Are All Rules Created Equal?

[Previous conversation which was unfortunately lost to the vagaries of Facebook's chat program was mainly me introducing Ben Seck to my arguments about clock management in Magic from my tcgplayer.com article published on 8/17.]

If you have any suggestions for reformatting this or future conversations, please let me know in the comments. Obviously, I want these to be as easy to read and follow as possible.

[Previous segment of conversation fortunately recovered from the ever-gracious TBS]

Ben -
I think you can’t keep defending the Saito position.
I actually think that the DCI should make a move towards people making MORE mistakes by enforcing time harsher
because “long enough” is basically an arbitrary ideal.
Who cares if the line is set such that people make more mistakes?
The “good” players will be those that can play within the rules/time limit/pressure.

Billy -
Sure. I’m fine with that too. My point at this time is that slow play is not a rule that’s core to the integrity of the game. if you can manage the clock with incurring more than the very occasional warning, you should.

If they enforce it more harshly, that just means a good slow player has less opportunities to work the clock

More on Saito: From an Undisclosed, but Personally Vouched for Eyewitness

Anonymous:

“I personally watched this and it was outrageous.  He should have been DQ’d immediately.

Play was proceeding normally as Saito was winning.  There are 6-7 minutes left.

Kid then cunning wishes for Tsabo Decree and decrees Merfolk.

Saito tanks for 45 seconds then reveals his hand of 2 merfolk.  He bins his 2 in hand and 2 in play.

Kid untaps and casts Jace.  Saito then counts kid’s sideboard, reviews graveyard and says ok.  Kid fateseals and leaves a daze on top. He activates factory and attacks.  Saito spends 45 seconds debating wasteland before taking 2.  He rereads Jace again.

He untaps and draws daze.  He reviews both graveyards and spends 30-40 seconds before saying go.

Kid fateseals and leaves a land.  He activates factory and attacks.  Saito repeats his 45 seconds fingering wasteland before taking 2.  He then stops to read Jace.

Saito draws the land and reviews both graveyards.  He spends 30 seconds before playing land.  He then stops to read Jace for 20 seconds.  He then fidgets with wasteland and then fetchland for 20 seconds before saying go.

Kid fateseals a land to top.  He then activates factory.  Saito reviews kids graveyard and finally takes 2.  Kid casts pernicious deed with 4 mana up.  Saito considers dazing it until time is called.

Rest of game takes under 1 minute.”

Slightly reformatted to make it clear this is a second hand account.

Only a Matter of Time: Thoughts on Saito, Slowplay, and Losing Less

During the GP this weekend, there were growing rumblings about possible slowplay abuse by Tomoharu Saito. Magic players are not kind and they are certainly not judicious when it comes to talking about suspected cheaters or foreigners in general. It’s kind of unfortunate. The gossip is fun for a little bit, and being in the know is titillating (even if you don’t actually have a clue what actually happened), but pretty quickly the stories that circulate get more and more divorced from reality.

Anyway, that’s not really what I want to talk about.

After hearing quite a bit of chatter, I decided to ask Saito what was going on, let him know that people were grumbling, get a feel for the situation from his angle, and also give him a heads up to take care with his time management. I like Saito, hang out with him a decent amount most tournaments on the smoking patio, and consider him trustworthy. I was definitely giving him the benefit of the doubt. Seems he had already gotten a warning and was aware of the issue. His explanation was this: “Legacy is complicated. So far I have only played against one deck that I tested against. Many decisions, very complicated.”

Satisfied me. In fact, I punted two of my matches on the way to not day 2′ing for exactly that reason. It also got me thinking about time management and I thought I should share my conclusions.

Magic is a hard, hard game. People lose a lot and sometimes they know why, sometimes they don’t. But I’m willing to bet that most of the time, the losers (only in the match sense) did not take the time they needed in-game to give important decisions their due diligence. I’m not saying you should always play slower, and I’m not saying you should develop habits that always put you in danger of going to time, but what I am saying is that if you’re still losing enough matches to keep you away from the blue envelope, the GP day 2, the PT top 8 or whatever, you’re probably not taking fair and proper advantage of one of your most important resources: time.

I’m definitely willing to bet that Saito is.