In a recent game, a friend and I were having a discussing on the timing of Jackson's ability to remove himself from the game.

To summarize, run was successful and he accessed the card. As my opponent only had 3 credits left he was taking a few moments to decide whether or not to trash the card. Do you have a window to remove him at that point or would you have to do it just before the card is accessed.

It seems wrong to me, that as the Corp player you could sit there and wait until the Runner decides and then as soon as he starts to say anything you jump in and say that you will remove him from the game.

You have a window to rez non-ice cards and use paid abilities after the runner commits to successful run, but before the access

Check the timing chart. Jackson's 'remove from the game' effect is a paid ability. As you can see on the timing chart, the final opportunity to use these is just before the run is declared successful (which is before the access step).

Incidentally if the Jackson is the only thing in the server, and you rez/activate him in the available window, the run immediately terminates and is neither considered successful or unsuccessful (although in getting Jackson off the table, the runner may feel this is still a good outcome).

So to clarify (and I'll use a very bad dialogue to pretend we're in a game)

Lets pretend for arguments sake that a rezzed Jackson Howard is installed in a server which has a rezzed Data Raven protecting it. We could assume the game would play out similar to the text below:

Runner: "OK, so I'll take one tag for encountering Data Raven and I don't have a Killer icebreaker, so I'll not be able to break that sub-routine; have a power token."

Corp: "Fair enough. You going to continue, or jack out?"

Runner: "I'll continue, and I'll pay 3 to trash Jackson."

Corp: "Sorry, but before you continued, I was going to remove Jackson from the game..."

Same scenario, slightly different however.

Runner: "OK, so I'll take one tag for encountering Data Raven and I don't have a Killer icebreaker, so I'll not be able to break that sub-routine; have a power token."

Corp: "Fair enough". *Corp player then places power token on Data Raven and before he has a chance to say or do anything else...

Runner: "I'll continue, and I'll pay 3 to trash Jackson."

Corp: "Sorry, but before you continued, I was going to remove Jackson from the game..."

Given the examples above, can someone help me understand exactly when during those examples, the Corp player is above to use Jackson. I'm going to my 1st tournament next week and would like to be clear on the rules.

You're pretty close. Rather than 'before you continue', it should normally be 'before you access'. Give them the option of jacking out, if they don't take it you can sack Jackson after they commit to the access step but before it occurs.

Incidentally, if the runner is saying 'I continue and pay to trash' then they are skipping through steps of the timing structure and you're well within your right to roll back to the paid window where you can trash Jackson, as they never gave you the option to act during that window when you had the opportunity.

Thanks very much.