But you "benefit of the doubt"ers are insisting that they be idiots.
Even an incident like this, which is obvious and blatant cheating, the judge is required to ignore the fact that the included cards make the deck stronger and look only at the fact that the deck was incorrectly registered.
There should be no benefit of the doubt at competitve rel, the default penalties for various infractions should be tough enough to discourage cheating, and the head judge should have the discretion to downgrade if they feel it's warranted.
While removing benefit of the doubt would reduce (probably) the amount of planned cheating that occurs, it would definitely cause a very large increase in cheats of opportunity. Let's take the following situation:
Player A is playing at a PTQ and when de-sideboarding, misses a card. He and his opponent shuffle the deck, then he draws his hand of seven cards and sees that a sideboard card was left in his deck. Under the current rules, he is incentivized to call a judge as soon as he sees it, because the Game Loss penalty will most likely be downgraded (in accordance with the IPG) to a Warning, fix it, and forced mulligan.
Under an IPG where there is no benefit of the doubt, this player would receive a game loss no matter the circumstances. Since there is no incentive for him to call the penalty on himself, he keeps quiet, thus committing a cheat of opportunity.
I've been a judge for a long time, and a competitive player for even longer. I remember the times when players were "allowed one free cheat", and the times when tapping land for mana before announcing spells led to penalties (a player got DQ'ed from the finals of a PT for repeated instances of this). The current IPG is a vast upgrade to either of those two days of a bygone era.
The judge gave him the penalty as listed in the IPG, Vic replaces the extra Archdruids with Mystics, and the tourney continues. There is a game in a round sometime after that where he blocks a Woodlot Crawler with a Mutavault, and it was his honest mistake that he didn't realize the Crawler had forestwalk; he's been out of the game recently and hasn't drafted Ravnica block after DGM released, and he didn't read the card well; his opponent didn't catch it either. His (and his opponent's) mistake, but still a mistake. Same thing happened with the Stromkirk Noble. Mistakes happen, especially for a player who is rusty.
This part reminded me of something... At Team T2 GP Madison (it was the first Ravinca block, T2 3 person teams... I had a B/W weenie deck and got paired against someone playing owling mine(lot of card draw for your opponent, punish them for having lots of cards in hand). Anyway we end up in game 3(bob was bad to have game1) and my opponent calls a judge to watch for slow play because we were running low on time and our teammates split. I was nervous as hell. Apparently at one point I played a land, did some stuff swung with my dudes, played another land... I didnt notice, my opponent didnt notice, the judge didnt notice. One of my teammates noticed and told me afterwards. I had no idea and could only vaguely remember the turn that it happened on. Stuff like that happens sometimes in high pressure situations.
So what you're sayin is, that this behaviour and style of play are enough to win ptqs nowadays? Don't bother about the latest sets, don't bother about card interactions, don't bother about checking your own deck before you play, as long as youre playin that ptq instead of say a fnm to get back into the game.
I'm SO SICK of the "too strong for Standard" argument. It's the new "Dies to removal". We can have a two mana 4/4 with a zillion abilities, but we can't just have Accumulated Knowledge. Makes sense.
So what you're sayin is, that this behaviour and style of play are enough to win ptqs nowaday? Don't bother about the latest sets, don't bother about card interactions, don't bother about checking your own deck before you play, as long as youre playin that ptq instead of say a fnm to get back into the game.
I'm saying that, according to the current IPG and rules, he won. He did not do anything dishonestly, and any issues that occurred were honest mistakes. Whether that is right, well, take that up with the DCI. I'm not defending his boneheaded lack of due diligence, or his lack of being able to read. I'm simply stating that he won according to the rules, policies, and procedures currently in place.
Like to note it should be on sideboarding not shuffling as you should never see any cards when shuffling or you start over. And since you aren't looking for archdruids and only the cards you want to sideboard out (main cards in deck aren't really something you are looking for or caring about when trying to think about what to sub out), it is understandable that you miss it to some extent. How they got in there in the 1st place in more suspicious than anything else IMO.
count your deck and number of cards before you hand in your deck reg sheet, problem solved.:D
i mean the judges should have said as much before the tourney.
if this guy has as good a rep as some are proclaiming, whats to say this is not the first time he's done this.
count your deck and number of cards before you hand in your deck reg sheet, problem solved.:D
i mean the judges should have said as much before the tourney.
if this guy has as good a rep as some are proclaiming, whats to say this is not the first time he's done this.
