Hi there
I was reported about this situation in my area, and I am not completely sure there's support in the JAR about the thing…

Anyway, simple fact: a player is playing at the Born of the Gods prerelease (no lists required) and suddenly casts a Desecration Demon. Of course the judge is called.

The judge investigates and ends up removing the player from the tournament. Quite fair, we'd say… however, let's make a step backwards.

It's a VERY silly cheating. So silly that I probably say the player was unaware of what he was doing. Now, I was not there and I didn't manage the investigation, but let's guess the player was in fact unaware. Do we consider the fact that he was getting an advantage and so it is INDEED cheating under the current definition? Or, since he was thinking this was perfectly legal, should we not consider cheating?

The problem with the second interpretation is: maybe he has mixed up Theros cards together with the Desecration Demon, and we do not have any way to reconstruct the pool. In this case, I don't see how I couldn't invoke the “preserving the tournament integrity” formula: what image and experience would we offer by forgiving and letting the player play with the pool that player says he has got? Does this make sense or would that be a deviation from the JAR philosophy?

Thanks,
Donato

With or without a specific announcement during the event about using the
cards in the packs you opened or not trading cards with friends, the player
would have to be able to give me some satisfactory answers to convince me
that he did not know that what he was doing was wrong. On the surface, the
Disqualification in this case doesn't sound wrong, but as with any
Disqualification it comes down to the investigation and the answers the
player gives you.

Presumably the Disqualification was actually enacted here - rendering this an ongoing investigation that *probably* shouldn't be discussed openly on these forums. However, with names removed and the open question posed, I'll assume that someone will step in if this still crosses the boundary.

In this case it is up to the head judge of that tournament to determine whether it was just mindless “I don't know how a prerelease works” or indeed, Cheating in the conventional sense. Personally at Regular REL I am more inclined to be open to the former situation, however as Geo rightly pointed out above, this player is going to have to be very obviously inexperienced with sanctioned Magic and also convince me that this is the case.

Jack
L2, UK

Edited Jack Doyle (Feb. 13, 2014 11:20:52 AM)

Lets say you were convinced the player really had no idea… (It would be very suprising, but it wouldn't completely shock me), how would you handle that?

If you can't reconstruct their pool, it's not really fair to leave them in the tournament.

Do you have them drop from the tournament and let them know this would normally be a DQ for Cheating, but you're helping out because they didn't know? (ie, kick'em out but make them happy about it)

I heard of a TO in a somewhat similar scenario decide to let them continue playing, but recorded them as a 0-2 for every match regardless of outcome. They got to continue playing but didn't end up gaining an advantage. (Though for this scenario, I suspect he'd have them take the wrong-set cards out at least)

Originally posted by Chris Nowak:

Lets say you were convinced the player really had no idea… (It would be very suprising, but it wouldn't completely shock me), how would you handle that?

If you can't reconstruct their pool, it's not really fair to leave them in the tournament.

Do you have them drop from the tournament and let them know this would normally be a DQ for Cheating, but you're helping out because they didn't know? (ie, kick'em out but make them happy about it)

I heard of a TO in a somewhat similar scenario decide to let them continue playing, but recorded them as a 0-2 for every match regardless of outcome. They got to continue playing but didn't end up gaining an advantage. (Though for this scenario, I suspect he'd have them take the wrong-set cards out at least)

You have a few options available to you, and I think the messaging is really important. If we assume that this player really is super-new and doesn't even understand what a Sealed event means, I'm not sure that there's a distinction to that player between “I'm disqualifying you for cheating” and “This is normally a disqualification for cheating, but I think you didn't know what you were doing so I'm going to help you out by just removing you from the event.” In both cases the player isn't playing in the event and probably doesn't have the knowledge of sanctioned Magic to understand the difference between being DQ'd and not.

However, a DQ doesn't have to be “I'm DQing you for cheating” – you can deliver it differently. In this case, if you feel like the player did this ignorantly but you can't confidently determine what his sealed pool should be, something like, “I'm not confident that you knew what you did was wrong, but I'm also not confident that we can get your sealed pool into a state that would let you participate in this event the same way everyone else is. In order to keep things fair for everyone else playing, I need to remove you from the tournament.”

