Hello everyone,

I just want to kick off a discussion about the scenario given in http://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/3304/

In short: A player wants his opponent to forget something about the game. He calls for a judge for some irrelevant questions, in order to waste some time, hoping his opponent loses the awareness of a trigger or something.

The player cleary didn't break any rule. Since his intentional time wasting was not to abuse the time limit, so the offense is not Stalling. Since it doesn't fit in any situation in the IPG, there is no infraction and no penalty.
Although, the whole situation leaves a bad taste.

The player intentionally wastes time of his opponent (and the time of a judge) in order to get an advantage, and there is no penalty? This seems very wrong to me.

In my opinion, intentional time wasting is an huge offense. It damages the integrity of the actual match, and the whole tournament. Players should not be able to abuse judge calls, to waste time in their match, in order to get an advantage.

Perhaps the Unsporting Conduct - Stalling Infraction should be updated to cover that.
In my opinion, intentional time wasting for whatever reason (and not only in order to take advantage of the time limit) is an DQable offense.

As has been brought up before, this seems like a dangerous idea. After all, if this were an infraction, we would have to then determine what calls are “legitimate” and which are “frivolous”. What we don't want is players being afraid to call a judge for fear of having their question be ruled as “frivolous”.

I don't necessarily agree that it's DQable, but it's not something I'd want to see at tournaments I'm HJing. It's a difficult spot to be in, though, because if I try to apply the “blanket fix” we have of giving the player a direct instruction and then tagging them with USC-Major if they neglect that instruction, there's some amount of that which will lead to a message of not bringing rules questions to judges (either for fear of getting the USC penalty or just in general).

I think it ultimately falls into the band of things that I may not like, much like players trying to jedi mind trick each other and causing communication problems in the process, but ultimately have to live with as a judge who needs to remain a neutral third party.

Edited Rebecca Lawrence (March 11, 2013 11:57:49 AM)

I agree with Edgar. Because of our position as neutral arbiters of the rules, as much as we may not like it, we are “part” of the game at Competitive events. If I can tell that a player is asking something that they don't really need to ask me, I'll tell them to get back to their match, but there's not really any penalty we can give here - if we start trying to come up with a barometer of which judge calls are legitimate or not, it's going to end up with players being afraid to call us because we may think that they're trying to waste our time, and thus incur a penalty.

The most we can really do in this situation is make sure that we're giving clear, concise answers to questions so that these players can't take up too much time when they are asking them. As Scott Marshall pointed out in that other thread, the responsibility is, in the end, on the Pact player to remember their own trigger. If their opponent uses a legal means to try to set them up to forget it, then I have no problem with that.

@Farid: To be clear, in the scenario in the other thread, the judge had proof that the player used the ruling time to throw off his opponent. That alone makes this situation more hypothetical than anything, because a player isn't going to admit to that unless they're particularly dense. As a judge, you should not be making that call on your own because it falls outside of the short list of things that we have to “eyeball”, such as Slow Play.

My original point was that even though there are behaviors that may be generally unwanted while not clearly defined in the IPG as Unsporting, a HJ still has the final say in what's unsporting and what isn't, and that determination should be used sparingly. Your better option is to prevent these corner cases by being professional and efficient in the first place; don't rush through your rulings, but be concise and make sure players understand each step of the explanation. Don't consider whether or not the player is trying to waste your time, but if the player is going over the same steps repeatedly, make it clear that you have responsibilities to other players in the event and gently encourage the player to return to the game - stay professional! Long rulings are at times unavoidable (I've heard tell of a high-profile event match with a 50 minute time extension).

OK, I am compelled to step in here. My apologies if my views below expressed are unpopular; it reflects my inexperience in judging and my great length of experience in gaming (holy cow, 30 years?) and game-mastering.

I was dissatisfied with the final word on the aforementioned thread, because it speaks to legality and technicality, not the spirit of the game, nor of gaming. Perhaps that perspective is an error on my part or a flaw I carry. It is certainly not aspersion cast upon that response's author.

If such a player were sitting at my table in my house gaming any game at all and they intended to use some means outside of the game itself being played to gain advantage, shenanigans would be called. Whether it's tickling someone playing a driving video game or erasing items from a character sheet and writing them on your own while the other guy is in the can, it is violating the essence of gaming: the only real win is by adhering to the rules, or you've just “won” something that was not that actual game.

There is no rule in Monopoly that states one cannot simply swipe property cards form another player when they go get a beer, but I'm pretty sure that if the guy was seriously going to keep the property card, I'd tell him to keep playing without me.