Judges do. And what proof do you have that he has done it before?
First, the facts listed by the OP are off by one. There were no Avacyn Pilgrim's in Victor's deck. Don't know where this "fact" came from, but its wrong, as I saw his list (indeed, I was there at the event). I know him personally (have known him for 5-6 years), and I know he is no cheater. I also know the head judge, David Hibbs, who also knows Victor and I from our many years in the local Houston Magic scene.
The real story:
Vic goes to a local game store to buy his deck. His list had 4 Elvish Archdruids and 4 Elvish Mystics; the store clerk made a mistake and gave him 6 Archdruids 2 Mystics. He did not do his due diligence and ran the deck as-is at the PTQ. His decklist had already been printed out before buying the cards the night before the PTQ, so he assumed the clerk got everything right. He definitely should have checked it, but I can understand the mistake. He never caught it during the games because he only really looked at his deck during sideboarding, and he glossed over the Archdruids because they never get sided out regardless of the matchup.
During round 6, he +1s new Garruk, and reveals a 5th archdruid. He calls the judge himself, as in he saw the 5th copy, was like uhhhh wtf, and calls the judge. The judge gave him the penalty as listed in the IPG, Vic replaces the extra Archdruids with Mystics, and the tourney continues. There is a game in a round sometime after that where he blocks a Woodlot Crawler with a Mutavault, and it was his honest mistake that he didn't realize the Crawler had forestwalk; he's been out of the game recently and hasn't drafted Ravnica block after DGM released, and he didn't read the card well; his opponent didn't catch it either. His (and his opponent's) mistake, but still a mistake. Same thing happened with the Stromkirk Noble. Mistakes happen, especially for a player who is rusty.
Vic goes on to the top 8, where his semis and finals matches are watched by the head judge. He gets another game loss for his unmarked checklist cards during the semis. He wins the event. The judges who saw his matches and made the calls all felt that he was not cheating. That is the end of it. If the judges agree that he was not intentionally trying to cheat, then he still won the event, and he gets the PT invite. I agree that doesn't change his first 5 rounds, but after the fact, there is nothing the judges can do about that.
Any investigation into this issue by the DCI will almost assuredly result in him keeping his invite. The judges are on his side; nothing he did was intentional according to them, so he did not cheat, and according to the IPG he got the punishments he deserved for his mistakes. End of story.
This is shady, at best. The judges are his friends, he makes MULTIPLE questionable plays, exposing his illegal decklist. No experienced Magic player, no matter how long they've been out of the game, would make so many obvious mistakes - especially registering a decklist and not checking his deck to make sure it was good multiple times.
Your friend is a cheater and he got caught and the only reason he got away with it is because the judges are his friends.
He should lose his PT invite and the judges should be suspended, clear and simple.
As long as there is any leniency for the rules, people will continue to cheat.
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Old enough to know better, much too young to care.
Well, I think there's two things to understand. The current MIPG already considers the penalty in most infractions based on the amount of advantage that can be gained via accident, or just the impact on the event itself. Hence why infractions like Drawing Extra Cards result in a Game Loss. Whereas a regular Game Rule Violation results in a Warning. In the former, there's a potentially for a lot of advantage, and it can be hard to detect such an error. In the later, typically it's caught very quickly as the opponent can see the error too. And, if not, then there's other problems.
This is only half true.
The IPG considers the amount of advantage that can be gained, but only during the current match. So even in a case like this one where it is clear that there was also potential advantage gained in the 5 previous rounds, the IPG does not provide any way (other than deviation) to take this into account by issuing a stronger penalty.
This is, simply put, nonsensical. Any penalty given, as an absolute minimum, needs to erase the unfair advantage gained by the rules violation.
