A new store, some easy events, but a first experience at v3.
There are way to many things I'd want to talk about when it comes to Magic, but I'll just begin right now with the simple things in tonight and the first tournament I had at this new store.
This place was started not that long ago by a guy named Phil - he doesn't really care about Magic, but he seems to have a good understanding of the amount of income the single game can contribute to his total survival of the store. I fully understand this as well, coming from a small store (Dragon's Lair Games in Madison, WI) at one point, and knowing just what it takes for a smaller store to survive. Thankfully for this place, at every occasion that I've been there, there's always been reports of product been clean-out, while there is a known amount there earlier in the day; in other words, they're going through product much faster than they can get it in. This is so much that I was thinking of not bothering bringing my tradable packs (right now it's just the box I got from Champs), but I feel that they should be there in the situation that the store doesn't have a sufficient supply of boosters. (yes, they're doing _that_ well)
So, I get there and start working as if it was a normal tournament; after talking with Phil (the store owner) on and off for a bit, I pretty much get the OK to run the tournament as I feel it should be run. To me, that means that since this is a new store, the people that came out should really decide how they want their tournaments to be run. After some finagling (Firefox 2's spell checker FTW), we settle in for a 13-person Standard tournament having 4 rounds of Swiss, followed by single-elims on the top 4. (I'd personally rather do T8 at 13, but T4 works fine as well). Rounds go by without a hitch, and my only problems the whole night come with a single thing: I'd never run a complete tournament using only DCI Reporter version 3...
For those of you who don't know the story of DCI Reporter, here's the basics. DCI Reporter is the software coordinators use to run all DCI tournaments, from those little 8-man things to Worlds. Version 2 of the software had been out for several years (I think Win 98 was the up-to-date version of Windows when this came out...) and was sorely in need of a makeover. Now, the only problem I saw with the program was that it really didn't like doing draft pods in a decent way; you take a group of 21 people, and it splits them into pods of 10 and 11, instead of the MUCH better 8-7-6. Version 3 didn't fix this, so there's my first peeve. My second MAJOR peeve comes from V3's interface. As a person who is learning to be a programmer, I see so much wrong in a completely changed back-end (the code itself for non-geeks) that feels completely designed around the front-end (the interface) so that you can do the same motions in both v2 and v3 and get the same end result. I feel that so much could have been done to make the interface better, but they instead just hotwired a .NET framework-based program (another peeve) onto this program which really wasn't that bad before.
Egh, enough rambling and ranting about my dislike for that thing, and that doesn't even get into... I'll talk about Tournament Board later. My main problem when using the program today was that two people didn't have their DCI numbers. So, I try to figure out how they integrated the pin database (where all known DCI numbers are stored) into v3. (it was a separate program in v2) I still don't know how to do it, as I took out my laptop, loaded the database program from v2, and found the numbers from there. The other problem, though much simpler, came from the cut to top 4; this is the ONE THING different in the function of this tournament from v2 for me, and it bothered me that this was the one thing that was different. So, after 10 minutes of figuring out what the program actually does, I have the top 4 pairings in the program right, 10 minutes after I already know who should be playing who and get them started.
I don't think there was much of a problem with anything this tournament, though. I should've given out a warning on a situation, but didn't. (interesting, Firefox's spell checker has could've and would've in it's dictionary, but not should've...) I was able to get a feel for this place, which I got the feel that until Phil gets setup with the DCI and WotC to run tournaments and gain Premier Event store status, that I'll be cranking out the tournaments for him. I need to get him able to be running tournaments, not so much so that I can play, but so that I don't have to be there all the time. Honestly, it sounds like there is another place looking for a organizer and judge, so I may in high demand.
Got a pack for working, which I really didn't care about. I mean, I have 37 now, which I'll probably use zero of them until I get back to Madison, which by then Planar Chaos will begin to be spoiled.
-------------------------
Things to talk about later...
::: Advancing to Level 2
::: Notes on helping at a 226-person event with only 5 other judges.
