason IDing is an issue, from a moral standpoint at least, is that the only scenario in which a player can gain an advantage by IDing is one in which most other players don’t follow suit. By its very nature, it is a tactic that depends on other players playing a certain way, and manipulating that. If everyone IDed, then we’d have draw tie breakers the same way we do win/loss tie breakers, and the tournament would function as per usual, and no unfair advantage would be had. So for right now, with most players believing IDs are illegal and not doing it, there is no doubt that there is a possibility of an unfair advantage (more on the specific term “possibility” later).
But from a legality standpoint, things get debatable. The rules forbid playing that goes against the spirit of the game in ways such as bribery, and also clearly states that a player who selects run will have that match marked as a loss. But the interpretations of these statements have been argued back and forth; for example, one forum post commented that the IDs in question received full consent and did not involve bribery, and did not actually play the match and use the double-forfeit option, but instead directly went to the judge. Furthermore, the aforementioned comment directly from Chris Brown is not in a public and widely accessible manner, and at this point is merely heresay from the grapevine.
Most players assume their IDing comrades should know better. But in some cases, they don’t. I think that most, if not all, of the people who IDed during this last weekend strive to be in good standing with the community, and logically would not have done this had they seen the act from the perspectives voiced through social media in the time after the event. Granted, I don’t believe ignorance is an excuse in many scenarios, but I also don’t believe the players strictly speaking believed they were cheating, and should not be treated to the same harshness. From the ones that I’ve talked to, players not only had direct consent of each other, but also direct consent of the head judge at the time. They did everything they could to double check that the idea they had was, in fact, legal. And a judge’s rule is final, whether we like it or not – the judge could have (and, depending on your viewpoint, should have) said no at any time.
For this to be treated with the severity that it has been given so far, the first step is a firm and explicit ban on IDs, with no room for misinterpretation. In any other situation, while the player’s actions are of course in a gray area, the fact remains that it is the tournament organizer and judges’ responsibility to ensure that all players are informed of the rules and acting in accordance with them, and the fact that this even happened begs for change in the written clarifications we have.
Players who do this inherently gain an unfair advantage
If you have a smart phone, I strongly recommend a paid app called Debate Mobile, which can show you the possible win/loss ratios of a tournament, given a certain number of swiss rounds and number of players. For those that don’t have it, I’ll skip to what you’ll find by looking at it: the Oregon Regional Championships that just passed were a perfect example of why it is not a hundred percent accurate to assume IDs give an advantage to the players that use them.
In a tournament of 128 players with seven rounds of swiss, the overwhelming odds are in favor of a single 7-0 score, and seven 6-1 scores, with no chance for a 5-2 score or below to make top cut. Players who go for an ID after one loss will be 5-1-1, making them automatically below the top 8 top cut that is standard for this size of a tournament. The only way for someone with an ID on their record to guarantee top cut in these circumstances is to never lose, at which point there was little point in IDing in the first place. The match that person avoided with an ID almost would have been better off as a loss. I think, on some level, some players who ID know this, and do this not to gain an advantage but rather to avoid having to play (and affect the outcome of) a friend, which is a whole other discussion.
A tie is its own separate category of the ranking system, meaning that a 5-1-1 will always go above a 5-2, but will also always go below a 6-1, the same way a Bullet Punch is always faster than a Dynamic Punch regardless of individual speed, but will always be slower than an Extremespeed. In this way, a tie in many instances is a safe middleground that will never be the best thing a player can do. A player at 5-1 going into the final round of a Swiss will be better off risking the match and trying to win if the goal is to guarantee top cut; playing it safe means being higher than certain people, but never high enough to matter. That is, of course, assuming conditions are similar enough to the example above.
The Missouri Regional, on the other hand, definitely saw some influence with IDing, due to the nature of the top 16 top cut. Most players will still make it, but people on the bubble who relied on resistances will be forced just below where they need to be if a potential loss of another player was recorded as a tie instead. This is a possibility that I cannot deny, and the part that builds my argument that, for the sake of the most fair tournament possible, every tournament should know in advance whether or not this okay, and it should not be left up to the head judge presiding over a specific regional.
