We had a discussion about this in a PPTQ two weeks ago, and I would like to see what people think.
I know this issue was talked about here, but it was a while ago and my case has some different circumstances.
I'm assuming no intentional malice here, so we can skip the “investigate for cheating” part.

A spectator sees a non-detrimental trigger being missed and points it out to the players.
What if the spectator is a non-judge tournament official? A player that was told to do so by that official? What if it's just a player who thinks he's doing the right thing?

I say that pointing out a missed trigger, no matter who does it or what the trigger is, should never be considered Outside Assistance.
My reasoning is that while it may help a player, a trigger triggering is free information and pointing out free information isn't giving advantage to a player, but merely keeping the game being played by the rules.

The way missed triggers get handled by the IPG creates the illusion that remembering triggers is part of the skill set required by a player, but I believe it shouldn't be. A MT used to be a punishable offence and it is no longer so because the IPG was adapted to the way players play.
Just because not pointing out triggers is now legal, doesn't mean pointing them out should be illegal.

All that said, the spectator should be told not to intervene in ongoing matches. It's just that a ML seems way too harsh for making sure a game is played by the actual rules.

Of course, other judges disagree with me (and I can understand why), so here we are :-)
Discuss…

Given the current IPG, a player stepping in to point out a missed trigger is providing outside assistance. I don't think who does it is relevant here.

Based on the IPG a trigger only triggers if the player remembers (otherwise its a missed trigger) so it is not free information and for competitive events the IPG forms a part of the rules (particularly with regards to penalties).

I think you can either have missed triggers as an exception (currently how it is in the IPG) where forgeting non-detrimental triggers is assumed to be penalty enough and therefore have pointing these out as Outside Assistance. Or enforce all missed triggers as penalties because they're breaking rules and make this not Outside Assistance.

I'm personally in favour of the current set up. I don't think there's any illusion here; remembering triggers is part of the skill set required by players.

Yeah, according to the current rules you have three options as a spectator:
- Point out the missed trigger. If the tigger is beneficial, this is OA. If the Trigger is detrimental, I would not rule OA, but I would recommend the spectator to use option 2:
- Ask players to pause the match without stating the reason while you get a judge.
- Do nothing.

You said

Originally posted by Yuval Tzur:

The way missed triggers get handled by the IPG creates the illusion that remembering triggers is part of the skill set required by a player, but I believe it shouldn't be. A MT used to be a punishable offence and it is no longer so because the IPG was adapted to the way players play.

I agree that mandatory triggers being not so mandatory according to the IPG is a bit counter-intuitive. However, it was invented to solve a different feeling of unfairness that existed before: I don't want to tell my opponent that they are forgetting to do beneficial stuff, but I have to :( I don't want to have to help my opponent win.

I think this is not so much a discussion about missed triggers, as it is about the severity of the OA penalty for spectators.

Originally posted by Anniek Van der Peijl:

I agree that mandatory triggers being not so mandatory according to the IPG is a bit counter-intuitive.

Mandatory triggers are still mandatory, it's just that the penalty is “you don't get your trigger” instead of “warning”.

Originally posted by Anniek Van der Peijl:

I think this is not so much a discussion about missed triggers, as it is about the severity of the OA penalty for spectators.

I disagree. I believe that OA is very damaging to the tournament's integrity and ML is a good penalty. What I don't like is that the IPG took a problem (pointing triggers), classified it as “not a problem” (not pointing triggers is legal), and now everybody believes that if not pointing them is legal, pointing them is illegal.

All I'm saying is that pointing out problems with the game state shouldn't be considered as helping a player (even if he benefits from it).
I believe making missed triggers not illegal doesn't make pointing them illegal.

Originally posted by Anniek Van der Peijl:

Ask players to pause the match without stating the reason while you get a judge.

I agree, but players tend to do stuff we don't want them to :-)

Edited Yuval Tzur (June 16, 2016 09:17:30 AM)

MT is not “legal”, it is an infraction! It leads to no penalty if the trigger was not detrimental, but it still is a Game Play Error in any case. Furthermore, we do not expect spectators to know when a trigger is detrimental or not. As such, I'll not call “OA” a spectator pointing out a MT: they are pointing out a rule violation and we do not want to discourage this behavior. By the way, I would certainly educate the spectator to call a judge next time, eventually asking the players to stop, rather than directly pointing out the error to the players.

