Tim asked me to re-post this... it's something that I posted in the original thread in the staff forum but it's definitely important and should be addressed by TO's.
Sorry for the long post but it's for a good reason.
Next item I want to bring up about rules...more specifically, officiating:
When you run a pool/bracket, you are also that pool's/bracket's official, aka, the first authority that players go to when a problem arises.
Anyway, when I was in umpire school, one of the first things we learned is that there are some rules that can only be enforced if the other team "protests" before the next pitch is thrown. For instance, if a player bats out of order, the defense must bring it to the umpire's attention before the pitcher throws a pitch to the next batter...otherwise the at bat becomes a legal at bat and there is nothing the umpire can do about it.
I bring this up for a specific reason: Now that we're going to enforce the "winner stays AND stays with same costume" rule, we have to be prepared for anything. Most of us who run pools do not watch the matches, just run the pools and and stay on our laptops to get reports.
-We aren't in position to watch every player's character/costume choice.
-If we see a player win and then choose a different character/costume, we are, in effect giving an advantage to the player who lost because, IMO, it is up to that player to be aware of what character/costume his opponent used and therefore, also his responsibility to report any change of character/costume to the official BEFORE the start of the next match.
-If the player chooses to not say anything, then proceeds to play out the match and is losing/lose the match, THEN reports that the winner changed character/costume, the match thereby becomes a legal match and the official can no-longer grant a re-play.
I have learned from umpiring, that its never a matter of IF something will happen, but WHEN. This will happen one day and we need to protect ourselves as officials by having a standardized rule that we can turn to in order to clarify the situation.
This is just my personal opinion and if you like what you see, I can summarize as such:
1. Winner Stays with character/costume choice
2. If winner changes character/costume, loser is obligated to inform official BEFORE the start of the next match.
3. If loser does not inform official before the match, and proceeds to lose the match, the match is considered legal.
4. If the Winner changes character/costume, and loser reports correctly, and winner refuses to change back, winner thereby forfeits that match(not the series) and the series continues from that point.
Again, just my personal opinion. As officials, you have to protect yourself and if we go out of our way to tell a winner when he changes either on purpose or accidentally, then we open ourselves to criticism if we don't do that for EVERY MATCH that we're responsible for.