Why This Matters, and What You Can Do
I stand by what I said before about being conceptually against the use of this; from what more informed players know, the absence of the intentional draw should be the originally intended format. But the way the Pokemon community as a whole has addressed the issue as a whole is far more unsportsmanlike than the instance itself; shaming people over Facebook statuses and posts doesn’t make the issue better, but merely makes some players feel worse. Whether they should feel guilty is up to you, and I won’t contest that.
But if you really want to do something about this, don’t waste your time ranting on the internet where no one in power will see it. I strongly encourage you to write to TPCi, and let your voice be heard in a constructive and assertive but still polite manner. Explain to them why having rules consistently enforced the same way, and more clearly spelled out in an accessible way for that matter, are important ideals. Share your side of what happened, and ask them to change things for the next set of tournaments (it’s not like we’ve never seen TPCi change the format mid season before).
This all comes down to one of the most fundamentals of being a Pokemon master: if something isn’t working, complaining doesn’t do any good – you have to do something to change it. Complaining doesn’t fix teambuilding issues, it doesn’t fix prediction issues, and it won’t fix this. For all of us to be better trainers, we have to face our problems head on rather than complain and shame someone for our own satisfaction.
About the Author
Chalkey is a Part-Time Editor for Nugget Bridge. Outside of Pokemon, Chalkey makes his living through running a small homeless shelter in Boston, focusing largely on helping clients search for jobs, apartments, and other charities for various resources. As a writer, he also works for Retroware.
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Nice article Chalkey.
I admit I’m not super-familiar with how tiebreakers and the top cut work in Pokemon VGC (I’m just getting into it), but I play a lot of competitive Magic: The Gathering and IDs at the top tables are very common in the last 2 rounds; the reason is that those players are usually locked for the top 8 cut as long as they don’t take an actual loss, and both players would rather both ensure they get in than risk one of them getting knocked out.
There are a few exceptions to that (MtG tournament rules do grant a small advantage in the top 8 games based on standings after Swiss, so some players will play it out to try to get that advantage, or because they know someone else is on the bubble they’d rather see in the top 8 for whatever reason) but the general expectation is that if both players can ID into the top 8, they will.
I’m not saying this should or shouldn’t be how VGC handles it, just giving an example of another game with some similarities. Personally I believe IDs should be legal — if the tournament format makes it to the advantage of both players to draw, better that they just say “ID” and sign the slip than pantomime a match and end up with an intentional “unintentional” draw. Having that happen would be much more toxic to tournament integrity. On the other hand, consider the fighting game community, which views that as outright collusion and comes down very harshly on it.
I’m sorry but when there are specifically two separate rules that are attempting to deny intentionally drawing, and then two separate tournament organizers/judges ignore those rules, that is not fair to any competitors. That is taking advantage of tournament judges, whether it is intentional or not. The rules are there for a reason, and intentionally drawing is not meant to be legal in VGC format. A run results in a loss (which means a double run should be a double loss) and all other outcomes come from the ingame system (which can declare a tie in one scenario where the HP of remaining/HP of total max team is equal at the end of time). You only addressed the “bribery” rule, not the logistically impossible ability to draw. When 99.5% of the field interprets the rules properly and two players ask a judge to ignore (or misinterpret) the rules, that is abuse of the system no matter what.
The rules are fine. Rules shouldn’t have been tested like this and they shouldn’t have been asked to be bent.
Point that should also be made, to some extent you can manipulate the top cut bracket to get favorable top cut matchups. Such as if both remaining undefeated players ID in the last round, they will guarantee not playing each other until the finals. Or avoid certain matchups they do not want.
Does anyone seriously think that players who ID don’t know that it is poor sportsmanship? Abusing a TCG judge’s lack of knowledge is dirty cheap tactic. This wasn’t the first tournament for the players who did this. It was players who knew each other and used “friend rule.” Maybe instead of hiding behind chalkey, the people could actual talk for themselves…
Anyways complaining on here DOES work. And I bet the judges will not allow ID draws in the future.
Since both Darkeness and I started this I feel like it’s important to voice my opinion here.