Is running 10 Elvish Archdruid a tiny thing and a pure accident? Or 15? I keep seeing this argument brought up and ignored. At what point is the advantage gained by the accident, as accidental as it may have been, too great to ignore? By the arguments given in this thread, if a player showed that he or she truly made a mistake in running any number of an important card in a deck, and went on to win many games / the entire event, a single game loss would suffice.
A lot depends on the answer to the question, "Why do you have 15 Elvish Archdruids in your deck?"
He had a perfectly plausible reason for having 6 Archdruids in the deck, and his story checked out and was believable. That goes a long way towards showing lack of intent. Now, is it possible he did it on purpose, and came up with a prepared story just in case he was caught? Yes. But you can usually tell when someone's trying to feed you a line and when someone's genuinely confused and caught off guard.
A quarterback in the NFL playoffs can't argue a delay of game penalty by saying. "Sorry. I forgot there was a play clock, my bad, honest mistake". A defensive lineman in the Superbowl can't leap off the line an cream the QB before the play started and be like "Sorry, sorry, honest mistake, I didn't do that on purpose, honest".
Hey, you just gave another example where intent matters. Jumping off the line early by mistake and going "unabated to the quarterback" is a much lighter penalty than doing it blatantly. And you can say whatever you like. Intent isn't just determined by someone saying "my bad". You can determine intent by someone's actions.
This is shady, at best. The judges are his friends, he makes MULTIPLE questionable plays, exposing his illegal decklist. No experienced Magic player, no matter how long they've been out of the game, would make so many obvious mistakes - especially registering a decklist and not checking his deck to make sure it was good multiple times.
Your friend is a cheater and he got caught and the only reason he got away with it is because the judges are his friends.
He should lose his PT invite and the judges should be suspended, clear and simple.
As long as there is any leniency for the rules, people will continue to cheat.
You are vastly misinterpreting the phrase "The judges are on his side". That doesn't mean that the judges are friends with him. It means that they ruled in his favor.
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Retrodrome!
Hoi, hoi, u embleer hrair
M'saion ulé hraka vair.
A lot depends on the answer to the question, "Why do you have 15 Elvish Archdruids in your deck?"
He had a perfectly plausible reason for having 6 Archdruids in the deck, and his story checked out and was believable. That goes a long way towards showing lack of intent. Now, is it possible he did it on purpose, and came up with a prepared story just in case he was caught? Yes. But you can usually tell when someone's trying to feed you a line and when someone's genuinely confused and caught off guard.
Hey, you just gave another example where intent matters. Jumping off the line early by mistake and going "unabated to the quarterback" is a much lighter penalty than doing it blatantly. And you can say whatever you like. Intent isn't just determined by someone saying "my bad". You can determine intent by someone's actions.
bull****
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Why do you have the power to determine if something is believable, are you in away trained to tell if someone was being truthful, especially without knowing the exact details. Or are you going off an inherent distrust of people you do not know?
Why do you have the power to determine if something is believable, are you in away trained to tell if someone was being truthful, especially without knowing the exact details. Or are you going off an inherent distrust of people you do not know?
i'm trying to reinforce how difficult it is to NOT count your cards before you play. if you can't count properly, maybe it's time to find another game:nod:
Yeah, here's the problem. I really think he should have been given (at least) a match loss for that match and all previous matches. If people put as much care into making sure they have legal Magic decks as they do into actually playing Magic, these things wouldn't happen.
There seem to be a couple of common sense improvements that can be made to the way PTQs work:
Match losses should be able to be given retroactively, and match wins should be able to be given retroactively to those opponents. This should have happened here. Yes, this means that pairings aren't correct, but that's preferable to having people lose to illegal decks.
Using an illegal deck should be a different infraction to registering your (legal) deck incorrectly, with different penalties. This in particular seems like a no brainer.
The reaction of the judges in this thread is quite frankly worrying. This event damages the credibility of the Pro Tour and competitive Magic in general. Intentional or not, this sort of thing is an egregious rule violation and winning a PTQ off the back of it shouldn't be able to happen.
