Subject: Solution to cheating/bad sportsmanship Date: Sun, 10 May 1998 18:18:31 +1000 From: Dominic Sawkins To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com After looking at some of the posts about cheating and bad sportsmanship on the Dojo, I came up with a solution for at least one of the problems. Several people have mentioned how inadequate the judges have been in handing penalties to competitors. In some situations a player takes an illicit action (i.e. draws an additional card or doesn't take damage from a pain land) to gain an advantage in the late rounds to make the finals. If they get caught all that happens is they get a warning and make the finals earning $5,000 or so. Unless they are high on warnings this is no penalty at all. The solution is to use the number of warnings a player has as the first countback in the resolving ties for prizes or finals qualification. This would make warnings important at any stage of a tournament to highly ranked competitors. There would at least be adequate motivation not to get caught "cheating". Most articles on the Dojo agree that it is the prizes that motivate competitors to "cheat". This would, in a small way, link the punishment to the crime, a facet that seems to be lacking at the moment. A friend of mine, Michael Mason, who is also a Level 3 Judge, commented that there maybe be problems in the type of warnings that are given. Not completely understanding the warnings system, I don't feel qualified to comment, but I would welcome other input on this. Thanks, Dominic Sawkins