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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60 Responses to Regarding Intentional Draws, And The Issues Around It
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I made a topic about this prior to the article’s publication, in which i made clear my dislike of the situation. However, i do not blame the players. If anything is poor sportsmanship, its attacking them over a mistake that wasnt even theirs.
It doesn’t matter what your records were when you ID’d so stop using that as a way to justify it. You could both go 0-8 and ID and it would still be wrong. I will give you both the benefit of the doubt that the judge offered to let you both ID and not the other way around. But you need to accept that what you did was wrong and against the rules. Stop trying to defend yourselves, just be sure to never agree to it again. This goes to anyone who has or hasn’t ID. It’s straight up against the rules and should never be done.
I simply don’t understand why are people being so nosy about this. Granted, some people may look at it as a “cheap” way of getting into a top cut, but actually it’s the only safe way. As LowBeyonder has already said, IDing is pretty normal in Magic, where you can tie into the top cut. The same wave has recently risen in the Pokemon TCG as well with a proper introduction of Bo3 Rounds (although there are some inherent time problems with that, but that doesn’t really matter). The whole point of playing a tournament for a regular player/grinder is to get into the top cut, and there isn’t a safer option than to go for a draw in the last round if you’re safely in the top8 already. Obviously it’s retarded to do it in a 5 round tournament, but let’s say if we get 8 or 9 rounds, and I’m 7-1 in the 8th round, it’s safer for me to draw than to play and risk 7-2 which probably won’t get me into the top8. Now if my opponent is unlucky and got paired up, obviously it doesn’t make any sense to him to tie me, as with a win he may have a shot with godly tiebreakers. We should see it as a regular trend at the vgc itself. Now unless the tpci doesn’t make Organized Play changes akin to what Wizards did I think 1 or 2 years ago, making swiss standing matter in the top8 (I can’t see how you can make a change like this in the vgc though), IDing should just be regarded without bearing any hate or criticism. The other thing I don’t understand is this “unfair advantage” this creates. Do I get a cookie or something if I tie? Last time I checked, everyone can ID in their round which means it’s not unfair to anyone.
IN ALL SERIOUSNESS if nobody was harmed, nobody should care. Two competent players who know they’re both in top cut are going to sandbag anyway, and the game’s a waste of time unless they actually want to play it out. The judge didn’t do anything wrong in giving them the option to not play out the game, because it saved time and didn’t affect anyone. There’s no victim here.
So long as a ruling’s in good spirit and isn’t bad for anyone, I don’t see why anyone would complain. It’s supposed to be fun for everyone, right? Oh yeah, this is pokemon. Eheh.
This article basically just stirred up more drama. This issue would have resolved itself without help from chalkey. I believe that the parties in question were dumb for not knowing the rules and listening to the judge. They are entitled to whatever messed up opinion they want.
At the end of the day, rules were broken. The guilty parties are all from the same “team.” Justify it however you want, it will still look bad.
I disagree with this, though. Specifically the part where you say it ‘didn’t affect anyone.’
Your opponent’s W/L ratios determine where you end up being ranked in these events. I only really know about the ID in Missouri, and that one didn’t seem to affect much ( it’s rather complicated and hard to tell for sure, but at least, I don’t think the top 16 would’ve changed any), but what about the other regionals? Can anybody say for certain that having a win and a loss, instead of two ties, wouldn’t have changed anything, in any of those events?
If you’re going to allow something for the higher-ranked players, you need to allow it for everybody. The fact is that obviously both players in Missouri were at least aware of the possibility that they might be out of the top 16, if they lost both of their remaining matches. If they were both fully confident in their ability to make top cut, if it were true that there was no way anything would have changed, then I’m convinced they would have played the game out, for fun if nothing else.
Again, I don’t blame them – they did what I would have done, what most of us would have done. I just want to prove that, even if it didn’t affect anything, there was at least a possibility it would have.
Besides that, though, there’s a precedent for them taking the ID, going back to even before the judge told them they could – at the very beginning of the tournament, when they had us all seated to listen to the rules, I recall the judge or whoever was on the mic mentioning the possibility of a tie. Which struck many of us as odd, as we didn’t remember that being possible, but no matter what any of us read or didn’t read in a rulebook, before our first match that day, the judges said that draws were possible. I don’t want to put words in either contestant’s mouth, but to me it would only make sense that they were allowing a draw, after what had been said earlier.
