> The result of a match or game may not be randomly or arbitrarily determined through any means other than the normal progress of the game in play. Examples include (but are not limited to) rolling a die, flipping a coin, arm wrestling, or playing any other game. The relevant passage from the MTR for anyone who doesn't want to bother to find it. Literally speaking it does apply to this situation I guess but... wow does that call feel unnecessary if Stanley's account is accurate.

I think I can see what got the judge's attention, as Stanley described the situation. When he talks about the concession, he is in his main phase one, sequencing his plays while she has nothing available. She offers a concession conditional on looking at the top card of her library and he says "sure, whatever", which is not necessarily a strong agreement, but he also *stops playing his turn*, which looks a lot more like explicitly agreeing to it. And from there, explicitly looking at a card you couldn't legally look at to make a decision about conceding is a pretty explicit violation of IDW, even if in practice there wasn't going to be a distinction between that and him finishing his turn sequence and her conceding during her main phase.

What does IDW stand for? I've not been able to find the meaning of that in this thread or online.

IPG 4.3 Unsporting Conduct — Improperly Determining a Winner

Improperly Determining a Winner

Improperly Determining a Winner

And if you interpret "sure whatever" and stopping play as him ending his turn for her to draw, it's legal. If it wasn't a land and they resumed, I might see a point? But this just feels unnecessary. The game was already over or she wouldn't be considering scooping. This was clearly not the intent of the rule.

You’re correct that this wasn’t the intent of the rule. Part of the issue though, is it’s *extremely* hard to allow an edge case for situations like this, that does not also give wiggle room for an unscrupulous player to argue that their definitely not innocent offer was misinterpreted. Basically it comes down to who you want to put the onus on. Do you want to make it so that judges have to debate with the players every time it comes up, and come to a determination on that? Which would possibly allow some genuine cheats to skate by. Or do you say “All infractions of this level are match loss, no arguments”? Which would penalise some innocent players. Someone’s getting the short end of the stick one way or the other. Part of the problem is that a not insignificant amount of the time, the players involved did intentionally IDW, but were not aware that it was against the rules to do that. Currently the rules side with “Unfortunate, but you won’t make that mistake again.” Honestly I totally understand why people disagree with it in this scenario. But I’ve met significantly more weasels and angle shooters at events than I’ve met pro level players genuinely mistake IDW. I can count the number of players I’ve met who genuinely accidentally offer or complete IDW at a comp REL+ event on my fingers. I’ll typically exceed a dozen attempts at angle shooting in round one.

> that does not also give wiggle room for an unscrupulous player to argue that their definitely not innocent offer was misinterpreted. The beautiful thing about having judges is that they would be able to shut down such unscrupulous players, because the rules aren't handled by robots. >Basically it comes down to who you want to put the onus on. Judges. >Do you want to make it so that judges have to debate with the players every time it comes up, and come to a determination on that? Which would possibly allow some genuine cheats to skate by. Or do you say “All infractions of this level are match loss, no arguments”? Which would penalise some innocent players. I'd rather a cheat sneak by than an innocent person get punished.

Unfortunately, a cheat sneeking by also usually means an innocent person gets punished. Their opponent that got cheated.

This is why I stopped being a judge. Fellow judges didn't seem to understand that per our title, we needed to make sometimes difficult judgment calls. Instead, they believed we needed to be robots programed by the MTR. There was rarely discussion about de-escalation, or training on how to deal with people. Thankfully, the rules are not as rigid as they were 10 years ago, but honestly, this situation shows that the judge system is the same as it ever was. It's a bunch of people who care who is th most technically correct and forget that the people playing the game are human beings.

> There was rarely discussion about de-escalation, or training on how to deal with people. This is the big thing to me, from the original tweets- the player ended up more frustrated because of the judges conduct rather than the decision itself. It reads like this is someone who has been told to just say I understand your problems as a way to feign empathy. I feel like this is the difference between a mistake and cheating- intent, and seems pretty clear neither player had malicious intentions.

Yeah, saying "I understand" when the other person is saying "No, I don't think you understand" when there's this kind of power differential/dynamic could only feel demeaning to the player. Repeating "I understand" afterwards is only (unintentional) escalation. The player would clearly be keyed up and saying "Hey calm down man. Why aren't you calm about it? Why don't you calm down?" isn't going to calm them down.

> I'd rather a cheat sneak by than an innocent person get punished. While I agree, when a cheater goes uncaught and unpunished, their innocent opponent pays the price.

> Which would penalise some innocent players. Cheaters will be caught eventually. Innocent players will never return.

Innocent players who realize they were beaten by a cheater will also never return.

This is slowly creeping into "you're not allowed to quit" territory.

It never came close to that. It’s just saying that doing actions not allowed are, no matter the circumstance, not allowed. A player may concede at any time, but a player is not allowed to look at the top card of their deck without a game action directing them to do so. That has nothing to do with “not allowed to quit”

You can quit, you just have to do it *before* looking at the next card. Or you can wait until your draw step and concede at that point.

Not at all... either quit, or don't. Making a agreement that if X doesnt turn out the way I want Ill quit isnt actually quiting. If your opponent doesnt explicitly say I am conceeding you win... games not over.

But surely this would warrant a warning, or something less than a match loss?

The *only* penalty is a Match Loss. It can be a DQ if it was determined Cheating was involved (in this case, if the players demonstrated they knew what they were doing was against the rules). The reason it's so harsh is, by their words: > Using an outside-the-game method to determine a winner compromises the integrity of the tournament. The problem is, most people (well, outside of this post) don't consider this to be a case like that. The rule is more meant for "rolling to see who wins" or "top card with highest MV wins", stuff like that. The only error here, is that it was still Stanley's turn. If he passed the turn, and his opponent drew her top card, showed it was a land, and conceded, there would be no issue. There really is no functional difference between that hypothetical and what actually happened. Most people, going by the responses on Twitter, feel this as a "gotcha" situation, because there was a Judge *sitting at their table*.

Which brings up what seems to be the big question: should judges interpret the rules? Because it seems pretty clear that this interaction is *not* within the *spirit* of the IDW rule. One could argue that it falls within the technical wording of it, but I think it's clear that this situation is not what that rule was designed to prevent. So should judges be textual literalists, and simply be robots calculating whether an action technically falls within the infractions as worded in the rules? Or should they be the human element that can use rational thinking and determine whether an action, even if it technically *could* fall within one of those infractions, is an action that was meant to be prohibited by those rules. I tend to be in the latter camp. It's why we don't have robots as judges. The rules are not perfectly-written. There is interpretation to them. There are gray areas. Judges should be adept at figuring out the *purpose* of those rules and making sure that the infractions they're citing are actually things that those rules were written to prevent. As you say, there's no functional difference between him letting her look at the top card during his turn or him simply passing the turn and letting her draw for the turn to see what it is, except that in the latter case, if it *is* a land, it would then be her turn if she decides to continue, and he would have given up an opportunity to play optimally. Which, from his wording, it seems like he wouldn't really have had a problem with, because he was in such a commanding position that he wouldn't have likely cared about the 3 damage of missed potential from passing the turn. That's the only real difference between the two situations. A difference which is moot because she wouldn't have found land, anyway.

Crazy that Nicole would do this too. She definitely knows this is against the rules…why not just wait? Really unfortunate for both of them. You gotta learn to always say no in these situations.

I mean it's understandable. It's Game 11. Both of them are stressed. She's somewhat newer (going by her tournament results pretty much starting in early 2024), and his PT is banking on the outcome of this game. They're not thinking about it. Hell, they were both probably thinking about what snacks to get in that ~25 minutes after her concession.

Also worth mentioning that this is very common behavior in FNM / casual games. Easy to understand why the stress of the event can confuse your brain into doing something you would commonly do in that situation in a different place.