Just as there is nothing in our policies which prevents a player acting as the example player did, there is nothing in the IPG or MTR that prevents me from learning the example player's name, and then announcing over the PA loudspeaker that “Player Name is willing to use all advantages to win and is clearly demonstrating by his/her actions that he/she is unwilling to game in an honorable manner. I recommend all future opponents of Player Name watch this opponent carefully for such poor games-person-ship.” Also not violating our policy is making that announcement to each opponent by personally coming over to the table and sitting there to watch the entire game, and give the poor gamesperson penalties at every opportunity the observing judge can think.

Allowing the example player to act in the fashion they have seems to directly condone that behavior: that winning is better than playing. I, personally, do not define a good gaming experience by winning, and it is clear that the large majority of Magic players (and other gamers as a whole) would agree with me, since tournaments have a lot of happy players and only one can win. When we prize the letter of the law over the spirit of the law, we get only the direct result – more folks who seek only to win at all costs and less folks who actually want to game for the joy of gaming. From the MTR, section 4.1:

“The philosophy of the DCI is that a player should have an advantage due to better understanding of the rules of a game, greater awareness of the interactions in the current game state, and superior tactical planning.”

If this means the kind of things like the example player enumerated, then I might be spending my time writing in the wrong place.

This truth I have learned in my gaming career: those who seek to “win” at gaming as their singular defining criterion for their gaming experience destroy the joy and fun of that experience for everyone they contact, without exception. Even two such individuals who meet will force their sociopathy upon eachother, and eventually a judge ends up sitting there at the table. In every instance in every gaming situation I have been in through RPGs, Wargames, board games, card games, and even video games to a large extent, never have one of these individuals made people want to play; in fact, the opposite effect is observed, again, without exception.

So if the advice from higher level judges is for me to tolerate and accept and therefore implicitly condone such behavior, I must respectfully ask: how does this serve the players of the current event, the makers of the game, and the tournament organizers in any beneficial way? Only one person gets rewarded for this behavior, and then we either send the message that it is acceptable and condoned implicitly, or worse, encouraged.

When gaming stops being about the game being played, I will stop being a gamer.

Again, my sincerest apologies if I have offended anyone with this point of view. I felt compelled to express it, and you have my apologies if this is inappropriate for this list.

Thank you for your time and consideration!

I don’t know as if we have another solution, or that another one could possibly be better than the one we have now, as I’ve batted a few ideas around in my head tonight, but every one that I’ve come up with seems to have one problem or another.



About the only thing I can think to do that isn’t a problem, is something I plan on doing at the next regular rel draft that I’m playing in.



I plan to discuss this situation with the players at the event, and make sure everyone gets a chance to talk about their feelings on it. By doing so I hope to do a couple of things:

1) Increase awareness of the trick, and hence decrease the effectiveness of it. (If one of my regulars has heard of the trick and someone tries it on them, it probably won’t work)

2) I’m confident that my regulars are going to determine it to be “sketchy”, and thus we’ll set up bad feelings for anyone who tries it, making my regulars unlikely to try such a move themselves.



Beyond that, I haven’t got any good ideas for dealing with this beyond what we already have.



With no offence intended to the authors, the IPG will never be perfect, simply because it’s a written document and we can’t expect the authors to anticipate everything, nor would a version that did anticipate everything be remotely comprehensible for us judges. Besides, as others have pointed out, changes to try and prevent players from making frivolous calls would have other negative repercussions.



I also considered the idea of prefacing a judge call by asking a player if the question was relative to the game, and reminding them that if they lie to a judge that is a DQ, but that sets a very adversarial tone for conversations with people who we’re supposed to be helping. I considered the idea of doing it just for the player with the history of such behaviour, but that seems to go against the idea of remaining neutral.



It feels bad to me to, but honestly there are so few cases of things that I feel bad about in this game, that I think we just have to take the bad with the good and deal with it.

Edited Michael White (March 11, 2013 09:54:16 PM)

Agreed. We have excellent guidance for the vast majority of issues, I was hoping to hear about gut reactions and creative solutions. I wouldn't expect this at a small or local event, but possibly a big one with potential relative anonymity.

Over the years I've been judging, discussions such as this have always come up. Fundamentally, we cannot penalise players for calling a judge unless they are using it to abuse a time limit as outlined in the Unsporting Conduct - Stalling infraction.

Whether your moral compass would allow you to take these actions, you cannot place your own values upon others, if what they are doing are within the rules. The MTR species what a floor judge's role is -

1.8 Floor Judges
Floor judges are available to players and spectators to answer questions, deal with illegal plays, or assist with reasonable requests

If a player calls a judge over and wants to ask a question, whatever the overall motive for asking that question we must as judges accept that call, answer the question to the best of our ability and then move on. If that causes an opponent to forget something, miss something or anything, it's not our responsibility, it's not he player who called us over's responsibility. It's the player that missed/forgot something.