The only reason why Keegan and I drew in St. Charles is because we knew we would guarantee top cut no matter what so we went with it. The judge talked to me directly and suggested the idea of drawing so we did not ask for a draw and we never planned on it a few rounds prior. Had we known that IDing in these tournaments is actually against the rules, we would have not gone through with it. I really don’t think that IDs should be allowed mainly due to the already explicit ruling against them in the VGC rules. Keegan and I had no idea about any rulings and thought we were doing nothing wrong with the action. The whole idea of IDing just isn’t something that’s been apart of VGC and has honestly never really been needed and I don’t think that it should continue. It was a hiccup that one of the TOs had that can easily be fixed in the future.
(i posted this on the article but more people will read it here)
The rules are fine. Rules shouldn’t have been tested like this and they shouldn’t have been asked to be bent.
What about when the TO approaches one of the players and tells him that he can intentionally draw that round if he wants to, and neither he nor his opponent is aware of the rules because 99.5% of players just read the rules regarding team building and playing the match and don’t really look at anything else unless it becomes directly pertinent?
One of my main problems with “ID” is how selective it was disseminated during these regionals.
Judges/Tournament staff informing select entrants that if they “ID” they will make top 8/16.
I find this sort of behavior disgusting…if everyone is not made aware of this option.
Had the ruling been properly highlighted, I am sure the final tournament brackets would look very different.
Pokémon has always been clear cut game of winning and losing.
This whole “ID” option is cowardly, in my eyes…but hey everyone has their reasons for entering competitions.
I enjoy traveling and testing myself against the world…playing the game and improving is my victory.
When I hear people using “ID” to make top cuts…it sickens me to see people positively accepting that sort of behavior.
I feel like this could mostly be boiled down to: The judges should know to handle intentional draws as double losses, and any requests to be denied.
That didn’t happen over this past weekend. If the judges actually knew the rulings, the draws would not have happened.
The morality of it doesn’t even need to be in question, since it’s expressly forbidden, and the judges who allowed the IDs obviously did not know that.
Looks like a case of lack of knowledge on both sides. Something that can be easily fixed in the future by better instructing the judges and the players regarding the rules.
The moral ramifications of IDing aside, the players who chose to intentionally draw this past weekend were performing an illegal action by doing so. Rule 5 of the Play Pokemon VG Rules and Formats states:
According to the rules prescribed by Play Pokemon, any of the players who chose to intentionally draw this past weekend would receive a loss for the match in which they drew. The only reason why none of these players received a loss for these infractions was due to the ignorance of the judge they’d asked. Play Pokemon really needs to address this issue, either by amending the rules to allow intentional draws, or to enforce the rules as they were originally written. Personally I’d prefer the latter with some sort of CP penalty to the cheating players, but I would be happy enough just to get some sort of consistency on the issue.
To expand on what Blake said and respond to PLL: Blake and I were most likely going to end up on either opposite sides of the bracket or pretty far away from each other regardless of what happens because one of us was probably going to be the first seed and the other wouldn’t have ended up in eighth regardless, so the earliest we would play each other in any case would be the semi-finals. And honestly that goes for any case where the undefeated players are paired together at the end of the tournament because even if one of them loses they will probably still end up pretty far away in the bracket and depending on the number of X-1s, there is a 50% chance or higher that it will be on the opposite side, and almost certain that it won’t be a meeting until the semifinals at least. With the top 16 cuts we will most likely be seeing in future regionals that wouldn’t even be a factor unless both players actually do manage to make it to top 4/top 2 and we all know how certain that is in the game we play. So no, PLL, top cut bracket manipulation is hardly even a big deal.
And really, PLL “Hiding behind Chalkey?” How could anyone who used the ID at this event even write this article with a shred of credibility to someone with your perspective and not just get laughed out the door. Would you honestly want to read an article that I wrote about IDing and analyzing its legality? It’s asinine to request that when Blake and I have both been pretty clear about our stance on what occurred on the forums/facebook, and JTK got to learn why IDing wasn’t a good idea the hard way.