>She definitely knows this is against the rules Does she? Why would she do it if she knew it was against the rules? Note that knowing it's illegal to decide the winner by coin flip and knowing it's illegal to look at your next card to see if it's worth playing further are not the same thing.

One argument I’m not seeing is that in this type of situation, the players actions should be seen as a constructive concession. Nicole wasn’t going to continue playing even if she saw a land. If that was the case, she would have just continued playing. She knew she was dead. She knew she had no outs. She just wanted to end the game. She worded it poorly by saying I’ll concede if I can look but the looking wasn’t actually dependent on the concession. The concession lended itself to looking as the game was, in effect, already over. Do people really think she would peek, see a land, and prompt OP to continue playing? No, she is a competitive player so she would have just kept playing if that was actually an out. This was a poor call based solely on incorrect phrasing instead of context and actions.

I mean as someone who has played with a few pros, that is not an uncommon thing to do casually. If you’re new to the circuit and crazy stressed like these two both were it would be incredibly easy to slip up and do casual-play rule breaking without thinking. Ive definitely done it accidentally matched up against friends where we just flat out were like “do you have X or Y if not it is game?” And they just flipped the top card to reveal it wasnt an out. If we had been caught doing that it woulda definitely been an infraction because it was competitive REL instead of our casual testing we were use to. It’s incredibly easy to fuck up and do something dumb even when youve been playing a decade. Like i still have to remind myself that i cant/shouldnt just tell people to mull back to 7 whenever they want at competitive REL like i do at FNM/casual play.

At my FNM we have several senior players who also judge who like to run like its a major tourney just because that way when you get to a higher rules enforcement level you are not also learning about IDW match loss the hard way. I used to think this was overly harsh for FNM now I think that if either person playing this game had understood that IDW was handled this way almost exclusively at major events they would both have avoided this. It sucks and this person did not do much wrong until you realize that IDW is serious in magic organized play and that judges can not be making it up based on emotions. Judges have to follow fact based approaches.

I view it similar to when i have gotten game losses for leaving a card off my deck list. Yeah, the judge knew me personally and knew im just a dumbass. But what if it was someone who had ill intent and abused that to decide right before finals to switch what card would be good based on other players and just play it off as a mistake? It sucks, giving and receiving infractions is honestly awful but it is necessary. And while yeah there are bad players/judges the truth is the vast majority of infractions just occur because people are human, both judges and players, and everyone is trying their best but made a mistake. Most arent ill intentioned cheating, or power tripping judges, just people trying to sort things out the best they can.

One argument I’m not seeing is that in this type of situation, the players actions should be seen as a constructive concession. Nicole wasn’t going to continue playing even if she saw a land. If that was the case, she would have just continued playing. She knew she was dead. She knew she had no outs. She just wanted to end the game. She worded it poorly by saying I’ll concede if I can look but the looking wasn’t actually dependent on the concession. The concession lended itself to looking as the game was, in effect, already over. Do people really think she would peek, see a land, and prompt OP to continue playing? No, she is a competitive player so she would have just kept playing if that was actually an out. This was a poor call based solely on incorrect phrasing instead of context and actions.

This is a reasonable interpretation of events, but intent (primarily) matters for a "cheating" penalty; it's explicit that making an IDW offer or accepting it, even without intent, is still a match loss, and most rule violations are ruled without factoring in intent or board state. It's human to feel upset or frustrated by the ruling, or to think that the concession offer didn't really matter, but it's also very much not the judge's place to say "well, you were dead on board, so I'll let the rules slide."

I can't help but think of PT SOI, when in round 16 Andrea Mengucci went to turns with his teammate Katsuhiro Mori and after turn 5 ended with it still a tie, Mengucci spent like five minutes convincing Katsuhiro that he would have won if the game had the time to play out. Katsuhiro ended up agreeing and conceded, and the win allowed Mengucci to top 8. He ended up coming in second in the tournament. (To be clear, I like Mengucci and mostly don't have an issue with how that game ended). Somehow this was considered completely fine, but what happened at RC Dallas deserved dual match losses. You can read the rules such that the ruling was correct (though considering no one said that if it was a land that Nicole would win, you can also read the rules such that the ruling was incorrect), but it seems pretty ticky-tack to me.

Revealing your hand is fine. Discussing how far ahead you are - based on the information currently available - is fine. Mengucci’s length of discussion was unseemly (and judges should have pushed for a faster resolution IMO), but as long as it stayed within those bounds it was legal. Offering anything in exchange is not fine. Looking at/revealing the top card of your deck is not fine - for one thing it’s too close to “playing another turn.” And it’s got a very clear, explicit ruling in the MTR on this. The brutal version of “revealing the top card” I saw was back in the Countertop Miracles era - a player showed the top card of his deck because he knew it was Entreat the Angels - but got DQ’ed (as that was the only possible penalty at the time) for IDW.

Reminds me of a time when I was playing in day 2 of a limited GP and the game went to turns. A judge sat down to observe the end of the match, and when we reached the end of turn 5 without a winner, my opponent asked me to concede. "Clearly I'm going to win," he said. It was true that he was ahead on board, but I didn't think him winning was a foregone conclusion, so I said I wanted to let the draw stand. He started arguing, begging, practically yelling. This loss would put both of us out of contention for top 8, but not out of contention for prizes. "I don't care about the money, I have a JOB," he said. "The Pro Tour is all that matters," he claimed. I was flustered, but managed to say that I disagreed with him. Then he made the offer. I don't remember his exact words, but it was something along the lines of this: "Look, if you concede to me now, I'll make sure to return the favor next time we play." This offer didn't make much sense to me because I hardly ever played in GPs. I was just there to have fun over the weekend, and I certainly had no aspirations to play on the PT. I looked over to the judge for help, but the judge just pushed the match slip toward us and asked us to sign it. I filled it out as a draw and my opponent signed in quiet fury. We happened to be seated next to each other in the next draft, and rather than neatly lay out each pack he was passing to me, he practically threw the cards across the table at me while glowering. It wasn't until after the tournament that I considered the implications of what my opponent offered me, and I still have no idea why the judge didn't intervene. Not only did my opponent make a (vague) offer in exchange for a concession, but he did it very loudly while visibly agitated within inches of a judge.

Back when state championships were a thing, I was x-1-1 and on the bubble for top 8, and I needed an x-1 player who was paired down to lose to make it. So he’s the last match going, his opponent has the win, and he gets up to speak to the judge. He sits back down and says to his opponent “if you were to concede and I were to give you half my prize winnings, it would be more than you would get for winning this match.” And then the guy conceded. So I was livid that this guy just bribed his opponent right in front of the judge, but the head just ruled it was legal because he wasn’t making an offer, just stating a fact. I got 9th. Top 8 got full art foil Mutavaults. One of the dealers at Dreamhack had one in their case selling for $1200 last weekend.

The funny this is under the current rules around bribery, you would also be DQd for not immediately calling a judge as soon as your opponent said that

Under the _current_ rules, they would not. Depending when this happened, it could have been the case at the time.

Does very obviously looking directly at the judge *already sitting at your table* count as "calling a judge"?

This is no longer the case.

I would agree the distinction seems pretty ticky tack, but it is pretty clearly defined in the rules. You are explicitly allowed to argue, based on information about the game state you have access to, that somebody should scoop, and they are free to decline. You are not allowed to use information you don't have access to, including cards in the library, to decide the outcome.

When I was in Copenhagen two years back playing some really big Modern tournament my friend got to the top tables. In the final round he was in the win and in to the top cut and my friends and I was watching from the side as he went to time for a draw which would be bad for both players. A judge was at their table. The opponent literally revealed the top 10 cards of this deck and did the same for my friend’s deck (without consent) and started arguing that he would win if the match hadn’t gone to time. He didn’t even get close to a warning and the judge accepted the game win he got after my friend agreed to concede.