Ben7000 and one of his opponents in worlds (I believe it was Mean?) actually did have legitimate game errors that wouldn’t let them play with each other, and so they were given a tie. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but there is possibility for a tie without IDing, as unlikely as it may be.
That’s true, but in that case, the judges should have explicitly stated as much. I wasn’t aware of that, and nobody I talked to, (a group that included at least one guy who had been to worlds) was, either.
The point is, whether draws have happened in the past or not, the possibility of a draw was raised early on, so it wouldn’t necessarily register as something that would be against any rules, especially when a judge approaches you and tells you that it’s fine.
I can say for certain it did not affect anything in Oregon. Had the person in 9th not ID’d and won they could have top cut, had they lost they would have come 16th. They only hurt their chance at getting into top 8 (as firestorm said earlier)
I think the most important thing about all of this is that everyone (players, judges, staff, everyone involved in tournaments) need to have a full understanding of the rules and inconsistent rulings is not fair to players who played in tournaments where this kind of ruling was not allowed (VA, etc.) In this case it is quite obvious from the rules documents that IDing is not allowed and I fully expect that to become the standard across all tournaments.
I don’t necessarily have a problem with players intentionally drawing, because it shouldn’t be up to them to make sure the rules are enforced. Admittedly, I think there’s a moral obligation to learn and follow the rules, but I’m sure others have a different view and I don’t necessarily hold the same standards as them, which is totally fine. More distressing to me is the fact that tournament officials were allowing this to happen, and in the case of Darkeness (and possibly others, I’m not sure) actually suggested it. That puts players in a difficult position, because if you refuse the tie and then win, a subsequent loss in the next round for your opponent could knock them out of the Top Cut, which is really something that I wouldn’t want to be responsible for.
As far as officials approving it though, that’s ludicrous. Either way, its a direct violation of the rules, and personally I see it in the same light as a judge willingly allowing someone to play with the illegal pokemon.
As long-time Magic: the Gathering tournament player, I’m actually rather surprised that IDing was never allowed and that people are actually mad that it happens. I think that IDing is perfectly fine, because it’s basically a loss in most situations unless you’re in the final round or two, where it becomes beneficial to both you and your opponent. The only incentive to ever do it is to guarantee your spot in the top cut. There is a obviously a risk in IDing, because if everybody else IDs, it goes down to tiebreakers, and if your breakers are bad, you lose out. So the only time to ever ID is when you’ve looked at the standings and determined that doing so guarantees you into the top cut. In Magic, the standings and tiebreakers are posted in the final two rounds to make this easier for people, but the math can be done with just the tiebreakers. There are definitely rules when IDing, however, so things like badgering and bribery are immediate DQs from the tournaments.
Here’s a breakdown of my thought process: You went to the tournament to win, to take it all down. You’re sitting at 5-1, and your opponent is at the same. Because of your tiebreakers, IDing guarantees you both the spot, but if the match was played out, the loser would be out. So, the win-and-in. While you are confident in your team, this is obviously the most safe path to take because of the variance aspect of this game.
I don’t really agree with everything you said, but I definitely see where you’re coming from. I think people are throwing around the word ‘sportsmanship’ quite a bit, but as somebody else said, it’s a competition – you do whatever you can, within the rules, to win. This includes IDing, in the cases where nobody knew it was illegal.
Here’s my problem, though. Like you said, IDing does have its risks… if everybody else has the option of doing it, too. But in this case, it was presented as an option only to a handful of people. In these cases, IDing wasn’t a risk at all – it was basically a guarantee to make top cut. That’s where I take issue with this whole mess – not so much with the concept of IDs (although I still would rather them not be a part of VGCs), but with how they were used in these past few tournaments.
This is a pokemon video game tournament. Not magic the gathering or pokemon tcg. Comparisons to a best of 3 card game aren’t relevant. I am pretty sure magic the gathering doesn’t have a stupid small top cut size like we have to deal with and pokemon TCG plays the double swiss, so there is incentive to play every single round day 1.
I would rather force every one to play and earn your spot in the top cut. Should someone with the easiest resistance possible sitting at x-1 be able to ID for a top cut spot, while a x-2 player has a much tougher resistance whiff? I don’t
Maybe you didn’t actually read the thread?