::: Random other things. It's two in the morning, and I'm just ranting now. What am I doing when I'm sick?
This place was started not that long ago by a guy named Phil - he doesn't really care about Magic, but he seems to have a good understanding of the amount of income the single game can contribute to his total survival of the store. I fully understand this as well, coming from a small store (Dragon's Lair Games in Madison, WI) at one point, and knowing just what it takes for a smaller store to survive. Thankfully for this place, at every occasion that I've been there, there's always been reports of product been clean-out, while there is a known amount there earlier in the day; in other words, they're going through product much faster than they can get it in. This is so much that I was thinking of not bothering bringing my tradable packs (right now it's just the box I got from Champs), but I feel that they should be there in the situation that the store doesn't have a sufficient supply of boosters. (yes, they're doing _that_ well)
So, I get there and start working as if it was a normal tournament; after talking with Phil (the store owner) on and off for a bit, I pretty much get the OK to run the tournament as I feel it should be run. To me, that means that since this is a new store, the people that came out should really decide how they want their tournaments to be run. After some finagling (Firefox 2's spell checker FTW), we settle in for a 13-person Standard tournament having 4 rounds of Swiss, followed by single-elims on the top 4. (I'd personally rather do T8 at 13, but T4 works fine as well). Rounds go by without a hitch, and my only problems the whole night come with a single thing: I'd never run a complete tournament using only DCI Reporter version 3...
For those of you who don't know the story of DCI Reporter, here's the basics. DCI Reporter is the software coordinators use to run all DCI tournaments, from those little 8-man things to Worlds. Version 2 of the software had been out for several years (I think Win 98 was the up-to-date version of Windows when this came out...) and was sorely in need of a makeover. Now, the only problem I saw with the program was that it really didn't like doing draft pods in a decent way; you take a group of 21 people, and it splits them into pods of 10 and 11, instead of the MUCH better 8-7-6. Version 3 didn't fix this, so there's my first peeve. My second MAJOR peeve comes from V3's interface. As a person who is learning to be a programmer, I see so much wrong in a completely changed back-end (the code itself for non-geeks) that feels completely designed around the front-end (the interface) so that you can do the same motions in both v2 and v3 and get the same end result. I feel that so much could have been done to make the interface better, but they instead just hotwired a .NET framework-based program (another peeve) onto this program which really wasn't that bad before.
Egh, enough rambling and ranting about my dislike for that thing, and that doesn't even get into... I'll talk about Tournament Board later. My main problem when using the program today was that two people didn't have their DCI numbers. So, I try to figure out how they integrated the pin database (where all known DCI numbers are stored) into v3. (it was a separate program in v2) I still don't know how to do it, as I took out my laptop, loaded the database program from v2, and found the numbers from there. The other problem, though much simpler, came from the cut to top 4; this is the ONE THING different in the function of this tournament from v2 for me, and it bothered me that this was the one thing that was different. So, after 10 minutes of figuring out what the program actually does, I have the top 4 pairings in the program right, 10 minutes after I already know who should be playing who and get them started.
I don't think there was much of a problem with anything this tournament, though. I should've given out a warning on a situation, but didn't. (interesting, Firefox's spell checker has could've and would've in it's dictionary, but not should've...) I was able to get a feel for this place, which I got the feel that until Phil gets setup with the DCI and WotC to run tournaments and gain Premier Event store status, that I'll be cranking out the tournaments for him. I need to get him able to be running tournaments, not so much so that I can play, but so that I don't have to be there all the time. Honestly, it sounds like there is another place looking for a organizer and judge, so I may in high demand.
Got a pack for working, which I really didn't care about. I mean, I have 37 now, which I'll probably use zero of them until I get back to Madison, which by then Planar Chaos will begin to be spoiled.
-------------------------
Things to talk about later...
::: Advancing to Level 2
::: Notes on helping at a 226-person event with only 5 other judges.
::: Random other things. It's two in the morning, and I'm just ranting now. What am I doing when I'm sick?
posted by bradleyjx at
11:22 PM
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