Hi, I thought of this scenario while reading today's Knowledge Pool and it doesn't seem to uncommon to me, i'd like to know what the policy is.

Alexandria and Noelle are playing at a Limited PTQ and Noelle won the first game. During the second game, she Alexandria realizes that she accidentally kept Noelle's Eternity Snare in her deck and calls judge Jack to cut through this gordian knot. After an investigation to determine that it was accidental, Jack rules (correctly) that it is a Deck/Decklist Problem and that both players get a Game Loss. However, because Jack doesn't read Toby's blog, he's unaware that the IPG recently changed and that these Game Losses shouldn't count toward the match result. He completes the match slip as 2-1 is Noelle's favor.

Later in the tournament Noelle (who does read Toby's blog), chatting with a friend mentions the story and the fact that she got an easy victory out of a inaccurate ruling. You overhear this conversation (or maybe you're the one Noelle is talking to). What should you do? Was Noelle cheating?

Edited Nathanaël François (Feb. 13, 2014 09:03:16 PM)

No infraction, no cheating.

Nice? No.

See also http://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/5811/

Edited Philip Böhm (Feb. 13, 2014 09:12:03 PM)

Players are never obliged to appeal a judge's ruling, even if they know it to be wrong.

Not sportive, but legal… :)

The old thread answers the basic question, and it focuses on the ethical question of what a judge should do.

However, we can look at this question from more general principles to discover what the answer to this question must be. Requiring a player to appeal would have (at least) two rather unfortunate consequences:

1) It holds players to a higher standard of knowledge than judges. If a judge “knows” what the correct ruling is, but gives the wrong one for some reason (happens all the time), that is unfortunate and we will do the best we can to correct it. If a player “knows” what the correct ruling is, but trusts an incorrect judge, that's a DQ.

2) It undermines floor judges and creates very strong incentives to appeal basically every ruling. Given that the role of judges is to facilitate legal play and correct errors, and trusting a judge to do that might get you a DQ, how can floor judges give rulings effectively? If you are less than 100% sure a floor judge got things exactly right, there is “no downside” (from a player perspective) to appealing but a serious chance of receiving a DQ if it turns out the judge botched it and you didn't speak up. The consequences of such a policy on tournament operations would be disastrous.

I'm sure there are other reasons, but these two immediately jump out at me as showstoppers for requiring appeals when players “know” judges are incorrect.

Yes, that makes sense, but I figured I should ask since it is extremely comparable to letting your opponent commit a GRV in your favor. i should have searched the forum before, my deepest apologies. The previous thread isn't even that old.

Noelle was not cheating. Players are not expected to point out incorrect
rulings or penalties.