I’m pretty ignorant, honestly. At a Force of Will prerelease my last round opponent conceded just before the round was called a draw so that I’d get 1st place and playmat instead of some other guy, I was kinda dropjaw’d and didn’t really get the culture of it.
It is when the tournament rules expressly forbid it.
8 Likes
I would be in favor of a 3 point system where win is 3, a timed win is worth 2 and a tie is worth 1. Seems like there should be some incentive to having more points than your opponent when time is called. Not sure if timed losses should be worth anything though.
I thought the tournament rules forbade concessions?
Tournament rules shouldn’t favor some players, and put others at a disadvantage.
The tournament rules got updated really recently, concessions are now legal. New tournament rules: IDs and Concessions now legal
2 Likes
Sure. So maybe it’s a good thing that the rules have changed.
But players shouldn’t violate the tournament rules. If you’re saying it happened a ton before it was made legal, I’m not going to be anything but surprised and disappointed.
2 Likes
If both myself and my opp need a sweep for the cut is it now legal to only play the first game for 4 prestige?
So do we make a timed loss worth 1 point, a timed win worth 2 points, and a win worth 3 points?
4 Likes
I find it weird that people think that it’s better to concede to give your opponent a spot in the cut while at the same time denying another person the same place in the cut. If it’s your friend it’s at least understandable (but, oddly enough, probably frowned upon), while it’s fine to choose to give one stranger the spot over another.
You could, like @lpoulter says, just decide that winner of the first round takes all, but isn’t that explicitly collusion?
1 Like
I asked CJ this, and apparently the rules say this still falls under collusion.
1 Like
I’ve just read the rules and it actually seems quite clear this is collusion.
Definition
Two or more people conspire to alter the results of the tournament.
Examples
- Two players intentionally draw their match to insure that they both make the cut to
elimination rounds. This is legal, so long as one player does not offer the other
compensation for doing so. - A player intentionally loses his match to guarantee his friend makes the cut to elimination
rounds. - A spectator asks a player to lose her match so that his friend will receive a prize.
Sure; I wasn’t doubting CJ. I just hadn’t bothered to read the rules myself!
I guess we still have to play out the full games next time we meet. 
This is pretty awful. Agreeing to ID and agreeing to let the winner of game 1 get game 2 are both agreements made before the first turn is taken in order to maximize each person’s chances to get into the cut, as a selfish desire, without any offer or use of compensation.
Either neither should be allowed or both should be allowed.
Hypothetical example: Players A, B & C all finish on the same points.
In terms of Head to head, Player A beat B, whilst B beat C. A & C didn’t play eachother. Lets also assume that SoS is 1.75 for A, 2 for B and 2.25 for C.
What order would they be ranked in?
I can see a case for A,B,C based upon head to head, but also C didn’t play A, so should be ranked above A based upon SoS creating a bit of a paradox.
How is this resolved in practice?
Agree 100%; if intentional draws are allowed, and concessions are allowed, agreeing that the loser of game one will concede game two is both logically consistent and ethically indistinguishable.
There is a minor tournament structure issue with any of this, and it’s because it lets people who end up at the top lock potential comeback players out. There are plenty of pairing-randomness-related reasons why someone might get shafted out of a favorable schedule and need someone at the top table to get swept to make the cut. If those in the cut at the end of the penultimate round can lock movement out, there’s no reason to play the final round, and this is recursively true. Meritocracy might be possible, but only once there’s a high degree of fully-played-out (i.e. no concessions, IDs) connectedness amongst players, which isn’t true of most mid-sized tournaments.
I don’t think this is necessary to find a rules solution to, though. We should strive to play more games 
4 Likes
The goal of jamming in more games is why I favor a looser structure where people begin a match with some available player as soon as they finish a match
1 Like
Honestly, I’d be happy to just see the cut done away with entirely in favour of one or two more rounds of Swiss. It would avoid nearly all of the issues to do with manufacturing results, stop the regular instances of the cut going on late into the evening even for minor events, let lower-ranked players get more than four games before they’re sent home, and seems generally more reliable at finding the best player on the day.
I don’t really see how the benefits of having a cut outweigh all of that, but I also suspect it’s not going to happen; FFG seem to be moving in the direction of cuts for more events, not less.
12 Likes
I’m not sure about that. Concessions aren’t freely allowed: rather they are allowed only where they are not part of an agreement with another party that will alter the scoring. They still fall under the collusion rules.
As far as ethics go, manipulated draws are defined as being allowed but with no explanation as to why this type of collusion is ethical while others aren’t, if indeed the collusion rule is an ethical issue. So it’s a little hard to look for ethical consistency given the rules as they stand.
I think it’s maybe more correct to say that if you allow manipulated draws, it makes sense from a point of consistency to allow any and all collusion and chicanery that players care to come up with!
The problem is that you should not overdo with giving those players extra games. From my experience 5 rounds is perfect - I once TOd a Regionals big enough to do 6 rounds Swiss and most casual players told me that the final round was not fun as they were too tired. Since then I aim at 5 rounds Swiss every time as this seems to be the amount of playing people enjoy the most.
1 Like