At SCS yesterday, I was playing Monopoly, and got a tilt warning, so I caught the ball for a bit to let the tilt settle. While I had the ball cradled, the game started ball searching (which definitely shouldn’t happen?), and partway through the first search, something it did started scoring points (not big points, I think I saw 50k or something)… At that point I panicked and flipped the ball away and then drained STDM, losing the game
What should I have done here, per the rules? If it hadn’t been scoring points I probably would have just stayed cradled and tried to grab a TD as I was pretty sure this was a malfunction (or maybe just a bug…) but I didn’t want to sit there just scoring points while I waited. As far as I was aware, all the TDs could also have been playing at the time so I’m not sure how long it would have taken. (on another note, this seems like a horrible system, why is the TD even playing in the competition? but oh well)
Shouldn’t of flipped. Stayed cradled and got the TD however long it takes. If there was a scoring issue with something falsely triggering with vibrations or whatever it’s going to keep happening probably even during gameplay. TD will make appropriate ruling when they get there.
If a game is malfunctioning hitting a ball away isn’t ever the correct reaction.
If it were me, I would probably line up a shot quickly and send the ball away, for fear that waiting for a TD ruling might be worse for me. The ball might get flipped away by the ball search. Or the game might give up looking for the ball and end the ball, or plunge a new one into play. Getting another ball on a new game might be really bad (like in Monopoly, you’d lose your progress around the board).
Of course I’d keep an eye out for phantom scoring and call for a ruling if it continued to happen (but the initially awarded amount happened just one time, and was pretty inconsequential).
I believe the most likely cause of this is probably a non-functioning end of stroke switch?
This is my biggest fear when a game starts ball searching… It’s never going to end well. Hopefully it was disabled but you can never be sure.
I assumed it would keep happening each ball search, and with how low scoring this game is I could picture 5-10 ball searches giving enough points to affect the game
Assuming the game was malfunctioning… I was sure it seemed weird but I know there’s a rule somewhere about purposely triggering ball search so there must be some games where you can do it.
I guess the other thing in my mind was, what is the TD going to do? Is this a big enough malfunction to end the game? I assume not. So, just tell me to stop cradling for too long or ignore it and play on?
I assume that continuing to cradle and not calling a TD would be against the rules. Would it still be if it wasn’t scoring? Was it bad (eg, possibly grounds for actually getting in trouble) to ignore this and attempt to play on (even though playing on ‘fixes’ this issue?)?
Short version - if the game is malfunctioning… TD needs to be brought in. Josh has been pretty consistent in that if you take rulings into your own hand… then you live or die by the action you took and the TD can’t retro-con choices you made. So if you think its bad… get the TD and wait it out.
You can’t (in any good conscious) penalize a player for delays waiting for a TD. They may make a call about the outcome, but penalize you for trapping to call a TD? Don’t see it happening