That judges here would rather dismiss players' concerns and repeat the rules as they exist, rather than consider that the rules might need changing, doesn't inspire confidence. Most posts by judges in this thread have seemed to imply that if Victor's rule breaking was a genuine accident then his PTQ win should stand, and I can't take that position seriously.
This is shady, at best. The judges are his friends, he makes MULTIPLE questionable plays, exposing his illegal decklist. No experienced Magic player, no matter how long they've been out of the game, would make so many obvious mistakes - especially registering a decklist and not checking his deck to make sure it was good multiple times.
Your friend is a cheater and he got caught and the only reason he got away with it is because the judges are his friends.
He should lose his PT invite and the judges should be suspended, clear and simple.
As long as there is any leniency for the rules, people will continue to cheat.
Lol. Funniest post in this thread by far. Please, tell me more about what you would do as dictator of the DCI. Ask any judge how many magic players make stupid mistakes. The answer will no doubt surprise you.
No, it is completely true. One only has to read the "General Philosophy" section of the MIPG, which is section 1, and see the truth of that statement. Generally speaking, the penalty for each infraction addresses the specific advantage gained at the time the error is identified and the penalty is assessed.
It's a section of the document that I read before every event I judge, just as a reminder as to why I judge.
The IPG considers the amount of advantage that can be gained, but only during the current match. So even in a case like this one where it is clear that there was also potential advantage gained in the 5 previous rounds, the IPG does not provide any way (other than deviation) to take this into account by issuing a stronger penalty.
Generally speaking, most infractions that occur at that moment in time only impact that one single game. That's the baseline that the MIPG presumes, and is reasonable in the general sense of why X penalty applies to Y infraction.
Yes, this situation is more significant in the fact that a player has 6 copies of the card in his deck rather than 4. And certainly, there is a mathmatical argument that this influenced how often he drew the card during the day. But, to actually determine the extent of the advantage? That's a purely qualitative argument at this point; there's no way one could put that into quantitative terms, given how much each game differs once you involve the other player, and any number of situations that develop.
This is, simply put, nonsensical. Any penalty given, as an absolute minimum, needs to erase the unfair advantage gained by the rules violation.
Even those where the mistake results in the opponent gaining an advantage? Again, is that the system you want? Or, is it okay to penalize the player less harshly when their mistake results in them being at a disadvantage? Or not penalized at all in such situations?
And, do you want judges making that kind of assessment?
i'm trying to reinforce how difficult it is to NOT count your cards before you play. if you can't count properly, maybe it's time to find another game:nod:
Maybe you should think of a reason why one would need to count their deck, I generally have no reason to count by deck (only sideboard to make sure it is the right 15). One generally does not think that they have randomly done something wrong, when for all their observations should be a legal and playable deck. The guy didn't check out the deck and that was a mistake, but how often does a store mess up a decklist like that (if that is what happened)
Lol. Funniest post in this thread by far. Please, tell me more about what you would do as dictator of the DCI. Ask any judge how many magic players make stupid mistakes. The answer will no doubt surprise you.
Maybe you should think of a reason why one would need to count their deck, I generally have no reason to count by deck (only sideboard to make sure it is the right 15). One generally does not think that they have randomly done something wrong, when for all their observations should be a legal and playable deck. The guy didn't check out the deck and that was a mistake, but how often does a store mess up a decklist like that (if that is what happened)
because it is your responsibility to do so, count your cards.
the store LITERALLY has nothing to do with his problem of not looking at his cards.:mad:
First, the facts listed by the OP are off by one. There were no Avacyn Pilgrim's in Victor's deck. Don't know where this "fact" came from, but its wrong, as I saw his list (indeed, I was there at the event). I know him personally (have known him for 5-6 years), and I know he is no cheater. I also know the head judge, David Hibbs, who also knows Victor and I from our many years in the local Houston Magic scene.
The real story:
Vic goes to a local game store to buy his deck. His list had 4 Elvish Archdruids and 4 Elvish Mystics; the store clerk made a mistake and gave him 6 Archdruids 2 Mystics. He did not do his due diligence and ran the deck as-is at the PTQ. His decklist had already been printed out before buying the cards the night before the PTQ, so he assumed the clerk got everything right. He definitely should have checked it, but I can understand the mistake. He never caught it during the games because he only really looked at his deck during sideboarding, and he glossed over the Archdruids because they never get sided out regardless of the matchup.
