There is no such thing as best card in the IPG or MTR. The rules would put it as a decklist error which was it was originally pointed out as. Not only that, we don't have access to the judge review of the situation. Nor are you able to establish intent here on the forum.
All of these things have been pointed out, so I'm not sure what else you want besides a link (which was provided) to the rules so you can see them yourself. Your argument is based on a combination of anger and misunderstanding of the rules which have been put out. You can be angry as you want, but it doesn't change the philosophy behind the rulings or what the ruling was.
This is a prime example there are actual judges instead of players policing each other, because everything would be a DQ and everything is cheating.
So, you can't write off my arguments to lack of experience with the subject material, so you write them off to emotion?
I'm not angry. I didn't go to this PTQ. I've never had a situation like this happen to me. It simply bothers me that someone can blatantly cheat and win a PTQ, while judges sit back and pretend the best player in the entire room is a moron when it comes to every other aspect of coherent thought but raw Magic gameplay. The fact that even the most basic common sense can't be applied to the IPG is concerning in itself. The fact that you can only defend it by writing off other people's arguments instead of addressing them does not in any way help ease those concerns.
@Valarin: Let me ask you a question, if I may. I noticed that every time you say rules should be enforced the same all the time regardless of intent, you never qualify that by saying "at Competitive or above". Would, in your ideal system, a deck error penalty at Regular REL still result in a DQ, even it's just a small town FNM? If so, isn't that a little ridiculous? If not, doesn't that contradict the very point of your system, since otherwise, either (A) bringing a Legacy deck to FNM would get the same miniscule penalty as any other deck penalty at Regular, or (B) Regular FNM would have varying penalties, for some reason, but Competitive+ would not.
@Go.dec: But if those very rules that you're told to read over aren't enforced, and the Magic community as a whole speaks out against this, why is it the community's job to defend the Head Judges for them and do intensive research as to why they may, in fact, be wrong in their perceptions? It seems to me if a large amount of any community has an issue with something that someone they're paying is doing, that person should stand up for themselves, not tell the community to figure it out by themselves because they haven't been there so they can't possibly understand - all the while ignoring the community's actual concerns entirely. As far as I can recall, that's been your only position in this thread.
@kaito: Volunteers, yes. But they don't walk home from a PTQ with nothing in their pocket for their trouble, even if it's just cards they have to sell to actually get their cash payment. And all the information circulating here about what happened at the PTQ is from people who were there. The link to the local Magic forum where the original discussion on this started is in this thread. Also, simply the information we know for certain... that he was running SIX mainboard Archdruids... that alone should be enough for anyone.
Again, I ask, if running two extra copies of your deck's best card isn't enough to get you DQed for intention cheating at Competitive REL, how many is? Ten? Twenty? Thirty? Forty? I hear a lot of vague generalizations about judging, but nothing specific. When is too much coincidence too much coincidence? I don't decry the judge system as a whole or anything, but the more I hear about stuff like this, the more I find myself trying to fathom in what alternate reality such decisions are being made. Do judges really not know that PTQ-winning players don't make mistakes that blatant for that many rounds? The fact they seem not to is what has me concerned about the system, not the other way around.
Let alone, what is the real message here? You can play 6 copies of a card and use the advantage that gives you in the tournament to win the event and get away with it. That's exactly what happened. That's the real takeaway here.
The DCI, WoTC, the IPG, judges of all levels, all were present at the event, and despite that, you are able to play an illegal deck for the majority of a tournament, and win. That's the message everyone will take away from this.
Agreed on this point. Hopefully, something will be done after the fact here, at the very least. Either that, or a much better explanation comes out for this than what we've heard so far. Not that I can even remotely imagine one...
"It was Bertoncini. He threatened my family and made me do it!" Yeah, that's about the only thing I can come up with...
And if some one walks off with your sideboard while you're staring at the board you should automatically be DQ'ed? That seems totally reasonable.
