Hi, my son plays at a local shop and was recently suspended because a couple of people thought he was cheating. Nobody had hard evidence (or he would have been banned for life). The reason given was that he wins too frequently (there is money and/or cards at stake). What I can say is that he spends practically every free minute watching videos about or playing mtg online, so he does invest a lot of time learning and practicing. I don't know much about mtg, but I know he plays modern and pioneer. So, my question is: how easy is it to know if someone is cheating? If they suspected him and we're watching him closely, how hard should it be to come up with hard evidence or not? Thanks in advance for any input.
To start with, in terms of your question about cheating, it can be easy or difficult depending on how well your son is cheating (if he is; I am certainly not suggesting it is true). In the end, the expectation is that there is a Magic Judge there that can observe and make that determination. It is for things like this that having a Judge is useful. Not to say they are the only ones that can see cheating obviously, but they tend to be more impartial than the players that are simply losing games. Random internet people like us (whether judges or not) can't offer much because cheating is definitely something you need to be there for.
I am not sure if you are trying to fight the cheating claim or trying to disprove it somehow so before you go too far down the rabbit hole, there are a couple things to keep in mind:
In a general sense, cheating is a pretty serious claim and one that is usually accompanied by some sort of proof. Generally speaking, if there is no evidence and the player is suspended anyway, either there is no judge or they are making a mistake. This assumes no evidence. A good Judge should be more inclined to doing an investigation to determine if cheating is, in fact, occurring. Since we really don't know the full story (and as much as it sucks, a player's mom saying they didn't do anything wrong isn't evidence one way or the other) we can only assume there is a judge and they made the right call as we have no evidence suggesting otherwise.
Now, for the second bit and likely where your son falls into based on the summary given: A store is still someone's private property and they are well within their rights to refuse service for (almost) any reason. Whether your son is cheating or not doesn't actually mean anything if they simply don't want him there. It isn't always good business sense but it is still their prerogative. So, if it is simply the store owner deciding they don't want your son as a customer, that decision goes above and beyond Magic as a game and there is very little Wizards is going to do about it. You could still report them to Wizards if you feel so inclined, but not serving your son isn't necessarily against any rules.
So, really, it comes down to what actually happened. Did your son get kicked out of a tournament because of the potential cheating? Or is your son simply not welcome at the store anymore? The former is a bit more serious as it can affect his ability to play at other stores, but the latter is simply a business's decision. If your son has the option to go to another shop, they may want to try to do that for the time being.
I feel that suspending someone from playing in a store due to suspicion of them cheating without any evidence is a pretty bold and serious claim. If the only "proof" they had was your son was winning a lot, that's VERY fishy if you ask me.
I'm not a judge or anything close to an expert on this matter but I believe they'd need MUCH more than just him winning a lot. They'd have to catch him doing something wrong in a game. and then if it was suspicious enough, they'd have to investigate to see if there was any kind of malicious intent behind it to see if there's worth suspending or banning him for.
The closest thing to this situation I know of is someone I know got DQd from an event for multiple warnings/game losses for similar errors. Even after that DQ, they were still allowed to play in future events. Although I guess most of the issues weren't malicious.
The first thing that I can see of happening is maybe people were complaining about your son winning all the time and the store owner decided to suspend him to make other people happy. Maybe they thought that suspending one person outweighed the risk of caring away other people.
What I'd suggest doing is going to the store yourself to talk to the owner or other staff to see if there's any more information you can get out of them or see if they will reverse their decision. If they're willing to be this petty, maybe it's not somewhere you'd wanna give money anyways
This is an unfortunate situation - I've really enjoyed playing MTG because I really loved the community. Losing the opportunity to play MTG would be a huge personal loss to me.
I will offer a few points when it comes to FNM vs high stakes games. When it comes to FNM, I've seen several situations on this level:
- Players offering sideboard/ deck advice in a difference language to their friends
- Players not changing sleeves frequently and these are heavy scratches
- Players play with foils/ HP cards and could be identified while shuffling
- Players shuffling with their deck upwards (this included myself)
- Forgetting their own detrimental triggers - I've had cases where I followed up with my opponent saying I did this wrong and you would have won the game and paid them the prize differences
- Deliberating being non-communicative/ rude to ward off questions about the cards from the opponent
My opponents have allowed me to do take backs, I've had players explain stuff like "you should remand the living end, not the cascade card" etc. We all had these bad situations show up, but overall my experience with the MTG and the community (both online and offline) has been overwhelming positive.
Therefore, when it comes to FNM, I'm incredibly forgiving. I'm not very happy about opponents that do not want FNM to be a casual environment and exhibit rude, salty behavior.
I advice you and your son should do is to speak to the LGS owner and what the potential concerns and speak to those people. But I will add one thing - it is unfortunate given the pandemic and most people are very on edge and frustrated about their lives. People may exhibit rude behavior, but I think its important to try to let these things go.
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Hi, my son plays at a local shop and was recently suspended because a couple of people thought he was cheating. Nobody had hard evidence (or he would have been banned for life).
I'll stop right there with a few questions to figure out exactly what happened : suspended regarding Magic the Gathering has a peculiar meaning. Suspension occurs after being disqualified at an event, followed by a report sent to a comitee in charge of reviewing the issue. It's only afterward that a suspension can be issued, so it isn't something that can be decided at a store level. Also : a life ban for cheating once is very unlikely.
So the main question here would be : is he actually suspended officially? Or do you mean by suspended that the store decided to prevent him from playing for a while there? If it's a shop decision, the only thing is to check with them for more information. If it went through the process described above, it'd mean that the Tournament Organizer or the Judge that day disqualified him, and sent a report. Normally, those reports should include a testimony from the player disqualified (at least if he accepts to write one).
