My question here is, how would a judge even know that such a thing has happened? Generally speaking, any ruling, correct or incorrect, will benefit at least one of the players. What would lead a judge to suspect that the player intentionally took advantage of the incorrect ruling?

Originally posted by William Barlen:

I think that a judge blowing a call should not excuse a player from his responsibility to maintain game state and adhere to the rules at all times.

Keep in mind that telling Abe that he is expected to abide by his own understanding of the rules if he believes the judge made the wrong call means that you're telling him, “If you believe a judge is wrong, you must ignore that judge.” And encouraging players to ignore judges–telling them that it's their responsibility to ignore judges–is a quick recipe for disaster.

Originally posted by Callum Milne:

William Barlen
I think that a judge blowing a call should not excuse a player from his responsibility to maintain game state and adhere to the rules at all times.

Keep in mind that telling Abe that he is expected to abide by his own understanding of the rules if he believes the judge made the wrong call means that you're telling him, “If you believe a judge is wrong, you must ignore that judge.” And encouraging players to ignore judges–telling them that it's their responsibility to ignore judges–is a quick recipe for disaster.

To expand on Callum's point here, allow me to introduce a wrinkle that I haven't seen discussed in this thread yet:

Let's change the situation slightly: Jon and Abe are playing a match, Abe calls a judge to explain a rule. The judge gives his ruling, which is correct. However, Jon, who is a bit of a smart-aleck and know-it-all, says (after the judge is beyond earshot) “that judge is full of crap, I know how this works, let's do it this way”. Abe has no idea who to believe, but Jon is adamantly sure that the judge is wrong (assume there is no reason to believe anything but that Jon actually has a misinterpretation of the rules, there is no fishy business happening here). Some rhetorical questions to think about:

1) Should Jon continue playing under his own interpretation of the rules? (remember that Jon's interpretation of the rules is wrong, and the judge, in this situation, was correct)
2) Should Abe play under Jon's interpretation of the rules, or the judge's?
3) If the players continue playing under Jon's interpretation of the rules, doesn't that undermine our role as judges, even just a little bit?

The parallels to draw here which make it analogous to the original situation are:

1) Player doesn't know the rules.
2) Judge makes a call that the player disagrees with.
3) Player ignores judge's ruling and continues playing with his own ruling.

Whether the player is objectively correct or not is beyond the scope of the situation, imo, because in the moment, during a match, the players are not going to look up the correct rule in CR; either they will obey the judge or not. Hence I think these two situations are sufficiently analogous.

Edited Lyle Waldman (Jan. 25, 2016 02:42:04 AM)

I'm sorry if this wasn't clear from the beginning.

*There was no infraction here, therefore there will not be any penalty.*

A judge was called. The judge made a ruling, which was accepted by both
players.
Abe is under no obligation to appeal the ruling, even though he thinks it
to be wrong.

If we have players second guessing every ruling, then soon enough we won't
need any floor judges making rulings anymore and we'll have tournaments
that last until the end of the week due to time extensions.

-R.

2016-01-25 9:40 GMT+01:00 Lyle Waldman <

Originally posted by William Barlen:

I respectfully disagree with the L5 (though it scares me).

If that is the case, then what policy has the player violated? Has the player then committed an infraction?

Originally posted by William Barlen:

I respectfully disagree with the L5

Good! Disagreement and discussion are how we polish our policies, and ensure we aren't overlooking something.

Originally posted by William Barlen:

(though it scares me)

Mua-ha-ha-haaa! No, seriously, I'm not a scary person.

Having said that, I'm going to stand firm on this one. Abe has no obligation to appeal what he believes is an incorrect ruling, whether that favors him, or not. This has been debated for a long time - I want to say more than 10 years? - but we always come to the same conclusion. For a lot of good reasons - many of them outlined here, by others - we don't require players to appeal, we allow them to appeal.

d:^D

Requiring players to appeal is a very slippery slope. Doing so basically
instructs players to never trust the judge's ruling. It's not hard to
imagine the implications of such an approach.

The other aspect of this is penalizing Abe for following the judge's
ruling, which is a fairly alarming suggestion. Infracting a player for
Cheating for obeying the ruling of a judge is frankly ludicrous. If a
judge makes a mistake, we'll of course correct it, but the players should
not be penalized for the judge's mistake.