Subject: Professional Dealers - A Better Solution?
Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 17:19:46 -0700 (PDT)
From: Joshua Randall <jerandall@yahoo.com>
To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com

[ ISSUE ]
[ REPLY - to: Professional Dealers by D. Iwan ]

DeAnn Iwan suggests in her article that in order to
solve the problem of cheating at major Magic tourna-
ments, professional dealers be employed to handle
both player's cards. I believe Ms. Iwan's idea has
some merits, but, in the end, is not a feasible one.

Employing professional dealers would create two prob-
lems: it would require additional time during each
match, and it would cost more.

Professional card dealers are not Magic players nor
likely familiar with the game; therefore, their grasp
of the cards, both literally and figuratively, would
be poor. Players would have to give detailed instruc-
tions regarding which Lands to tap for mana, which
spell to select from the hand to play, which perma-
nents to target, and so forth. For every play. For
every game. For every match. The added time per action
multiplied by each player and each match could easily
result in tournaments that took several more hours to
complete than currently.

As Ms. Iwan points out, professional dealers do not
work cheaply. I do not think that players would be
willing to pay the much higher entry fees that would
be necessary to offset these costs, nor do I think that
Wizards or the DCI is willing to absorb them.

So, although the *idea* of professional dealers is a
good one, it is not feasible in practice. I propose an
alternative that seems equally good in theory and
slightly more feasible in practice:

All tournament matches should be played via computer.

I will address the main drawback to this idea first. It
would be very difficult to obtain and set up several
hundred computers for each tournament. I do not know
the costs involved in this, both in terms of hardware
and in terms of support personnel, but I imagine them
to be considerable. So, like the professional dealers
idea, the computers idea is probably impractical.

However, I would like to list briefly some of the ad-
vantages to be had by playing all games via computer:

(1) A complete record of each and every action for
    each and every game. This would both make judging
    much easier - no more "failure to agree on reality"
    warnings - and allow detailed strategic analysis
    after each game.

(2) Relative impossibility of cheating by manipulating
    cards in one's library. Although it is conceivable
    that unethical players could "hack" the program to
    give themselves an edge, it should be far easier to
    detect and prevent such hacking than to detect and
    prevent the current forms of cheating.

(3) Easy tracking of game phases, life totals, and
    other factors.

(4) Elimination of need for sleeves and for consider-
    ations of marked cards. Players could still be re-
    quired to own the cards in their deck and could
    register decks for entry into the computer program
    prior to the tournament.

(5) Automatic pairing and reporting of matches. No need
    for players physically to relocate during the event
    (unless desired).

Many readers will be familiar with either Microprose's
Magic computer game, or the Apprentice software program
that is used to track Magic games player over the 'Net.
While each has flaws, I believe either could be cleaned
up enough to be used in tournaments.

Respectfully submitted,

==
Joshua 'Enjolras' Randall
jerandall@yahoo.com

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