Hi,

I would like to present three situations and I'd be happy I you would share your opinions on these situations. How do you intervene, and why? The REL is regular, but we're not talking about FNM. In all the three situations there's a new player with little to no tournament experience who's manaweaving his deck in the pattern of spell - spell - land.


Situation A:

The player is manaweaving his deck, but shuffles properly before presenting the deck to his/her opponent.


Situation B:

The player is manaweaving his deck, and shuffles halfheartedly by just repeatedly putting chunks from the bottom to the top.

Situation C:

The player is manaweaving his deck, and shuffles halfheartedly by just repeatedly putting chunks from the bottom to the top. His/her opponent recognizes what his opponent is doing, but instead of calling a judge, the following happens when the deck is presented: He/she starts to “pile-shuffle” the manaweaver's deck in three piles and puts the piles on top of each other so the manaweaver will draw either only lands or only spells.

Best regards,

Jasper

A: Completely acceptable. The only requirement is that the deck is completely shuffled and randomized before presentation.

B: This falls under Insufficient Shuffling, and should be treated as a chance to educate the player on what is “proper” shuffling (I put proper in quotes because, as we've discussed many a time, there is no “correct” way to shuffle). This is, of course, as long as the play wasn't intending to cheat via this method.

C: This is a definite form of Cheating on the opponent's part, granted that the opponent knew what he was doing was illegal. If all Cheating is decided to not have happened intentionally for both players, then follow the advice for B and educate the players on what correct shuffling is, as well as telling the opponent that taking advantage of a player's mana weaving is not okay.

As for intervention - we intervene as soon as the rule has been broken, or if someone calls for us. In this case, the intervention points are as follows:

A: Don't need to.
B: As soon as the player presents the deck insufficiently shuffled.
C: The situation infers that we are not present to witness the event, so we would intervene upon the player complaining that the opponent took advantage of his shuffling method.
All: When called by the players.

Edited Peter Richmond (April 17, 2013 04:39:42 AM)

My personal standpoint on Manaweaving:

Don't do it, even if you shuffle enough afterwards. My reasons:
- You have to shuffle afterwards enough, so that manaweaving has no effect => You wasted time
- You will at least at higher level tournaments produce judge calls
- If you don't shuffle enough you are compromising the integrity of the tournament

With this in mind, my opinion on this cases are:

A: Talk to player between the matches and explain him why this is a bad thing. If he fears big pile of lands clumped together that doesn't get seperated by his normal shuffle I will suggest him one pile shuffle, which also helps him to count the deck.

B: Make a Deck Check to see how “bad” his shuffling was and talk to the player. Ask him, why he did this and find out if knows that this behaviour is bad. The end can be DQ or just a stern talk that he was close to a DQ.

C: Get both players seperated. Ask the player with the 3-pile shuffle why he was doing this and why he didn't call a judge. I'm very likely to disqualify him.
For the other player, the same situation as B applies.


In all three cases there is an important message that I want to send “Don't manaweave!”. And sometimes a DQ is the way to send this message. If I'm disqualifying a new player for manaweaving I will take some more time and trying to make him understand that I doesn't think of him as a really bad cheater, but the things he did harm the integrity of the tournament. It's a difficult thing because you want that new player coming back.

I agree with Martin. Best case, you've shuffled completely and had no effect. Worst case, you randomly shuffle into something that resembles land, spell, spell, and when the judge checks your deck it looks like insufficient shuffling. In either case, it wastes time.

From what I understand, manaweaving prior to shuffling thoroughly is currently legal but used to be illegal. Could someone give a brief history on what prompted the change?

(I am a fan of allowing it personally)

Originally posted by Jasper König:

Situation C:

The player is manaweaving his deck, and shuffles halfheartedly by just repeatedly putting chunks from the bottom to the top. His/her opponent recognizes what his opponent is doing, but instead of calling a judge, the following happens when the deck is presented: He/she starts to “pile-shuffle” the manaweaver's deck in three piles and puts the piles on top of each other so the manaweaver will draw either only lands or only spells.

(as an opponent):
I do this in legacy, all the time… I've never seen my opponent manaweave their deck, but I've seen lots of players do it inbetween rounds (because they know or suspect it's a little illegal). Pretty much 50% of the time when I do this, my opponent mulligans once or twice complaing about zero-lands or all-lands… And every time they mulligan I secretly think “Hah! I've taken down another mana-weaver, get away you cheaty bastard!”

