Mistakes through inaction are still mistakes.

Let's say I'm sitting at a game, and I see a player with Goblin Electromancer and Trinisphere cast Ponder for RG. I say “you need to pay blue mana for that.” We “rewind” 1 second, player untaps the G and taps a U. I issue a GRV. Player looks, shuffles, and draws. Then player casts Brainstorm for GU. I now think “oh, that isn't how Trinisphere + Electromancer works…” Do I now give a fresh GRV because everything I said on the previous GRV was true? (He did need to pay U.) I made a mistake by not completely correcting the cost paid for the previous spell.

Likewise, the judge in the OP took the action of correcting the list to match the contents of the player's actual deck and sideboard. The parts of that task he performed were fine, but he did not complete that action, which was - in my opinion - a mistake. Even if a complete deck check were impractical, he could have easily confirmed that the contents of the deck box matched the listed sideboard. (He could even do this while the player himself was looking for the missing card from the main deck, costing no event time at all.)

I don't think we should be so literal in reading “gives erroneous information” that it excludes errors of omission, when the much more general word “mistake” is used three times in the preceding two sentences.

Originally posted by Denis Sokolov:

How is this a mistake by a judge?
Could you clarify for me, what exactly, did the judge say that was incorrect or do that was wrong?

Do you intend to say that a judge, by giving a DDLP, is “legally” claiming that the deck is correct
and it is now okay to play it? I am unable to find anything like that in the IPG.

If a traffic cop fines you for a busted headlight, do you later get a free pass if your brake lights don't work
either? “I've already been fined for another light today, officer, you can't fine me again!”

Your analogy is sound, but there is a contrary analogy. Let's say you have a busted headlight. The cop sirens you and, as you brake and pull over, the cop notices your light is out. If the cop doesn't notify you that your brake light is out as well, he's well within his rights, but he's being kind of a jerk cop. Do you want to be a jerk judge? With my player hat on, I don't want to play an event where there is a jerk judge on staff, and with my judge hat on, I don't want to be associated with an event that gets a bad reputation from the players because one of the judges was a jerk.

As an additional analogy: how would you feel if the cop saw you had a busted tail light, didn't tell you, then he radio'd back to HQ and said “hey, this guy has a busted taillight too, someone else come out here and let's shake him down for some more money” and you got busted again 500 yards down the road? That's how it can feel to a player in this situation, literally (because most good players can handle 1 game loss, but taking 2 usually puts all but the very best out of prize contention, so you are literally taking away their money). Is that a feeling we want to promote among the player base?

I can't support the notion that the initial D/DL Problem was botched by the judge. It's true that we could have done more, and provided even better service (to that player, and to the event). But it is not a mistake by the judge.

Now, when the additional cards are discovered later, it seems like the best customer service is accomplished by explaining to that player why that's also D/DL Problem and normally a Game Loss - make sure he understands the severity and reasons behind this - and then tell him that, because you feel like you could have avoided this if you had more time earlier, you'll downgrade this time.

Keep in mind, however, that the player has a responsibility here, too, and they did make a mistake - a fairly serious one - and what we did earlier should not absolve him of that responsibility. An earlier post makes the (valid) point that many players are unaware of this rule (no extra cards in box). At Comp REL, I think it's quite reasonable to expect them to know that … or to educate those who don't, via the strong reinforcement that comes with the Game Loss lesson.

What would I have done, in Eric's original situation? It's hard to speculate, since I wasn't there - but I think I'd probably downgrade, with a Stern Glare in place of the GL (and Eric's quite good with that Stern Glare when he needs it - heh!).

Ah, Scott, you know me too well. Downgrade and Stern Chat so it was. I often feel that my Stern Chats are worth at least half a GL :). At the time of the incident, I, too, did not classify the original DDLP as a judge error, because that is not our usual policy. However, I also considered the matter from the player's point of view. It was a VERY close call, and the senior judges I consulted were split down the middle, of course.