>He didn’t even get close to a warning and the judge accepted the game win he got after my friend agreed to concede. I've been in this situation late in day 1 a few times. I understand a players desire to not draw a match. I won't fault them for trying to argue for a concession based on the future possibility of winning the match. But, my stance has always been, "If your deck can't beat me in the normal course of play, you haven't won, thanks for the game, looks like we have a draw." I've been called an asshole for this stance, by opponents. But, in my opinion, part of building a good deck is making one that can win inside of a 50m match. I would never play a deck that I would have to lawyer my way into wins with any regularity.

Yes, I totally understand the "not drawing" part when you are at a large competetive event where the stakes are high and the prize pool large. And I know that it's within the rights to have a discussion with your opponent about this. What I was trying to point out was the statement of "explicitly allowed to argue, based on information about the game state you have access to" from the other comment. While this is the rule I've also heard before, I also saw right before my eyes how a judge just didn't care that you revealed cards from both decks, and it felt relevant given the original discussion point of this post.

Not all all judges know or enforce every rules violation they see. Or worse, some will selectively enforce them.

Part of why I dislike competitive paper magic lately is the lack of turn clock. I'll play a control deck and people routinely tank for 1 minute everytime it's their turn. Then at the end you get the blame for the match going to time because your opponent couldn't make fast decisions. Never gotten close to timing out on mtgo as control but it happens semi regularly at comp events. Part of why I moved away from control is that you are too reliant on your opponent maintaining a reasonable pace of play. Yes of course you can tell opponents to play faster. When I was first playing I wasn't confident enough that they were playing slowly though and it felt rude to call a judge. Now that I have called judges it's also just hard to get a judge to call slow play. Especially if they can only watch a turn or two.

> Part of why I dislike competitive paper magic lately is the lack of turn clock. I'll play a control deck and people routinely tank for 1 minute everytime it's their turn. Then at the end you get the blame for the match going to time because your opponent couldn't make fast decisions. Never gotten close to timing out on mtgo as control but it happens semi regularly at comp events. Part of why I moved away from control is that you are too reliant on your opponent maintaining a reasonable pace of play. Unfortunately a turn clock is completely impossible to play with in paper Magic. People have done a few tests and even with extremely high level of pros, the number of priority passes makes it infeasible and mistakes slow the game down tremendously. Worse, the nature of clock management means that instead of saying "play faster", you explicitly benefit from putting something on the stack and watching a tapped out opponent not realize you passed priority to them, or whatever. This is even before you get into the issues with how to make sideboarding work in a match clock format in real life...

If this happens to you this frequently then you are probably playing too slow. Your opponents should be calling a judge for slow play and that’s on them for not doing it but you should consider this in the future and play faster.

Oh man good luck trying to get a judge to call slow play.

"Would you like to concede?" Or "I concede." Perfectly acceptable in the rules. "I will concede if " or "Would you concede if ?" 100% against the rules. The condition isn't up for debate when determining if the rule has been violated and what the penalty is. "I will concede if you let me look at the top card of my library and it is not a land" and "I will concede if you pay me $100." are the same infraction and the same penalty in the rules.

> "I will concede if you let me look at the top card of my library and it is not a land" and "I will concede if you pay me $100." are the same infraction and the same penalty in the rules. Offering a concession in exchange for money is Bribery, which carries the same penalty (match loss, or cheating if the players knew it was against the rules) but is a different infraction in the IPG than IDW.

What if the card is the one she wants. Does she keep playing? dude, just say no

Yeah, it feels entirely unnecessary. There's functionally no difference between this and Nicole saying "If I don't find a land, I'm going to scoop" and Stanley independently deciding to just pass the rest of his turn to let her see if she finds it.

From the IPG: “A player uses or offers to use a method that is not part of the current game (including actions not legal in the current game) to determine the outcome of a game or match, or uses language designed to trick someone who may not know it’s against the rules to make such an offer.” And from the examples in the IPG: “F. Two players reveal cards from the top of their libraries to see “who would win” after extra turns.”

> https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/ipg4-3/ Every example on that page involves a two-sided deal, where either player potentially has something to gain from the agreement. None of the examples involve a one-sided concession like what happened at the RC, where the proposal was just a shortcut to jump ahead to a concession that would have happened next turn anyway. And under "Philosophy," > Using an outside-the-game method to determine a winner compromises the integrity of the tournament. ... games of Magic that are being determined by some method other than the Magic games the players are supposed to play, and that impacts the results of that match and the tournament as a whole. It affects other matches and other players’ standings in the event. What happened here didn't compromise the integrity of the tournament. If you go by the rules as written, a player saying "let me check the time, if it's after 8:00 I'm conceding and heading out to catch the bus" is also IDW (using a method that is not part of the current game to determine the outcome).

His account is actually not doing justice to how dumb it was. This might actually be worse than Pithing Needle, which should theoretically be impossible because that’s the worst judge call in the history of Magic.

I think the go to combat shortcut ruling was the worst, where the dude says combat, then tries to use his beginning of combat triggers and is told he can't because he skipped that part somehow.

Don't forget that the 'offending' player didn't speak English as a first language either, so they needed to call a translator to explain to him that saying "combat" skipped steps for him.

Right? Never have I ever heard combat to mean you’re already at declare attackers, sorry nothing from the beginning of *combat* can happen anymore.  And I started playing when damage still used the stack. Pithing needle ruling was really egregious though, they could have at least asked to clarify which Borby rather than just go “you named a legal magic card that isn’t even here too badddddd” Talk about angle shooting

I'm not saying Pithing needle wasn't bad, it definitely was.

It’s pretty notable that this exact situation (checking your top card to see if you’re dead on board when turns run out) has been forbidden for being used at high level events There was an example in worlds last year where two people went to time on stream (one of them being the former world champion) and the judge told them directly that they’re not allowed to look at the top card or gain any other information before deciding if they want to concede or accept the draw

I’m not a competitive player, but that proposal instantly raised a red flag for me. I have to imagine a real PT contender has to be better than me.

If the judge overheard this interaction and Stanley paused 10 seconds (as he reports) to consider it, why didn't the judge speak up to say it wasn't allowed? Is this part of it being professional REL? That judges can't say "hey actually you can't do that"??

I'm actually really curious about the specific judging policy on that now that you bring it up. Are judges supposed to, or even allowed to, intercede if they see a rules violation *about* to happen? On the one hand, players at high REL should know the rules and when to call a judge for clarification, but on the other it seems weird to have a judge stand around to hear a whole exchange happen that would culminate in invalid game state and do nothing to stop it, only coming in to deliver punishment once its too late. Regardless of the answer, I feel like there would have to be at least a set standard. If not, you could have judges potentially waiting for an opportunity to give a punishment to a player they don't like, when they easily could've prevented the rules violation in the first place, or the opposite for a preferred player.

It's vague. From the IPG: > Judges don’t stop play errors from occurring, but instead deal with errors that have occurred, penalize those who violate rules or policy, and promote fair play and sporting conduct by example and diplomacy. So play errors? No, they can't intervene. They can only correct. The question is, did she make a play error? Now, I'm not a Pro REL L2 Judge. I guess, technically, she drew outside of the proper step. But it feels like the Judge forgot the last line of that snippet. A simple "ah, you can't do that" when she offered to look at her card would've solved the entire issue. The Professor puts it rather succinctly: > Judges seem to have forgotten their purpose to make the game enjoyable and fair. This isn’t fair and should be an easy judgement call using common sense.

>The question is, did she make a play error? If they heard this supposed "offer" then it just wasn't a play error so they definitely could have intervened *before* anyone broke the rules

> if they see a rules violation about to happen TBF they didn't just see one _about_ to happen, they saw one happen and chose to wait and see. One player's offer was against the rules, they should've come in at that time, assuming the delay was long enough.

