Player A controls 2 Leonin Arbitrer. He cracks a fetch, puts a land into play and continues the game.

A few seconds after, the judge notices he didn't pay 4 and tells the player he needs to pay the “extra cost”.

The player says “Well, my opponent didn't notice it so…”

After some questions, it seems the player is aware that the Arbitrer affects himself but is convinced that it's the opponent's responsability to notice it.

What would you do? What if it was Comp REL?

Originally posted by Jorge Monteiro:

the player is aware that the Arbitrer affects himself but is convinced that it's the opponent's responsability to notice it

The JAR says about cheating: “Intentionally and knowingly breaking or letting an opponent break game or tournament rules, or lying, in order to gain an advantage.”

This seems like an easy DQ to me.

I'd explain that his cards are his responsibility, and he's obliged to remember them, regardless of whether the opponent notices.

I suspect he's confusing Arbiter with a trigger, so I'd explain the difference between it and a trigger. I'd also mention that it's only the opponent's triggers that he's safe to ignore.

Lastly (and depending on how competitive your FNM is) I'd consider encouraging a more sporting approach to the game in general. The JAR encourages (but doesn't require) players to point out their opponents triggers at Regular REL. If the event is full of newer players, it can create a poor experience if someone feels their opponent screwed them out of something (regardless of the facts).

“Well I know this affects me but my opponent didn't point out my mistake so I should get a pass” smells worse than rotting fish. Player A seems to want to play “Gotcha!” (which IIRC is why we changed the morph rules in the IPG last winter). I can see where the trigger remembrance policy would cause some confusion there, but he intentionally broke the rules in order to gain an advantage. Even so, whether Arbiter is a trigger or not, he's still obligated to remember his own triggers (especially in this case since he controls the Arbiters).

I would take a bit of time to explain the trigger confusion like Mark said, but this is still a DQ at any REL.

We seem to be missing a key part of the Serious Problems infraction, namely
“knowingly breaking the rules.” This is similar philosophically to the
aspect of USC-Cheating that “the player must be aware that he or she is
doing something illegal.” In this case, it certainly appears that player A
believes Leonin Arbiter works like a missed trigger and has a
misunderstanding of how missed triggers work. Obviously, some
investigation is required, but based on the information we have, we should
be educating the player on his responsibilities in terms of maintaining the
game state (and probably on his triggers as well), but this does not match
the requirements for Cheating to me.

Justin has it right - it may feel really shady to us, but it still has to meet the criteria to be Cheating (or a Serious Problem). This player didn't think he was doing anything illegal - just “clever”.

d:^D

To clear it up a bit, at no point during the investigation, did the player give any indication that he thought it was a trigger.
Even if he did, as mentioned above, he is responsible for his own triggers.

This still doesn't sit right with me. He may not have been knowingly breaking tournament rules (believing that it's his opponent's responsibility to point out the cost) but he certainly was aware of Arbiter's restriction and knowingly broke the game rules to gain an advantage–having the fetched land without paying for the restriction he knew about. Direct from the JAR's Serious Problems (emphasis mine):

Intentionally and knowingly breaking or letting an opponent break game or tournament rules, or lying, in order to gain an advantage.

The IPG reads very similarly, so this wouldn't be any different at Competitive.

I could be completely wrong and missing something here, but from what I'm reading this still looks like a DQ.

In situations like these, it's worth taking a step back and look at the overall situation.

Did he do something wrong? - yes, so we need to address it.

Did he believe he was doing something wrong? - no, so we can rule out a DQ.

That leaves us with the only remaining option at Regular: fix and educate. In this case I would act strict and sternly, because I think we can all agree that we like this situation a lot less than, say, first time player casting a sorcery as an instant.

But that's the nature of Regular - as a judge you have plenty of free reign in how you want to approach the fix and educate.

That's the thing; from the way I'm reading the scenario–particularly this result of the investigation, it seems like Cheating (emphasis again mine)

After some questions, it seems the player is aware that the Arbitrer affects himself but is convinced that it's the opponent's responsability to notice it.

“I know I'm not allowed to do this but if my opponent doesn't point it out then I'm okay because I believe they're supposed to point it out” is how I'm reading this. The nuances may come from further questions a la “you had to be there”.

I admit I was torn between the two answers, and I'd probably like to ask another question or two to get a sense of whether he truly believed that the burden was on his opponent to make him pay for the cost, or whether he wanted to try and play “Gotcha” with it because he believed his opponent had to remember. If it's the former, I see no reason not to “fix and educate”. If it's the latter…I'm still in the Dairy Queen camp.

Can we just take this as evidence that it's impossible to investigate
intent through a four-sentence explanation in a webforum? This is the
reason we don't generally second guess decisions to DQ or not to DQ here.
It seems like we've identified the questions that we would ask this player.
Don't read too far into the specific language used in this thread, you're
not going to get a satisfactory answer.

I have no issue with that. :)

I think the key to this is here:

• The player must be aware that he or she is doing something illegal.

Even though the player is aware they are not faithfully applying the rules, they believe that it is their opponent's responsibility to point it out and that they are allowed to ignore the violation in the absence of that intervention.

From a philosophy standpoint this is very different from stacking a deck or drawing extra cards and trying to obscure that fact to your opponent and a judge. The player is stating that they genuinely thought they were allowed to do this. That, it seems to me, is the heart of the cheating infraction, that the action is not only intended to gain advantage but to do so in a way that the, presumably non-cheating opponent, is not also able to take advantage of. This player believes his opponent could legally pull the same thing on him if he didn't “know the rules”.

As a side note if I were investigating this I would also think through the possibility that this is a cover story for the behavior, but I would probably rule it out on the basis of this is a terrible cover story =P

Originally posted by Matt Cooper:

“I know I'm not allowed to do this but if my opponent doesn't point it out then I'm okay because I believe they're supposed to point it out” is how I'm reading this. The nuances may come from further questions a la “you had to be there”.

I think that's what Mark is trying to say. Apparently the player genuinly believed it's his opponent's job to enforce this rule. He didn't believe he did anything wrong - and if that's the case, it's not cheating.

I agree with Dan though, it's really hard to evaluate the scenario here.