During round 6, he +1s new Garruk, and reveals a 5th archdruid. He calls the judge himself, as in he saw the 5th copy, was like uhhhh wtf, and calls the judge. The judge gave him the penalty as listed in the IPG, Vic replaces the extra Archdruids with Mystics, and the tourney continues. There is a game in a round sometime after that where he blocks a Woodlot Crawler with a Mutavault, and it was his honest mistake that he didn't realize the Crawler had forestwalk; he's been out of the game recently and hasn't drafted Ravnica block after DGM released, and he didn't read the card well; his opponent didn't catch it either. His (and his opponent's) mistake, but still a mistake. Same thing happened with the Stromkirk Noble. Mistakes happen, especially for a player who is rusty.
Vic goes on to the top 8, where his semis and finals matches are watched by the head judge. He gets another game loss for his unmarked checklist cards during the semis. He wins the event. The judges who saw his matches and made the calls all felt that he was not cheating. That is the end of it. If the judges agree that he was not intentionally trying to cheat, then he still won the event, and he gets the PT invite. I agree that doesn't change his first 5 rounds, but after the fact, there is nothing the judges can do about that.
Any investigation into this issue by the DCI will almost assuredly result in him keeping his invite. The judges are on his side; nothing he did was intentional according to them, so he did not cheat, and according to the IPG he got the punishments he deserved for his mistakes. End of story.
I appreciate the story.
what doesn't jive with me is how those 6 archdruids left the clerks hands into your friends hands, got sleeved and went through 5 matches of sideboarding before only noticing the 5th archdruid revealed off garruk. Seems all to convenient to blame others.
Lol. Funniest post in this thread by far. Please, tell me more about what you would do as dictator of the DCI. Ask any judge how many magic players make stupid mistakes. The answer will no doubt surprise you.
It's about the level of discernment that is entrusted to judges. Do they make mistakes? Of course, but every step must be taken to curb the rate and capacity of those mistakes.
In this case, more than one judge likely made a mistake that cost honest Magic players a chance at a Pro Tour invite. It's unacceptable and there should be consequences.
This guy cheated, there's too much evidence stacked up against him. It's way too obvious.
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Old enough to know better, much too young to care.
because it is your responsibility to do so, count your cards.
the store LITERALLY has nothing to do with his problem of not looking at his cards.:mad:
Generally when you order cards you don't think a store will mess up like that. It may be his responsible to look at his cards but why would you if there is zero reason to think that they are wrong. I mean I go out at 4 in the morning to make sure I turned the stove off, when I already got up to do it. Just to make sure I really did it that time again.
Not saying he shouldn't have looked at the cards but to say someone who had little reason to check didn't when he believed that they were the right cards has no reason to be involved in an event is a ok argument at best
never said i did, but i've been playing for 19 yrs, and i've never made the 'mistake' of having more than 4 of a given card
so no issue with him apparently ignoring the judges????
I have been playing nearly as long and I made my 1st mistake of casting something that I did not have the mana for this past Saturday at a PTQ.
We go into my turn 3. I have Breeding Pool and Hinterland Harbor in play. I cast a Voice of Resurgence, then forget to play Hallowed Fountain from my hand. An outside player noticed it a turn later, called a Judge, and we both got a warning. I was pretty surprised that I had made a mistake like this, especially forgetting to cast Hallowed Fountain, which I noticed once I passed the turn.
Back to this PTQ. So, the player had 6 mana dorks and 6 Elvish Archdruid? It seems like a calculated mistake, but I can't really prove it. From Round 6 on, he had to play with a "legal" deck, so at least he "earned" it from that point on. Players play for many reasons. Some borrow decks. Some have no idea of the metagame. It seems like this would be corrected during deck registration where he took out every card and wrote it down on the paper. Maybe he wasn't paying attention?