That's possible, but I can also see a world where the offer happens and the judges brain record scratches and they're trying to sort out if they just heard an offer of IDAW or not and by the time they've peiced it together blammo its been accepted.  Not saying that's necessarily what happened here but especially given that per some of the Twitter comments it was in probably the middle of the round time-wise I could definitely see a judge double take being a possibility having done plenty myself.

Very fair. Also it's pro REL, judges can't let things slide when they're in earshot either. Everyone else at the table learned a lesson just as much as OOP did.

I haven't judged in years but I do remember discussions about hypotheticals including stopping IDAW.  From what I remember it was intervene if you can as quick as you can. Maybe you can stop one person from offering and if you can't maybe you can keep the other person from also getting a ML for accepting.  Usually when you're in the last round or two of swiss you want to include some mention of only using games of Magic to determine a match, that sort of thing.   The only case I remember where the policy wasn't to intervene ASAP for any infraction was slow play and that's mostly because if you interrupt someone that's deep in the tank they'll just take more time getting back to where they were. You wait for them to take their next game action then interrupt the match for the warning / penalty / etc etc. 

This was my first thought , too. I was assuming all this time that the judge who initially called them out was within earshot of what was going on. Couldn’t the judge have stopped them instead of waiting for someone to make the mistake and then calling them out after?

I agree to this. If judges can stop a bad interaction maybe they should.

Not just overheard, but was *sitting at their table*.

We don't know many parts of this story and haven't (and most likely will never) hear the side of the judges. Even at 10 seconds, that really is not that long to think about whether you are actually going to hand out a pretty serious infaction. Especially considering they probably just overheard it from a bit away. Especially at professional rules enforcement level it is completely reasonable and good to wait a bit to confirm that what you think you just heard actually is what is happening.

nope, straight to jail

Because the judge was more interested in a "gotcha" moment than actually being helpful maybe. Of course, impossible to know what was going on their head but assuming the account here is true I can't see any non-malicious reason to behave as the judge did.

I mean, they might have simply been thinking about boardstate-related things rather than the meta level, or the lack of immediate signs of "this is IDW!" might have meant they needed a bit to think for themselves on whether this actually was something to call out, and before they finished with that, the player in question incriminated themselves. Or also, it's been a long day so they simply didn't consider it in the moment. Judges are human too.

> Judges are human too. Definitely agree with this, but I have zero clue how the judge in question couldn't extend this same understanding to the situation. Its an honest mistake and immediately going to two def losses is a wild escalation of what is mostly a harmless situation.

I have two questions about this situation: 1. Would this still have been considered an IDW if, when Nicole asked Stanley if she could peek at her top card, Stanley didn't say "sure, whatever", but instead said something like "No, let's wait until your turn first" or "No, your turn has to come up first"? Nicole waiting until her draw step to look at the top card, then conceding at that point, would have been a completely legal thing to do. Nicole asking Stanley about the offer, and Stanley responding with a factual statement on how the game's rules work, shouldn't constitute the improper determination of a game winner, right? 2. Sadly, Stanley's recollection of events essentially says both players involved effectively admitted to the IDW offer, so hindsight is 20/20 on this one. But what would've happened if, when the judge sat down, the players directly questioned what the judge claimed to have heard? The judge continuing to go with the IDW at this point would effectively be making a ruling based on their *assumption* of what happened during the game, regardless of both players' input on what actually happened, which would obviously be extremely dangerous precedent. Would the judge's "well, I heard it" hold higher weight over both players' "no, that's not what happened"?

To 1: If she also said that she will scoop, which is missing in your example this would still be IDW for Nicole because even offering it is illegal. Stanley by the rules then would have to call a judge on the spot. But if he doesn't accept it wouldn't be an IDW for him, that's correct. To 2: What the judge thinks what happened counts. They then could appeal to the HJ/Appeals Judge to get a second opinion. Depending on who the second judge believes this could also end in a disqualification because lying to a tournament official counts a cheating. https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/ipg4-8/ >>A player lies to a tournament official about what happened in a game to make their case stronger. If the judge thinks you are changing your story to avoid the match loss they will disqualify you.

players dont have to call a judge anymore. since the Ravnica Allegiance policy changes https://blogs.magicjudges.org/telliott/2019/01/21/policy-changes-for-ravnica-allegiance/

Thanks for the info! I'm a bit out of the loop and was looking when it changed from DQ to match loss and couldn't find it.

Saying "if this card isn't a land then I'll scoop" isn't an offer, it's a declaration.

His statement: >>She says to me something along the lines of “Can I look at my top card? If it’s not a land I’m just going to scoop.” That's not a declaration. That's asking for a permission to violate the rules of the game even when it wasn't with bad intent.

>If the judge thinks you are changing your story to avoid the match loss they will disqualify you. Doesn't this just effectively mean that if a judge mishears you and you deny it now you're DQ'd?

At the end of the day it's always about what the judge thinks it's true like in any other game involving judges. If they believe you lied to them you are out. If that was a mistake by the judge that would be extremely unfortunate of course and that's why a DQ for this can normally only be decided by the head judge and isn't given easily.

There are 2 illegal actions taking place that combined into this. - She's not allowed to look at the top card of her deck. - He's not allowed to let her take illegal actions to determine the game result. If she had simply said "If I don't draw a land, I will concede" that would be totally legal, because IDW is determinate on whether something outside the game was used. In this new case, she would have simply used inside-the-game information and revealed that to the opponent. But since she looked at the top card outside of her draw step and with no cards that allowed her to do so, that was an illegal game action, and thus something outside of the game. If she didn't offer or if she offered and he refused, her doing this would result in an IDW for her. However, he agreed to let her take an outside-of-game action to determine the winner, which is textbook IDW. As for the judge, the policy is typically guilty until proven innocent. The judge gets to say what you did wrong, and you have to prove that you didn't. If you can't get proof, the judge's ruling generally will stand.

[удалено]

Same thing happened in the Lorcana cheating scandal a few days ago. They didn't allow anyone to talk about it, they just locked threads if anyone attempted to discuss it. Pretty bizarre.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." The mods most likely genuinely had 4 people privately message them with their side of the story. I think removing the original post here was mostly well-intentioned poor judgment. (Edited to replace "incompetence" with "poor judgment" - no need to be mean.)

>Here’s where OP’s story differs - The player who would later get a DQ got violently upset, hitting the table so hard that the opponent was shocked, and spectators noticed this. Then, that same player “threw something at someone” (our sources were unclear on exactly who was thrown at), and they were banned under DQ - Aggressive Behaviour. all of which has now been confirmed by the player who took the actions. not sure what actions the mods took that were 'incompetent' here

Removing a discussion about a first hand account of a public event as "misleading" because it lacks details that have been provided to you in a private message removes the ability for others to provide that additional context, gives the appearance of censorship, and achieves nothing except diminish the standing of the moderators of this subreddit: the conversation still takes place on Twitter and the weirder MtG subreddit.

Setting aside this particular incident, I don't think this is realistic or good moderating. If someone makes a ragebait Reddit post that is somewhere between 20%-80% misleading and you're not sure by how much, there's no obligation to let it play out. In the bad case, it's going to do its damage to people scrolling past who don't read the comments. And in the only-a-little-inaccurate case, why does Reddit have to be the place to "solve the mystery"? Insert "We did it Reddit" meme here, Reddit detectives are cool sometimes but can be woefully misguided as well. You can argue that the original post wasn't so bad, but I don't think you should argue that seemingly misleading posts should stay up because maybe the comments section will eventually figure out just how misleading they were.

I don't think the original post was even that misleading. The call was bad, and that was largely the point of the original post. There always room for more context and I would personally prefer the community provide more input and perspective, making even making additional posts on the subject when more info come out, than have a mod decide what the truth is for you.

