It wasn’t a death save. I’ve had a number of people remind me of this. I know what one looks like. In my youth I did them!
The intent of my statement was that if sliding twice is forbidden, then how is sliding once permitted? I completely disagree with people that think that sliding is part of the game. It’s not part of the game. It can only be accomplished if you have physical advantage. I thought we were playing the game, not moving furniture.
There’s lots I could say here that would provide more context to why I would have chosen a verbal for Eric Stone and a yellow for Alex. I can’t really get into them without it devolving into something else.
When it comes to tournaments, I totally agree we need to set the example early and then lead by it, especially with new players. Eric only does himself a disservice by what he says and does. Also, Eric’s violation was emotional and did not affect the game’s outcome. Alex’s was physical. But I’m already starting to dig too deep.
None of the players in the room during the main finals round were new tournament players. They are used to people getting emotional. Also, we have to use the right touch to get the result we want. A verbal to Eric Stone would have sent enough of a message such that he would not have repeated the behavior. That’s my final word on all of that.
Thank you for the great feedback on the stream overall. As you can guess, it takes a team to make the dream work. Thankfully I had wonderful support.
It’s not. Just because a death save requires sliding the game in two directions, doesn’t mean sliding a game twice is forbidden.
If you want to stop players from sliding games, you have the tools to do so. Rubber feet, no tilt warnings, tight tilt, etc.
But if you really want sliding to be made illegal, you’ll need to make this absolutely clear up front to the players well in advance of your tournaments, or you’ll have some very upset players. Making sliding illegal will be a very uncommon rule.
Great discussion!
Sliding twice is permitted. Or three times. Whatever the tilt bob allows. The double-slide (or single slide, depending on your technique) of a death save isn’t prohibited due to the act of sliding — it’s prohibited because of the state of the ball/game, and what it attempts to do to the ball in that game state. You could even perform a death save with a relatively innocuous physical nudge, depending on which pin we’re talking about and how fast the ball is rolling down the apron.
The great news here, is that in tournaments where you are the TD, you control the solution: Tighten the tilt bob. Or use rubber feet. Or both.
Oh, and don’t use BSD or game that have similar debounce software logic that allow a massive move without giving two dangers + tilt in one single move.
But please don’t claim something is in the IFPA rules, when it isn’t.
Further, my son, who takes after his dad and is not tall for his age, at the young age of 7, was able to make slide saves. And when it wasn’t during competition, he was able to death save. Most pins — depending on the floor — do not require much physical stature to slide them.
The issue I raised was not related to when in the tourney TDs should use yellow cards. Once again, TD discretion.
The issue was your comment that your willingness, as a TD, to give Stone a yellow card was based on that you knew him as a person. Full stop. This type of bias must be avoided by TDs.
“None of the players in the room…” — I understand the premise of what you’re saying, though I disagree. I would suggest here that how you adjudicate outbursts and language content shouldn’t be based on the composition of who’s in the room at the time, nor the stage of the tournament. Particularly when you’re streaming the event to a much wider audience, with no way of knowing the online audience composition.
what about not useing it at all till the rom bugs and other issues are fixed.
Your call as a TD. BSD certainly has bugs. Though this question isn’t related to this thread’s topic.
Just to confirm then are you saying that slide saves are not legal at Pinball Asylum tourneys?
If you don’t want slides, rubber feet are the solution as mentioned by many people already. Without them it is certain that machines will move around to some extent.
I got a talk once for doing a move like in the video. A verbal warning for a legitimate save can screw the player by making them exert too much caution in situations where a ball could be saved. It’s not a good mindset for competitive play and I was upset about it for some time.
Your mental well being isn’t the responsibility of the TD. You need to prepare yourself for bad calls, errors, other situations you have no control over.
Other than unbalanced mystery awards, BSD is an awesome tournament game. Below are PAPA’s notes on the game.
The mystery award is random and is significant enough in many situations to cause a competitive imbalance. Directors are encouraged to install modified roms that limit the mystery to 500k. Another potential fix is to lower the mystery timer to one second.
https://replayfoundation.org/papa/learning-center/director-guide/game-notes/
Yeah BSD is a fantastic tournament game.
Better adjustment im is to just disconnect the right inlane switch (light mystery) and set the mystery to start off in the factory software. No modified roms needed 
I like to do this for the outlane save on Star Trek and million dollar shot on NBAFB. Then also take out the insert light.
I understand for NBAFB but Star Trek? Why not just set the outlane save to start off and set the kickback to hard? Give it some risk/reward.
I had one that still played way too long and didn’t have any other game options.
As far as the original ruling goes, I’ll say this. I understand that the players need to alert a TD that something has happened, and they need to do so timely. But I think for an ongoing issue, sometime during the game before they’ve played their last ball, might be timely enough. Maybe they didn’t feel comfortable approaching the TD, if everyone else thought it was just a joke.
If someone started the game in Spanish against me, I’d get a ruling and I wouldn’t care that I killed the ‘funny joke,’ but that’s just me. I know plenty of people who would be just as unhappy about it and say nothing, just because they wouldn’t want to go against the others and cause some sort of problem.
I think the ruling shouldn’t be about when they came to you, as long as they didn’t wait until the game was over, but rather if it materially changed the game. Which as a TD you could rule however you felt about it. I might go with Bowen/Pinburgh on this one, honestly. I can certainly see the argument for it.
I was the TD for the tournament. I walked up and saw the situation on WPT about the time player 3 was on his second ball. I chose not to say anything since the game was in progress. After the game was over I came up to collect the scores and one player mentioned the Spanish language setting in passing, not asking for a ruling.
As I said above if the player had complained or asked for a ruling before he plunged, or early in the game I would have forced the players to restart the game.
I don’t think, in general, that a TD should have to wait for a player to ask for a ruling, if they know something is happening that should be ruled on. Are you saying that because it was ball 3 it is too late to seek help?
There are exceptions to jumping in and ruling, such as (not) preventing a player from playing out of turn.
I would agree with this. I am a newer TD but I think it is up to me to set the pace and tone of a tournament. See something say something applies 10 fold to me since I am the authoritiy figure there.
I don’t assume anything. It’s a neutral area. Even if players are used to it doesn’t make it right. I would still strive to keep a great environment. How do we know they are “used” to it? Maybe they don’t like it but don’t want to “be that guy” since he is a bigger player.
In my experience of TD’ing for the past 6 years or so, I don’t think interrupting and restarting a game in progress for a general game state issue like this, i.e. not related to a malfunction, makes sense if the players themselves aren’t asking me to intervene. Yes, if I had noticed this before the first ball was plunged, or before player two plunged, I would have said something and asked the players if they’d like to restart in English. So yes, to answer your question, because the game was well in progress and no one asked/complained about the game state, I let the game proceed.