The tough part is that he ended up winning the PTQ, which makes it look like cheaters prosper. However, most PTQ winners don't cheat. I know many of them. I am kind of torn in how I feel. I feel like it is a HUGE mistake. But it was at least corrected and he won the rest "fairly." Another way I feel is that it was put that way purposely to gain an unfair advantage. Some decks just need to get past those first rounds to play against their better matchups.
Honestly, if the judges did it the way that the DCI rules have it currently, I don't think they're in the wrong.
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
Holy crap. Playing extra copies @ a PTQ isn't an automatic DQ?! Learn something new every day...
I could maybe see an exception for basic lands. But how hard is it to count to FOUR. Seriously, this is really, really messed up and hopefully doesn't give others bad ideas to try.
It's an instant speed 5/5 trampler for 4. Wtf do you people want seriously? It has applications in populate/ above the curve beats decks, or in Bant control/ flash. I seriously think anyone mad at this card for any reason other than losing an attacker to instant speed wurm, should go home and make their own awesome card game and leave the rest of us alone.
It's about the level of discernment that is entrusted to judges. Do they make mistakes? Of course, but every step must be taken to curb the rate and capacity of those mistakes.
In this case, more than one judge likely made a mistake that cost honest Magic players a chance at a Pro Tour invite. It's unacceptable and there should be consequences.
This guy cheated, there's too much evidence stacked up against him. It's way too obvious.
I see zero evidence against him (when it comes intent, aka what makes cheating cheating in mtg), all I see is highly trained judges investigating a situation and calling it accidental as well as hear say that is being depicted as facts. If you disagree plz go join all the sports fans that argue at refs for their bad calls, but 1 bad call doesn't mean we should change everything. Tho I do believe they could make a rule to increase the penalty for having an above legal amount of playable cards in their deck.
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While removing benefit of the doubt would reduce (probably) the amount of planned cheating that occurs, it would definitely cause a very large increase in cheats of opportunity. Let's take the following situation:
Player A is playing at a PTQ and when de-sideboarding, misses a card. He and his opponent shuffle the deck, then he draws his hand of seven cards and sees that a sideboard card was left in his deck. Under the current rules, he is incentivized to call a judge as soon as he sees it, because the Game Loss penalty will most likely be downgraded (in accordance with the IPG) to a Warning, fix it, and forced mulligan.
Under an IPG where there is no benefit of the doubt, this player would receive a game loss no matter the circumstances. Since there is no incentive for him to call the penalty on himself, he keeps quiet, thus committing a cheat of opportunity.
I've been a judge for a long time, and a competitive player for even longer. I remember the times when players were "allowed one free cheat", and the times when tapping land for mana before announcing spells led to penalties (a player got DQ'ed from the finals of a PT for repeated instances of this). The current IPG is a vast upgrade to either of those two days of a bygone era.
This part reminded me of something... At Team T2 GP Madison (it was the first Ravinca block, T2 3 person teams... I had a B/W weenie deck and got paired against someone playing owling mine(lot of card draw for your opponent, punish them for having lots of cards in hand). Anyway we end up in game 3(bob was bad to have game1) and my opponent calls a judge to watch for slow play because we were running low on time and our teammates split. I was nervous as hell. Apparently at one point I played a land, did some stuff swung with my dudes, played another land... I didnt notice, my opponent didnt notice, the judge didnt notice. One of my teammates noticed and told me afterwards. I had no idea and could only vaguely remember the turn that it happened on. Stuff like that happens sometimes in high pressure situations.
So what you're sayin is, that this behaviour and style of play are enough to win ptqs nowadays? Don't bother about the latest sets, don't bother about card interactions, don't bother about checking your own deck before you play, as long as youre playin that ptq instead of say a fnm to get back into the game.
I'm saying that, according to the current IPG and rules, he won. He did not do anything dishonestly, and any issues that occurred were honest mistakes. Whether that is right, well, take that up with the DCI. I'm not defending his boneheaded lack of due diligence, or his lack of being able to read. I'm simply stating that he won according to the rules, policies, and procedures currently in place.
count your deck and number of cards before you hand in your deck reg sheet, problem solved.:D
i mean the judges should have said as much before the tourney.
if this guy has as good a rep as some are proclaiming, whats to say this is not the first time he's done this.