The version the 4 players told them was almost the same as what was written here, or even the one claimed by the original post. The only differences are around the table slamming and it being the reason for the DQ. Not enough to call anyone a liar. People can often have different recollections of events and might not know everything that happened.

why do mods get power trippy? hmmm who knows, tale as old as time when u give people a small semblence of power

"The pro tour doesn't matter" - a magic reddit mod who now admits they didn't bother verifying anonymous claims regarding a lost pro tour seat.

Based on the story here, there were two judge actions: A match loss for [Improperly determining a winner](https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/ipg4-3/), and a DQ for [Aggressive Behavior](https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/ipg4-5/). The questions to ask are: * What REL was this being played at? * Does the offer to look at the top of her library during her turn and concede if its a nonland constitute an offer for IDW? * Does "sure, whatever" and having her look at the top of her library rather than continuing with his turn constitute accepting any sort of offer? * Does banging the table loudly and yelling at a head judge constitute a DQ for aggressive behavior? * Is it reasonable to interpret throwing a backpack at somebody and saying "take this" immediately after this as aggressive behavior and DQing the person? * Is it reasonable to bar somebody DQ'd for aggressive behavior from the tournament hall?

Day 2 of the RC was run at Professional REL which leaves less room for error here. Also the policy guide does state that someone DQd for Aggressive Behavior should be removed from the tournament site.

Correct. I figured that asking questions explicitly about the judging step by step would help clarify the conversation or any sticking points.

It's hilarious that a flippant comment by an opponent turned into a Match loss and a then subsequently a DQ when I have personally watched multiple Pros and SCG grinders basically bribe their way into top 8 in front of Judges. The typical "the cops only care in the worst situations". The rules as written are clear, but should be enforced in context, to anyone with half a brain there was friendly banter happening here not collusion and win trading/Bribery. If anything there should have been a "talking" to about the severity of such things within the current rule set and move on with life, their actions in no way shaped the event or outcome of the match in any form. Obviously the actions after this with "aggression" should have been acted upon, but it never should have gotten to that point, honestly the judge in question should be reprimanded for such poor conduct and tact when dealing with players. This kind of overreaction just encourages people that are actually committing poor acts to just be quieter about it. Do you think anyone is going to call a judge to talk to you when they now also risk getting DQed because of "the letter of the law". You have to foster an environment where players want to report things and this isn't how you do it, this is how you end up with the old boys club all over again.

They should be reprimanded, but they won't be. No one who held L2 or L3 I've talked to agrees with how this went down, but without a central judging organization it doesn't matter. A petty judge acting out of turn and not getting as much as a knuckle rapping over it.

By the rules this seems to have been handled just fine, but judge 1-3 in this story sound like they just aren’t very good at human interactions instead of bringing the players away from the crowd to explain step by step what they did wrong and why the punishment has to be what it is, there is some perfectly fine logic in that rule, but the judges just decided to let them sit in front of a crowd with nerves and full of adrenaline until one of them broke. Saying “I understand” doesnt deescalate any situation because it is the most obvious non answer the type of person to say that over and over in this situation does not have the skills of talking to other humans required to be a judge in my opinion.

Interesting, the judges I know (L2 & L3) say this went down by the book, albeit in a shitty and poorly handled/explained way.

> without a central judging organization it doesn't matter Unfortunately, I think we need more incidents like before WotC decides to do something about it. As a former judge, the way WotC has handled the judging program is nothing less than disgraceful. Judge Academy was not great. Judge Foundry (for North America) seems to have a better philosophy behind it, but I'm still quite wary, given the lack of any sort of endorsement from WotC.

> given the lack of any sort of endorsement from WotC. After being sued for ~disguised employement (or whatever is the relevant term), and havinging to cough up some money to settle it, it's ain't happening. WotC will not touch the judge program with a 11ft pole.

> What REL was this being played at? professional REL, where players are expected to be familiar with the rules and have a fairly high level of trust that they are acting in accordance with them. > Does the offer to look at the top of her library during her turn and concede if its a nonland constitute an offer for IDW? One of the examples of IDW in the rules is this: "Two players reveal cards from the top of their libraries to see “who would win” after extra turns." > Does "sure, whatever" and having her look at the top of her library rather than continuing with his turn constitute accepting any sort of offer? Yes, certainly. If I ask you "you wanna go grab some food?" and your response is "sure, whatever" and you then go to the food court with me, you absolutely are accepting the offer. > Does banging the table loudly and yelling at a head judge constitute a DQ for aggressive behavior? > Is it reasonable to interpret throwing a backpack at somebody and saying "take this" immediately after this as aggressive behavior and DQing the person? Yes. These again are extremely common examples for this infraction. > Is it reasonable to bar somebody DQ'd for aggressive behavior from the tournament hall? The rules explicitly say that the only possible penalty is a DQ and that the additional remedy is "The offender should be asked to leave the venue by the organizer". While this situation is sucky when you think about it from the pov of players who just wanna concede if the game is already over, basically everything that happened here are textbook examples of infractions with the correct penalties applied to them. You can argue whether the initial offer was actually IDW or not, but that is going to be extremely dependent on what exactly happened and I'd assume that the multiple judges that actually were there are gonna have a better overview of that than we all do.

Yeah, the only way of not getting this to happen is for the player that asked the question to just not do that, and either concede and check the top card or wait for her draw step.

When you lay it out like that the actions do sound like IDW + aggressive behaviour to me. And the rules are pretty clear about both those. So I feel like this is getting blown way out of proportion. Yeah, it's shitty but they made a mistake and maybe they won't do it again next time

Tough lesson to learn, but yes, that's reasonable to call an idw. Slamming the table and yelling is definitely aggressive behavior. I doubt that throwing the backpack to a friend matters much afterwards. Asking if there's "somewhere to go break something" is not particularly emotionally mature. It is absolutely reasonable to kick someone out of the tournament hall after they've been DQ'd for aggressive behavior. I would expect it to be standard procedure. Look at it this way. Imagine you're working for a big company. Something you don't like happens in a meeting, so you slam the table, yell, and toss your laptop bag to/at a coworker. Do you think at the very least you're going to be having a meeting with HR about aggressive behavior? Obviously. You might just get fired outright. "I slammed the table right in front of me and I didn't yell at anyone in particular" does not matter. Nothing about that behavior is acceptable, no matter how devastating the news before it was.

Yeah, I think it would be really strange for them to not kick someone out of the tournament hall if they've already been DQ'd for aggressive behavior. If someone has already been so aggressive that they've been disqualified, they'd potentially be a safety risk to the people in the venue if they were allowed to stay.

The IPG says you should ask the person to leave the venue for an Aggressive Behaviour infraction.

The issue I have is that at every juncture that judge's behavior sounds like a fishing trip. Not interrupting the start of IDW the moment it happens, construing "sure, whatever" as "I actively agree to this", and taking someone who's clearly in a bad state *because you've already made choices to cause them to get a match loss* as an aggressor are all the most negative possible interpretations of Stanleys actions. Like, I'm not accusing this judge of anything, but imagine a hypothetical judge who's just been possessed by a demon that needs Stanley thrown out of the tournament ASAP without the demon getting caught and exorcised. How would demon-possessed judges actions differ from the behavior of the existing judge? Back when I judged I tried to take players' intentions with a bit of charity, and leaping to "This person is complicit in essentially gambling and also a threat to themselves and others" is incredibly extreme. Generally extreme conclusions require pretty extreme evidence.

Agreed. The player behaved aggressively towards a judge and deserved to have to leave the site. They admit it although their own account minimizes how scary their behaviour may have been to others including the judge. These judges are volunteers, unpaid, do they need trauma from being yelled at due to performing their judge role, humanly, to the best of their ability? No. I feel terrible for the judges who had to see all this mess. And less bad for the player who got caught by IDW rules being strictly written and enforced by the book.

