The following situation came up at an IQ I was head judging this past weekend, and I was hoping for some feedback on how best to remedy it.

NAP cracks a fetch land at the end of APs turn, shuffles, and then quickly untaps and draws for the turn (up to 2 cards in hand) without presenting the deck to AP. AP calls a judge, both players agree on what happened, and I do not suspect any sort of foul play. The situation falls pretty clearly into insufficient shuffling since the deck was not presented for additional randomization. Per the IPG, the penalty is a Warning and an additional remedy of shuffling the deck is called for.

My question is this: how should we deal with the card that was drawn? Part of me would want to back up the card draw since the ruling of insufficient shuffling would seem to indicate that the drawn card may be a (likley-) known card. On the other hand, following the general backup philosophy would seem to dictate shuffling first and then returning a card to the top of the deck to avoid randomly shuffling away a card that has been deliberately retained in the hand, with the end result being exactly the same as if the card draw were not backed up. Other possible options would be shuffling away a random card from the hand (not ideal since it seems to contradict the backup philosophy in the IPG) or use the HCE fix, which seems like a pretty major deviation from policy to me.

Ultimately I opted to leave the hand intact and simply have the deck re-shuffled, but the opponent's reaction indicated that they were less-than-pleased by that outcome, and I'm not 100% on having made the right call either.

Do you think I made the right call, or should I have employed one of the other potential fixes?

Edited Andrew Keeler (Nov. 7, 2016 07:41:30 PM)

I don't see using HCE as a major deviation from policy, and that's what I'd go with here. In my eyes, we have too many cards in hand at this point, because the player should not have two cards in hand until after their library has been cut. The library hasn't been cut/shuffled by the opponent, so the player has too many cards in hand right now, so they've committed Hidden Card Error.
I would give the opponent the “thoughtsieze” fix, return the card to the library and properly shuffle it, then have the first player draw their card for the turn from their now properly randomized deck.

Brook, that sounds like fitting an infraction to the fix you want. If you
think the player cheated, they get a DQ. If you think they didn't, you tell
them to be careful, they shuffle their deck, and you track it via the IS
Warning.

I'd be open to backing up the card draw (as you would when a player drew a
card legally before giving th'opponent opportunity to perform some action),
and letting the opponent shuffle the random card away, but I think that
damages the game, so ultimately I don't like it.

2016-11-07 18:30 GMT-05:00 Brook Gardner-Durbin <

I support your ruling. There's nothing in TE-Insufficient Shuffling that lets us backup, and applying HCE to this opens some terrible cans of worms (players conveniently forgetting to shuffle a presented deck so they will get a glimpse of the hand.)

It's worth nothing both players will never be 100% happy with a ruling, so as long as you explain the policy support for your fix, that's your best course of action.

Hi Andrew,

I also agree with you ruling.

What is most important in this scenario is a thorough investigation.

1) Separate the players.

2) Ask them for a detailed description of the situation. Was there a chance the NAP was somehow trying to distract the AP to forget about the shuffle? How did other other fetching/shuffles in the game go?

3) What is the current situation the game? Which game in the match is it? Do the players know which deck they are facing? Ask the players about the match up and where is the game heading. What are the best cards in the match up?

4) We should evaluate those two cards in NAPs hand. That means, at least, asking the AP something in the lines of “hypothetically, which card would you like your opponent to NOT draw?” Or if you are an expert Pro player besides being a Magic Judge (like Steve Hatto for example), you can try to evaluate it yourself.


For an example how cheats are easily performed in such situations, check this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g50GHHVJi9A




Second important thing is to enter the infraction into WER with enough detail, so it is possible to find any possible pattern in NAP's behavior.