You can find the full rules for judging at regular REL here: https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/jar/

A quick synopsis:
· the focus is on player education
· you are not required to remind opponents of missed triggers, but judges / TOs can if they are watching (and at LLM we probably will!)
· intentional cheating is of course still prohibited and would result in being removed from an event

Why are we making this change?

LLMs have been running for over 7 years now, with changes to the venue, prizing, and of course attendees during that time. The original purpose of the tournaments was to provide a relaxed ‘training ground’ with some reasonable stakes so that people could practice for bigger Legacy events in the UK and Europe. In addition, it’s become clear over the years that LLM and its sister events in Nottingham and the West are important nuclei for the social network of eternal format players in the UK. LLMs have long been ‘pub REL’ with the idea that one should play to win but not penalise small mistakes or misunderstandings. With all this in mind, we feel that an official move to Regular REL accurately reflects the renewed emphasis on the accessible and social side of LLM, which has always been important. We know that lots of people play their first Legacy tournament at LLM and we want to make sure that those players have a positive experience as well as the grizzled vets.

What does this mean for me? Probably nothing. The majority of games at LLMs have always been played at a friendly trot, with takebacks given and obvious mistakes pointed out helpfully where no new information has been gained. LLM was never a competitive REL event anyway, so the ‘no penalties’ part of regular REL is nothing new. The change is intended to clearly signal how LLM games are already played, not actually change how they are played.

Won’t this make LLMs less competitive? No. LLMs were never run at Competitive REL. If you were comfortable playing for stakes at LLMs before, you should still be comfortable doing that going forward. We hope this change will make LLMs even more fun and rewarding going forward and we look forward to seeing everyone on 18th August.