Ruling Intentional Draws

D

Darkeh3

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Hi guys,

Not exactly if this general rule question fits exactly in this section, so feel free to move it if needed.

I was wondering on the legality of players in the TCG having an intentional draw during the last rounds of swiss rounds in order to make it to topcut. Is this against official Play! Pokemon rules or not? I browsed around and only see people debating on the morality of it, and was just wondering if intentionally calling a draw between players is actually legal according to the official rules. (Also, an exact quotation from the rules to back up your statement would be nice as well.)

And if it is, are the players still required to play through their game or are they simply allowed to state their agreement on a tie.

Thanks.
 
Intentional Draws (IDs) are not against the rules in a TCG tournament. In fact, they are not uncommon when on-the-bubble players NEED the 1 point to guarantee their spot.

HOWEVER: Consistently pestering your opponent for an ID is against the rules. If your opponent doesn't want to draw, you must respect that decision. The last regionals I went to, the TO said we were allowed to ask our opponents to ID once in a round, any further than that and we would get warnings for violating spirit of the game.

Players who ID are not required to play their game, they simply sign the slip and head off (probably to go get food lol!)
 
Ah, alright. Thanks for the clarification! I have one more quick question though ...

Do the judges actually tell players if they are in the situation where if they draw they are able to make it to top cut? I've heard some people say
they do and some do not. Is there a rule regarding this?
 
Usually the judges announce beforehand that a certain number of points guarantees you top cut. However I do not believe that if you raise your hand and ask a judge "does a draw get me into top cut" that they would tell you.

Most of the time they also just don't know. Fall regionals for me last year, they knew 19 points was guaranteed cut, but the matches ended up working in such a way where everybody with 18 points also got in, and a lucky 1 or 2 individuals with 17 made it. There was no way for the judges to know that everybody with 18 would get in until after all of the matches were completed.

So I would not count on the judges telling you whether or not your draw gets you into top cut, but look for some kind of announcement where "X points guarantees you into day 2/top 8."
 
Just went to cities a little while ago. I asked some players about what score was needed to topcut. For I believe 28 people, they said a topcut of 8 would be 3-0-2 (So 11 points). So two draws would be possible.

How exactly do people go about calculating this? Is there actually a sure 100% way to calculate a guarantee into topcut or not? I'm still not entirely sure how the process works. Is there a certain formula or calculator out there for determining topcut? How about for topcuts of different numbers? Like 4, 16, etc?

Sorry for the tons of questions. I just can't find any information relating to this anywhere for some reason.
 
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