At that point you can get the TO involved to try to arrive at some other solutions. If we think this player just really made a hugely ignorant mistake, we probably want to keep him playing at this store and keep him interested in showing up for sanctioned events, so pursuing options like a full or partial refund or free entry into another event preserves the integrity of the original event while also keeping this player engaged.

Having the player agree to 0-2 all his matches in exchange for continuing to play is kind of a weird solution to me, since either we think this player can fairly continue to play or not.

Cheating requires knowledge and intent, even at Regular REL. If you think that this is likely to be the case then you should disqualify the player; if not, then you should not.

In terms of not being sure of what his pool was - if I have understood correctly, you found a Return to Ravnica card in the player's prerelease deck. Depending on the time and resources that you have available, you could check the cards in the supposed pool, remove anything that could not be there (wrong block etc.) and see whether you have the right number of cards which should (42 Theros cards and 42 Born of the Gods cards, I believe).

The other option, if you are certain that the player is not cheating, is just to ask them. Might there pool have got mixed up with other legal cards? Can they remember what was in their pool? If you think that the player is innocent and just made a mistake, I see no problem with trusting them enough to reconstruct what they remember of their pool and allowing them to play on with that.

I really, really dislike the ‘let them play on and put them as 0-2 each round’ solution. Giving a match loss each round is far from the spirit of Regular REL, and keeping a ‘dummy player’ in the tournament as a bye feels pretty close to fraud.

If he played a prerelease, surely he should have 42 brand-new cards from Theros and another 42 from BNG. Assuming he was really unaware of what he's doing is illegal (I usually remind them of this fact, "you can make your deck 40-min, no max, ONLY from the cards you just opened), I feel more inclined to remove all the illegal cards from his deck (I'm quite sure he will only have a few rares and (un)commons there), replacing them with whatever cards he has from THS/BNG (quite sure he will have all together in some place in his backpack :D), shuffle and continue playing.

You could probably argue that he might choose Theros cards he own from around October. Well, first of all, you have all the pool available. No more than 6 rare cards should be there, apart from prerelease ones and… foils. This will help a lot. If you find that this player has had an incredible amount of luck and opened a few Thassas foil, probably should recheck the original attempt of Cheating :)

I think that's a better solution for Prereleases, when a lot of really newbies come to have a good time, prizes are relatively low, it's the most Regular of Regular REL events possible (at least in my LGSs, FNMs are like PTQ trainings), and make that player (and probably friends that come with him) happier and more likely to come back more and play Magic. TO will like this fix too :)

I really think the point is being missed here.

There isn't much discussion needed if he had knowledge and did it
intentionally we DQ the player if not we educate and fix the deck. There
are a lot of great ways to investigate listed above especially Kim's post
but it seems as though some are suggesting that even if he has knowledge
and did intend to cheat you are just going to replace the card with legal
cards and let him keep playing. Policy does not agree with this stand point.

tl;dr version Knowledge and intent-DQ otherwise educate the player fix the
deck and move on. :)

What if there was no intent, but the deck is unfixable?

For example, because the player has built from a giant pool consisting of everything he opened at this prerelease and everything he opened in the one he played in a few hours ago (this example has actually happened). You can cut down to the correct number of cards of each type, but there's no way to know what came from where.

Originally posted by James Winward-Stuart:

What if there was no intent, but the deck is unfixable?

For example, because the player has built from a giant pool consisting of everything he opened at this prerelease and everything he opened in the one he played in a few hours ago (this example has actually happened). You can cut down to the correct number of cards of each type, but there's no way to know what came from where.

Well, if I wrapped my head around Kim's words, if we are trusting him we should just ask “what are from now and what not?” (hopefully, you can also find some other player from the first prerelease who could help). However, if we think the player doesn't deserve this trust, we shouldn't be wondering “what if” and he shouldn't be playing anymore.

Thanks everyone for the insights! :)

Edited Donato Del Giudice (Feb. 15, 2014 10:57:46 AM)

Originally posted by James Winward-Stuart:

What if there was no intent, but the deck is unfixable?