There is a rule against intentional drawing. The players who did this have played in many previous tournaments where intentional draws have not been allowed. Playing to win by breaking a rule is as bad.
I believe I addressed this point already. I apologize if my wording was unclear, so allow me to restate my previous argument.
At the beginning of this tournament, we, the players, were sat down and told over the loudspeaker, by the event staff, that it was possible for our rounds to end in a draw. We were given no information on how this was possible – as it turns out, it wasn’t, but the judges were confused. But at the time, it’s not only possible but likely that players offered the chance to ID assumed that this was what had been referenced earlier.
I’m against rule-breaking, naturally. But to label people as cheaters for doing something they had every reason to believe was legal seems overly-antagonistic in my eyes.
I agree. If it’s not presented as an option to everybody, it should not exist. I wasn’t clear on the matter and thought that it was presented as an option to everybody.
As a matter of fact, Magic tournaments never have anything bigger than a top 8 cut, and averages 9 rounds of swiss because of the size of the tournament, so you’re misinformed there. But I’ve looked around and I don’t see anywhere that says that people weren’t allowed to ID, it was simply looked down upon. As DPlusPlus stated, it was never announced that IDs weren’t allowed, it’s just that the option of doing so wasn’t made clear.
Again, intentional draws are an unavoidable aspect of a paper-based game that has a way of ending without a determined winner. Video games do not have that. What you are considering positive is exploiting the tournament format to get a win. If possible, the tournament format should not allow for a way to exploit the system. That’s exactly what exists here.
These are the situations that a Pokemon match can end in a tie:
Can you see how this would not be possible in 99% of cases through normal gameplay? We want winners of games determined by the game — not factors outside the game.
I am fine with ID’s as long as they can be done within the rules. This means if you want to go to time you must meet all three tie breaking conditions. Alternativelly if you both run then I see it as a double loss. The only way I see of getting an ID is rule 5.2 (If both players’ game systems are stuck in an unfixable frozen game state and it cannot be determined which player’s Game Card or system is responsible for the frozen state, both players will receive a tie for that game). While I haven’t actuaully tried this with someone else I would assume you would meet the requirements of a double frozen game state by both players ejecting their game card in the middle of the battle. It cannot be determined which system is at fault because both of them are thus you are both given a tie.
Wow reading this thread was a huge downer. I think only a few people who replied here read the article and got what it’s trying to say. Let’s start with a few quotes from the article:
(emphasis mine)
If you don’t want to see IDs in the future then politely send TPCi an e-mail or letter stating that you would like to see more explicit rules against IDs in the published rules. That’s really all there is to it. Maybe your interpretation of the current rules already disallows this, but clearly others do not interpret them this way. And ultimately your interpretation is completely irrelevant because it’s the TO who needs to interpret the rules. So if you don’t want to see more IDs then you need to get the rules as explicit as possible on the issue so that it’s immediately obvious to a TO that players should not be allowed to intentionally draw.
Thanks for the article, I hope this post will reinforce some of its points to people reading the thread.
Just building on what Firestorm said, the actual rules first fall under Remaining Pokemon, then default to Average Percent of Hp Remaining, then lastly it defaults to Total Hp Remaining. So for 2 players to actually obtain a legitimate tie in-game, they would need carbon copies of the exact same team. It’s not as simple as Protect+Switch, Protect+Switch to timer stall. The biggest thing is that the game itself does not intend for ties (hence the below quoted rules) and would not have these systems in check if it did.
If both games glitched, then it wouldn’t be intentional. If both players ejected their carts, that should be looked upon as cheating. No one should be able to try to circumvent the rules in order to try to take an easy way into Top Cut. Which I actually strongly agree with PLL on this, everyone should have to play every single round of Swiss and earn their spot in Top Cut, rather than ID.
Just gonna leave this here.
It’s over, done with, ancient history.
If you want it to stop in the future, the TOs and judges need to know and enforce these rules in future tournaments.
We can’t change what’s done, so there’s no point in arguing about it. What we can do is try and stop it in the future.
The debate about intentional draws aside, I don’t think there should be a circumstance where any kind of draw should be allowed to happen.
All results should be the product of a battle, which will be either a win or a loss for each player. If DS’ fail to connect, organisers should endeavour to ensure the battle happens one way or the other – perhaps keeping a couple of spare DS’ aside for special circumstances. Draws detract from the reliability of the overall standings, which can sometimes mean the difference between a few meaningless places – but it could affect Championship Point thresholds, or even top cut positions.