Thanks to everyone with some great points on both sides of the discussion. You guys generated exactly the kind of probing, challenging, respectful discussion that we like to see. The funny thing is, on this one I can argue BOTH sides really well (I've got more ammo left for both sides, than has been yet discussed here).

Eric S.




On 07/08/13, Scott Marshall wrote:

I can't support the notion that the initial D/DL Problem was botched by the judge. It's true that we could have done more, and provided even better service (to that player, and to the event). But it is not a mistake by the judge.

Now, when the additional cards are discovered later, it seems like the best customer service is accomplished by explaining to that player why that's also D/DL Problem and normally a Game Loss - make sure he understands the severity and reasons behind this - and then tell him that, because you feel like you could have avoided this if you had more time earlier, you'll downgrade this time.

Keep in mind, however, that the player has a responsibility here, too, and they did make a mistake - a fairly serious one - and what we did earlier should not absolve him of that responsibility. An earlier post makes the (valid) point that many players are unaware of this rule (no extra cards in box). At Comp REL, I think it's qu
ite reasonable to expect them to know that … or to educate those who don't, via the strong reinforcement that comes with the Game Loss lesson.

What would I have done, in Eric's original situation? It's hard to speculate, since I wasn't there - but I think I'd probably downgrade, with a Stern Glare in place of the GL (and Eric's quite good with that Stern Glare when he needs it - heh!).

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There seems to be a belief here that fixing an illegal decklist involves a full and formal deckcheck, but I don't think there's any support for this assertion. The goal of fixing an illegal decklist is to figure out what's missing. Sometimes that involves laying out the deck, sometimes it's just a player looking over and realizing what they messed up.

It is hard to assert a judge made an error when they were not being asked to do a formal deckcheck.

But at the most basic level, how can we consider a decklist “fixed” if we don't know that it matches the contents of the player's deck box? Is our goal really just to make the player write a legal number of cards on the list? Couldn't we reasonably set the bar higher than that? And if we can, shouldn't we?

Originally posted by Joshua Feingold:

But at the most basic level, how can we consider a decklist “fixed” if we don't know that it matches the contents of the player's deck box? Is our goal really just to make the player write a legal number of cards on the list?

The goal, in this case, is to ensure that we have 60 cards registered in the main deck that match what the player is playing, since the existence of only 58 on the decklist ensures that there's a problem. Note that at this point we aren't even thinking about the sideboard, so we're unlikely to discover an error there.

Originally posted by Joshua Feingold:

Couldn't we reasonably set the bar higher than that? And if we can, shouldn't we?

We could set the bar wherever. However, the realities of a tournament and practical considerations mean that the focus at that time is getting everyone to a legal 60-card list that matches their deck. Not to mention that giving judges more work that opens up cheating possibilities if they don't do it perfectly seems suboptimal.

Some people mentioned customer service…

Isn't it a better cust serv to correct an illegal decklist (which happen a lot in big tournament) in 1 min and let the players return to their normal pace of the event than to lose ~5/7 minutes doing a full deckcheck to prevent a double penalty situation that occurs very rarely? even if twice in the same weekend, I still consider it rare - and even if it occurs the player cant be cleared fully from blame.

That one player, once every 3? years will say “You should have looked better”.
The other 1200 players will say “Good thing that wasn't a full deckcheck, it could have delayed the round for 10 mins or so”

I really, really need a great big “LIKE!!!!!” button for Jorge's post!

It occurs to me that also whether or not we consider this to be a judge's error is irrelevant. The philosophy is that a deck check coming back with no penalty is not a clean bill of health, and if I do a deck check, miss a card, and then the player shuffles up and presents 59, I'm not going to downgrade that penalty (unless, perhaps, I lost the card).

Originally posted by Toby Elliott:

Joshua Feingold
But at the most basic level, how can we consider a decklist “fixed” if we don't know that it matches the contents of the player's deck box? Is our goal really just to make the player write a legal number of cards on the list?