It's really hard to take players seriously that haven't run a tournament and haven't judged to be talking about these issues. There's a reason there are people that do this and you don't. So instead of raging, read your rules and play the game and if you're going to try to act like you know what's best, read the philosophy behind the rules and talk to judges to understand them.
Or maybe the judges should explain their policies to us, as we are the customers here. Wizards of the Coast is a BUSINESS. Advertising is part of business. If the infraction procedures for this kind of situation are really up to snuff, why should we have to go digging to get information about it? We're PAYING to be at these events. The judges are being PAID. Why is it that you shift the burden of responsibility to the consumer, instead of to the company expected to represent itself well? Obviously, from what many players have seen and heard, there are issues with the system. Dismissing those concerns by saying "You haven't been there. You don't know." is like a husband telling his wife "Yes, I don't really understand you at all, but what do you expect? I'm not a woman." There's a little bit of truth in it, but, overall, it's just not a productive line of discussion.
But, yes, about Valarin's assertion that someone taking your sideboard should get you DQed, I completely agree. His arguments are getting more implausible the more he's asked about them.
No, I'd like a system where having a deck that could possibly be legal (3x Elvish Archdruid, 3x Avacyn's Pilgrim where you reported 4/2, or just writing 3x Thalia) does not carry the same penalty as having a deck that could never possibly be legal deck (having 5+ Archdruids or running Counterspell in Standard).
I agree with this, too. As I've said before in this thread, as a moderately competitive player, I can't believe even a SINGLE extra copy of a mainboard card would go unnoticed by anyone with even CLOSE to the skill needed to win a PTQ, much less two. And it also happens to be the best, most important card in his entire deck? And he only catches it eventually by accident, possibly even trying to conceal it by not revealing his incriminating Garruk draw? Add to this all the other reports about unmarked checklists, clear sleeves with lands that have roughed corners, trying to block Stromkirk Noble with a Mutavault, trying to block Woodlot Crawler with Forests in play... this does not sound like it could even POSSIBLY be accidental just from the two extra cards, much less with all this extra (albeit mostly unconfirmed) information.
The more the perception grows that cheating is being ignored by judges in high level events, the more some honest Magic players are just going to avoid the whole mess and spend their time and money on something they don't feel is just going to rip them off. Either that, or start demanding the DCI just guillotine everyone who even makes an obviously honest mistake, like Valarin here is advocating. It may not be a problem now, but, if players start feeling they have to even watch out for crazy, ridiculously blatant cheats like their opponents running TWO extra copies of their deck's best cards in addition to all the other things they have to keep up with... I can't imagine that won't eventually have an effect on tournament attendance and card sales.
Oh whoa, I have no idea how to run a 200+ tournament! It is so hard to reserve space and set up tables and take money and make sure deck lists add up to 60+15 cards! And the backbreaker is timing rounds to 50 minutes! I just don't know if I can count that high. And I have to make sure all the new people with Event decks get to play in Competitive REL events without too much fuss! It's just too much to handle, really.
All I know is I see something broken and abusable. If you don't, then I worry for the future of Magic.
Woah, calm down there. He does have a small point.
What I find odd, though, is that I've been to more than a couple of competitive events and each of them start with a speech that says, among a lot of other things, something along the lines of "This event is being held at Competitive Rule Enforcement Level, so you will be expected to have a basic understanding of [Various Aspects of Competitive Level Play]." But in this thread, we're being told that it's harsh and wrong to disqualify someone who doesn't even know the most basic rules like how you can't intentionally sideboard before game 1 of a match.
Why not just say "This is Competitive Rule Enforcement Level, so like at FNM, you can kind of get away with anything as long as you don't do it more than five or six times." From some of the responses I'm hearing here, that seems like the more honest approach. And, no, I'm not saying whether or not I'd actually DQ someone for the aforementioned offense. I can believe ignorance of a single rule a lot more than I can believe blatant obliviousness spanning five rounds of gameplay plus your entire deckbuilding process.
