Indiana Regionals DQ & Philly

AlexanderTheAwesome

AlexanderTheAwesome

Go! Chandelure!
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So nobody has talked about this yet, so I'll be the first one I guess.

Anyone that was at Fort Wayne, Indiana Regional championships on 10/27 more than likely heard about the Chris Fulop situation that happened on the very last round of Top 32 (the last of the grueling 14, 50 minute, best 2/3 swiss rounds). If you were not here is what happened:

Going into the last round of the top 32, Chris (who I believe was 9-2-2?? He had 29 points.) gets down paired to a 5-4-4. There are many theories surrounding why the computer did this, but considering he and only one other person were downpaired farther than they should have, it was an obvious glitch in the system. Words were going around at the time that to be guaranteed top 8 you were going to need at least 30 points after the last round. Meaning Fulop only had to draw his opponent or win. However, this round resulted in many game changing losses and ties (Kyle S. and google Cawthon being one example as if they hadn't tied one of them would've cut), so all 29's ended up getting in (unknown to Chris at the time). So before his match he automatically begins talking to the judges about what happened in the system and absolutely no one knows why. He is forced to play the match none the less, and before the match starts Chris requests an intentional draw with his opponent (who had absolutely no chance of cutting that round), and he refuses. Well guess what happens, Chris ends up losing the match and he is furious. Words are thrown around (I won't go into that) and Fulop immediately talks to AJ (the head judge), while still angry I might add, saying that he wants to be either reimbursed for his time and/or money.... OR get into top 8 (considering this is the first tournament structure using the new $20 entry fee). Again words are said and AJ disqualifies him for multiple reasons including "Spirit of the Game".

Side Notes:
Also, according to many players (including myself as my first round tie shouldn't have happened), the judging staff wasn't exactly.... well I'm not going to sugar coat it. They were bad

Also, discuss the recent "cheating" at Philly. Apparently someone was looking at the bottom card of their deck after the cut, but I wasn't there so I will stay off that for now (whether or not that was a rumor is also un-confirmed by me)

I tried to make the story as un-biased as possible having Fulop being from around my area and holding multiple conversations with him, but it was difficult. Also, I may be missing some details so please try to correct things as little as possible.

So the questions are:
What do you think should of happened?
Should Chris have had any reimbursement on his loss?
Who do we blame for this? Is it the 50 minutes 2/3?
What should the judging staff should have done differently?
What was your overall opinion on the situation and the tournament structure in general?
 
RE: Indianna Regionals DQ & Houston

I just want to note that the cheating at Houston wasn't at Houston, it was at Philly, and the player accused of doing so is Gino Lombardi. He was accused of looking at the bottom of his deck after I think round 4, the judges told him that he had done it multiple times, and they DQ'd him. He firmly denies doing so and is angry because apparently the judges didn't say anything to him during his first few rounds, even though they said he they had seen him doing it throughout the tournament right before he was DQ'd.

I don't know whether he did it or not (or whether the judges told him about it or not before the DQ), I just wanted to clean up the facts.
 
Why didn't they repair? Two 9-2-2's were paired against two 5-4-4's. Why didn't the players with similar records just play each other?
 
I'm not exactly sure, but that I am pretty sure they did play each other already on the second day. Also, we were told that they wouldn't repair anyway at all.
 
Not trying to be disrespectful, but Chris Fulop handled this in a terrible manner. Getting DQ'd was a no brainer, Nintendo can't be more clear on how you are to conduct yourself. So that one was justified.

They don't make corrections to the pairings because a computer paired them. For some reason or another they were paired together. It was most likely not a glitch. To have a glitch happen during one round, but not at all during the previous day or the remainder of the current day is highly unlikely. They choose to pair them by a computer for accuracy and efficiency. Altering pairings introduces the "was someone being favored" argument. Also if they put the two 9-5-4's together and say the other person lost, that person should and most likely would be upset. You altered my pairings and reduced my chances of winning manually after a "randomized" computer paired me with someone according to many factors it took into consideration.

And the last part of my "rant" would be that you lost to an extreme down pairing and then want to cry about it. Go home and sit and think about what caused you to lose such a down paired match. Why should you get your money back. A computer randomly pairs you IN YOUR FAVOR and you cry like a little kid and throw a fit ending up getting DQ'd.

I do not know him personally and was not there for the second day so these are just my feelings about what I have read, but this is saddening. This kind of behavior is unacceptable.
 
He should have been repaired, period. A computer shouldn't be doing the pairings to begin with when it's the top 32 involved. Just take the time to sit down and do the math and do it that way. There is serious money and points on the line. I was there and it was the talk of the event, and it seemed almost everyone there (everyone I talked to at least) seemed to think he was in the right and should have been given a top 8 spot because of the error (or not forced to play the game. Lots of people said to give him a bye).

As for the judges? Yeah. They were BAD. I literally had a judge come up to explain gbooster and why it can attack silver mirror/suicune and I had to talk him through the rules and explain. At one point a judge said "Can you attach more than one tool per turn?". Why do judges not have to be professors? I don't understand that.

One thing that was really cool though is that they allowed the use of electronic cigarettes (or "Vaping"). Multiple judges gave players the thumbs up on using them as long as it didn't bother anyone near them or cause a disturbance with the amount of vapor they were producing. As a vaper myself (though, I didn't vape in doors because I left my juice in the room) I was really happy about this.
 
Coming from a software programmers point of view, this misconception people have of glitches is beyond my understandings. You are talking about a pairing software not a graphics engine. Once software like this is deemed working, it is working. I don't mean just deemed working like hey I said its working. I am assuming they used this everywhere and they didn't have whacky pairings going on all day.

