http://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/8468/

There already is lots of discussion about other topics in this thread, so I made new thread.

After much debate, we came to the general conclusion that a defensive three-pile isn’t cheating, even if you suspect your opponent of shenanigans. We’d obviously prefer that you call a judge, but that’s up to you.

It says counter-stacking is legal, even if that player knows opponents are doing something wrong, and he try to use it for his advantage. I understand there were “much debate”, but could we have any summery why this is not cheating? (I think “knowing something wrong happen and use it for his advantage without call judge” match completely with criteria of cheating)

Maybe the point is “even if you suspect” =/= “even if you know for certain”

Let me expand:

Scenario 1:
Your opponent forgets to add to his/her life total when hitting with a lifelink creature, you know something is wrong and you let it happen.

Scenario 2:
Your opponent messes with his/her deck and then presents it. You think something might be wrong, but you don't know.

Does it make any sense?

Edited Andrea Mondani (April 28, 2014 04:28:06 AM)

Andrea makes good points, but there's more, of course.

While the L4s agreed that we don't like “vigilante justice” - i.e., players meting out their own form of “punishment” or “fix” to a situation - it's difficult to enforce.

But even more fundamental - 3-pile shuffles are a legal action. We don't want to write policy that says, essentially, “taking a legal action under certain (and rather arbitrary) circumstances is a DQ-able offense.”

d:^D

Just to confirm my understanding of both what I remember of the discussion previously and policy as it now is:

Your at an event where mana weaving before the match and then “shuffling” at the table matches is common so you three-pile to protect against this - this is OK

Your opponent mana weaves at the table and presents, you three pile to undo this - Bad

Originally posted by Gareth Tanner:

Your opponent mana weaves at the table and presents, you three pile to undo this - Bad

That was an example in old versions of the IPG, but has been removed; we now allow that behavior.

As I previously stated, we'd still prefer they call a judge, and should encourage them to do so in the future.

Shuffling your opponent's deck with the 3-pile method is not illegal - period.

d:^D

The second situation is bad, and may even be cheating, although proving it (or at least gathering sufficient evidence) would be very difficult. The example was removed from the IPG because the first situation is clearly not cheating, yet fit into the example exactly.

Cheating is:
* Breaking a rule, or allowing a rule to be broken
* Intentionally, knowing that you're breaking a rule (or at least doing something “wrong”)
* In order to gain an advantage.

3-pile counting your opponent's deck is not against any rule. While a player's deck is presented to their opponent for “additional randomization”, there's no requirements on the nature of that randomization. Opponents are allowed to merely cut the deck, or even just leave the deck as-is. Without a rule being broken, it can't be cheating.

Consider an alternate scenario - a player believes that their opponent has shuffled so poorly, that all their lands are in a single clump on the top of their deck. So, when presented, they merely cut the deck, leaving all lands on the bottom. In this situation, would you say cutting the deck, instead of shuffling it, was cheating?

The player is not breaking any rules. They might be allowing their opponent to break a rule, by allowing their opponent to insufficiently randomize their deck. But, how would you prove that they realized their opponent had insufficiently randomized? It's not even always easy for a judge to tell if a deck is sufficiently randomized.

I think the previous versions of the IPG assumed that any instance of the defensive 3-pile count would be to take advantage of known insufficient randomization, in which case it would be cheating.

To be clear, even in the second scenario, the 3-pile count itself is not cheating, what's cheating is allowing your opponent to insufficiently randomize, because you think you'll gain an advantage by doing so.

Edited Talin Salway (April 28, 2014 10:51:08 AM)

Originally posted by Talin Salway:

The second situation is bad, and may even be cheating

No, it is NOT Cheating. I'm sorry that my message wasn't clearer on that - but please understand that much.

(Talin, I realize you elaborate on that very point, but I feel it's critical that we don't read this as “it's cheating, but ‘meh’, we can't stop it”.)

d:^D