I responded to Pookar in the article so you can refer there, but really, everyone is getting all fussed up because a TO who apparently doesn’t know the rules (which is definitely a case for changing and clarifying the rules) offered something to Blake and I that was illegal. I saw ID’s all over the place on the TCG standings that I saw around, and I didn’t see them last year, so I honestly had no idea whether or not it was legal. I don’t read the rules, I show up and play Pokemon. Rules change and I don’t keep up with them unless it directly impacts my team or how I can play. And I will say it again, 99.5% of the people at the tournaments don’t even read the rulebook.
Really, the community backlash to this whole ordeal, people making inferences about situations they don’t have proper context about (Pookar especially I’m seeing), and having goes at people (which honestly could only be at me or Blake considering the only other people who ID’d to my knowledge were just screwed by it) is really not what this community needs or should have about something that LITERALLY DID NOT EVEN MATTER.
This is literally all that ever should have been stated regarding this whole thing. I have no idea who you are but thank you.
How many times do we have to say that we were offered by this by a TO and didn’t understand the rules? A misunderstanding and misguided judge totally warrants taking away the CP that we definitely would have gotten anyway because it had no effect on tournament outcome and limited effect on the Top Cut bracket. And also, how many times do we have to say that there was no selecting of “Run” at any point during the ID. It was simply us crossing out Win and writing tie on a match slip.
I think the TO/judges telling people they can ID is a bit… weird. And it should definitely be consistently enforced if it’s in the rules. Either ban IDs and enforce that or don’t ban them. Having a rule that just gets ignored when the TOs don’t feel like forcing it is pretty bad.
@break: Yeah, because Blake and I needed that ID to make top cut (spoiler alert, neither of us did). And to my knowledge we are the only two people who have top cut after IDing. The final tournament brackets if there had been no IDs would have had a few different match-ups, but most likely the composition would have been identical or exactly the same. But no you totally understand everything that happened (you don’t, and most of what you said was actually factually incorrect).
So, if a TO tells me that it’s ok to use Mega Blaziken in my team, and I end up in the top cut, then I’m entitled to the CP I gained?
Granted, I don’t know the actual place bopper finished in, but if you haven’t noticed the amount of CP you get is tiered depending on your finish. Yes, both of you were destined to make the top cut at that point anyway, but unless I’m mistaken your seeds were not set in stone until after you violated the rules. You may have faced different opponents in the first round of top cut, which could have led to different outcomes which absolutely would have an effect on CP distribution. In this case, you may have even cheated yourself out of some CP, since you lost to your top 16 opponent, someone you may not have played had you actually played out your match.
If you would prefer to argue semantics and say that you were not in violation of the rule I supplied since you never actually took part in a game, let me supply Rule 10 from the Play Pokemon General Event Rules:
Your match was not the result of game play, neither of you conceded to the other, and neither of you were penalized. I don’t know how else I can prove to you that you were in violation of the rules.
Just as an aside, claiming ignorance of a rule is not a valid defense for why the rule should not apply to you. Just ask anyone in a Western court of law.
Touchy subject but I feel like I have to weigh in:
When I first heard about the ID’s I was 100% on the side of “how could the two players do such a thing that clearly undermines the sportsmanship of the game and gives them an unfair advantage”. That all changed though when I jokingly brought it up with the TO at my Regional who said an ID would be fine, and had no idea that the rules state that games must be played out. Even with me giving him that knowledge, there were still 2 ID’s in the Masters Division (one of which gave a person a 9th place finish when they would have been 16th otherwise – thankfully their ID didn’t affect anything).
Again, as I’ve said before, it’s unfair to attack Darkeness and Mr Bopper regardless of whether they decided to do this or the TO presented it to them (the latter of which I believe to be the case). In the end, the TO at the event allowed this, and other TO’s allowed it all across the US this past weekend. Hopefully TPCi is following the community on this one and straightening things out so we can avoid all of this in the future.
My vote? If you run, you lose, regardless of whether both players do it or not.
Yeah, but if a police officer does not read me my Miranda Rights and I provide information, then that information cannot be used against me in a court of law.
I would understand the CP penalty thing if we were both 7-1 in the last round and our resistances would’ve placed either of us under the cut if we hadn’t ID’d but that is CLEARLY not the case.
