“A person… notices an offense… and does not call attention to it.”

Was the offense actually noticed without attention being called to it?

Originally posted by Josh Stansfield:

Can someone point me to the rule that says a player is responsible for counting the cards in an opponent's hand before the game begins?

MTR rule 1.10
Players are responsible for…
… maintaining a clear and legal game state.

Nancy's intention to not observe how many cards Adam has began the game with before he takes his first action of the game indicates that she did not fulfill her responsibility.

The described scenario doesn't actually tell us when she noticed it. Feingold is right; we would need to investigate to learn when she noticed it. That timing is critical for this being a DQ or not.

After considering all the points made I now believe that more information is needed. Nancy has stated that she won't even check on her opponent's hand size until she would get a free game win instead of a warning, it's clear she made this choice to gain an advantage. This could become cheating if there was proof that she was aware of the rule in MTR 1.10 that makes both players responsible for a clear and legal game state. If Nancy is aware of this rule then I'd be reasonably certain it's cheating since she has intentionally failed to maintained the game state until it was most convenient for her. Otherwise, it would simply be a Failure maintain game state penalty for Nancy which would only be a warning and the game would end from Adam's Game Loss.

As for Scott's question, I don't believe the second scenario is analogous to the first one since in the second scenario the window of opportunity to catch the error is a lot smaller. Also, once the error has occurred, the second scenario has no obvious means of a downgrade unlike the Improper Drawing at the Start of the Game the first scenario offers. With these two considerations I don't believe Nancy is cheating since she has no real window of opportunity to intentionally ignore the error before it would become a Game Loss for me…err…Adam.

To clear things up a bit, my intention with the question was that Nancy was being completely truthful. She spent the time after she decided to keep her hand writing her opponents name on her score pad, riffling her cards, or otherwise purposefully not counting how many cards Adam drew. She didn't notice that he had drawn too many cards until it was her turn, as this is the first time she made an active effort to check. She called the judge as soon as she noticed. This his how she behaves in every competitive game, but normally after her opponents first turn she find them to have the correct number of cards.

Actually, the scenario as given seems pretty clear that she did not notice it. (ie, she intentionally didn't look until after he did something. But a quick investigation should clarify). Going with the assumption that she did not notice…

Toward Scott's question (and this where my mind first went), I think there's a distinction between being human and not paying attention (or being unable to pay enough attention at all times) and intentionally shirking your responsibility. 99% of the time, the person would just say “I didn't notice until after they played the land”, but in this case she told us straight up that she was ignoring the game state. Sometimes players can talk themselves into trouble.

It seems akin to “Excuse, me, are you aware that the new electronics device policy doesn't allow you to listen to music while playing at Competitive?” “Yeah, but there isn't an IPG entry for it, so you can only give me a caution for the first time around.”. The only difference is in the music example, he's explicitly said he was aware he broke a rule, while in the OP's scenario we have to infer it from her actions (and clarify it, and find out if she's interacted with other judges about it, etc and investigate those).

Having said that, it's entirely possible to know something generally, but temporarily forget about it. The human brain can only keep so much active at a time (cognitive load), and while processing all the other rules, how MTR 1.10 interacts may not have occurred to her. So she may be aware of the rule generally, but not aware at the moment that it applied to her here.

While on a personal level I don't mind seeing someone who is angle-shooting being out-shot, but I think that's ventures into punishment and revenge, and is outside our purview.

I'm in the no DQ camp (open to be convinced though). I would make it clear to her that she now has no excuse though, and I'd make sure to let the rest of the judge staff know. But to me this looks very not-sporting, but not unsporting.

Not yet having read the other replies, I think an education is required here.

Adam: DEC with a game loss. Explain to Adam that he should check the number of cards before beginning play.
I wish we could apply “GPE — Improper Drawing @ Start of Game”, but taking a game action ends the opportunity to do so.

Nancy: Failure to maintain game state and a stern talking to. This is not behavior I would want to encourage. I don't think there's Cheating going on here, as the GPE/DEC has been reported as soon as it has been noticed. Definitely write a report on this in WER though.

Edit: Having read the replies, I think my solution is reasonable. If this offense repeats, we can use “A third or subsequent Warning for a Game Play Error offense in the same category should be upgraded to a Game Loss.”.

Edited Mart Leuvering (July 15, 2014 06:49:43 PM)

Originally posted by Eric Paré:

Josh Stansfield
Can someone point me to the rule that says a player is responsible for counting the cards in an opponent's hand before the game begins?

MTR rule 1.10
Players are responsible for…
… maintaining a clear and legal game state.

Nancy's intention to not observe how many cards Adam has began the game with before he takes his first action of the game indicates that she did not fulfill her responsibility.

Adam: “Have I played a land this turn?”
Nancy: “I don't know.”