This is my main problem: How can you not see intent? Avacyn's Pilgrim looks NOTHING like Elvish Archdruid. Different expansion symbols, one's rare, one has a bunch of text the other doesn't, different casting costs...at what point can you say, "This guy intended to cheat"? When you find his handwritten master plan for cheating? When you find his twitter account saying, "Whoa, cheated my way to a PTQ today!"? If you set the standard too high, then you will never find anyone with intent.
Agreed. I'm still waiting for someone to tell me exactly how many Elvish Archdruids you have to have in deck before a judge will just hands down call it intentional cheating.
"Stupid store. I asked for a full Standard deck and they just gave me thirty Elvish Archdruids and a bunch of basic Forests. Oh, and like six Craterhoof Behemoths. And some Mox Emeralds. Stupid store."
I personally love threads like this... their is only one person other than the player who knows 100% what happened, and that is the head judge. I personally know the head judge, and having head judged more than a few 200+ person PTQs myself, and having been in this exact situation, ask yourself this question:
Did the person cheat, intend to cheat, and know what he was doing was wrong.
I guarantee no one here knows these questions. You can assume things, and I certainly know how I would have investigated myself (see we are trained to do that). If the head judge throught he was cheating he would have been gone.
Players do lots of stupid things at times. I had a situation where a player was intentionally sideboarding for game one, and was X-1 at a PTQ I head judged. You know what... I did not DQ him. Why? He had no idea you could not presideboard.
People make mistakes... Is it unfortunate? Yes, should we change the rules for these situations... No! The rules structure is how it is for a reason.
Finally, if you are going to cheat, you will be caught, and when you are caught, a DQ is the least of your worries... The DCI tends to suspend intentional cheaters.
DO NOT DO IT!
With all due respect to you as a Level 2 Judge, Sir, responding sarcastically ("see we are trained to do that") to Magic players' concerns that cheating is not being taken seriously has the exact opposite effect of reassuring us that you're actually well-trained to handle the issue.
I do, however, agree that we must always keep an open mind when dealing with incomplete information. But, unless this entire story is completely fabricated, I cannot, as a competitive player with even LESS skill than it takes to win a PTQ, believe he didn't know he was running six mainboard copies of his deck's best card for over five rounds, based on everything I know as a competitive player.
I like to think that in Magic, like in most areas of life, a little bit of common sense can go a long way. You don't have to come up with some magic formula for exactly how many game/match losses someone should receive versus X, Y, and Z criteria of deck error to make fnord's suggestions plausible. The man played and won 5 straight rounds with an inexcusably slanted deck. Considering there were only four more matches left in the Swiss rounds of the tournament, DQing him evens out his advantage. You don't have to do a seance to determine which games in which matches the 5th and 6th Archdruids helped him and which ones they didn't. You can basically just assume them all tainted and weigh them accordingly. I'm not saying I fully support the idea or anything, but you're making it a LOT more complicated than it needs to be.
Namida, I really liked what you said about the issue in your first post. "Pretend that you are this player, and assume that playing with six Archdruids all day was an honest mistake. Would you honestly feel like you were the one wronged if you actually got disqualified here?" I thought that really summed up the issue pretty well.
I'd still like a straight answer to the question I asked earlier, though, from those who want to always give benefit of the doubt no matter what. How many Archdruids before he's blatantly cheating? Six? Eight? Ten? Twenty? How many before you'd expect a competent, competitive player of that skill level to notice reasonably early?
Also, if this kind of behavior is allowed, can I make a Battle of Wits deck with nothing but a giant stack of Islands and like a hundred Battle of Wits? Because that would be awesome...
If you ran them and won, you got a win, when yo didn't run them, you lost, and if you ran them and got caught, you would have lost. So there was no reason for you not to run 6, 8, or 10 of them.
This is an excellent point. How many Archdruids does someone have to run before it's considered intentional cheating? Would ten have been enough? Twenty? Thirty? Fourty? What arbitrary number is high enough before judges assume he had to have noticed he had too many Archdruids in his deck? My contention in this thread has always been that five alone would be too many for a skilled player to overlook for five straight rounds. I know that I often sideboard twice in competitive matches that go to game three, because you have to sideboard, again, in response to your opponent's boarded cards from game two. Then, again, I usually play Esper, which is very reactive. Still, I simply can't imagine a PTQ-winning player ever being able to overlook the fifth Archdruid for five straight rounds... much less the sixth one.