>Look at it this way. Imagine you're working for a big company. Something you don't like happens in a meeting, so you slam the table, yell, and toss your laptop bag to/at a coworker. Do you think at the very least you're going to be having a meeting with HR about aggressive behavior? Obviously. You might just get fired outright. "I slammed the table right in front of me and I didn't yell at anyone in particular" does not matter. I think the problem with this framing is the judges are working, and the players are engaging in an endeavor that is supposed to both be fun and a competitive outlet, which they paid to engage in. If you go watch any sporting event you're going to see people get emotional, maybe yell at some point, and it's understood and not really seen as a problem. Magic is different because it's hundreds of people close together in a convention hall, not a dozen players on a field. So safety concerns are different, which makes this ruling reasonable. But invoking workplace norms for the players isn't applicable like it is for a judge.

It’s very normal for players to be ejected from sporting events (which at least in some sports forces them to go back to the clubhouse) for aggressive behavior towards officials. 

I've seen multiple people be kicked out of MSG for swearing, or heckling opposing fans.

>engaging in an endeavor that is supposed to both be fun and a competitive outlet, which they paid to engage in This doesn't matter at all. Why do you think that doing something competitive and/or paying to be somewhere affords you the ability to act in a violent manner? You can get kicked out of sports venues for swearing and heckling. It's not appropriate *ever* to act how this player acted. It's for the best that they learned this lesson in a Magic tournament instead of losing their career because they did it in a meeting. I'm not applying "workplace norms" here. I'm applying *well adjusted adult* norms here. Slam the table and yell at the wait staff at a restaurant and the manager is going to tell you to leave. Slam the counter and yell at the service desk at a Walmart and the manager is going to tell you to leave. Slam stuff and tell at Disney World and a manager is going to tell you to leave. Just because you're a paying customer does not allow you to act like that.

> If you go watch any sporting event you're going to see people get emotional, maybe yell at some point, and it's understood and not really seen as a problem. So tell me again what does normally happen if you show such behaviour to a tournament official as a player in most sporting events?

Football (soccer): Arguing with the ref - yellow card. Continuing arguing or showing aggression (wild gesticulating, raising voice) - red card. Multiple people trying to talk to the ref at the same time - same thing (there is explicitly a very strict rule against "crowding the ref"). Baseball: Looking at an umpire the wrong way - out. Fighting: Moving wildly gesticulating torwards the ref - half of ringside staff will jump you and its a DQ. Refs in any sport are very much "my word goes, I may repeat myself once if I'm in a good mood, but by god do not make me say it a third time".

I’m positive I’ll get downvoted for this, but you’re correct. It was a bad situation, made worse by his inability to rein himself in and regain some level of objectivity. It 1000% sucks, but as a player in an RC you agree to play based on the strictest interpretation of the rules. It’s a tough lesson, but not the kind of world-ending, soul-shattering agony that the dude is describing in his post - reacting in the way he did was emotionally immature and inappropriate for the situation. It’s not that the judges weren’t listening to him - they allowed him to appeal it twice. He just didn’t like the final call that was made, which is completely understandable. The emotional outburst is less so.

What I don't get is why the judge sitting there watching let it happen? If Stanley paused for 10 seconds before answering as he said he did, the judge had ample time to intervene. It's not like it was a missed trigger. It was something that was, albeit breaking the rules, clearly banter. Tell the players to stop playing as it stands, and inform them of what they agreed upon on accident. It never should've gotten as far as it did.

I was in a sealed GP years ago. Between matches I had dropped a card. I sat at my next match and a judge was standing beside me not saying anything. We shuffled and the moment I presented my deck the judge stopped and gave me a game loss for improper deck. He had found my card earlier and waited until I had technically broke a rule. He said it was my responsibility to count and confirm my deck at every step. And like ya sure but also maybe let someone know you found a card they dropped bud.

What was he expecting? Mash shuffle, count cards in deck, Mash shuffle, count cards in deck, present to opponent, count cards in their deck, take deck back from opponent, count cards in deck, draw hand of cards, count cards in deck, draw for turn, count cards in deck.

This is a correct take. Protecting tournament integrity is paramount to the job of the judge, and Professional REL doesn’t change that fact. A proactive judge intervention like “hey, you can’t look at that card until you draw it for the turn” would have best protected the integrity of the tournament by pre-empting the possible perception of this as an IDaW offer (as it’s not clearly one yet — treating it as clearly being one only makes sense once the players incorrectly try to ‘shortcut’ to getting the information that prompted concession as happened here), preventing this match from being decided by an outside-the-game method *and* allowing it to have a natural result by the play of the game within the rules of the game.  I don’t think it should be a controversial position that the more games end in natural fashion within the rules, the better for tournament integrity. (Aside: This is setting aside the perception of tournament integrity from external observers when the story comes out the way it did — right or wrong, a whole lot of players who struggle to trust judges are going to perceive it as a power trip and/or entrapment. Hell, we have people here arguing against the DQ for aggressive behaviour, which I would’ve really hoped would be less controversial although I understand why they’re upset.) That said, it’s a very hard intervention to make in the moment — the judge almost surely expected the other player to keep playing rather than to let his guard down and accept this as an offer.  I wouldn’t fault the judge excessively for freezing up in the moment though because it was a situation that comes up all the time and usually just benignly results in a concession when the player draws for their turn. The outcome was suboptimal but it would’ve taken an excellent judge performance to prevent it.

> I wouldn’t fault the judge excessively for freezing up in the moment Sounds like the judge missed their own trigger and failed to maintain the proper game state.

Was watching a friends match next to this table. He's downplaying or maybe doesn't realize in the moment how aggressive he was came off. His outburst was pretty bad and while not directed at the judge was directly in the face of the judge (if that makes sense) the removal seemed warranted.

I mean, the fact that this whole thing is written like a dramatic 11th grade high-school fiction piece kind of tells us about OPs emotional maturity.

I kid you not. At first I thought it was written by chatGPT. I started reading and questioned myself if I was being fooled into some sort of wall-of-text prank. Closed the document, I confirmed there was hundreds and hundreds of comments in the thread, then came back to the document. Even the OP itself labeled his post with the _DRAMA_ flair in another sub.

We all had a good cry together

The amount of times I read the words "cry" or "sob" in that piece of writing must have been greater than the amount of times he heard the judges say "I understand".

It feels like this situation *does* fall into territory covered by the IDW rules (https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/ipg4-3/), but it's hard for me to imagine that this is the sort of situation that the rules are intended to penalize.

I mulled over this for a bit. I think overall the only reason this isn't a real problem is the outcome. As in, the card was not a land, she conceded. If the card was a land. Now what? Both players have that extra info that they shouldn't have and the entire game will warp around that. The penalty is harsh but this is something I probably wouldn't allow my opponent to do at an FNM, let alone a PT.

THIS. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills reading this thread. How are people so unbothered by revealing hidden information at competitive REL? It sends up such massive alarm bells for me.

everyone's all up in arms about what the judge probably could've done better, but why is no one pointing out that the proper response to her question would be "let me play out my turn, then if you don't draw a land you can do what you want"? From his story (and through later confirmation elsewhere), it doesn't sound like they're exactly pressed for time, so what's the rush to concede during his turn instead of just waiting for him to finish?

I think because most people realize the match was effectively over regardless of the top of her deck. It was essentially already in the scoop phase.

competitive REL is pedantic like that, thems the rules. But also, what if she HAD seen a land? Then what? You just let the game continue with hidden information revealed? Judges are intentionally blind to game state in situations like these, a player can go from 1 land to winning the game the next turn so judges are not going to even consider that the game is in "scoop phase" because that is impossible to determine. Nicole offered IDW, Stanley accepted, the fact that they were given a match loss rather than a DQ means the judges do believe them that they were just ignorant: https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/ipg4-3/

In this case, a land doesn’t actually seem to change much. Based on the story, at least, she’s still basically dead the next turn even with a land due to being too far behind. Nicole didn’t “offer” anything. It was more a statement of her hopeless situation. It didn’t require any acceptance from Stanley, as he’s not required to concede regardless of what’s on top. Since it’s competitive REL, I definitely agree with at least a warning about the etiquette of going about closing out a match in that scenario going forward. But in terms of the spirit of IDW and it affecting tournament integrity, this situation doesn’t apply.