Nancy has found one of the few legal (if morally questionable) rules-lawyering edges left in Magic. While many people might be loathe to reward such behaviour, I am hard-pressed to find IPG justification for any sort of infraction for her. Bottom line is that Adam drew too many cards, and Nancy (intentionally) did not notice until a harsher penalty would be issued. Nancy hasn't done everything she could to ensure the game state was legal, just as in the above example, but that in and of itself is not an infraction any more. Unless we want to revive Failure To Agree on Reality?

I would give Adam a game loss for drawing extra cards, that one seems cut and dry. However, regarding Nancy I feel a DQ is a bit excessive, I feel this would warrant an investigation as to when she has noticed the extra card draw.

Her claiming not to check until after draw isn't failure to maintain game state if she did not notice the extra card. However this is behaviour that is to be frowned upon so I feel that a stern talking to would be a must but I don't see any infraction here if she has not checked the opponents opening hand size before he started his turn. And you can't ignore something with the hope of gaining advantage if you didn't know there was a rules violation at that time in the first place. Not good conduct, but definitely not unsporting conduct.

Let's take a look at the definition of Failure to Maintain Game State:

“A player allows another player in the game to commit a GPE involving an effect or action that he or she does not control, and has not pointed it out immediately.”

Note that this part of the definition does not care about how the player has gotten themselves into a situation where this applies. “Allowing” does not imply intent and can allow for negligence. If the player is specifically looking out for errors and not calling them, even when it doesn't gain them an advantage, it's FtMGS. If a player neglects to be aware of the error for whatever reason and doesn't point it out immediately, it's still FtMGS. Therefore, if players want to avoid this penalty, they are “forced” to perform any arbitrary action they can to make themselves aware of all GPEs his or her opponent makes, which can include but is now limited to counting the number of cards his or her opponent has drawn after a mulligan.

Continuing with the definition of FtMGS:

“If a judge believes a player is intentionally not pointing out other player's illegal actions, either for his or her advantage or in the hope of bringing it up at a more strategically advantageous time, they should consider an USC - Cheating infraction.”

It's clear that Nancy is choosing not to count her opponent's hand so that she can bring it up at a more strategically advantageous time, so this line applies. I will not consider USC - Cheating:

“A person breaks a rule defined by the tournament documents, lies to a tournament pofficial, or notices an offese committed in his or her (or a teammate's) match and does not call attention to it.”

A lot of our discussion so far has been about whether or not the third clause applies. Personally, I feel it doesn't, clearly Nancy noticed the error and called attention to it as soon as she noticed it. However, the first clause definitely applies, because the IPG is a tournament document and she violated it by committing FtMGS.

“Additionally, the offense must meet the following criteria for it to be considered Cheating:

- The player must be attempting to gain an advantage from his or her action.
- The player must be aware that he or she is doing something illegal.”

The first obviously applies, Nancy admitted to it. So the tougher question is whether or not the second applies here. Remember, we are talking about whether or not Nancy is aware that FtMGS is illegal, not whether or not it is illegal to not count your opponent's opening hand. This question involves some investigation, but it's clear that Nancy already knows she musn't delay when calling a judge for an error she notices, so it's going to take a lot to convince me that she thinks it ok for her to let her opponent make mistakes by being willfully ignorant of them.

Unless Nancy tells me something I'm not expecting, I'd be strongly inclined to DQ here.

Edited Darcy Alemany (July 16, 2014 11:40:37 AM)

At what point does she commit FtMGS and at what point do we go past “pointed it out immediately”? The moment her opponent draws to many cards? When her opponent makes an action and moves from IPD@SoG to DEC?

It's really situational. I may be too strict on this, but I tend to treat “immediately” as immediately: if a FtMGS player's first response to the error wasn't to point it out, then their response isn't immediate. Practically speaking, this usually means the FtMGS player needs to respond before the next game action is taken, or if the error-making player is playing too quickly, before the FtMGS player makes their next decision.

Edited Darcy Alemany (July 16, 2014 11:52:04 AM)

I know that we always say “Assume nothing fishy is going on…” in these sort of scenarios, but this seems REALLY fishy and deserves a close investigation. Nancy literally did not even begin to notice Adam's hand until after he took a game action?

I agree with the general consensus, players are not responsible for monitoring their opponents' hands and if Nancy really did notice only before her turn, then she did nothing wrong. However, her noticing the EXACT moment it would be a more serious penalty seems like quite the “coincidence.”

We require that players mention any infraction as soon as they notice it.

We do not require that players be extra vigilant at every moment in case an infraction might be about to happen.

Remember that, even though you might be put off by her attitude, it is just Competitive, not Unsporting … and even more importantly, it's still Adam's responsibility to draw the correct number of cards, or notice & report the error immediately - and he did neither.

Adam gets a GL for DEC.
Nancy calls attention to the infraction as soon as she notices it, which is all we require.
End of story.

d:^D

Edited Scott Marshall (July 16, 2014 03:57:49 PM)