For example, because the player has built from a giant pool consisting of everything he opened at this prerelease and everything he opened in the one he played in a few hours ago (this example has actually happened). You can cut down to the correct number of cards of each type, but there's no way to know what came from where.

If you can't figure out which was the previous event and which was the current from asking the player, in the spirit of regular REL you could just pull out the right number of cards from each set and rarity from the enlarged pool and start from there. On the other hand this could delay the event a bit.

Assuming I believe it was a completely honest mistake -

This issue has both a common and uncommon aspect.

The common aspect - The player has cards in their deck that they shouldn't. The JAR conveniently has a fix for this situation. I would rewind to the point where the demon was cast, remove all illegal cards from the deck, add basic lands as necessary to meet the 40-card minimum. Shuffle the deck (being sure to account for any known cards, due to scry and such). Then the player draws cards for however many illegal cards were removed from hand. (this isn't explicitly listed in the JAR, but it seems correct. I could be wrong on the card draw). Continue the game, and investigate the pool after the match is over.

The uncommon aspect is the contaminated pool. My philosophy here is to take cues from Competitive REL where applicable (rulings should be consistent across RELs). Unfortunately, without decklists, we can't apply the exact fix. I would try to bring the pool to a legal state, and then instruct the player not to alter the pool further.

Additional investigation will be necessary as to how exactly the pool got contaminated. If the player had just added cards from their own collection, removing existing cards is fine, as they won't have any BNG cards in their collection at a prerelease. The pool should be legal at this point (correct number of rares/uncommons/commons).

If the player also contaminated their pool by trading with other players, this is a more serious issue. At this point, I would want to drop all players involved in trading from the sanctioned event. Even assuming none were cheating, they've gained a significant advantage over all legal players. This is not a fix that's supported by any document, but it's a situation that just won't happen at competitive, so there's not as much example to draw on.

my question does not pertain to a contaminated pool at a pre-release but it does go along with regular REL and preserving the tournament integrity…. a couple rounds later or the next day from an FNM I am having several players come up to me and state they have witnessed another player cheating (drawing extra cards, leaving spells on the battlefield and picking them up and putting them back in his hand, having certain cards getting played that were never in his hand and so on…), but the same players who tell me this never come and get me during the times things like this happen. So I am a little unsure on how to handle the situation other than pulling this particular player aside and talking to them. Has anyone else had a situation similar and how did you handle it?

This will always be a tricky situation to deal with Brian. Firstly, I would listen to everything these players have to say about what they say they saw. Also find out why they're only mentioning it now. Then take a moment to thank them, and most importantly educate them on telling you these things when they see them, and not the next day. Obviously if what they say is true, and they had told you on the day, you could have done something about it.

Then, next time you see the player they've accused of foul play, have a chat with them. Tell them that you've heard these accusations and see what happens (no need to name names). Their response will tell you a lot - maybe the other players didn't understand what was happening in the games they saw. Maybe the games they saw were friendly games in between rounds where he was messing around with friends. Maybe he was cheating and will panic at being approached. Maybe he's got a stone cold poker face and you'll never know.

A lot will depend on how you approach the various parties - your body language, tone of voice (friendly, accusatory, wondering). If you know the people well, you'll be able to be more straight forward. If you know and trust some of the people involved, this may help. If they're strangers, then you may need to be more professional in your approach. If they hate each other, you may need to take things with a grain of salt ;)

If he confesses to cheating, then you can do a post event DQ. If he denies everything and you believe him, then leave it at that. Avoid saying things like “Fine, but I'll be watching you”! However, if you have the time at the next prerelease, it may be worth keeping an eye on them in case you do see anything suspicious.

Long story short - you need to hear both parts of the story, and just make a decision. While the decision may be “do nothing”, you owe it to the players to follow through and show that you are willing to deal with their problems.

thanks Mark, I plan on talking to him as soon as I can. However, I see part of my original message is missing so I will go ahead and attach it here….

The player in question has been known for cheating previously at another shop that myself and quite a few of my friends would frequent. When what we saw was brought up to the store owner we were told then that because this player spends a lot of money each week nothing will be done. So we quit going to that shop.