I've seen players propose a blocking scheme that is disadvantageous, in the hope the player will think it's the right blocks and just say “sure, block that way”, only to discover the player was able to do something with that and either win that combat or next. Are we going to DQ the player for “gaming” their opponent? I know some players will try and keep up a banter of discussion, chats, commentary etc, just to try and distract their opponent. Are we going to DQ the player because they are just talking a lot? If it's not profanity or abusive or hateful it's not penalisable.

What often helps is when the local playing community frowns on things like that. I wouldn't suggest getting on the PA and abusing a player for doing things like this either, from a judge or TO it comes across as very biased against that player and that player may well feel victimised and think that future rulings against them are because you are actively biased against them.

(moderator hat on) I'm going to keep this thread open, but if it starts to go around in circles it will be closed. Remember when posting ask yourself if you are adding to the discussion something that hasn't already been said or moving the discussion forward, if neither is true, please don't post.)

I'm not punishing anyone for using psychological warfare within a game (within the rules) that causes their opponent to miss triggers. I'm punishing someone for intentionally misusing the services that I'm providing to all players. If anyone does that in a tournament that I'm running, I'm calling it unsporting major and giving them a GL. This is not me “placing my values on others”; this is such a brain-dead obvious common sense call that I'm flabbergasted we're still discussing it. If that makes me a bad M:tG judge, well, I can think of much worse things to be. As a judge I've been verbally abused and physically threatened by everyone from spectators to TOs. I'm not looking for validation; I do it because I believe in promoting gaming and sportsmanship in all contexts. I am honestly and truly on the same side as everyone else here.

But mods, please don't act like you're doing us favors by keeping threads open when you'd clearly rather just close them and move on. I've made this clear to Scott and I'm making it clear here - having any kind of open discussion about judging experiences on these forums is like pulling teeth. I don't know if it's just because higher-level judges feel like giving practical, off-the-book advice to lower level judges is somehow beneath them, or if it's a symptom of being thousands of miles from each other behind a computer screen, because I've never had any problems having discussions with other judges I've had the pleasure of actually working with who have made my skills and insights better. No one's ever told me my question wasn't helpful, or that if I didn't have something good to ask I shouldn't ask it at all. They don't pick out individual parts of questions that they can give authoritative answers to and ignore the question that's actually being asked. Why can't we have that kind of working environment here? Why does every discussion have to trickle down from a select few? Why can't we have a community instead of an aristocracy?

How is one supposed to determine if a player wasted time asking a question?

Is everyone that could possibly do this going to straight out tell you their purpose?

If a player is this tournament savvy, will they not have a seemingly legitimate rules question to ‘pick your brain’ on to do such a thing?

Should a judge have to question the motive of every aside or request for clarification? Should they do so before/after assessing the game state?

What it seems like to me is that if one wants to pursue a DQ for someone possibly wasting time in order to gain a tactical advantage, it might get a few that actually are doing so. It is a slippery slope as said before, one that will end up making players unwilling to call a judge for fear of a DQ.

Know what players are not going to stop doing this? The same players that would be willing to use this tactical advantage are more than likely intelligent enough and tournament savvy enough to ask pertinent game state information that they are ‘unclear’ about.

Just my two cents, I think that it would be unfair to judges to mandate that they make such a subjective call.

Thank you for your thoughts.

As Aaron pointed out. I don't want to penalise a player who calls for a judge. I wan't to penalise one who intentionally wastes time in order to gain an advantage.

We seldom have evidence about the intention of a player. How do we know that the guy who just tried to Ultimate Price that Knight of Glory wasn't aware of that Protection of Black Ability? Of course we always act “in dubio pro reo”. But I claim, that most of the Cheating infractions are not penalisied because they look like honest mistakes, because the intentional violation cannot be proved.

I never try to classify a judge call as “legitimate” or “frivolous” in order to penalise a player. And seldom we will be able to prove, that a player actually is abusing a judge call, in order to gain an advantage. But if we can, its taken as a legitimate action anyway?

Looking at this case from a policy angle: Why does intentionally wasting time in order to take an advantage of the time limit is not acceptable, but intentionally wasting time for gaining some other advantage in the game is?

I also examined the Definition and Examples of the Stalling Infraction in the IPG. Example C mentions that a player is guilty of stalling, if he appeals a warning in order to have more time to make a decision. In this example the player also isn't taking advantage of the time limit, but he is trying to gain more time by abusing the services provided by the judges. How is this example different from the initial situation? And how does it fit in the current definition of the Stalling Infraction?