You can always see it in their eyes, they become afraid the moment you lay down three piles and continue back on the first… Why am I cheating in this scenario? I don't know for a fact that the opponent mana-weaved…

Originally posted by Ward Poulisse:

Why am I cheating in this scenario? I don't know for a fact that the opponent mana-weaved…

Players are obligated to call a judge when they notice an infraction that has occurred in their match (per MTR 1.10). Intentionally not doing so in order to gain an advantage therefore meets the requirements for USC-Cheating (if they know that what they are doing is illegal).

Edited Vincent Roscioli (April 17, 2013 02:19:57 PM)

I wanted to weigh in on this because I see this happen a lot at my local store and have somewhat strong feelings on it. Two rules have been referenced so far in the discussion so I wanted to include them in my post in an effort to be clear.

3.4. Tournament Error — Insufficient Shuffling
Definition: A player unintentionally fails to sufficiently shuffle his or her deck or portion of his or her deck before presenting it to his or her opponent. A deck is not shuffled if the judge believes a player could know the position or distribution of one or more cards in his or her deck.

4.8. Unsporting Conduct —Cheating
Definition: A person breaks a rule defined by the tournament documents, lies to a tournament official, or notices an offense committed in his or her (or a teammate's) match and does not call attention to it.
Additionally, the offense must meet the following criteria for it to be considered Cheating:
• The player must be attempting to gain advantage from his or her action.
• The player must be aware that he or she is doing something illegal.
If all criteria are not met, the offense is not Cheating and should be handled by a different infraction. Cheating will often appear on the surface as a Game Play Error

When you consider mana-weaving, one of two things must be true; either it will have no effect and be useless following a proper shuffle, or you are knowingly attempting to gain an advantage through an illegal action (one cannot man-weave on accident). If a player has mana-weaved they believe that the action will produce an effect. Even if they shuffle afterword they still took an action they believe would give them an unfair advantage. As the game is intended to be played with a random deck any known or intended order should be consider and treated as stacking ones deck; violation 4.8 UC-Cheating. I do not believe that 3.4 applies to any of these situations as the act of mana-weaving was not unintentional. The only sticky point in the discussion for me is the requirement that a player be aware that what they are doing is illegal. In order to overcome this I would ask the player, “Were you aware that you had to shuffle your deck in order to assure that the card order was random?” If they say yes, then they are cheating.

When judging at regular REL the focus should be on training new players as well as maintaining the integrity of the game. The Judging at Regular REL document does not provide any flexibility on the cheating penalty; however it is conceivable that a new and young player not be able to see the connection between mana-weaving and a stacked deck. In this instance, at regular REL, I would make an announcement to the room explaining the connection, have the player shuffle his deck while I watched and treat any future instance of man-weaving as cheating.

As for situation “C” that exact example is given as an example of 4.8 UC-Cheating in the WoTC MTG infraction procedure guide.

But I am only a level 0, so what do I know.

Joshua

Mana-weaving isn't inherently illegal. If a player does this with the belief that it will somehow help their draws even after sufficient shuffling, that doesn't make it true. How is this any different from a player tossing a grain of salt over their shoulder before shuffling, or kissing a lucky coin before shuffling? With sufficient shuffling, each of those actions serves the same purpose: To appease a player's mind that they will get a better outcome.

Mana-weaving is only a problem if sufficient shuffling doesn't occur (or if it takes too much time, it could also be slow play). And it should only take one stern discussion about sufficient shuffling (and probably avoiding mana-weaving altogether) to solve the problem for any particular player.

Originally posted by Joshua Collier:

But I am only a level 0, so what do I know.

Well, you know how to add to the discussion … and, thanks for doing that!

Simply put, mana-weaving isn't an illegal act - but anything that sets your deck in a non-random state and isn't followed by sufficient shuffling is a violation of 3.4. Thus, someone who stacks their deck (including a mana weave) and doesn't attempt to shuffle sufficiently afterwards is clearly breaking a rule to gain advantage - if they knew better, excuse them from the event.

But here's the thing. I am an imperfect shuffler - hopefully, all of us are. If I start with a random deck and perform 7 thorough shuffles, the result will be noticeably different than if I started from, say, decklist order (e.g., after a deck check). I don't want to open the Pandora's box of probability, statistics and other math subjects that so often flare up in these shuffling threads (please, folks - you know who you are. Don't.) … but it's fair to say that, after some number of humanly-imperfect-yet-still-thorough shuffles, two decks that started from random or ordered will converge, or at least approach an acceptable equivalence of randomness.