I was pretty disappointed that the tie was allowed to happen at Worlds last year in Vancouver, when it could have potentially been prevented if the organisers had a backup DS for one of the players to try to connect with. That tie potentially changed pairings, and while I don’t think it cost anyone a top cut place how the results panned out, it did affect the pairings for the top cut.
I am sure there are enough things to stress about when trying to keep a large tournament running smoothly, but as a point to consider for tournament organisers for the accuracy and integrity of tournament results – draws, intentional or not, should never be allowed to happen (unless of course, by some freak chance a draw does occur from the result of a battle).
Agreed fully.But even if a draw were to occur in battle, there’s a sudden death clause:
Whats over and done with is over and done with; the players that ID did it legitimately on their part and the judge who legalized it was wrong, as much as it’s a comparison I don’t like to make, football which has the most money in it worldwide goes by the judges say is final, even if the judge is wrong, and in the end it’s the judge that should get the blame not the players.
With regards to allowing ID’s, I’m here to play Competitive Pokemon, and I don’t want to have to play the system with IDs to affect my chances of winning, if I have to worry about that something is wrong. Having to figure out the amount of spaces in top cut are available, how many 1 loss players will be knocked out is all well and fun to do but that playing Pokemon at the end of the day!
When a new issue arises, I think it can be useful to stop and look at “what changed?” This helps get a little perspective and can be reassuring that no one is trying to do something inconsistent or exploitative.
This year saw a significant change in the TCG as they switched to a Best of 3 format with a tight time limit leading to a very high number of ties (especially in the October Regionals). The entire community of TCG players started to shift their approach to things as they tried to figure out what exactly these changes meant for them and how to best leverage it. Since it is so trivially easy to tie in the TCG – any two players can force a game to tie if they want to by just never knocking anything out and going through their deck slowly enough – that it became apparent players could choose to tie. In an effort to accept this new reality, judges in the TCG accepted players could choose to tie and it started to become more common place. As is always the case, at local leagues and before events, etc., your hard working judges do their best to teach the middle and lower tier of players about the tactics the higher tier are currently employing.
Cut to this set of Regionals. As much as my family has come to LOVE the VGC and VGC community, in the tournament scene we still have a much higher percentage of TCG trained staff. They work very hard to try to catch up on the VGC with their TCG knowledge. As their core background is TCG though, inevitably something that is legal in the TCG can be misrepresented in the VGC if the judge doesn’t have the experience to know the differences between the two games. This is where we are currently at with Intentional Draws. Whereas it is trivial to create a draw state in the TCG, it is night impossible to intentionally create that state in the VGC (unless you are running identical teams). This is the core difference that a primary TCG judge is not likely to know.
Now, is it better for the game for both TCG and VGC to work the same way? That is a different organizational debate. As long as we have a Best of 3 format in the TCG that does not have a built in tie breaker, intentionally drawing is not going to leave that format. If the VGC wants to enforce the no voluntary drawing, it will need to have an education campaign so our judges know what the differences between the two systems are. You can never stop two people with identical teams forcing a draw as they just slowly bang into each other’s protects, but you can stop folks from voluntarily choosing a tie without trying to make it happen “the hard way”. Or, TPCi decides it is in the best interest of supporting the VGC for it to be as similar to the TCG as possible and gives us Best of 3 and IDs as well. Either way, I think at this point we can feel good that their will be more clarification in April and it won’t just be a huge debate.
Will be addressing intentional draws specifically when the rules and format for the VG are updated later this month.
Show up to play.
This is VGC not TCG. If you can’t figure out that the rules for pokemon video game are going to be different than every competitive card game you are an idiot. Arguments including what happens in magic the gathering and pokemon tcg are irrelevant.
Anyways…
Safest way to make top cut would be to steal your opponents 3ds and game card before your match started. Since there is no explicit rule against stealing before the match starts it is perfectly legal. If you were seriously trying to win, you wouldn’t even chance it enough to try and draw, you would have to outright steal that 3ds.
Same problem as before, we shouldn’t steal people’s stuff, after all like you said we aren’t tcg
Excellent idea!
I recommend doing it while your opponent’s at the urinal. Just grab it and run. The best part is that if you get caught you can just say you were messing with them.