An important thing to note : proof isn't required for a disqualification for cheating. Magic is not using the "Innocent until proven guilty" logic. As long as the person in charge of the investigation (then again, should be a judge, or the Tournament Organizer) is convinced that the player did all three of the following, then he may disqualify that person for cheating :
- did something that isn't allowed by the rules;
- knew that what they did isn't allowed by the rules;
- did so in order to gain an advantage.
Cheating can take so many forms in Magic it really depends from one case to another (card manipulation, draw cards without being supposed to...).
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I am not sure if you are trying to fight the cheating claim or trying to disprove it somehow so before you go too far down the rabbit hole, there are a couple things to keep in mind:
In a general sense, cheating is a pretty serious claim and one that is usually accompanied by some sort of proof. Generally speaking, if there is no evidence and the player is suspended anyway, either there is no judge or they are making a mistake. This assumes no evidence. A good Judge should be more inclined to doing an investigation to determine if cheating is, in fact, occurring. Since we really don't know the full story (and as much as it sucks, a player's mom saying they didn't do anything wrong isn't evidence one way or the other) we can only assume there is a judge and they made the right call as we have no evidence suggesting otherwise.
Now, for the second bit and likely where your son falls into based on the summary given: A store is still someone's private property and they are well within their rights to refuse service for (almost) any reason. Whether your son is cheating or not doesn't actually mean anything if they simply don't want him there. It isn't always good business sense but it is still their prerogative. So, if it is simply the store owner deciding they don't want your son as a customer, that decision goes above and beyond Magic as a game and there is very little Wizards is going to do about it. You could still report them to Wizards if you feel so inclined, but not serving your son isn't necessarily against any rules.
So, really, it comes down to what actually happened. Did your son get kicked out of a tournament because of the potential cheating? Or is your son simply not welcome at the store anymore? The former is a bit more serious as it can affect his ability to play at other stores, but the latter is simply a business's decision. If your son has the option to go to another shop, they may want to try to do that for the time being.
I'm not a judge or anything close to an expert on this matter but I believe they'd need MUCH more than just him winning a lot. They'd have to catch him doing something wrong in a game. and then if it was suspicious enough, they'd have to investigate to see if there was any kind of malicious intent behind it to see if there's worth suspending or banning him for.
The closest thing to this situation I know of is someone I know got DQd from an event for multiple warnings/game losses for similar errors. Even after that DQ, they were still allowed to play in future events. Although I guess most of the issues weren't malicious.
The first thing that I can see of happening is maybe people were complaining about your son winning all the time and the store owner decided to suspend him to make other people happy. Maybe they thought that suspending one person outweighed the risk of caring away other people.
What I'd suggest doing is going to the store yourself to talk to the owner or other staff to see if there's any more information you can get out of them or see if they will reverse their decision. If they're willing to be this petty, maybe it's not somewhere you'd wanna give money anyways
I will offer a few points when it comes to FNM vs high stakes games. When it comes to FNM, I've seen several situations on this level:
- Players offering sideboard/ deck advice in a difference language to their friends
- Players not changing sleeves frequently and these are heavy scratches
- Players play with foils/ HP cards and could be identified while shuffling
- Players shuffling with their deck upwards (this included myself)
- Forgetting their own detrimental triggers - I've had cases where I followed up with my opponent saying I did this wrong and you would have won the game and paid them the prize differences
- Deliberating being non-communicative/ rude to ward off questions about the cards from the opponent
My opponents have allowed me to do take backs, I've had players explain stuff like "you should remand the living end, not the cascade card" etc. We all had these bad situations show up, but overall my experience with the MTG and the community (both online and offline) has been overwhelming positive.
Therefore, when it comes to FNM, I'm incredibly forgiving. I'm not very happy about opponents that do not want FNM to be a casual environment and exhibit rude, salty behavior.
I advice you and your son should do is to speak to the LGS owner and what the potential concerns and speak to those people. But I will add one thing - it is unfortunate given the pandemic and most people are very on edge and frustrated about their lives. People may exhibit rude behavior, but I think its important to try to let these things go.
Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Here are some other articles I've written about fine tuning your cube:
1. Minimum Archetype Support
2. Improving Green Archetypes
3. Improving White Archetypes
4. Matchup Analysis
5. Cube Combos (Work in Progress)
Draft my Cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/d8i
I'll stop right there with a few questions to figure out exactly what happened : suspended regarding Magic the Gathering has a peculiar meaning. Suspension occurs after being disqualified at an event, followed by a report sent to a comitee in charge of reviewing the issue. It's only afterward that a suspension can be issued, so it isn't something that can be decided at a store level. Also : a life ban for cheating once is very unlikely.
So the main question here would be : is he actually suspended officially? Or do you mean by suspended that the store decided to prevent him from playing for a while there? If it's a shop decision, the only thing is to check with them for more information. If it went through the process described above, it'd mean that the Tournament Organizer or the Judge that day disqualified him, and sent a report. Normally, those reports should include a testimony from the player disqualified (at least if he accepts to write one).
An important thing to note : proof isn't required for a disqualification for cheating. Magic is not using the "Innocent until proven guilty" logic. As long as the person in charge of the investigation (then again, should be a judge, or the Tournament Organizer) is convinced that the player did all three of the following, then he may disqualify that person for cheating :
- did something that isn't allowed by the rules;
- knew that what they did isn't allowed by the rules;
- did so in order to gain an advantage.
Cheating can take so many forms in Magic it really depends from one case to another (card manipulation, draw cards without being supposed to...).