At the socal regional, upon entering round 9 the head judge, or someone idr who lol, announced that players were not allowed to ID. I laughed, but knew it needed to be said, I did hear some awws in the crowd. It annoys me when people try to manipulate tops with draws and intentional loses, because you are stealing slots from people who may have earned the right to be there.
Also, you cannot be charged with a crime for the same action more than once.
Are we done reciting pointless law facts, or did you actually have something relevant to add to the conversation?
You’re the one who brought the pointless law facts in. I edited my post for something relevant, but in general if you want to take a loose interpretation of concession in that we conceded to each other that the match would end in a draw, if you delve deep enough into the definition that could actually be a viable argument.
Since I have one more pointless law fact: The punishment for breaking rules would need to be established for there to be any justified punishment in law. The rulebook acts as a guideline for play, but it includes no clause pertaining to punishment in the case that any rule be broken.
From your first post in this very thread. You seem to imply that since you do not and did not read the rules prior to participating, you should get a free pass on breaking one of the not immediately obvious rules.
Your point about needing precedent for punishing rulebreakers is asinine. New rules will need new and appropriate punishments when they are broken for the first time or in a novel way. Whether or not a punishment is even meted out is up to Play Pokemon in this case, though I would hope that they would try to discourage taking advantage of ignorant TOs in the future.
I think you might be taking this a little too far. It’s not like they manipulated the TO into doing this for them; they’ve been very clear from the start that they were told if they wanted to guarantee top cut they could both take a draw. I don’t think there’s any need for TPCi to make an example of them as in the long run, (as valuable as Challenge points are) they would have top cut anyway, and it’s not like they went on to win. Again, keep in mind this was happening at multiple events over the weekend, this one just happened to be the first and most public.
And what of concession potentially being interpreted as both players conceding equals a tie, wer? And I’m not talking about precedent, I’m simply talking about how the rulebook simply does not state who is responsible for ensuring that gameplay is carried out exactly as it is written in the book, who is responsible for any rulings that are deemed against the rules, and it does not mention a single thing about how and whether or not any of these things are punishable, and to what degree. And please cite where specifically I stated that because I did not read the rules prior to participating I should get a free pass on breaking the not immediately obvious rules, because implication does not constitute a body of proof. I didn’t, I said that I do not read them. I rely on the game system, hack checks, and TOs to enforce the rules, and if nothing is being enforced (and in this case the supposed rule breaking was even endorsed) then I will assume that it is legal and in good standing to do so.
External
Let me quote the second definition and put the relevant part in bold for you:
To concede is to accept defeat. To take a loss, if you will.
“Should an issue arise at a PLAY! Pokémon tournament, players and spectators will be subject to the Pokémon Organized Play Penalty Guidelines. All penalties above Caution level must be reported to POP for further review. Penalties issued to spectators may be assigned to the player or players that they are responsible for, if severe enough. The Head Judge has the final say on all penalties issued at a tournament.” – Rule 13, Play Pokemon Event Rules. As far as handing out a punishment after the fact, that would be in the jurisdiction of Play Pokemon, as has been shown before with previous suspensions from play. You probably don’t deserve to be penalized CP after the fact for taking advantage of an ignorant TO, and I was unnecessarily harsh on that point earlier.
Please elucidate as to what point you were trying to make, then, when you said you didn’t bother reading the rules.
I agree with basically everything Chalkey wrote. I’m very against the idea of intentional draws being brought into the video game. They’re a necessary evil as a side effect of the TCG’s change in rules. We will never have that issue in the video game as a result of our built-in timer. A tie is literally impossible to receive through normal gameplay. The only things that exist, outside a game-breaking glitch, is a win, loss, or double game loss.
I am very sure that we will not have this afterwards because AlphaZealot has a video game tournament background being the owner of SmashBoards and an employee of MLG. He likely has similar views to this as I and many others do in this community. Competitions like the Video Game Championships are a showcase of skill that entertain the players as well as those who follow and watch the game. Collusion in the form of intentional draws do not help with either of those. They’re a form of manipulating the system to better your chances of winning without actually playing the game.
However, if for some reason we do have intentional draws going forward, I want everyone to know the same thing I told Gabby and Fidget after Oregon: You never, never, ever ID before the last two rounds. It doesn’t matter if they’re your best friend. If you ID before the position that it guarantees you top cut, you’re just hurting both your chances. It never matters how many people are in the competition or who makes cut.