I don't know (and again, don't want to read replies explaining the math) if I can accomplish that convergent state within the 3 minutes allotted, using only my imperfect mechanisms.

So, is it wrong for me to mana weave first, to get further away from the “ordered” state, and thus actually improve the chances of a “good” randomization? Arguably, mana weaving actually improves the chances of achieving the real goal - i.e., truly random deck order.

Ignoring all the philosophical rambling, the bottom line is still: is it clear that they failed to shuffle sufficiently after ordering their deck in any fashion? If so, was it to gain advantage? (And, of course, ‘did they know better?’ - but it's very rare to find someone who thinks it's OK to stack the deck.)

Originally posted by Ward Poulisse:

Why am I cheating in this scenario? I don't know for a fact that the opponent mana-weaved…

You are cheating here because you as a judge know you are supposed to shuffle your opponents deck. We teach all of our judges in my area that a pile shuffle isn't a shuffle. Shuffle = Randomize and your method is obviously not randomizing your opponents deck.


Edit starts here.

To keep this in the education mode we should take the opportunity to educate the player that a 3 pile shuffle isn't considered a shuffle, it is in fact designed to derandomize the deck by most that are using it.

And we should let all players know that pile shuffles are not for randomizing the deck. I use a pile shuffle to count cards and look for marked cards.

Edited Jim Shuman (April 17, 2013 05:42:28 PM)

Just to point out guys the OP was at Regular REL meaning that definitions from the IPG doesn't apply here.

Personally my way of looking at the situations:

A) this is fine they are suffiently shuffling so we have no problem

B) looking at this it falls straight into “General Unwanted Behaviours” so we take the line of giving the player a chat off to the side about how to shuffle better and allow to go away educated

C) here we hit a serious problem for the player who chooses to un-weave his opponents deck rather than call a judge. The line we need to draw is if the player has un weeved knowing he shouldn't or if he thought this was acceptable. If we think he knew he should have called a judge or make someone aware of what was wrong then we are looking at a DQ else we spend some time explaining to them what the problem with how they acted is and again look to educate them on how to behave.

Originally posted by Jim Shuman:

Ward Poulisse
Why am I cheating in this scenario? I don't know for a fact that the opponent mana-weaved…

You are cheating here because you as a judge know you are supposed to shuffle your opponents deck. We teach all of our judges in my area that a pile shuffle isn't a shuffle. Shuffle = Randomize and your method is obviously not randomizing your opponents deck.

But if I only cut my opponents deck am I cheating? I personally have alot of time done a pile shuffle to count my opponents deck and cut, would you class that as cheating?

A player is responsible for randomizing his or her own deck, not the opponent's. The requirement to shuffle an opponent's deck is for your own benefit and to minimize any motivation for stacking one's own deck. If you decide to simply cut, pile shuffle, or do nothing, you're not really violating any rule (except in the most technical reading possible), unless that choice is with the intent to undo a suspected deck stacking instead of calling a judge about it.

History lesson: shuffling the opponent's deck used to be optional, but certain cultures considered it an insult and/or an accusation if you insisted on shuffling your opponent's deck. This led to problems where unscrupulous people would take advantage of that cultural norm (not shuffling the opponent's deck) by stacking their own decks. So the rule was changed to “required to shuffle” so that those with a cultural aversion to shuffling an opponent's deck could point to the policy and say, “Oh, this says I have to. I'm not accusing you of anything,” and no one could be offended.

Edited Josh Stansfield (April 17, 2013 04:35:36 PM)

Originally posted by Gareth Tanner:

Jim Shuman

Ward Poulisse
Why am I cheating in this scenario? I don't know for a fact that the opponent mana-weaved…

You are cheating here because you as a judge know you are supposed to shuffle your opponents deck. We teach all of our judges in my area that a pile shuffle isn't a shuffle. Shuffle = Randomize and your method is obviously not randomizing your opponents deck.

But if I only cut my opponents deck am I cheating? I personally have alot of time done a pile shuffle to count my opponents deck and cut, would you class that as cheating?

Jim's explanation neglects to mention one fact. Although it is true that both scenarios fail to sufficiently shuffle, the scenario of which you take advantage of your opponent's mana-weaving is actually equally as wrong as mana-weaving in the first place; you are intentionally making it so that the deck's order is known to you.

The reason why a simple cut is “okay” goes back to the entire “what is correct shuffling” discussion, which seems to come up every few months.