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NEW RULE FOR FINAL ROUND SEATING

From Vincent Ripoll, VEKN Rules Director:

In tournament play, lurking (also known as scouting) has long been seen as a necessary evil: choosing the seating in the finals is meaningless if one doesn’t know what the others are playing. However, all players are not equal in the amount of information about others´ decks they can gather – it depends on who met whom during the preliminary rounds, and of how much data you can collect from other players between rounds. Lurking often also tends to become a nuisance as players interfere in games once their own game is over.

In order to remove the necessity of lurking for the purpose of choosing one's seating for the final table, the following change was tested during the last six months throughout the world, and the feedback was highly positive. Therefore, it will be official as of January 1st 2022 (see Tournament Rules).

3.1.3. Final Round Seating
Table positions are not assigned in the final round. Instead each of the finalists is given an index card (or reasonable substitute) with his or her name on it. Each finalist shuffles his or her crypt and presents it to the judge for additional shuffling and cutting, if desired. The judge then draws three random cards from each crypt and reveals them: those, as well as the number of cards left in the crypt and to whom they belong, are public information until all the players are seated. Starting with the lowest qualifier, each qualifier places his or her index card face-up in a row on the table. When placing his or her card, each player must choose to position his or her card at either end of the row (one end of the row is equivalent to the other) or may create a space between two cards already placed. After all cards have been placed, they are read from left to right to determine seating positions in the final round. The judge will then determine randomly which player will play first. The revealed crypt cards are shuffled back into their owner's crypt.