So if I understand correctly, if a sideboard card is lost, a penalty is not given if the player called the judge for that themselves, but if we find out for example during a deck check we do give a penalty.

If that is the case, I don't know how I'm supposed to get that from the IPG. It says:

Sideboards are considered to be a part of the deck for the purpose of this infraction. If sideboard cards are lost, make a note of this, but issue no penalty.

That sounds like it applies to both scenarios?

EDIT: I'm mainly concerned about how this applies to constructed tournaments. I've had players unable to locate sideboard cards during the tournament

Edited Toby Hazes (Dec. 5, 2013 02:43:14 PM)

I think there may be confusing about when a SB card is “lost”. If a player
writes down 15 cards on his decklist, but only brought 14 to the events for
his SB, is the 15th card on the list “lost”? Typically, if a player knows
he has lost a card, he will let a judge know about it. It might be good to
have some more clear language that explains when a card is “lost” according
to the IPG. Is it only when a judge believes that the player physically
misplaced a card or does it apply more broadly to anytime a player's
sideboard list has more cards listed than are in the actual sideboard?

If you do a deck check on someone in a limited event, and they don't have their entire card pool (i.e., their sideboard), it should NOT be a penalty - whether they notify you or not. You can extend that philosophy to constructed, but that's just not a likely scenario, while sideboard cards go missing all the time in sealed deck.

On fairly rare occasions, a player might misplace his constructed sideboard (or have it stolen?); because he can still present a legal deck for game 1, the penalty should probably be less severe than a normal Deck/Deck List Problem. The clause about having the player report that is intended to encourage (and reward) honesty. This is an interesting little wrinkle, though - I'm going to pursue clarification from the rest of the HL Judges, and report back…

Shawn, your scenario is quite interesting - pretty sure I've never seen that happen. Maybe the player thought he could buy or trade for the 15th card, so he listed it - then failed to find one, anywhere? I don't see any real potential for abuse there, so if you encounter that and choose to downgrade D/DLP and correct the list to match the actual sideboard, I don't think too many of us would squawk. (Again, assuming that oddball scenario ever actually happens…)

d:^D

I have always understood that a sideboard is “lost” if it is listed on the deck list but not physically present. Whether it's “not physically present” because the player left it at home, didn't find it while picking up the cards after he accidentally dropped his deck an hour ago, left it lying on the table after his round 1 match, or it accidentally got shuffled into his last opponent's deck, is irrelevant.

@Scott: Interesting that you mention that you've never witnessed such a scenario. When I was getting some experience at GP Vienna (Right before doing my L1 exam), I actually witnessed exactly this case. Someone wrote 15 cards down, but only had 14 in his actual sideboard (Apparently he counted at one point 16 cards for his sideboard, and took one card out as a last minute decision (having it scratched through on his sheet), but he was actually just having 15 cards and went down to 14 (his list somehow still stated 15 cards though.) I remember the decision was a game loss, since he didn't point out that he only had 14 cards when he noticed it later during his games.

(I hope it's allowed to state what was ruled, since I obviously wasn't the one getting to that conclusion.)

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

I'm going to pursue clarification from the rest of the HL Judges, and report back…

Confirmed - we don't want to award a Game Loss in any “lost sideboard card(s)” scenario. This should be clarified in a future version of the documents.