so, i played my first tournament the other night.

as the timer counted down up in the corner of the screen, the atmosphere in games became increasingly exciteable. various friends of mine and others on my table popped in to ask if we were in. everyone was anticipating the big moment.

the tournament started, and, unsurprisingly, a lot of familiar faces from the tables were in there. everyone was chatting and discussing moves. i had a bad couple of games and soon was in the last place in the tournament, (perhaps 37th ish?) although with enough points to play another game. a few friends noticed this and dropped into the table i was watching to tell me to get my act together. everyone was having a laugh and enjoying the games.

now, here's where my question starts.

in what was potentially my last match in this tournament, i was randomly seated on a table with one of my oldest friends from this game. i hadn't even known he was playing kdice at the time, let alone that he was in the tourney, so i was surprised to see him. obviously, we started chatting. after a few rounds, when we were both doing okay but weren't in a position to do incredibly well, he saw i was on low points and said he would defend me from the much larger player i was fighting. i treated it as any other truce and was grateful for the help. he sort of suicided on the larger player and somehow had a lot of luck with his defends, and suddenly we were in a position to take down the whole table, which we did. doing well in this game meant that i gained back some points, and eventually, ended up getting a top ten place in the tournament.

i've been having some moral qualms about that game since. if i hadn't been helped by my friend, i would almost certainly have been out of the tournament; however, a truce with any other player would have helped exactly the same. i know it wasn't a PGA because we arranged nothing beforehand and truced very visibly in the chatbox; it was a genuine truce and i have no worries about that definition. what concerns me is the advantage players with many friends may have in a tournament as opposed to lower table players who haven't yet made many friendships on the site yet, whether this counts as a fair advantage, and whether it is fair to use it as we would any other?

the social element of this site is one that most of us value very highly, and being randomly seated with a friend in a tournament is always a nice surprise. i think that acknowledging the other player's presence and working with them without mentioning anything in the chatbox would give the players concerned an unfair advantage, but when a truce is mentioned in the chatbox, and when everyone is aware of it, is it a bad thing? is it any different from any other truce or is this classed as PGA?

thoughts on the subject would be appreciated.

(i clicked discussion ages ago.)