I think I may be confused. Where is the word “provide” used in the defintion? I see the word “gives”.

You're right… that was bad transcription on my part =)

Same thing though… I read “gives” just as actively.

I don't think it follows that if Adam requests the information that Peter saying something which may or may not be true is giving that same sort of information. While investigation would certainly be warranted, if Peter does not actively know the contents of Nate's deck, he cannot be revealing hidden information to Adam by making a statement about a deck archetype, nor is that information parseable as “play advice” in my mind.

Human communication is very nebulous and it's easy to construct a logical path that indicates that talking about a type of deck constitutes advice or information, but our communication policies are quite explicit about what sorts of information we're talking about when we discuss “hidden information” - so I'm not sure it applies here. Since it is effectively “schrodinger's box” with regards to the context of the deck itself, in that a statement like “this deck archetype usually has/doesn't have X”, we can't penalize it on that ground - and as already noted, unless Peter was making this statement with the intent of Adam being able to hear him, I do not feel like it is offering play advice to say that sort of thing.

Edited Rebecca Lawrence (June 10, 2014 12:30:49 PM)

The intent of the OA penalty, as applied to spectators, is to prevent them from the very damaging action of providing the players with any sort of information which might alter their course of play.

One case in which I have awarded OA to a spectator involved a player in topdeck mode swinging in for small points against a player with a very large (at least 30) life total. Over the course of several turns, he could have been activating his Kessig Wolf Run in order to punch through, but simply forgot about it. When a spectator pointed this out—I forget the exact wording, but it was something like, “You could have used Wolf Run there,”—he definitely committed Outside Assistance because it reminded the player to use the Wolf Run on future turns.

We can imagine any number of variations on this scenario. What if instead the spectator said, “You have a Wolf Run,” which is not directly play advice or hidden information? What if he instead was talking to a friend? What if both of these were true?

In all of these cases, as long as the player's attention is drawn to the Wolf Run on the battlefield, the behaviour we need to discourage has occurred: a player's line of play will change based on a reminder by a spectator. This is the essence of “play advice”. In every case the spectator should be assessed an Outside Assistance penalty. If we adopt some narrow interpretation, there are players who would angle shoot this: in critical matches, they would obliquely help their friends by staying outside of the infraction's definition. Can you imagine handling a call where you had to say, “Well, your opponent can't get play advice from a friend, but he can get told this other thing, and that's okay, sorry about the fact that it cost you the game.”?

There is, of course, a line, and in this case, for me that line is somewhere around people talking about unrelated things and happening to mention something which jogs the player's memory. But I would apply OA aggressively in any circumstances where it clearly damages

As a result, I don't disagree with Darcy's penalty. While it's close to the edge of where I'm going to call something genuinely too oblique for it to reasonably be play advice, I don't think it's at all a stretch that hearing a spectator say “Mono blue doesn't run Karn” would be interpreted as advice not to play around Karn.