My Event Kit

I was accused, recently, of being "the most organized person I know" by a friend of mine. (That accusation was quickly followed by, "That might reflect poorly on my friends," but still ...) As it turns out, judging, scorekeeping, and tournament organizing have contributed more than their fair share to my organizational habits.

When I first started scorekeeping side events at SCG Opens, I didn't write a lot down. I had a computer in front of me that had all of the information I needed in it ... somewhere. If someone asked me a question, I could flip through the DCI-R events or the event details pages and answer it. But, as it turns out, those things take time, and time isn't something scorekeepers have a ton of. I started making paper charts of important event information so I could answer those questions in two seconds instead of 10 or 15; better yet, someone walking by could just glance at them and find out what they needed to know. I've posted a couple of these before because I think they're fun event souvenirs, but here's another example from GP London:

(See all those smiley faces? They mean that event is finished. Which is good, seeing as how London was two months ago.)

There are many facets of organization. These charts are just one of them. The other, and the one I think is most important, is being prepared.

Even with all the skill and experience in the world, if you show up to an event with no idea of what's going on and without the tools you need, your success will suffer.

I have a pencil case that I take to events. In fact, I carry it pretty much everywhere I think I might want to do any sort of work. It looks like this:

Because, you know, I believe in fun.

1. Notebook

Everyone needs a notebook. Whether you're judging or on stage, having a place to write things down is super important. While a computer or smartphone can make a decent notebook, they have one huge downside: they need electricity. If your phone dies in the middle of the day, how are you going to write down the details of that sweet judge call you want to remember forever or the observation you made about the new judge's confidence?

My notebooks are also a record of the things I've accomplished and the things I still want to accomplish. They have notes from events, lists of posts I want to get around to writing, goals for judging and scorekeeping. It's a journal, but only for things related to Magic: the Gathering. I even have some pictures of sweet draft decks in there. This is one of the best tools that exists for reflection and improvement. Oh, and organization.

I like to use moleskine notebooks. They're expensive, but they hold up well to constant traveling and abuse. Plus, they come in a billion different colors, sizes and styles so I still get to have some fun with them. My current one is white. Well, it was white. It's gotten a little dirty.

2. Pens, Pencils, Highlighters, Sharpies

These take up most of the space in my pencil case. Surprising, right? I use pencil to fill in chart information that might change — starting table number and round, mostly. Highlighters are useful for processing drop sheets and prize payouts. Pens are for everything else.

I don't use sharpies much, but it's inevitable that I get asked for one at an event. Someone wants a card signed or a judge needs a bolder note on the pairings sheet. I always prefer to be the person that says "Yes, I can help you with that," so I bring a sharpie or two.

If you're judging, bring a red pen. Or pink. Or orange. Actually, anything that's not blue or black is just fine. Most players have blue and black pens, and anything that stands out on a match result slip is great. But please don't write on slips with sharpies. Especially not the back of slips. They bleed everywhere and make things hard to read.

3. Sticky Notes

There are a few things I'm miserable at remembering. Assigning fixed seats when I get registration files is probably the biggest one, so I write the player's name and table number on a sticky note and plant it firmly on my computer screen, usually somewhere where it's in the way. Sometimes it helps, and sometimes I get used to working around it and forget why it's there.

Sticky notes are also great for tagging lost and found items and passing notes. Most of the organizers I've worked with have these in their office supplies, but I always bring my own little ones.

4. Flash Drives

For the people on stage, the Internet is usually an essential tool. We use it to pass files around and communicate with staff on the other side of the hall. But, inevitably, something bad happens. Someone's laptop can't connect. We hit the maximum number of connections. It's too slow to sync files. A flash drive solves all of these problems.

I have an owl and a turtle. There's nothing like a small silver lining to a stressful situation, and absurd flash drives are amusing, right? I also have a grown-up flash drive for when I want people to think I'm a professional, but that's not very often.