Judges do. And what proof do you have that he has done it before?
never said i did, but i've been playing for 19 yrs, and i've never made the 'mistake' of having more than 4 of a given card
so no issue with him apparently ignoring the judges????
This is shady, at best. The judges are his friends, he makes MULTIPLE questionable plays, exposing his illegal decklist. No experienced Magic player, no matter how long they've been out of the game, would make so many obvious mistakes - especially registering a decklist and not checking his deck to make sure it was good multiple times.
Your friend is a cheater and he got caught and the only reason he got away with it is because the judges are his friends.
He should lose his PT invite and the judges should be suspended, clear and simple.
As long as there is any leniency for the rules, people will continue to cheat.
This is only half true.
The IPG considers the amount of advantage that can be gained, but only during the current match. So even in a case like this one where it is clear that there was also potential advantage gained in the 5 previous rounds, the IPG does not provide any way (other than deviation) to take this into account by issuing a stronger penalty.
This is, simply put, nonsensical. Any penalty given, as an absolute minimum, needs to erase the unfair advantage gained by the rules violation.
Practice for Khans of Tarkir Limited:
Draft: (#1) (#2) (#3) (#4) (#5)
A lot depends on the answer to the question, "Why do you have 15 Elvish Archdruids in your deck?"
He had a perfectly plausible reason for having 6 Archdruids in the deck, and his story checked out and was believable. That goes a long way towards showing lack of intent. Now, is it possible he did it on purpose, and came up with a prepared story just in case he was caught? Yes. But you can usually tell when someone's trying to feed you a line and when someone's genuinely confused and caught off guard.
Hey, you just gave another example where intent matters. Jumping off the line early by mistake and going "unabated to the quarterback" is a much lighter penalty than doing it blatantly. And you can say whatever you like. Intent isn't just determined by someone saying "my bad". You can determine intent by someone's actions.
You are vastly misinterpreting the phrase "The judges are on his side". That doesn't mean that the judges are friends with him. It means that they ruled in his favor.
Hoi, hoi, u embleer hrair
M'saion ulé hraka vair.
bull****
Please do not evade the censor. Warning issued.
-Memnarch
Why do you have the power to determine if something is believable, are you in away trained to tell if someone was being truthful, especially without knowing the exact details. Or are you going off an inherent distrust of people you do not know?
i'm trying to reinforce how difficult it is to NOT count your cards before you play. if you can't count properly, maybe it's time to find another game:nod:
Yeah, here's the problem. I really think he should have been given (at least) a match loss for that match and all previous matches. If people put as much care into making sure they have legal Magic decks as they do into actually playing Magic, these things wouldn't happen.
There seem to be a couple of common sense improvements that can be made to the way PTQs work:
The reaction of the judges in this thread is quite frankly worrying. This event damages the credibility of the Pro Tour and competitive Magic in general. Intentional or not, this sort of thing is an egregious rule violation and winning a PTQ off the back of it shouldn't be able to happen.
That judges here would rather dismiss players' concerns and repeat the rules as they exist, rather than consider that the rules might need changing, doesn't inspire confidence. Most posts by judges in this thread have seemed to imply that if Victor's rule breaking was a genuine accident then his PTQ win should stand, and I can't take that position seriously.
Lol. Funniest post in this thread by far. Please, tell me more about what you would do as dictator of the DCI. Ask any judge how many magic players make stupid mistakes. The answer will no doubt surprise you.
No, it is completely true. One only has to read the "General Philosophy" section of the MIPG, which is section 1, and see the truth of that statement. Generally speaking, the penalty for each infraction addresses the specific advantage gained at the time the error is identified and the penalty is assessed.
It's a section of the document that I read before every event I judge, just as a reminder as to why I judge.
Generally speaking, most infractions that occur at that moment in time only impact that one single game. That's the baseline that the MIPG presumes, and is reasonable in the general sense of why X penalty applies to Y infraction.