Again, I definitely don't agree with you about "Having an illegal deck, for any reason, should get you DQ'ed from a tournament." I do think there's a line that needs to be drawn. Just, right now, that line seems drawn in a way that seems a lot easier to exploit than it should be.
The initial story of 'Oh it was supposed to be another card' seems really shady to me because when I proxy cards for my deck, I NEVER use a card that I already have in my deck. I use either a completely different card, or I turn it over. I do something to make sure it's obvious. Does ANYONE here actually proxy cards the way that guy did - by putting in multiples of cards you already have in there? I'm guessing no.
The other story about getting the extras from SZ also seem fishy. Stores rarely mess up your order by giving you cards worth MORE than what they were supposed to send you. I've been ordering cards online for a decade and never has someone messed up my order by giving me more cards or more expensive cards. And honestly, if you buy something from a store, aren't you going to check to make sure they gave you everything, because you don't want to get jipped by them sending out less/the wrong stuff?
Doesn't add up...
Exactly. I hope no one offers to sell this guy four Tarmogoyfs sight unseen for $25 each. Apparently, he'll buy them and not bother to check they're actually Tarmogoyfs until someone else notices and tells him.
So if I go to a Standard game and pop out a T1 win with Belcher, it's cool cause hey, I'm just human, and picked up the wrong deck? That's the problem with the "oops" argument: it can be used to defend WAY to many things. That's why intent needs to be removed from the rules. If you broke the rules, you should get an appropriate penalty, and right now, the penalties are FAR from appropriate, to the point where they practically entice people to cheat.
I'll probably never agree that intent should be completely divorced from the penalty guidelines, but I think you make a very strong case for looking at facts and consequence more than perceived intent, and how difficult it is to have a fair tournament when a few alligator's tears can let a cheater get away with murder. (Or six Murders in the same deck.)
This kind of philosophy is great in theory, but in practice it's often really hard to determine if something is intentional or not. A skilled cheater can make it look more accidental than someone who actually did just make a mistake.
So the solution is to expect players at higher REL events to maintain a higher level of rules adherence. I agree that DQing for every little mistake is excessive, but giving only a game loss for something which could have given a player an unfair advantage in 10-20 games isn't nearly enough.
I haven't commented before because I've mostly been discussing this on an entirely different subpoint from you, but I really agree with a lot of what you've had to say here. Intent can't be completely divorced from rule enforcement because then you have a kid who shows up with the wrong deck out of ignorance getting the same DQ as some shady guy doing it to intentionally cheat his way through a PTQ. But, like you seem to be saying, we're not mind readers. It's hard to infer intent from someone without basically conducting a police-level investigation into their background, behavior, and actions. The more that facts and consequence dictate rules enforcement, the less hunches judges have to make about the thoughts in another man or woman's head.
@binger: Like I said earlier, I threw my deck for a different PTQ together in a few hours in the middle of the night, and I still checked the thing card for card at least three times before the PTQ started. I can't imagine someone just picking up a deck somewhere and playing it in such a big event sight unseen. Not if you actually want to win anything.
And that's what should be done. A Judge Investigation that allows the Judge Staff come to a relatively clear verdict (and I hope that was done in this case).
I agree. But when offenses that reek so foul of cheating are being ignored by such investigations time and time, again, it is the honor of the vigilant people of the Magic community to draw attention to the matter and determine whether or not the systems, officials, and judgments used in these matters are really working as well as they need to be. Or, at the very least, we can cultivate a little more common sense in these matters. Remember, it was the community that eventually caught up to Bertoncini, even though I agree with EX that it would have been better for him to have been given the usual due process. Even when Bertoncini cheated on camera, and one of the commentators noticed and called it out, he was given a pass. This definitely raises concerns among the Magic community, discouraging attendance at larger events the more this perception of tolerated foul play, true or not, continues to grow.