5. USB Hub

Speaking of, I need to get a new one of these. My old one has outlived its functionality :(

Sometimes an organizer hands me a laptop, and sometimes I use my own. My laptop has three USB ports. I've been at many events where the admin laptops only had two. When you know you need to plug in a printer, a mouse and, often, a 10-key, two or three USB ports doesn't cut it, especially not when Internet access might use one and you might need to transfer files the old fashioned way.

6. Headphones

If there's any chance I'm interacting with players, my headphones stay in my pencil case. There are times when they're awesome, though, like catching up with paperwork as events are winding down, especially grinding through post-event entry of 8-man brackets, and on breaks. I use a hair tie or rubber band to keep them folded up nice and tidy.

7. Chargers

There's nothing quite like getting a quarter of the way through the day and realizing you don't have a phone, computer or tablet charger. Whoops. My computer charger doesn't fit neatly in my pencil case, but the other two do. Like headphones, I keep them wrapped up neatly with a hair tie. I also keep a backup computer charger in the backpack I travel with. I've never had to use it, but I'm glad it's there.

8. Change

This is one of the newest additions to my pencil case, mostly because I like Diet Coke WAY too much. Coins and $1 bills make it easier to acquire delicious beverages from vending machines. They also make it easier to make change for communal lunch orders and coffee/hot chocolate runs.

9. Advil

Advil is my headache-be-gone drug of choice. It's also awesome to have around when the venue chairs suck or I do something stupid to my shoulders or wrists while I'm working.

Many organizers can't provide ibuprofen or any other drugs to their staff or players, and working through pain is miserable. I've forgotten this a couple times, and all the other awesome registration and scorekeeping staff who don't forget have been responsible for my sanity at more than one event.

10. Tablet, Book or Other Entertainment

Taking breaks is important. I'm one of the worst offenders on this front — I enjoy scorekeeping, and I'd often rather keep doing it than go do something else, especially if exciting things are happening. I'm extra bad at taking breaks when I've been working on something with my downtime, like a blog post, review or event feedback.

Having something to do while on break makes leaving the stage and disconnecting from the event for a while more enticing.

What do you take to events? Whether you're judging, on stage or working in some other role, what things are essential to your event success?

(Edit: Thanks for the comments guys! They have to be approved before they appear to prevent spam, so if you don't see your comment right away it's because I haven't seen it yet.)

Comprehensive(ish) Guide to Match Result Slips

The life of a scorekeeper revolves around match result slips. Most of the time (unless something has gone wrong, we're hungry, or we drank too much Diet Coke last round) we're sitting on stage pressing buttons on a computer and hoping nothing breaks.

Slips are our connection to the tournament and its players. Through them, we get the information we need to keep the event moving. In the ideal and perfect scorekeeping world, they're cut perfectly, filled out neatly, and don't have any water/soda/blood/I don't really want to know what else on them. (Yes, all of those things have happened.)

The ideal and perfect scorekeeping world doesn't exist, but I am dedicated to bringing it one step closer to reality. Take note of these things for your next large event, share them with your Paper Team, and make a scorekeeper near you very happy. Or at least a bit happier.

Cut

Cutting match result slips well is super important. A slip that looks like this one will make any scorekeeper's life really difficult:

Yep. That was turned in at real event. Table number, player names, and results are essential pieces of information on slips. I managed to figure this one out with a bit of detective work, but it took some time. When I'm scorekeeping, time is the most precious commodity, and it's much easier to deal with slips that are cut neatly:

• Top and bottom of the sheet are cut off. This might not seem important, but ask the scorekeeper at your next event if you can help sort slips and you'll see why it is.
• Try to cut on the line. It doesn't have to be perfect. The important parts are that the slips are the same size and all the pertinent information is there.
• Edges are neat. Slips tend to stick together when they're not. To keep the paper cutter from pulling, press the blade in while you push down. I was *miserable* at cutting paper until someone taught me this.
• If you mess up cutting slips, let me know and ask me to print more, especially if the event is using DCI-R -- I can re-print a specific range of slips.

As a corollary, please don't fold/crumple/tear/nibble on/completely devour match result slips.

There are some questions for which there are two kinds of answers: answers that are okay and answers that are completely gross. I avoid asking those questions as much as possible because I don't want to know any answer in the second category. "Why is this match result slip wet?" is one of those questions.

