Change in Tokyo Masters

Jeff Donais

There has been a change to the invitation list for Tokyo Masters. Based on an appeal filed by the team "Panzer Hunters," we have corrected their DCI 3-person team rating, which puts them four rating points higher than Rolled-Up Aces (as of the date of the rating-based invitations to the Masters Series tournament in Tokyo). There was a problem with K-values for two Pro Tour Qualifiers that were held in Japan during last year's team qualifier season for Pro Tour-New York. Because two of the Qualifiers in Japan were post-sanctioned instead of pre-sanctioned, they inadvertently had a 16 K-value entered instead of 32 K-value, diminishing their impact on Panzer Hunters' rating. These tournaments, which showed that Panzer Hunters had a higher rating than Rolled Up Aces, were discovered and corrected the week after the invitations to the Tokyo Masters were posted. Panzer Hunters correctly filed an appeal more than three weeks before the Masters event (which is the deadline for rating-based appeals). We investigated the matter and found that Panzer Hunters had actually earned the invitation to the Tokyo Masters and Rolled-Up Aces did not actually earn the invitation to the tournament.

We have already contacted Rolled-Up Aces and Panzer Hunters to inform them of the change. Although Rolled-Up Aces cannot play in the Masters in Tokyo, all three members do posses an invitation to Pro Tour Tokyo and are also eligible to compete in the Masters Gateway tournament. If someone is granted a rating-based appeal to attend a Pro Tour, we simply add them to the invitation list and do not remove anyone else from the tournament. Because events like the Masters have a limited number of spots, we must ensure that the number of teams attending is correct and that only teams that have appropriately earned an invitation are allowed to play.

Because of the nature of the event and the relatively short-notice involved, the DCI has offered to pay for the airfare and hotel of Rolled-Up Aces and give them some money to cover additional expenses. We realize that Tokyo is expensive and that Rolled-Up Aces may not have booked their tickets if they had known that they were not competing in the Masters, which guarantees each competing team $3,000. Rolled-Up Aces will enjoy an all-expenses paid trip to Tokyo to compete in the Pro Tour and Gateway tournament.

On behalf of the DCI, I would like to apologize for the inconvenience to Rolled-Up Aces. They are all fine players and fine people (Shawn Keller, Thomas Keller and Dan Clegg). The sanctioning method that was used for the two Qualifiers that had their K-value misreported has been fixed and errors of this specific nature should not occur in the future for Qualifiers in Japan since they will all be presanctioned. The DCI allows rating-based appeals because of the high number of tournaments that are run each year (nearly 100,000) and the potential for an error to occur at the player level, tournament organizer level or data-entry level. With 5,000,000 (five million) sanctioned matches in the database, we have an extremely high accuracy rate, especially for newer matches reported using the 8-digit DCI number system and the new sanctioning system which includes direct tournament results uploaded using DCI Reporter software. Errors will occur, since events are sanctioned in over fifty countries by thousands of different tournament organizers of varying skill levels. When we spot an error, we investigate the cause, fix the error and correct the cause of the error through process or policy improvements.

I would like to make it completely clear that Rolled-Up Aces has done nothing wrong in this situation and has acted professionally through its resolution. Since they did not meet the criteria for an invitation, they should never have been invited to the event. We also apologize to Panzer Hunters, who legitimately earned an invitation by meeting the rating criteria, for not discovering our error earlier. Team Panzer Hunters has also been very professional and patient during this process. We thank both teams for their understanding and professional attitude.

The final invitation list for the Tokyo Masters is:

Car Acrobatic Team (USA)
Your Move Games (USA)
Potato Nation (USA/Canada)
Black Ops (France)
Outland (Norway)
Game Empire (USA)
Panzer Hunters (Japan)
+ 1 invitation through the Masters Gateway tournament next Thursday in Tokyo.

Take Care,
Jeff Donais
DCI Tournament Manager