Subject: Professional Dealers
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 17:43:35 GMT
From: sagrillo@tiac.net (sagrillo)
Newsgroups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.misc

   Once again we have another major tournament and another set of
discussions about it--almost all of which are related to cheating and
very few of which are related to strategy or other gaming issues.  I
don't want to get bogged down in little issues like whether the card
in someone's lap was accidental or whether there really is a muscle
sliver somewhere in some trash can.  I'd like to mention how much of
the problem could be adressed:  use professional dealers at the major
tourneys (real professional dealers for the top matches and volunteer
judge/dealers for all the others).

     If you are serious about wanting an end to major cheating for the
big money games, you will have to make it harder to do successfully.
One major way professional poker handles this in tournaments is to use
professional dealers.  The dealer would handle both players
decks--shuffling and the like--and would hand the player a card when
drawn.  The players would never touch their decks, their opponents
decks--ideally would never even SEE their decks--except when the game
gave them the opportunity to do something non-random with the deck.
Impulse?  The dealer hands you cards, then you hand the dealer back
cards as called for.  The dealer could also potentially keep track of
a few very simple things like whether a land has been played, and what
phase the game is in (say, by moving a marker from phase to phase).

     This would eliminate most (but not all) the opportunities to
cheat.  Sure, you could still mis-spend mana to cast spells and the
like.  But, most of the card and deck manipulation would be impossible
(or extremely difficult) to do.

    Now, professional dealers are not cheap.  I'd guess they are $20
to $30 an hour.  This means that, if you want real professional
dealers at the top table, everyone has to pay more in entry fees.  If
you want appointed dealers for every match....well, you either have to
pay a lot more for the tourney or else poney up some volunteer time to
cover all the added work.  This clearly isn't appropriate for every
mom and pop card store tourney.  But, it does seem reasonable for the
big tournaments (Regionals, Nationals, Pro Tour and perhaps a very
small number of other tourneys).

     Professional sports (real professional sports) have enough line
judges, dealers, whatever to keep the game reasonably honest.  If you
want the same in magic, the players will have to poney up the extra
costs to cover them (or find sponsors or TV networks or some other
source of $$ to cover them).  Without adequate
judges/referees/dealers, cheating will continue to dominate big money
games.

      Another alternative would probably be to decrease the incentive
to cheat (by dropping all prize money from the top tournaments).  But
I don't think that would work very well now that cheating has been
institutionalized.

     Whining for stiffer penalties for cheaters has gotten players no
where.  I don't see this changing any time soon.
---
Your garden variety mage,
DeAnn Iwan