Judge calls, penalties and rulings
Take a call from the floor, record what you ruled, and grant a table extra time.
A table calls for a judge
Anybody at a table can call for a judge from the public pairing page — no app, no account. The call appears on the console with the table, what it is about, and how long it has been waiting.
A judge claims it, which tells everybody else it is being handled. If two judges claim it at the same moment the first one holds it and the second is told who.
An open call stops the next round. A table still waiting on a ruling is a table whose result is not settled, and pairing on it would build the next round on a number that is about to change.
Ending a call
Every call ends with what actually happened: a ruling was given, there was no infraction, a penalty was issued, or the table sorted it out before anybody arrived. There is no way to close one without saying which — a call nobody can account for a week later is the same as no record at all.
You can grant the table extra time as part of the resolution. The extra time belongs to that table and the round clock is not moved: everybody else was playing while that table was waiting, and moving the room clock would take time from them to give it back to one table.
After the event, the judge summary lists every call, how long each table waited, and how it ended. Most calls produce no penalty, and those are exactly the ones a penalty log cannot show you.
Writing one up
A penalty is a record against one entry, with the infraction, the level, the round and who issued it.
It never changes a result by itself. If a ruling should also change what was reported, record the penalty and then correct the result — two deliberate acts, both on the record, rather than one that quietly does both.
What a judge sees
A player’s penalties travel with the competition, so a judge with no signal can still see that this is somebody’s second warning tonight. That is exactly the judge who needs to know.
Two judges writing up the same player at the same time produces two penalties. That is correct — two things happened.
The levels
The levels and infractions come from the ruleset, not from us. A sanctioned Magic event and a school club do not share a penalty ladder and should not be made to.