Originally posted by Aaron Huntsman:

I'm not punishing anyone for using psychological warfare within a game (within the rules) that causes their opponent to miss triggers. I'm punishing someone for intentionally misusing the services that I'm providing to all players. If anyone does that in a tournament that I'm running, I'm calling it unsporting major and giving them a GL. This is not me “placing my values on others”; this is such a brain-dead obvious common sense call that I'm flabbergasted we're still discussing it. If that makes me a bad M:tG judge, well, I can think of much worse things to be. As a judge I've been verbally abused and physically threatened by everyone from spectators to TOs. I'm not looking for validation; I do it because I believe in promoting gaming and sportsmanship in all contexts. I am honestly and truly on the same side as everyone else here.

There are indeed mechanisms within the MIPG that allow a player to be punished for behavior that is truly egregious. However, as a judge, you are going to have to reflect careful on when and how you draw the line on dealing with that behavior. Keep in mind that when you come down as a strict disciplinary, that also sends a message to your community about how YOU behave. It also sends a message about the Judge Program itself and how the rest of us somehow “act towards players”. If players see us as the opposition, then that is a detriment to the entire community.

So, yes, you can certainly take this approach with using the MIPG. But, frankly, I see using the MIPG as a blunt instrument to be more of a detriment than a incentive. It may not feel ideal, but pushing to educate players on “wasting time” (and I think the number of those incidents is truly few and far between) and then leaving actual punishment waiting in the wings is a bit more helpful. At least if you are trying to actually modify behavior.

Originally posted by Aaron Huntsman:

But mods, please don't act like you're doing us favors by keeping threads open when you'd clearly rather just close them and move on. I've made this clear to Scott and I'm making it clear here - having any kind of open discussion about judging experiences on these forums is like pulling teeth. I don't know if it's just because higher-level judges feel like giving practical, off-the-book advice to lower level judges is somehow beneath them, or if it's a symptom of being thousands of miles from each other behind a computer screen, because I've never had any problems having discussions with other judges I've had the pleasure of actually working with who have made my skills and insights better. No one's ever told me my question wasn't helpful, or that if I didn't have something good to ask I shouldn't ask it at all. They don't pick out individual parts of questions that they can give authoritative answers to and ignore the question that's actually being asked. Why can't we have that kind of working environment here? Why does every discussion have to trickle down from a select few? Why can't we have a community instead of an aristocracy?

Perhaps this is something you could share with Mark and/or others in private, rather than publicly? I mean, it seems rather unfortunate to put something up like this in a public manner, it draws attention away from the very discussion we could be having, or should be having. I think there are good and bad aspects to the behavior, and Farid asks some very good follow-up questions… But getting into this kind of side conversation, especially with some pretty loaded language, is only going to derail the thread.

For example, I get tired of seeing us “higher-level judges” ignored in favor of an fficial response from Toby or Scott. What is my opinion? Chopped liver? Perhaps, instead, we can publicly discuss the situation and even have a back and forth via opinions on the subject, since really we are peers here regardless of level, and share some private feedback if something that is stated isn't fitting in the thread itself. As personally, I do try to be clear on actual opinion and discussion, but there are also times where I think directing someone to read policy is necessary. Especially when it is clear the person posting has missed something in the MIPG or MTR. If that makes someone unhappy or disgruntled, perhaps rather than publicly berate me, message me directly?

As I was taught when younger; praise in public, chastise in private.

Calling a judge to ask a rules question is never a waste of time. If it takes 2 minutes to answer a rules question, you give the match a 2-minute time extension. Yes, it could add time to the overall tournament, but it is still valid to answer the question. The player is not Stalling because they are not gaining any advantage in the amount of time to play the match. We should not be penalizing players for calling a judge. It sets a very bad message to players that will create adversarial relationships between judges and players. If you think that the player is using a judge call as a strategic play, such as distracting the player or to bluff about having a counterspell in hand, just explain to the player that judges are not there to help players strategically. Are there occasional times where it might seem appropriate to penalize a player, but it isn't worth the harm it does to the community by telling players that calling a judge could get you DQed if the judge doesn't think it is a good question. We are there to help the players. Sometimes that help may be abused, but we still need to provide that help for the good of the community.

Edited Shawn Doherty (March 14, 2013 08:05:23 AM)

Thanks Mark!

I would not condone calling such an example player out, because that is inconsistent with my view of how a judge should comport oneself.

What I reject is the notion that I should tacitly accept such behavior. Were I faced with such a situation, I would report it to the TO and let them handle it, and possibly keep an eye on future matches of theirs. If the TO does nothing, I don't have to work their events in the future.