Penalties

Penalties should be written out like this, legibly, on the back of match result slips:

[Judge Name First, Last] [Player Name Last, First] [Infraction] [Penalty] [Concise Description]

Some scorekeepers like a different order for judge and player name, and if your scorekeeper, team lead, or head judge tells you to write penalties differently, by all means do.

Most scorekeepers are familiar with the IPG, either as judges themselves or by virtue of having typed a million or so penalties. As such, you can save yourself some time when writing penalties with some abbreviations.

Infractions

IPD@SoG (or similar): Improper Draw at Start of Game

LEC/L@EC: Looking at Extra Cards

GRV/GRE: Game Rule Violation/Error

FTMGS: Failure to Maintain Game State

DEC: Drawing Extra Cards

MT: Missed Trigger

DDLP: Deck/Decklist Problem

Penalties

W: Warning

GL: Game Loss

ML: Match Loss

If the penalty that was issued is the standard penalty for that infraction, it's not really necessary to write it down. If there was an upgrade or downgrade, it's essential that it's written down, and maybe circled so the scorekeeper doesn't overlook it.

Concise Description

This part is important. The fewer words you write, the fewer I have to parse and type, but it has to be long enough to sufficiently convey what happened in the match. If it's an infraction that occurs regularly, like drawing seven cards on a mulligan, using "shorthand" is a quick, easy way to convey what happened.

Here are some of the phrases I like to use:

• Mulliganed to 7
• Flipped top card
• 59/15
• See above (for Failure to Maintain Game State, when the GRV is already described)

If there are details that you think are important to the situation, like something you observed that might raise a red flag, write it down on the slip. Make sure you use specific details about what happened rather than your thoughts on it -- players can flip over the slip and read the penalty any time.

And on that note, make sure what you write down doesn't give any information away to the players.

Okay, so my handwriting there wasn't the neatest, but it's legible! (I think.)

No Shows

There's an easy way to fill out no shows, and there's a hard way. The hard way involves writing anything on the back of a match result slips. The easy way ends up looking like this:

There's not really much to say about no-show penalties, and filling out the slip like this tells the scorekeeper everything they need to know.

Notice that the game record isn't in pen -- that's because the player who did show up to the match filled it out instead of me (or they would have, if this wasn't just a mock slip).

That's important enough that I'll say it again, in bold, and centered:

Always have the player at the table fill out no show results.

Players know who they are, and they know that they're the one winning this match. Whether you hear their name and are thinking about which player to assign the penalty to or the players have similar names, the result is rather frequently the same: the wrong player getting assigned the penalty and dropped.

If you have the player fill out the 0-2 or 2-0 and sign before you make a mark, the odds of that are dramatically reduced. Accidentally dropped players are the most tedious scorekeeping issue to fix (apart from things completely exploding, that is), and many times they can be avoided with this simple measure.

Things to Confirm

Weird things happen on slips all the time. Players start to fill them out wrong. They decide they don't want to drop after all. Almost all the time, completely scribbling through the mistake and re-writing it is a perfectly clear indication of what the slip is supposed to say.

Initialling the slip in red ink lets the scorekeeper know that a judge was involved and everything's correct -- if I have a question about a slip, I'll track down the judge whose initials are on it, or the players.

Here are some cases where a little extra confirmation helps:

• If a player accidentally marked the drop column, write "NOT DROPPING" somewhere next to the scribble. Sometimes players scribble in that column to indicate that they want to drop, and I don't want to guess wrong.
• If the winner of a match is dropping, judge initials help me confirm that the drop mark is next to the correct player's name.
• During end-of-round procedures, put a 0 in the draws column if a match ended 1-1.

If a player forgot to sign the slip and you still can't find them, still turn the slip in. Having a result for the match is better than having a slip floating around on the floor. If there's an error in the result, innocent or otherwise, it can be corrected at the beginning of the next round, and that's better than the potential delay caused to the entire event. Players signing on the wrong line, on the other hand, isn't a problem at all.

Do you have any other tips and tricks for match result slips? Let us know :D