This weekend I had a difficult situation come up in a Competitive REL event.

Alice and Nate were both playing control decks and had a lot of information about each others' hands due to respective Sin Collectors cast a couple turns before. Nate had passed the turn with two lands (including a blue source) untapped.

Alice drew for the turn and spent a good while agonizing over playing a fused Far // Away or an Obzedat, Ghost Council. Finally, it appeared she made a decision and placed Obzedat into play without tapping any lands or announcing the spell (the players did not speak the same native language, so most of the communication throughout the match was nonverbal). Nate gave the ‘ok’ hand signal and Alice brought the card off the table and placed it back into her hand. She then continued to think about which spell to cast.

Believing that there was a good chance that Alice had put Obzedat into play only to gain information on whether his opponent was going to counter it, I asked the players to stop and began an investigation. (I am going to omit details of the investigation because this was my first of this type and I made mistakes that my L2s later made me aware of.)

Alice told me that she did not intend to cast Obzedat and that she was just thinking about the correct play. She also told me that she was unaware of any signal that Nate had made and she didn't think he had made any such signal.

Nate told me that he had made the signal, believing that Obzedat was cast, but didn't think it was a big deal since they knew each other's hands anyhow.

So based on this, I didn't feel I had enough evidence to make a ruling of USC-Cheating. But couldn't think of an applicable lesser penalty at the time, so I made a ruling of no penalties and gave the players extra time.

After thinking about it more, I don't think any of these are a great fit, but the below could be possibilities:
CPV-Warning (Misrepresenting the free information of game actions)
GRV- Warning (Casting a spell without paying its costs; I think this would be a huge stretch)

Please advise me on this. I would like to improve my understanding of policy through my mistakes.

I think you Investigate (which you did) and decide if you think there was Cheating involved. Keep in mind that, to be considered as Cheating: there has to be an infraction, the player had to have known they were doing something wrong, and they had to believe they would get an advantage in doing so.

If I believe that Alice was simply indecisive, and really didn't notice Nate's reaction, then we just carry on (and I encourage Alice to keep her “thoughts” to herself). It looks like that's the conclusion you reached, so it looks like you handled it fine.

Hm. This is a tough one indeed. I'm just an L1, like you, but here's my opinion:

There's one major point of informatoin you didn't include here which is probably make-or-break for me. The question is: What was Alice's body language after putting the Obzedat on the table? If Alice's body language said “Do you respond?”, then I'd heavily recommend to the HJ to begin an investigation for a DQ for Cheating. If Alice clearly did motion to be still considering her options, then it's Nate's responsibility to pick up on this and allow Alice the time she needs (slow play excepting, etc). In this case I would give no penalty and ask the players to continue playing, as you did. The key thing to this situation is that “baiting” is illegal, but revealing cards from your hand is not. The question is “was this baiting, or was this an unorthodox way to think about your play?”

The point that they knew each other's hands, by the way, is irrelevant. Hands can be mis-remembered, mis-recorded, and so on, very easily. I would not take that into account at all when making this ruling.

The primary question I have is what penalty should be assessed for “baiting.” As Scott mentioned, we need an infraction to base the USC-Cheating on.

The more I think about it, the more I want to give CPV-Warning to the active player.

I didn't include extra information about Alice, but she is a well-known player that is often around the top tables in large tournaments in our community. She is not the type of player that would accidentally show a card while thinking over a play.

Originally posted by Cameron Bachman:

The more I think about it, the more I want to give CPV-Warning to the active player.

What part of the Communication Policy has been violated?

I didn't include extra information about Alice, but she is a well-known player that is often around the top tables in large tournaments in our community. She is not the type of player that would accidentally show a card while thinking over a play.

The fact that a player is well-known does not change the standard to which we hold them. Above all, judging needs to be fair.

My theory on the CPV infraction is that Alice misrepresented game actions (Free information) by pretending to cast a spell.

I originally omitted the information about Alice for the reasons you mentioned, Sean. I also didn't consider it in my ruling.

On Tue Jul 09 03:44, Cameron Bachman wrote:
> My theory on the CPV infraction is that Alice misrepresented game actions (Free information) by pretending to cast a spell.
>
> I originally omitted the information about Alice for the reasons you mentioned, Sean. I also didn't consider it in my ruling.

Would an alternative approach here be to say that she announced the spell and
is now somewhere between 601.2b and 601.2e. Particularly since they have been
communicating non-verbally, I feel this is likely to be an established method
of announcing the spell in this match. Now if she didn't activate mana
abilities and pay for the spell we're issuing a GRV, which is probably enough
to track it if we don't think she was trying to deliberately bait some
information and should dissuade her from thinking ‘out load’ in future.

If we do think she's cheating, then that GRV is the infraction she committed
with an intent to gain.

