Originally posted by Benjamin McDole:

Perhaps a look at why that exception to the upgrade is even there. There are many judges here who are trying to use it to “protect” the AP from getting a game loss through their negligence. In reality that clause is there to keep the opponent from being able to sit on an infraction and cause a more grievous penalty. Example, I'm playing someone and notice that they have not revealed for a Mystical Tutor even though the card is sitting on top of their library. That clause keeps me from getting to decide if they get a warning or a game loss. The ipg is designed so that players do not get to decide the penalty for an infraction. To do anything other than a game loss here would be against the spirit, and in my opinion letter of the document.

Thank you Benjamin, I completely failed to see it from this perspective!
While I would've enforced what Scot said even though I had not agreed with it, this clarifies very much why I would not want to have a player decide on the penalty gets - since the paragraph I would've used now (in retrospect) seems to be in place for exactly the reason that the NAP cannot decide on the penalty, so it should not be used to have the AP decide on his penalty.

Thanks again everyone (and especially the mods for not closing this down ‘prematurely’). I feel like I'm just a little bit better judge now than I was before this thread :).

Edited Philip Ockelmann (June 18, 2013 10:02:39 AM)

Originally posted by Joshua Feingold:

Shawn, I don't think that we, as the judge, can reveal this information. However, the player can reveal even more information than is strictly required, which I believe bypasses the “opponent cannot verify the legality clause” which trips us over into special upgrade territory. I'm not looking to re-downgrade an upgrade. I'm looking to avoid the initial need for an upgrade altogether by making the legality verifiable.

In the current gamestate (no card was revealed when Domri was activated, and a card was put into the hand, which is hidden), the opponent cannot verify the legality of the action. So in the current gamestate, the IPG upgrade applies. That means that by allowing the opponent to reveal his hand, you ARE effectively redowngrading an upgrade. And that, the IPG only allows if the card was in a uniquely identifiable position.

Oh Domri… If you worked with me at SCG Edison you probably saw/heard me beating myself up over this card -.-

In a feature match, on camera, a player with a hand of just Temple Garden activated Domri, saw Zealous Conscripts, put it into his hand. I stopped him, told him to reveal it, didn't realize I shouldn't have, opponent had no problem with it. It wasn't until a few rounds later when I told the story that I was told “um… It's worse than you think.”

At that time, I felt very strongly about only issuing “severe” penalties if the situation actually warranted it. And giving the upgraded GL for GRV felt really silly when I was sitting right next to the player and could confirm “that's absolutely the card he looked at.”

Now, I understand the idea of needing to be consistent, and I understand that avoiding perceived favoritism is key. But in a perfect world, I'd love to see policy allowing a Judge to say “I was watching this the whole time, -I- can absolutely verify the action taken was legal, Warning, play more carefully, carry on.” We're supposed to be neutral officials, and our judgment should be trusted. Unfortunately, there is that perception of favoritism (or actual favoritism… We can't ignore that unfortunate possibility)

Having special judge knowledge matter is a dangerous idea. It means that the player without a judge sitting over his shoulder is at a major disadvantage compared to his opponent. That sets up some really severe inconsistency and feel-bads.

EDIT: To even further elaborate on how this creates problems, imagine that you are watching a match. (Maybe a camera match.) Another nearby match has a quick rules question that you have to deal with. While you are momentarily helping out the other match, a Domri type of error happens in the match that the offending player thought you were watching. He now thinks that you should be able to downgrade for him. Policy even says that you can when you are watching the match! But you got distracted for 15 seconds, so now he gets a Game Loss. That's some bad, bad feels.

Edited Joshua Feingold (June 18, 2013 04:40:59 PM)

Originally posted by Gareth Tanner:

Ben has pointed out that we don't look at the game being played at the moment when looking for a infraction. The contents of the players hand is actually not relevant at all, how we should be looking at it when we are called

I want to emphasize something Gareth just pointed out: having a judge look at a player's hand to decide what to do is extremely dangerous, as it will - intentionally or otherwise - often provide the opponent with strategic info.

I am curious what do people think of the situation when the hand contains
only identical creatures? Going strictly by the letter of the policy, the
card put into the hand without revealing is not uniquely identifiable, but
they are all the same.

This thread probably needs to be closed as the last question doesn't further the discussion and is most likely going to cause the same points to be raised again.