[FSPA] Leaving early tonight

[Joe Schober]

There were some questions around this situation that Rob described, so although he did a good job explaining what's going on, here's a little extra background...

FSPA has always had a rule that a player can't ask to use preplays once they know their group's machine picks (i.e. approx 15 minutes before league starts, if they're at the league location).  The reason for this is simple: we don't want players abusing the preplay system by seeing that their group is playing Oktoberfest for game 4, knowing they have a great preplay score on that machine, and then after game 3 saying "something came up, I have to leave, use my preplay".

Rob describes a situation where a player knows far in advance that they'll have to leave league early for a prior commitment, and requests that their preplays be used for specific game numbers (e.g. 3rd and 4th games of the meet), without knowledge of which machines those will be.  Once that request is accepted, it's irrevocable once the machine picks are set, to avoid any possibility of a player gaming the preplay system.  In short, instead of the commonly-seen "I'm absent next week, use my preplays for all four games", this is "I'm absent for games 3 and 4 next week, use my preplays for those two games".

Since Rob happens to be the league commissioner as well as the player affected in this particular situation, he deferred to the entire FSPA exec team to make a ruling on whether this was a legit use of preplays, and the group consensus was that this adhered to both the letter and the intent of the rules.

Hopefully this clarifies things.  Please don't hesitate to ping me or any FSPA official if you ever have questions or concerns about how our rules are applied.

Thanks...

--Joe