@EX: This thread is not mute, at all. The perception that cheating is rampant among top level Magic play is a growing one. The concerns players have with perceived cheaters getting away with these kinds of offenses over and over and over and over before being caught are increasing. Even if the system does work well enough as currently implemented, people are coming to doubt this, so creating a forum for judges like yourself to step up and politely explain why things work the way they do and why we wouldn't want them to work any other way is very productive towards the end of quashing false perceptions, at the very least, don't you think? Stagnation is the mark of something dying, why wouldn't we, as the Magic community, want to continue to take interest in the competitive workings of the game we all know and love if we want it to continue to succeed?
If I'm unfortunate enough to be next to a man who is shot on three separate occasions, I can only hope that it is not considered sufficient evidence to convict me of murder.
Convict? No. Make the police suspicious enough to investigate you further? I'd hope so.
OmegaLegacy, I should be clear that I'm playing devil's/DCI's advocate here because typically no one does, or everyone ignores it. I was on the Bertoncini "ban"-dwaggon back when it happened and I personally regret being so quick to judge. I still feel he got what was coming to him, and I'm glad the DCI acted at some point, but I would personally be very content with someone getting away with it to commit an offense again later so that we were certain they were up to no good rather than DQ and possibly suspend someone for an honest mistake, much like what happened with Bertoncini.
The offenses and their details are recorded by the DCI, and will be kept in the event they happen a bunch more. The person will receive a longer suspension for all these if they're ever determined to be cheating. This means that either they won't do it again since they realize they're being monitored, or they will and they'll just get 1... 2... 3 years suspended from playing their game in a sanctioned capacity.
But you raise a good point. Did the judges make the right call? Did they ask the right questions? Did they give away more or less information when investigating that hey should have? I'm not them, I wasn't there, I don't know them, so I don't know. Hopefully they're asking these same questions, and working to improve for the future to maintain the integrity of ALL the events we all play in, in the future.
EX33396948:
I appreciate your respectful discourse. I understand what you're saying exactly. This situation just rings so foul with what I know as even a slightly competitive Magic player, I feel compelled to draw focus to it.
Are you honestly suggesting that Judges start making rulings based on hunches? Is that what you really want to start happening? What if one sees a player running 57 cards that they know to be shady from their LGS? Should they be DQd?
I'd personally prefer it if that overwhelming power and responsibility be left out of the hands of the few. I'd love to see some of the DQs that would be submitted to Wizards of the Coast.
"Why did <player X> get banned?"
"Because he had a decklist problem, and was playing with clear sleeves."
"Makes sense, good job."
Where does it stop? Shady-looking characters? If a judge recently has a personal problem with another player and sees them having a DDLP issue, do they have the right to DQ them? You're suggesting giving judges complete power with no oversight (not that I'm recommending oversight for Judges, because either is a terrible solution).
The best-case is to have set-in-stone rules that allow judges the right to conduct their own investigations in cases of cheating, and only DQ if they see that there's a problem. Circumstantial evidence is always circumstantial.
Silvortal:
You misunderstand me completely. Acting on hunches is exactly what I'm decrying. I'm saying that it's **** near impossible for a Magic player with even my petty level of competitiveness, much less the ability to win a PTQ, to play five straight rounds of high level Magic and not know he has six copies of his most important card in his deck. It seems to me the only way a judge could NOT consider this cheating is to be playing on their biases and assumptions. The transparency of a man's sleeves is definitely not something I'd want a judge considering, but I'm not a judge. I'm simply an informed layman giving my opinion, so I can consider whatever evidence I want, especially since I can't interview the relevant parties like a judge can. Circumstantial evidence is still evidence, and people go to jail for it every day when enough of it adds up on the same suspicious side of the scale. "I only happened to be walking next to the man when someone else mysteriously shot him" only works the first one or two times at best.
So, you can't write off my arguments to lack of experience with the subject material, so you write them off to emotion?
