New York $10K Championship Debt

The past weekend a Versus $10K Championship tournament came to my hood and never having been a part of one of these, I felt compelled to get involved. This was a first, though, because it meant working under another head judge who was the same level as me and another TO (yes, NYC has two UDE Premiere Tournament Organizers). Now, I know this particular TO personally, but I've never actually worked under him, so this was entirely unfamiliar territory.

The turnout was lower than expected, only around 180 players showed up. Unfortunately, I can't really discuss my observations of how the event was run in this post because I don't like to portray people negatively in pubic forums. What I can say is that the event and those working it seemed far less professional than Pro Circuits, Pro Tours, PTQs and Regionals I've worked. The behavior of some of the judges was, I felt, unacceptable. This included how they interacted with players and how they handled their duties. Now, don't get me wrong - the event was not a catastrophy. It went smoothly and the players seemed pretty happy, but to an outside observer I think eyebrows would have been raised. There were also problems on the the side of UDE as various foils and deck boxes were not shipped for prize distribution. Hopefully this sort of thing can be remedied and will not happen again in the future.

At the event I got some experience team leading and dealing with some unique situations that only arise when multiple events are being run simultaneously with different head judges. At first it was very interesting/weird to work under a HJ who was the same level as me, but then it became less weird as he basically turned the $10K over to me on Day 2. I took the Top 24 through thier drafts and into their playoff games as well as table judged the finals. It was a long weekend as I knew it would be (a good 12+ hours each day), but I'm used to this. When I finished on Sunday I was looking forward to the relief. Unfortunately, the compensation for my effort was pretty poor. Yes, I got the $10K foils (one of each...I hope that's what we were supposed to get; PCs give multiples of certain foils), but a certain number of packs are supposed to be given to judges dependent on the number of players in the event. I'm pretty sure we got less than the minimum recommended (this was a two-day event after all). Now, I was somewhat expecting this going into the event, but seeing several judges leave early or disappear for extended periods of time and still get paid the same amount, well, that just sucks in my opinion.

At the end of the day the TO thanked me a lot for my help and said I'm welcome to judge anytime for him. As much as I love the guy, and even though I did learn some interesting things about judging and myself, I'm not a newbie at this. I head judge my own events on a regular basis and I do a stellar job. I wouldn't normally recognize this, let alone say it out load, but at this event one of the younger judges came over to me and said, "Hey! Do you remember me? When I was 13 you were running the JSS I was in. I remember I made a bad mistake and you came over and were so nice about it. I remember that to this day and now I'm a judge." I think a lot of the players and my TOs recognize this too which is why they compensate me so well. So, while this weekend put me no closer to paying off my current debt from playing soccer, it helped me see myself a little better and I feel very lucky to be respected so much by the players and by my current Magic and UDE TOs.