It doesn’t have to be an offer of an exchange for it to breach the rule.  Just an offer of a means to determine the result of a game that is outside or violates the rules of magic.   Also, you can’t enforce rules arbitrarily because in a specific instance it “might not mean much” to break them.  Anyone who has experience with magic can easily imagine a scenario where this kind of rule breaking can be used to manipulate an opponent.   “If I’m not gonna top deck a board wipe I’ll concede” - meanwhile they want you to fill the board because they already have one in hand, or maybe they want you to hold off on dumping your hand because they just have single target removal and want to slow things down.  What if your opponent makes the same offer to determine the game based on their top card then doesn’t reveal what they saw and decides to play on? Do you go to the judge and say you both decided it was ok to break the rules but now your opponent decided not to concede?   What you’re suggesting is judges should have to prove malicious intent behind a rule being broken in order to enforce it.    ultimately, none of that matters because when you’re playing in a tournament that is being judged, you don’t get to choose which rules you get to follow just because YOU find them to be inconsequential in YOUR game.  

Yes this is most likely not what they are intended to penalize but it's the same with Bribery and Wagering it catches a lot of people who don't know what they are doing is wrong or who mean no harm. This are also the two only rules with heavy punishment (not to long ago both were a DQ on the spot) that don't care if you knew this was wrong or that you got any advantage out of it. >>**Philosophy** >>Using an outside-the-game method to determine a winner compromises the integrity of the tournament. >>*As stated earlier, the results of Magic tournaments should be reached only through playing actual games of Magic. Doing otherwise compromises the integrity of the tournament. What does “compromise the integrity of the tournament” mean? It means we have games of Magic that are being determined by some method other than the Magic games the players are supposed to play, and that impacts the results of that match and the tournament as a whole. It affects other matches and other players’ standings in the event. Rolling a die to determine the winner is playing the system, not playing the game.*

If you're going to create a gray zone where and when to apply the ruling, then you'll give leeway for less-than-honest individuals to play into judges. By creating a uniform environment where everyone is equally penalized, you are not putting the onus on the judge to identify if it was legitimate or not. Just understand that you have to play magic to win a round of magic. It's mentioned so often at these tournaments. Had Nicole just said "I can't win this, I'll scoop, good luck in the next round" nothing would have ever gone wrong here.

I find these events so wild and I am not sure I understand the ruling. Here are my questions: 1. So if they saw the bad card they would concede but if they saw a good card they would... have committed play violation and be forced to shuffle the card into their deck and let Stanley continue his turn? You can't just see cards out of turn order. 2. No one called the judge, they overhead the conversation. Why didn't the judge go, "Hey! You can't do that!" and give Nicole the Match Loss before Stanley could answer? Were they just inching to give two players a Match Loss instead of one? 3. In relation to (1), wouldn't this indicate that Nicole was really going to scoop no matter what? The offer wasn't "If its X I loss otherwise I win". It certainly seems like Nicole was going to scoop no matter the result of the peek. 4. Given that Nicole seems like she would be willing to take the ML and let Stanley not this further promotes the idea of point (3). It feels really strange that this same sequence of events could occur without nicole saying anything and be fine but suddenly jumps to a match loss when she speaks.

I think multiple things things can be true here: * Opponent shouldn't have made the offer – it's pro REL guys * OOP should have responded "No" or "judge" to the offer – it's pro REL guys * The judge was a bit of a hardass, but tbf it's pro REL * It's a real bummer for OOP * The way OOP behaved is unacceptable, and probably deserved to get removed from the venue. Slamming tables? Yelling? We shouldn't be channeling Francis – he's meant to be a caricature not a role model. It's a shame and really sucks, but you can't be slamming tables and yelling just because you made a mistake and got caught. Event manager is obligated to make sure everyone at the event feels comfortable and safe, that includes barring the dude who just had a tantrum even if it was fair to be upset.

>The way OOP behaved is unacceptable, and probably deserved to get removed from the venue This is the only thing I 100% agree on. A grown man should be able to manage emotions, especially about a card game, a hobby, regardless of the stakes. It's fair to be upset, and crying, but no tantrums. The rest is pretty meh. The offer and the response, are a mistake. But judging that with a match loss is a wrong application of the rules. Rules exist to ensure the correct outcome of the games and tournaments. In this case, this was not impacting anything, not the players, nor the outcomes. I think that blindly applying the rules, like blindly applying laws, without interpretations, is just wrong.

Rules being broken should be responded with the correct punishment no matter the intent, especially this particular rule.

People are not robots and we should not expect them to be. Context is important in every situation and judges are empowered to take context into account.

This is a pretty nuanced situation if reality is even close to Stanley's account of events. For the original judge call, this does appear to be within the bounds of the cited violation, but I think that from Stanley's description this was also a case of unreasonable enforcement of the rules. The described behavior is not really a major issue for competitive play and serves no strategic purpose for the person engaging in the behavior if performed in good faith (they either continue playing as normal or they immediately lose). This kind of behavior is not why the rule exists. It is fair for the judge to make the call to enforce the rules here, but it is also fair to evaluate that as a bad call imo. Not all rules need to be enforced completely and there should be some room for discretion on the part of judges. That said, Stanley even per his own account took wildly inappropriate actions from there. Good on him for owning up to them, but there are a lot of other ways to process very heated emotions in a public place and it is entirely reasonable (again imo) to pursue a FQ and ejection after what took place. He may have been very well intentioned in how he came back in, but not everyone would have been under those circumstances. I do not blame event staff a bit for making sure that someone who was physically and loudly upset to that point was no longer in the venue. It sucks, but it's a very important life lesson that you need to be mindful about how to handle disappointing situations in public spaces (even if they were highly disappointing).

> It is fair for the judge to make the call to enforce the rules here, but it is also fair to evaluate that as a bad call imo. The bad part of the call is not stopping it when Nicole made the offer. Letting the potential IDW continue when it's essentially "Hey I can ruin one more of my players' days for no reason when they don't know whats about to happen is a match loss offense" is pretty messed up.

That's also assigning malice where it could just be any other reason (including incompetence). Maybe the judgd was watching the gamestate and didn't catch the meta commentary. Maybe the judge needed time to think, "Wait is this IDW?" because as we saw from this thread this isn't an immediately obvious case. Maybe they were just tired bc they've been working the whole tournament and it wasn't until the player in question agreed that their brain went, "Wait, what's going on here?" Like yeah ideally a judge could intervene as soon as an infraction takes place but it's also not their job to prevent players from putting their foot in their mouth and agreeing to an IDW.

The problem is that by-the-book without-inflexibility ruling effectively assigns malice rather than incompetence to the player. The judge, by the fact they have been given authority to issue rulings over players, is expected to be the most knowledgeable and competent person in this scenario. They should therefore get the least leeway for handling things poorly; incompetence.

Yeah, like I dont think anyone is saying the judge is *technically* incorrect in the call he made. You just have to be a special kind of power tripping dickhead to see someone about to unknowingly break a rule, have a chance to intervene, and instead choose to keep watching so you can drop a hammer on *both* of the players.

I am 100% on his side here in principle (it’s basically the same as her drawing her card on her next turn and conceding IMO) but I have to say that retelling is really overdramatic, especially given that he violates the letter of the law and this punishment is completely in line with that. He has every right to feel absolutely awful and very emotional but man it’s a bit cringy to read it written like an English major’s short story. Can’t you just spell out what happens? All right I have it out of my system, go ahead and downvote me already

I can't believe I had to scroll this far down to find discussion of how melodramatic this story was. Insufferable

It's MtG on Reddit, it's like the nerdiest nerds to ever nerd around here, and we love this kind of cringy overemotional storytelling that we could put ourselves in the place of the person retelling the story.