It would mess up the OA part of IPG, but I can imagine a specific exception to the usual Match Loss in case of missed triggers. Actually, I am asked this question on OA each PPTQ I judge these days (mainly because of the presence of werewolves in Standard.

Originally posted by Aruna Prem Bianzino:

MT is not “legal”, it is an infraction! It leads to no penalty if the trigger was not detrimental, but it still is a Game Play Error in any case. Furthermore, we do not expect spectators to know when a trigger is detrimental or not. As such, I'll not call “OA” a spectator pointing out a MT: they are pointing out a rule violation and we do not want to discourage this behavior.

If we, as judges, notice a player missing a (non-detrimental) trigger, we do not point it out; it seems strange if a player's friends can point out missed triggers, but not a judge.

If pointing out missed triggers is not OA, then that thus incentivizes having all your friends come watch your match if they're free to help spot missed triggers. This seems like a bad road to me.

Edited James Winward-Stuart (June 16, 2016 10:48:01 AM)

Aruna and Yuval,

I'm curious, would you feel different if the thing being pointed out is a
trigger that has not yet been “missed” as per the current IPG?

*Example:*

*You attack with a prowess creature that could be attacking for 3 if you
remembered.*
*I say: “I take two”.*
*Before you have a chance to reply, a spectator says: “no, you take three”.*

If you do feel this is OA, do you feel OA shouldn't be applied to MT only
when they are past the point where we through the IPG consider them missed?

Cheers

/Eskil M

2016-06-16 14:18 GMT+02:00 Aruna Prem Bianzino <

Originally posted by Yuval Tzur:

All I'm saying is that pointing out problems with the game state shouldn't be considered as helping a player (even if he benefits from it).
I believe making missed triggers not illegal doesn't make pointing them illegal.

Let's say that I'm a new tournament player. I ask my friend, “Hey, after you finish your match, can you watch mine and make sure I don't miss any triggers?”

Would you be okay with that?

Originally posted by Eskil Myrenberg:

I'm curious, would you feel different if the thing being pointed out is a
trigger that has not yet been “missed” as per the current IPG?

If a trigger has not been missed yet, pointing it out would change the way players make decisions (derived information), so we're no longer in the “providing free information shouldn't be punished” realm.

John Brian McCarthy
Let's say that I'm a new tournament player. I ask my friend, “Hey, after you finish your match, can you watch mine and make sure I don't miss any triggers?”

Would you be okay with that?

If the friend points out only triggers that are good for you or bad for your opponent, you're getting an advantage over your opponent. This should be investigated and is probably cheating.
But again, this is no longer “a player who thinks he's doing the right thing”.

While answering these questions, I came to a realisation:
Punishing anyone for providing free information is not the right thing to do, but the line is blurry enough to require a single solution for consistency's sake (which is the right thing to do).
If you punish all or punish none, I think punishing all is the better option, since the damage created by not punishing is greater than the good that is done by not punishing.

So, do I think pointing a missed trigger is not OA? Yes.
Do I think that the line is too blurry to consistently decide when to punish and when to let go? Even more so.

Thank you all.

Incidentally, one thing that was asked in the OP but was not covered in the ensuing discussion:

A player that was told to do so by that official?

In this case I would probably rule not OA on the basis that the player is doing what he's been told to do by someone in a position of authority. Kind of like, if a judge mistakenly tells a player to shuffle their deck, and then the player shuffles their deck, the player is then not on the hook for a GRV for shuffling inappropriately. I don't know specifically in the case of a non-judge tournament official, that gets to questionable territory, but if the tournament official is a judge and the judge tells the player to watch for missed triggers and the player intervenes on a missed trigger as a result of that instruction, I would not rule OA on that spectator. Since players may not know the difference between a judge and another tournament official, I'm inclined to not rule OA on the non-judge official case either, but that one is much more up for debate in my eyes.

That's all I have to add.

Edited Lyle Waldman (June 16, 2016 08:24:12 PM)