I'm not angry. I didn't go to this PTQ. I've never had a situation like this happen to me. It simply bothers me that someone can blatantly cheat and win a PTQ, while judges sit back and pretend the best player in the entire room is a moron when it comes to every other aspect of coherent thought but raw Magic gameplay. The fact that even the most basic common sense can't be applied to the IPG is concerning in itself. The fact that you can only defend it by writing off other people's arguments instead of addressing them does not in any way help ease those concerns.
@Valarin: Let me ask you a question, if I may. I noticed that every time you say rules should be enforced the same all the time regardless of intent, you never qualify that by saying "at Competitive or above". Would, in your ideal system, a deck error penalty at Regular REL still result in a DQ, even it's just a small town FNM? If so, isn't that a little ridiculous? If not, doesn't that contradict the very point of your system, since otherwise, either (A) bringing a Legacy deck to FNM would get the same miniscule penalty as any other deck penalty at Regular, or (B) Regular FNM would have varying penalties, for some reason, but Competitive+ would not.
@kaito: Volunteers, yes. But they don't walk home from a PTQ with nothing in their pocket for their trouble, even if it's just cards they have to sell to actually get their cash payment. And all the information circulating here about what happened at the PTQ is from people who were there. The link to the local Magic forum where the original discussion on this started is in this thread. Also, simply the information we know for certain... that he was running SIX mainboard Archdruids... that alone should be enough for anyone.
Again, I ask, if running two extra copies of your deck's best card isn't enough to get you DQed for intention cheating at Competitive REL, how many is? Ten? Twenty? Thirty? Forty? I hear a lot of vague generalizations about judging, but nothing specific. When is too much coincidence too much coincidence? I don't decry the judge system as a whole or anything, but the more I hear about stuff like this, the more I find myself trying to fathom in what alternate reality such decisions are being made. Do judges really not know that PTQ-winning players don't make mistakes that blatant for that many rounds? The fact they seem not to is what has me concerned about the system, not the other way around.
Agreed on this point. Hopefully, something will be done after the fact here, at the very least. Either that, or a much better explanation comes out for this than what we've heard so far. Not that I can even remotely imagine one...
"It was Bertoncini. He threatened my family and made me do it!" Yeah, that's about the only thing I can come up with...
Or maybe the judges should explain their policies to us, as we are the customers here. Wizards of the Coast is a BUSINESS. Advertising is part of business. If the infraction procedures for this kind of situation are really up to snuff, why should we have to go digging to get information about it? We're PAYING to be at these events. The judges are being PAID. Why is it that you shift the burden of responsibility to the consumer, instead of to the company expected to represent itself well? Obviously, from what many players have seen and heard, there are issues with the system. Dismissing those concerns by saying "You haven't been there. You don't know." is like a husband telling his wife "Yes, I don't really understand you at all, but what do you expect? I'm not a woman." There's a little bit of truth in it, but, overall, it's just not a productive line of discussion.
But, yes, about Valarin's assertion that someone taking your sideboard should get you DQed, I completely agree. His arguments are getting more implausible the more he's asked about them.
I agree with this, too. As I've said before in this thread, as a moderately competitive player, I can't believe even a SINGLE extra copy of a mainboard card would go unnoticed by anyone with even CLOSE to the skill needed to win a PTQ, much less two. And it also happens to be the best, most important card in his entire deck? And he only catches it eventually by accident, possibly even trying to conceal it by not revealing his incriminating Garruk draw? Add to this all the other reports about unmarked checklists, clear sleeves with lands that have roughed corners, trying to block Stromkirk Noble with a Mutavault, trying to block Woodlot Crawler with Forests in play... this does not sound like it could even POSSIBLY be accidental just from the two extra cards, much less with all this extra (albeit mostly unconfirmed) information.