The goal, in this case, is to ensure that we have 60 cards registered in the main deck that match what the player is playing, since the existence of only 58 on the decklist ensures that there's a problem. Note that at this point we aren't even thinking about the sideboard, so we're unlikely to discover an error there.

Joshua Feingold
Couldn't we reasonably set the bar higher than that? And if we can, shouldn't we?

We could set the bar wherever. However, the realities of a tournament and practical considerations mean that the focus at that time is getting everyone to a legal 60-card list that matches their deck. Not to mention that giving judges more work that opens up cheating possibilities if they don't do it perfectly seems suboptimal.

Say a player is super sloppy and registers a 59-card decklist and a 14-card sideboard (it's not July 13 yet!). He also is carrying around a couple of extra, format-legal MTG cards in his deckbox because he left his bag in his car to avoid having his stuff stolen at a large event. How many game losses can such a player expect to receive? As both a player and a judge, I think it's reasonable for this player to expect to get only 1 game loss and a Very Stern Talking To (TM) for these 3 total infractions.

Would downgrading this (including a Very Stern Talking To (TM)) be considered a deviation?
If not, why not (if we do not consider this a mistake by the Judge who handed out the first DDLP)?

I see where the idea of downgrading this and giving a Stern Talk to the player (after ruling out cheating) originates from - it is a huge feel-bad moment for the player, and handing out the ruling probably isn't fun either, and from the players point of view, this should have been caught but wasn't. But on the first glance, I would not even have considered deviating here, to be honest. Then again, I am only a rather inexperienced L2 when it comes to Headjudging and hence, this kind of situation ;).

Philip - arguably, yes, that would be a deviation.

It's likely that the additional error (extra cards in deck box) existed at the time the original error was resolved, and - circumstances permitting - the judge staff could have discovered all D/DL Problems at one time, and thus only assessed a single instance of the infraction.

Does anyone truly believe that, if we simultaneously discover both a 59 card deck(list) and extra cards in the box that the player should receive TWO D/DL Problem infractions at the same time? (I suppose that Spock might point out that it would be logical to award two penalties…)

Also, consider a similar scenario - you count the list, get to 59, approach the player at the start of round 2, and he says “oh, crap, I forgot to change that 3 to a 4 … I didn't know if I could buy or trade for the 4th copy, so I was either going to add that or something else”. So, you fix the list to match, award the GL, and carry on.

Later - probably even during round 2, maybe round 3 - someone is reading through the list and says “hey, wait - Incinerate isn't legal in Standard, right?”

Would you then go issue another GL to that player, when you had just corrected his list - but failed to notice the illegal card?

Before anyone howls about judge mistakes, keep in mind that your focus is on the known, not the unknown, and - if you've got some big event experience, you value the quick resolution that avoids delaying the whole event. It's not a mistake, it's just not as thorough as we'd like, in an ideal world.

I would not issue two different GLs for an illegal decklist as they are the same mistake: submitting an illegal decklist. The difference here is that in the first case, there were two different (but similar) errors, while in this case, it is the same error, it has just not been fully corrected.

Is there a point where a player and a judge share responsibility for an error?

I had an issue with a double deck deck-list penalty at an event I took over for at PAX east during the last round. It was a small 20 person legacy event run at comp REL. The player had initially registered a 14 card sideboard. When the judge checked his list the player confirmed he had forgotten to write down his Blightsteel Colossus. The player promptly wrote down Darksteel Colossus on his list, the judge ok'd the list, the player received his DDLP, and preceded to game two of his match.

After I took over I did 1 last deck check and randomly pulled his table. Going through his list I checked and saw that his list didn't match his decklist. After pulling his aside to chat he told me he must have accidentally wrote dark steel, and that the judge at the time (who at this point had left the venue) affirmed his list was correct.

Clearly the player does have some responsibility to write things correctly, and I feel we have a responsibility towards our players to ensure that they don't get in their own way and can play magic and enjoy themselves. I still flip flop over the decision at the time and wonder how others would have handled the situation.