Matt

Originally posted by Matthew Johnson:

On Tue Jul 09 03:44, Cameron Bachman wrote:
Would an alternative approach here be to say that she announced the spell and
is now somewhere between 601.2b and 601.2e. Particularly since they have been
communicating non-verbally, I feel this is likely to be an established method
of announcing the spell in this match. Now if she didn't activate mana
abilities and pay for the spell we're issuing a GRV, which is probably enough
to track it if we don't think she was trying to deliberately bait some
information and should dissuade her from thinking ‘out load’ in future.

I like this approach, but it does require some deviation. Strictly speaking, judges are not allowed (through action or inaction, punishment or coercion) to force players to activate mana abilities for spells they did not want to cast, or abilities they did not want to activate. Thus we need to deviate here, to force Alice to activate her mana abilities. Is this a legitimate deviation, given the circumstances? IMO it is, but I'm not sure what the Higher Ups think.

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

I like this approach, but it does require some deviation. Strictly speaking, judges are not allowed (through action or inaction, punishment or coercion) to force players to activate mana abilities for spells they did not want to cast, or abilities they did not want to activate. Thus we need to deviate here, to force Alice to activate her mana abilities. Is this a legitimate deviation, given the circumstances? IMO it is, but I'm not sure what the Higher Ups think.

We discussed this possibility during the investigation but ruled it out immediately because we weren't about to force a player to make an action that would result in a penalty.

My head judge got back to me today and agrees that the penalty to be considered would be CPV, if Alice was intentionally misrepresenting the spell. Otherwise, its an error of dexterity, and no penalty is issued.

On Tue Jul 09 12:32, Cameron Bachman wrote:
>

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

>
> I like this approach, but it does require some deviation. Strictly speaking, judges are not allowed (through action or inaction, punishment or coercion) to force players to activate mana abilities for spells they did not want to cast, or abilities they did not want to activate. Thus we need to deviate here, to force Alice to activate her mana abilities. Is this a legitimate deviation, given the circumstances? IMO it is, but I'm not sure what the Higher Ups think.

>
> We discussed this possibility during the investigation but ruled it out immediately because we weren't about to force a player to make an action that would result in a penalty.

I think that she's already taken the action of announcing the spell. We're not forcing her to activate mana abilities, but if she does then she's attempted to cast a spell without the mana available to do so. Which is a GRV. If she goes ahead and casts the card she originally shown then she hasn't gained, so its fine. If she retracts the spell she announced, then she gets a GRV. This means it's tracked, upgrades and we have something to point to if we do want to investigate for cheating.

Matt

Originally posted by Matthew Johnson:

I think that she's already taken the action of announcing the spell. We're not forcing her to activate mana abilities, but if she does then she's attempted to cast a spell without the mana available to do so. Which is a GRV. If she goes ahead and casts the card she originally shown then she hasn't gained, so its fine. If she retracts the spell she announced, then she gets a GRV. This means it's tracked, upgrades and we have something to point to if we do want to investigate for cheating.

Matt

Ah, thanks for the clarification. Sorry, I misunderstood your previous post. In summary, we give Alice the option to either cast the spell and pay the mana, or she can retract the spell and get a Warning for GRV, is that accurate?

On Tue Jul 09 14:57, Lyle Waldman wrote:
>

Originally posted by Matthew Johnson:

> I think that she's already taken the action of announcing the spell. We're not forcing her to activate mana abilities, but if she does then she's attempted to cast a spell without the mana available to do so. Which is a GRV. If she goes ahead and casts the card she originally shown then she hasn't gained, so its fine. If she retracts the spell she announced, then she gets a GRV. This means it's tracked, upgrades and we have something to point to if we do want to investigate for cheating.
>
> Matt

>
> Ah, thanks for the clarification. Sorry, I misunderstood your previous post. In summary, we give Alice the option to either cast the spell and pay the mana, or she can retract the spell and get a Warning for GRV, is that accurate?

Yes, which is I think what we would do if a player called us over and said something like “I'm trying to cast this, but then I noticed it costs 1 extra and I don't want to sacrifice my lotus bloom to pay for it, can I take it back”. This seems morally similar - if we're working from the premise that a non-verbal annoucement shortcut has been setup.

Matt

In previous discussions, the HLs have held that:

• drop a card from your hand? Oops, put it back.
  
• show a card, but retract it before you can notice your opponent's reaction? Probably OK…
  
• show a card, see the reaction, then retract it? Nope, you started to play that card.
  

As you can see, it hinges a LOT on your investigation, and whether you believe Alice read a reaction from her opponent - or was trying to. While we can't force Alice to use mana abilities, we can record a GRV for starting to cast a spell and not being able to pay for it.

And if we believe that GRV is intentional, to gain advantage, and that Alice knew that was wrong? Well, now we have another conversation.