Having people do the pairings is even worse using your reasoning. There is money (not serious really but money) involved and points on the line, so would I rely on you a human being capable of error to calculate who I face and hope that you are being truthful and not just a friend of a friend or lazy or bad at math. I take the computer every time. Programs are programmatic, they are not random in results. If a glitch is occuring it will occur consistently and programmatically not just under the criteria of "Fulop is in his latch match of top 32, ahhhhhh glitch".

This was his pairing according to MANY different input variables that obviously were so great in numbers the staff couldn't even begin to comprehend them.

I am also confused on why everyone thinks it is okay that he uses his pairing as an excuse as to why he lost and why he should be refunded. He was paired down significantly.
 
xKILLx said:
Coming from a software programmers point of view, this misconception people have of glitches is beyond my understandings. You are talking about a pairing software not a graphics engine. Once software like this is deemed working, it is working. I don't mean just deemed working like hey I said its working. I am assuming they used this everywhere and they didn't have whacky pairings going on all day.

Having people do the pairings is even worse using your reasoning. There is money (not serious really but money) involved and points on the line, so would I rely on you a human being capable of error to calculate who I face and hope that you are being truthful and not just a friend of a friend or lazy or bad at math. I take the computer every time. Programs are programmatic, they are not random in results. If a glitch is occuring it will occur consistently and programmatically not just under the criteria of "Fulop is in his latch match of top 32, ahhhhhh glitch".

This was his pairing according to MANY different input variables that obviously were so great in numbers the staff couldn't even begin to comprehend them.

I am also confused on why everyone thinks it is okay that he uses his pairing as an excuse as to why he lost and why he should be refunded. He was paired down significantly.
Click to expand...

Perhaps we were using the term "glitch" a little to loosely. By glitch, I think what we meant was that something in the software happened that was not originally intended, Yes, it was more then likely put in the software like this correctly. The computer did what it was told to do. However, it did not produce desired results. The system did not "glitch" it just did something we didn't think would happen when programming.

To your second point. The point that he lost was just fuel in the fire. He was already ticked off so him losing only made matters worse. Also, one of the main reasons he was mad he lost is because if he was paired correctly, his opponent more than likely would've intentionally drew to him (because then that person would also be guarenteed cut)
 
So he was mad because he could have been in a situation where he didn't have to actually play to win, but instead was forced to play a match he should have won, but was too busy having a bad attitude. A human might have given him the easy pairing, but is that really the fair choice?

One thing is absolutely clear, there is a right way and a wrong way to act. Regardless of the situation he acted poorly and got what he deserved.
 
zaniix said:
So he was mad because he could have been in a situation where he didn't have to actually play to win, but instead was forced to play a match he should have won, but was too busy having a bad attitude. A human might have given him the easy pairing, but is that really the fair choice?
Click to expand...
This was during top 32. These were the top 32 players out of 376 players. None of them are pushovers no matter how you look at it, everyone was playing meta and the entire scene was very competitive whether it be at the top 4 or the bottom 4. Even IF he did have to play the top guy to get into top 8 he probably COULD'VE had a better chance. The entire metagame in my opinion is matchup dependant, and if he was playing Plasma and his opponent was playing something like Straight Darkrai w/o Enhanced hammers, BUT he was still the top guy, he could've had a better chance at winning than if his oppoonent in the bottom four (the one he actually played) was playing something like Blastoise (a bad matchup for Plasma)

One thing is absolutely clear, there is a right way and a wrong way to act. Regardless of the situation he acted poorly and got what he deserved.
Click to expand...
I'm not denying that sadly, he did act very poorly and I'm sure something different would've happened had the situation been more calm. Yes, you are correct that there is a right way to act.
Do you see what I'm saying? Just because the player is at the bottom doesn't mean that it is an auto-win, especially if they are playing a deck that is a coiunter to yours.
 
I was at this regionals, and I will say this. The consensus was that this dude got in the 5-4-4 kid's face and then was in his mother's face about this issue and to my observation that was the reasoning for his DQ. I was in the room seconds after all this happened and multiple people told me directly that is what happened. I'm not discrediting anything you say, I am just stating what I heard from multiple eye witnesses.

I don't think there are any fingers to be pointed. That is child's play. I think he should have grown a pair of nuts, been a man about it. Instead of a whiny child and played his games out and maybe he needs to consider anger management. Because it's just a card game and it's a measly $20. Grow up & get real. I'm sure there was no mysterious computer glitch, the computers paired in a way they were designed to pair in the parameters set to them.. It's over and done with, to nobody's fault.
 
Win with honor. Lose with dignity. Apparently this is something that Chris lacked in this situation. Paired incorrectly or not, both players were in the top 32 and deserved to be in that position. By losing, it pretty much proves that point. And then to go on a tangent like that afterwards? It shows quite the lack of self control.

And it's funny to hear people smack talk the judges. I hear very little along the line of specifics other than "They were bad." 3 of the head judges of the event are all multiple time nationals or worlds judges. Derek picks those that he deems the strongest for judging his bigger events, and this was no exception.
 
AlexanderTheAwesome said:
Side Notes:
Also, according to many players (including myself as my first round tie shouldn't have happened), the judging staff wasn't exactly.... well I'm not going to sugar coat it. They were bad
Click to expand...
If you are trying not to sugar coat it you should provide examples about how Judges at Indiana Regionals, were "bad". If you are trying to call out the judging staff you are doing a poor job at it. Without examples how can we be expected to fix/address/respond to what you perceive as bad judging. When you provide examples, please tell me how many of these examples resulted in an appeal to the Head Judge, and for those that did not get appealed, Why didn't they? If their were instants of bad judging, why wouldn't there be an appeal.

-Judge from Indiana Regionals
 
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