I have issues with extremely gray areas such as definitions of terms that do not have any true definition except “word-of-mouth” from superiors. In your opinions, what is a good definition for the phrase “uniquely identifiable”? I'm looking to get a number of peoples' opinion on this to generate my own definition that I will adhere to and hopefully teach other L1s when I hit L2.

Here are a few examples of situations where it matters to have a concrete definition and assume that the opponent can confirm the situation:
1) Someone puts an extra card on top of their hand that is flat on the table and hasn't touched their hand.
2) Someone puts an extra card into their hand on one side and they haven't moved it.
3) Someone draw one extra card from thinking it was their turn, and the judge can confirm what card they drew.

This term no longer exists in the IPG, are you referring to its former
application in Game Rule Violation?

“If the information was ever in a position where opponents had the
opportunity to verify the legality (such as on top of the library, as the
only card in hand, or on the battlefield), do not upgrade the penalty and
reveal the information if possible.”

That pretty much defines it. The definition is can you point at the card at
some point and say “That was the one that caused the issue.”

When a card touches a player's hand, it is no longer uniquely identifiable
because it easily could get mixed with the other cards. (Unless, of course,
it's the only card in hand).

So none of the situations you mentioned apply, and they would all be Game
Rule Violation upgrades or Drawing Extra Cards, depending on the situations.

Oh I should also add some examples of when this line does apply:

A player casts Mystical Tutor and puts the card right on top of the library without revealing. We can point at the top of the library and say ‘That’s the card'.

A player uses Ajani Mentor of Heroes +1 and puts the card in hand without revealing, and it's their only card in hand. We can point at that card and say “That's the card.”

For more information, consult your local library or the Annotated IPG which also goes into more detail about this:

http://wiki.magicjudges.org/en/w/Annotated_IPG/Game_Rule_Violation

Thanks CJ! I must have missed that. I thought that the term was still in the IPG and used widely. That makes my situations much easier to answer without a vague understanding of what it meant.

I'm a little confused how a player can put a card on top of their hand and
somehow have it not touch their hand as in your scenario A. The other
scenarios are very likely going to be DEC as CJ indicated.

Originally posted by Justin Miyashiro:

I'm a little confused how a player can put a card on top of their hand and
somehow have it not touch their hand as in your scenario A. The other
scenarios are very likely going to be DEC as CJ indicated.

I'm fairly certain he means his hand of cards which is lying flat has not touched his hand appendage, as in its still undoubtably the card atop this pile.

I think that in situation 1 Ryan is trying to say that the player puts the
card on top of the set of cards which is his hand but he doesn't pick them
with his hands and hold them, they remain on the table.

For me all 3 situations are clear DEC.
For situations 1 and 2, I think that the problem is that it's not easy to
be sure that the player put the card on top or on the side he tells us.
Players do not have to be careful at where their opponent puts the card he
is ilegally drawing. And we know it is possible to do sheanigans when
moving a card to the hand and place it in a different place than the player
says.

In situation 3, if we allow to downgrade, then every player would ask a
judge behind him so that when they make a mistake and do DEC they only get
a warning because a judge could verify what card he drew. That's why
players must know the identity of the card, nor spectators, judges, staff,
video coverage or whatever.

Originally posted by Cj Shrader:

When a card touches a player's hand, it is no longer uniquely identifiable
because it easily could get mixed with the other cards. (Unless, of course,
it's the only card in hand).

If the player moves the card about or is a Kibbler-shuffler then yes, it would be very easy for me to loose track of the card that was added to the hand. Conversely when a card is placed on top of three other cards that are flat on the table, and none of the cards are moved, I'm supposedly not able to tell which one it is. Not only is this counter-intuitive but also feels really unfair. Also I can't find a place where ‘uniquely identifiable’ is defined as not applying because the card was put in a hand (though I have seen this as the line taken on these and other forums).

When a player, their opponent and the judge at the table point at the same card in a hand and say with absolute certainty ‘that’s the physical card he drew' why can't we downgrade?

Added

David Larrea
… then every player would ask a judge behind him so that when they make a mistake and do DEC they only get a warning because a judge could verify what card he drew. That's why players must know the identity of the card, nor spectators, judges, staff, video coverage or whatever.

There are players who ask for all sorts of things :)

When you're in a feature match, one of the last table in turns, or just happen to have a judge watching it changes the game by errors being caught and recorded - we allow this extra vigilance to be applied to random games in tournaments that penalizes players but not this instance where a player would get a fairer outcome?

Edited Marc Shotter (April 20, 2015 07:56:08 AM)

Originally posted by Marc Shotter:

When a player, their opponent and the judge at the table point at the same card in a hand and say with absolute certainty ‘that’s the physical card he drew' why can't we downgrade?

“Come on, you know it was this one!”
“Why are you telling him you didn't know if it moved - you know better!”
“Do you really want to win on a technicality like this?”
“Judge, weren't you paying attention? You saw that these were the cards I had before…”

Letting a player pressure an opponent into “remembering” something is a dangerous road to go down - there's a reason that we don't provide players with the option to downgrade an opponent's penalty. This falls under the same line - if a player gets a penalty and gets upset, we want them to be annoyed at themselves for being careless, or annoyed at the IPG for being so heartless, or even annoyed at us for enforcing it rather than just hand-waving. We don't want them annoyed at the opponent for “being a jerk and giving me a game loss,” especially since they might have to go to the next game and keep sitting across from each other!

Aside from the social consequences, memory is a funny thing, and by suggesting that a player should remember something, it's possible that the player will do so, especially if he or she isn't “overwriting” an accurate memory of events. It's possible that a player won't know what the card was, and will accept his opponent's view of events, since the opponent seems so certain.