The more the perception grows that cheating is being ignored by judges in high level events, the more some honest Magic players are just going to avoid the whole mess and spend their time and money on something they don't feel is just going to rip them off. Either that, or start demanding the DCI just guillotine everyone who even makes an obviously honest mistake, like Valarin here is advocating. It may not be a problem now, but, if players start feeling they have to even watch out for crazy, ridiculously blatant cheats like their opponents running TWO extra copies of their deck's best cards in addition to all the other things they have to keep up with... I can't imagine that won't eventually have an effect on tournament attendance and card sales.
Woah, calm down there. He does have a small point.
What I find odd, though, is that I've been to more than a couple of competitive events and each of them start with a speech that says, among a lot of other things, something along the lines of "This event is being held at Competitive Rule Enforcement Level, so you will be expected to have a basic understanding of [Various Aspects of Competitive Level Play]." But in this thread, we're being told that it's harsh and wrong to disqualify someone who doesn't even know the most basic rules like how you can't intentionally sideboard before game 1 of a match.
Why not just say "This is Competitive Rule Enforcement Level, so like at FNM, you can kind of get away with anything as long as you don't do it more than five or six times." From some of the responses I'm hearing here, that seems like the more honest approach. And, no, I'm not saying whether or not I'd actually DQ someone for the aforementioned offense. I can believe ignorance of a single rule a lot more than I can believe blatant obliviousness spanning five rounds of gameplay plus your entire deckbuilding process.
Agreed. I'm still waiting for someone to tell me exactly how many Elvish Archdruids you have to have in deck before a judge will just hands down call it intentional cheating.
"Stupid store. I asked for a full Standard deck and they just gave me thirty Elvish Archdruids and a bunch of basic Forests. Oh, and like six Craterhoof Behemoths. And some Mox Emeralds. Stupid store."
With all due respect to you as a Level 2 Judge, Sir, responding sarcastically ("see we are trained to do that") to Magic players' concerns that cheating is not being taken seriously has the exact opposite effect of reassuring us that you're actually well-trained to handle the issue.
I do, however, agree that we must always keep an open mind when dealing with incomplete information. But, unless this entire story is completely fabricated, I cannot, as a competitive player with even LESS skill than it takes to win a PTQ, believe he didn't know he was running six mainboard copies of his deck's best card for over five rounds, based on everything I know as a competitive player.
I like to think that in Magic, like in most areas of life, a little bit of common sense can go a long way. You don't have to come up with some magic formula for exactly how many game/match losses someone should receive versus X, Y, and Z criteria of deck error to make fnord's suggestions plausible. The man played and won 5 straight rounds with an inexcusably slanted deck. Considering there were only four more matches left in the Swiss rounds of the tournament, DQing him evens out his advantage. You don't have to do a seance to determine which games in which matches the 5th and 6th Archdruids helped him and which ones they didn't. You can basically just assume them all tainted and weigh them accordingly. I'm not saying I fully support the idea or anything, but you're making it a LOT more complicated than it needs to be.
Namida, I really liked what you said about the issue in your first post. "Pretend that you are this player, and assume that playing with six Archdruids all day was an honest mistake. Would you honestly feel like you were the one wronged if you actually got disqualified here?" I thought that really summed up the issue pretty well.
I'd still like a straight answer to the question I asked earlier, though, from those who want to always give benefit of the doubt no matter what. How many Archdruids before he's blatantly cheating? Six? Eight? Ten? Twenty? How many before you'd expect a competent, competitive player of that skill level to notice reasonably early?
Also, if this kind of behavior is allowed, can I make a Battle of Wits deck with nothing but a giant stack of Islands and like a hundred Battle of Wits? Because that would be awesome...
This is an excellent point. How many Archdruids does someone have to run before it's considered intentional cheating? Would ten have been enough? Twenty? Thirty? Fourty? What arbitrary number is high enough before judges assume he had to have noticed he had too many Archdruids in his deck? My contention in this thread has always been that five alone would be too many for a skilled player to overlook for five straight rounds. I know that I often sideboard twice in competitive matches that go to game three, because you have to sideboard, again, in response to your opponent's boarded cards from game two. Then, again, I usually play Esper, which is very reactive. Still, I simply can't imagine a PTQ-winning player ever being able to overlook the fifth Archdruid for five straight rounds... much less the sixth one.