On the point of Texas, I think whoever the judge was should be spoken to. A judge should never give advice to players on what they should do. The fact that he told you guys you should ID is way over the line. He can say “you are allowed” if asked about it (though he’d be wrong).
to acknowledge (an opponent’s victory, score, etc.) before it is officially established
Acknowledging that the score was a tie before it is officially established results in a tie.
The point I’m making with the not reading the rules thing is that we rely on the game system, TO, and hack check to enforce and inform us of the rules of play. Much like we rely on Law enforcement officers and lawyers and judges to enforce and inform us of the code of law. If they have faulty information or misunderstand it in the enforcement or information they do have some of the blame to bear, you cannot honestly expect an entire populace to understand all of the technicalities of the law.
A couple things:
1.) You pulled this number out of your ass.
2.) Personally, I don’t think anyone who hasn’t read the rules should expect to win.
That being said, it is completely stupid for the judges not to know the entire rule book front to back (especially when it’s only ten pages long) and they should not be walking around telling people it’s a good idea to intentionally draw when it’s pretty obviously against the rules. However, at any given tournament, the organizers’ word is essentially law, so if an organizer told me I was guaranteed to be in the top cut if I took my pants off and danced like a chicken, I would probably do it.
As aggressive as my posts were, I gave both parties the benefit of the doubt by saying they could have unintentionally broke these rules, which in one case is pretty clear is what happened (although probably should’ve been fishy to both of you because of your tournament experience). Its in the past and it happened, but you should acknowledge it was poor procedure by the judges. You should also understand that with as much backlash that is happening, the community is mostly up in arms about it occurring in the first place when it shouldn’t have. The players in offense deserve some backlash (because theres no way you couldn’t have known this wasn’t underhanded, you dont need to read a rulebook to know this) but the two separate judges are bigger offenders (especially the texas judge apparently)
The issue here is not to try and make players who ID’d with judge’s consent feel terrible. The issue here is what we as a community can do to respond to the instance of ID’s being allowed by the judging staff. Dwelling on the past, on what was allowed (and apparently advised in some cases) to happen, is not going to be productive towards how ID’s should be handled in the future.
The problem with ID’ing in VGC is that a legitimate draw condition is near-impossible to come by. The TCG currently has a system where as long as the 1st/3rd game doesn’t finish, the match ends in a draw. That’s like imagining a scenario in VGC where as long as the timer runs out before all Pokemon faint, the game ends in a draw. My point is that match resolution is handled very differently in TCG versus VGC, and a decision regarding ID’s should not be made as if the two are the same.
VGC also has stringent built-in tiebreakers which make the only true draw scenario one where:
The only situations where that can intentionally occur is if both players have essentially the same Pokemon with the same spreads, that can just use non-damaging moves to stall out the timer.
The reason that intentional draws are allowed in TCG is because you cannot prevent them! If ID’s weren’t allowed, we’d have players draw-passing for 50 minutes +3, which is just a waste of the judge’s time and the player’s time.
As I’ve just outlined, it’s ridiculously difficult to manipulate the system to allow a draw in VGC. I don’t mind if players play within the specs of the game. If two friends running mirror teams (or at least 4 of the same Pokemon) are paired against each other, and they choose to perform legal game actions that result in a draw, then that’s fine by me. In a competitive environment, it’s unreasonable to ask players to not maximize their chances of winning a tournament. The logic that leads to an ID in a scenario like the above is the same sort of outside-the-box thinking that a player might go through to decide to win on time by any of the 3 pre-described tie breakers. The only difference is that both players are involved in the decision-making process directly.
Whether mutual benefit can be termed “collusion” is the better debate to discuss here. But personally, if someone wants to win an event, then they should be entitled to play within the rules to give them the best chance of tournament success. You wouldn’t penalize someone for Protect-stalling the timer out to guarantee their victory (though you can certainly have your opinions about it). And I don’t think you should penalize someone for Protect-stalling the timer out to guarantee their game ends in a tie. But if players want a draw, they have to play within the rules and earn it.
#my2cents