Yes, this situation is more significant in the fact that a player has 6 copies of the card in his deck rather than 4. And certainly, there is a mathmatical argument that this influenced how often he drew the card during the day. But, to actually determine the extent of the advantage? That's a purely qualitative argument at this point; there's no way one could put that into quantitative terms, given how much each game differs once you involve the other player, and any number of situations that develop.
Even those where the mistake results in the opponent gaining an advantage? Again, is that the system you want? Or, is it okay to penalize the player less harshly when their mistake results in them being at a disadvantage? Or not penalized at all in such situations?
And, do you want judges making that kind of assessment?
Maybe you should think of a reason why one would need to count their deck, I generally have no reason to count by deck (only sideboard to make sure it is the right 15). One generally does not think that they have randomly done something wrong, when for all their observations should be a legal and playable deck. The guy didn't check out the deck and that was a mistake, but how often does a store mess up a decklist like that (if that is what happened)
6 of a given card is NOT a mistake
because it is your responsibility to do so, count your cards.
the store LITERALLY has nothing to do with his problem of not looking at his cards.:mad:
I appreciate the story.
what doesn't jive with me is how those 6 archdruids left the clerks hands into your friends hands, got sleeved and went through 5 matches of sideboarding before only noticing the 5th archdruid revealed off garruk. Seems all to convenient to blame others.
Must be quite the perfect storm of events.
It's about the level of discernment that is entrusted to judges. Do they make mistakes? Of course, but every step must be taken to curb the rate and capacity of those mistakes.
In this case, more than one judge likely made a mistake that cost honest Magic players a chance at a Pro Tour invite. It's unacceptable and there should be consequences.
This guy cheated, there's too much evidence stacked up against him. It's way too obvious.
Generally when you order cards you don't think a store will mess up like that. It may be his responsible to look at his cards but why would you if there is zero reason to think that they are wrong. I mean I go out at 4 in the morning to make sure I turned the stove off, when I already got up to do it. Just to make sure I really did it that time again.
Not saying he shouldn't have looked at the cards but to say someone who had little reason to check didn't when he believed that they were the right cards has no reason to be involved in an event is a ok argument at best
I have been playing nearly as long and I made my 1st mistake of casting something that I did not have the mana for this past Saturday at a PTQ.
We go into my turn 3. I have Breeding Pool and Hinterland Harbor in play. I cast a Voice of Resurgence, then forget to play Hallowed Fountain from my hand. An outside player noticed it a turn later, called a Judge, and we both got a warning. I was pretty surprised that I had made a mistake like this, especially forgetting to cast Hallowed Fountain, which I noticed once I passed the turn.
Back to this PTQ. So, the player had 6 mana dorks and 6 Elvish Archdruid? It seems like a calculated mistake, but I can't really prove it. From Round 6 on, he had to play with a "legal" deck, so at least he "earned" it from that point on. Players play for many reasons. Some borrow decks. Some have no idea of the metagame. It seems like this would be corrected during deck registration where he took out every card and wrote it down on the paper. Maybe he wasn't paying attention?
The tough part is that he ended up winning the PTQ, which makes it look like cheaters prosper. However, most PTQ winners don't cheat. I know many of them. I am kind of torn in how I feel. I feel like it is a HUGE mistake. But it was at least corrected and he won the rest "fairly." Another way I feel is that it was put that way purposely to gain an unfair advantage. Some decks just need to get past those first rounds to play against their better matchups.
Honestly, if the judges did it the way that the DCI rules have it currently, I don't think they're in the wrong.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)I could maybe see an exception for basic lands. But how hard is it to count to FOUR. Seriously, this is really, really messed up and hopefully doesn't give others bad ideas to try.
I see zero evidence against him (when it comes intent, aka what makes cheating cheating in mtg), all I see is highly trained judges investigating a situation and calling it accidental as well as hear say that is being depicted as facts. If you disagree plz go join all the sports fans that argue at refs for their bad calls, but 1 bad call doesn't mean we should change everything. Tho I do believe they could make a rule to increase the penalty for having an above legal amount of playable cards in their deck.