Again, I definitely don't agree with you about "Having an illegal deck, for any reason, should get you DQ'ed from a tournament." I do think there's a line that needs to be drawn. Just, right now, that line seems drawn in a way that seems a lot easier to exploit than it should be.
Exactly. I hope no one offers to sell this guy four Tarmogoyfs sight unseen for $25 each. Apparently, he'll buy them and not bother to check they're actually Tarmogoyfs until someone else notices and tells him.
I'll probably never agree that intent should be completely divorced from the penalty guidelines, but I think you make a very strong case for looking at facts and consequence more than perceived intent, and how difficult it is to have a fair tournament when a few alligator's tears can let a cheater get away with murder. (Or six Murders in the same deck.)
I haven't commented before because I've mostly been discussing this on an entirely different subpoint from you, but I really agree with a lot of what you've had to say here. Intent can't be completely divorced from rule enforcement because then you have a kid who shows up with the wrong deck out of ignorance getting the same DQ as some shady guy doing it to intentionally cheat his way through a PTQ. But, like you seem to be saying, we're not mind readers. It's hard to infer intent from someone without basically conducting a police-level investigation into their background, behavior, and actions. The more that facts and consequence dictate rules enforcement, the less hunches judges have to make about the thoughts in another man or woman's head.
@binger: Like I said earlier, I threw my deck for a different PTQ together in a few hours in the middle of the night, and I still checked the thing card for card at least three times before the PTQ started. I can't imagine someone just picking up a deck somewhere and playing it in such a big event sight unseen. Not if you actually want to win anything.
I agree. But when offenses that reek so foul of cheating are being ignored by such investigations time and time, again, it is the honor of the vigilant people of the Magic community to draw attention to the matter and determine whether or not the systems, officials, and judgments used in these matters are really working as well as they need to be. Or, at the very least, we can cultivate a little more common sense in these matters. Remember, it was the community that eventually caught up to Bertoncini, even though I agree with EX that it would have been better for him to have been given the usual due process. Even when Bertoncini cheated on camera, and one of the commentators noticed and called it out, he was given a pass. This definitely raises concerns among the Magic community, discouraging attendance at larger events the more this perception of tolerated foul play, true or not, continues to grow.
@EX: This thread is not mute, at all. The perception that cheating is rampant among top level Magic play is a growing one. The concerns players have with perceived cheaters getting away with these kinds of offenses over and over and over and over before being caught are increasing. Even if the system does work well enough as currently implemented, people are coming to doubt this, so creating a forum for judges like yourself to step up and politely explain why things work the way they do and why we wouldn't want them to work any other way is very productive towards the end of quashing false perceptions, at the very least, don't you think? Stagnation is the mark of something dying, why wouldn't we, as the Magic community, want to continue to take interest in the competitive workings of the game we all know and love if we want it to continue to succeed?
Convict? No. Make the police suspicious enough to investigate you further? I'd hope so.
I appreciate your respectful discourse. I understand what you're saying exactly. This situation just rings so foul with what I know as even a slightly competitive Magic player, I feel compelled to draw focus to it.
You misunderstand me completely. Acting on hunches is exactly what I'm decrying. I'm saying that it's **** near impossible for a Magic player with even my petty level of competitiveness, much less the ability to win a PTQ, to play five straight rounds of high level Magic and not know he has six copies of his most important card in his deck. It seems to me the only way a judge could NOT consider this cheating is to be playing on their biases and assumptions. The transparency of a man's sleeves is definitely not something I'd want a judge considering, but I'm not a judge. I'm simply an informed layman giving my opinion, so I can consider whatever evidence I want, especially since I can't interview the relevant parties like a judge can. Circumstantial evidence is still evidence, and people go to jail for it every day when enough of it adds up on the same suspicious side of the scale. "I only happened to be walking next to the man when someone else mysteriously shot him" only works the first one or two times at best.