And in terms of that a judge remember, in some cases, I have trouble sometimes telling a player if he made a land drop that turn or not, much less what was in their hand each moment. When you're sitting at table, you're focused on not just what's going on in the actual game state, but also how much time is on the clock, what the pace of play looks like, what are people around you saying, what round is lunch break, did someone just call for a judge, etc, because unless you know an error is about to occur, you might not be focused on it. Asking that you be held accountable for saying if the player shifted the order of cards or not is likely to produce inconsistent results.

Hey Marc,

I posted the line earlier, but here it is again:

"An error that an opponent has no opportunity to verify the legality of should have its penalty upgraded. These errors involve misplaying hidden information, such as the morph ability or failing to reveal a card to prove that a choice made was a legal one. If the information was ever in a position where opponents had the opportunity to verify the legality (such as on top of the library, as the only card in hand, or on the battlefield), do not upgrade the penalty and reveal the information if possible.“

You can intuit from this that if there is more than one card in the hand, we can not ”downgrade“ (technically, we can not not upgrade).

This line of it touching the hand comes from DEC and L@EC, which both have phrasing that makes it clear that is the line at which a card is considered ”drawn.“ We have to have a line somewhere, and that's it. If we allowed judges to determine ”Well this time it was clearly that card“ where another judge would go ”We can't tell if it was that card on top,“ then we have inconsistent rulings which really sours the tournament experience for players.

From DEC: ”A player illegally puts one or more cards into his or her hand and, at the moment before he or she began the instruction or action that put a card into his or her hand, no other Game Rule Violation or Communication Policy Violation had been committed, and the error was not the result of resolving objects on the stack in an incorrect order“

Of course in the Chapin case (Which I think is what we are subtly discussing here), a GRV had happened first, but this still defines where that line is.

Some more clarification from L@EC: ”Once a card has been placed into his or her hand or if a player takes a game action after removing the card from the library, the offense is no longer Looking at Extra Cards.“

You can see the philosophy of ”the moment it touches the hand it becomes something else“ all throughout this. It may not be spelled out for GRV (though I'd argue it is with that only card in hand line).

So to go back…why can't we downgrade, even if the judge saw what the card was? ”All players are treated equally according to the guidelines of an event’s Rules Enforcement Level (REL). " Allowing some players who happen to randomly have a judge behind them downgrades while others doing the exact same thing to not get downgrades is not being treated equally. Imagine the quagmire that opens up if I'm standing behind my friend while he's playing, and I see what he drew/failed to reveal, and I give him the downgrade there but then don't give it to his opponent later because I wasn't standing behind his opponent.

The only way to treat everyone equally and fairly is to have a hard line, and the IPG has said that line is when the card touches a hand.

Hi John

I guess this is a bit corner case and I understand that the opponent may not want to admit they know the card and the judge may not actually remember, but when everyone agrees I don't see why we would upgrade this. I do take the point where this could lead to some very high expectations from players (but they already have those). The flip side is the customer service angle where everyone at the table can see what happened and that we can confirm if that play was legal because we know ‘it was that card right there!’ It leaves a bad taste I guess and a lot of the problems you highlight have the potential to exist in any judge call.

Hi CJ (love the show btw)

Originally posted by Cj Shrader:

If the information was ever in a position where opponents had the opportunity to verify the legality (such as on top of the library, as the only card in hand, or on the battlefield), do not upgrade the penalty and reveal the information if possible."

The ‘such as’ clause in the above indicates that these are not the only options but examples of when this is the case. The other problem is that the card is right now in a position where we can confirm the legality and so we have the option to reveal the information and not upgrade.

The counter to the ‘treated equally’ clause is that if a judge is sitting in at my table I wont be treated the same because the judge may catch errors that would have otherwise not been noticed (I'm not suggesting I should want that, just pointing out that it is unequal). We seem to be happy with the unequal treatment when it results in penalties but not when it could reduce them and I'm not sure why.

I think the Chapin case has raised the profile of this issue, but I'm more interested in clarifying the rules as I think the current wording has some space for confusion. I completely accept all the implications that once a card hits the hand it is ‘drawn’ but I can't see where it states that once it is drawn a card cannot possibly be identified. The way this is being interpreted currently suggests I can tell the uniqueness of a card placed on top of my library but not one placed on top of my hand?!?

(disclaimer: policy continually evolves, so this may not be true in a few years… and I certainly won't remember to go back and update this!)

The game defines what is, or is not, uniquely identifiable. While your point is fair, Marc, it is neither significant nor exceptional that all players and the judge agree on which card it was; if it doesn't match the definition, don't deviate.

The key phrase in the quote you repeated is not “such as”, but rather “was ever in a position where the opponents had the opportunity to verify”. A classic example is Enlightened Tutor; I cast this during your end step, search for a card, put it face-down on top of my library, ask you “still done?”, then untap, upkeep, and draw the card. You see what's going on, and decide to “sit on the error” until I've drawn the card, thinking you'll get a free win from my Game Loss.

The goal of that sentence is to avoid exactly that sort of shenanigans.

d:^D

The number one reason I've heard (and I agree with) for not downgrading the DEC even if everyone at the table agrees on the identity of the card is, well, Sleight of Hand. Yes, everyone at the table may *think* they know what the card is, but we can't be 100% sure even if we saw the card go into the player's hand ourselves.

That isn't a presumption of cheating, but an understanding that human memory and sight is a tricky thing. Since cameras cannot be referred to, that leaves us with the list of exceptions in the IPG.