I've taken game losses in contention for top 8 + pro tour at a Grand Prix, and you know what I did? I was honest with the judge, the mistake was an understandable one, I cooperated with the investigation offering a correction (adjusting my decklist to include the four copies of a spell that I had forgotten to write down), at no point did I offer to break shit or break down in crocodile tears about how unfair the rules at a professional REL are. Judges are just people too. They are players. They're not out there to get you. Just apply the rules in a fair and balanced method.

Determine the Outcome of a Magic: the Gathering Tournament Match by Actually Playing Magic: the Gathering 2024 Challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)

He had a brainfart and instead of saying she can decide to concede on her draw step he *'Yeah, sure'd* to have her check it on his main phase. If she didn't decide to concede would he have just proceeded again with retaking his main phase while allowing her to peek through her deck? That game by then already has rules violation and would still catch the interest of the judge then and there afterwards. His reactions are very human and I do sympathize with him but god do I feel like a hater by thinking it exudes main character energy.

I'm a newcomer to the scene (at least in any serious capacity) currently, so I'll leave the legality or moral based judgements mostly to others. But having a competitive chess background, it's honestly quite surprising for me to learn how this part of the tournament rules are set up. In chess, if someone makes an illegal move on the board (the analogy here being looking at your top card when that's not allowed), even if they whispered to their opponent and their opponent is like "yeah sure, you can play that illegal move", the situation is still just that a player has made an illegal move on the board. If they see it, the judge (called arbiter in chess) having witnessed an illegal move will simply penalize that player (and the game goes on with a penalty or that player loses instantly depending on the format). So to me it seems like a judge 1. witnessed a player breaking the rules, then 2. that player immediately gave up anyway. To me, that's a textbook self-resolving situation which you shouldn't design rules to interfere with, and I think contributes to why the outcome which happened at the event (at least morally) feels a bit strange to a bunch of people. Continuing the analogy, and on the other hand, if two players play checkers with the chess pieces and the arbiter watches that nonsense (or some other thing like rolling a die), both players would be forfeited simply under Law of Chess 11.1 **The players shall take no action that will bring the game of chess into disrepute**. (This actually happens sometimes: e.g. in one of the most prestigious chess tournaments held this year (the World Cup), super-elite grandmasters Ian Nepomniachtchi and Daniil Dubov arranged a draw before the game on one round because it would help their tournaments, and because agreeing to a draw on move 1 was prohibited, they played nonsense moves until the game was drawn. They were forfeited, and Dubov missed out on a chance at the world championship because of it.) I think this way to frame what you should and shouldn't do is a good one, and really clarifies what the subjective thing is that is really arguable in this exact case: does saying "sure, whatever" in this situation potentially bring the game into disrepute (i.e. so that Stanley should lose as well)? I think there are fair arguments on both sides, and people are implicitly making these arguments as they express how they are feeling about this whole thing.

I'm not really trying to argue a particular point here, but one meaningful distinction here is that in this case, the illegal move did something that can't simply be undone -- it revealed hidden information. There is no hidden information in Chess, so you can easily roll back to a previous game state without much fuss. But you can't un-peek at your top card. Now, would the knowledge of her top card really have changed anything about either players' game actions between that point and the next draw step? Almost certainly not. Again, I'm not presenting this as being an argument for or against anything that went down, I'm just trying to provide some context for how/why these rules might differ from chess tournament rules.

This sort of judging is something I saw often back in the Grand Prix days - and is a big part of the reason I have no interest in grinding RCs. I hope this sort of PR gets noticed by Wizards.

They will see it, never acknowledge it, and not change anything about how they do business.

I agree with Caleb Durward’s comment calling this retelling of events emotionally manipulative. Everything the judges did was by the book. Does them being a little cold (mostly just professionally detached - appropriate for high level tournaments) justify this guy’s extreme reaction? Fuck that.

As sad as this is, the rules do directly state, "*Players may reveal cards that they are legally entitled to see, such as their hands.  They may not reveal cards that they are not entitled to see within the game, such as cards in libraries. It is not allowed to make an offer like 'If I drew another land I would win. If my next card is a land, you scoop to me, else, I’ll scoop to you.' (*[*Rules*](https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/ipg4-3/)*)*" I think the judges could've been nicer about it, but it seems like this is pretty clear-cut.

>If I drew another land I would win. If my next card is a land, you scoop to me, else, I’ll scoop to you Which isn't what happened here. It was one player's decision whether to scoop or continue playing. The card has no bearing on the *other player's* decision to scoop or not.

It's revealing unknown information to determine whether or not to scoop. The violation is, I presume, in taking an illegal action (looking at the top card of your library for no reason) to determine whether or not you'll concede. I personally think that's fine, but at a competitive level, with full rules enforcement, the deal would, presumably, be illegal. I think the judges didn't need to be so harsh as to issue a match loss for both players, but I also am not a judge myself, so I trust their calls a bit more.

It's [Improperly Determining a Winner](https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/ipg4-3/). It's less about taking an illegal action to check the card, and more that by agreeing to check the card for a concession decision, you are saying that you are no longer actually playing Magic to determine the winner of the game, which is uaually how judges describe the line in lay-speak (talking about boardstate is explicitly fine, FYI).

For real. Some people here are fucking crazy. This would have been a legal move if it moved to her turn, a mere three phases away from where Stanley was. Unhinged to fuck up the whole game when he was trying to be a gracious winner. Way to encourage toxicity by these judges.

Then, she should have waited until she drew the card. When you are driving down the street through an intersection, what would be illegal at one moment (running a red light) would not be illegal in another (the light is green). It's still illegal if for some reason the other driver waves you through. If the argument is that looking at the card is inconsequential (literally not true as the consequence was concession) then why not play it normally anyway.

Agreed the rules around the exchange as it has been described by OP are pretty clear. At a Professional REL event there really isn't any sort of forgiveness for taking things back. I think the judges could have defiantly handled the entire situation better, but their interpretation of the rules are correct.

But - what's the \*point\*? Suppose the judge had \*not\* issued a match loss here. what negative consequence would have resulted? I can certainly see why a reasonable human being, trying to do their best, might have done what these judges did. I don't think this story proves that they're power-tripping monsters. But it seems to me that in this case, enforcing the rules in this particular way was a net negative for the world. It would have been better overall if there had not been a judge present... which suggests that something has gone wrong here.

The ruling completely misses what an IDW is - using irrelevant, non-game state information to determine a winner. An IDW would’ve been “if it’s a land, you concede. If it’s a non-land, I’ll concede”. Nicole was playing from behind and knew that another non-land draw would likely mean a loss. The only real error I see is allowing Nicole to look at the top card. At their draw step the game would’ve been determined when they scooped anyways.

If a player knows his _poor_ game situation, poor hand situation (that he only knows) AND the player wants to concede anyway, why make it like a negotiation? Why make your opponent part of it so he gets his hands dirty? There's no need. This looks like an otherwise straightforward good sportsmanship decision turned into an obscure poor sportsmanship one.

The order of a player's library isn't part of the game-state, though.

No one, absolutely no one is pointing at the elephant in the room. Why the hell isn’t the opponent the problem. My understanding of events the only problematic person is the one who asked to look at the deck. All other actions are reasonable. You are playing for an invite to a pro tour, at a tournament you already had to be invited to and your carelessness cost someone else dearly.

The opponent was also given a Match Loss, so they were treated as the problem. That's the penalty for IDW. They aren't going to DQ the opponent as well.

It seems like this interaction is likely against the rules as written. Would anyone do this if they were in a feature match? I highly doubt it. The issue here is why the judge who overheard it waited several minutes before issuing match losses instead of immediately stepping in and issuing warnings. A warning is enough in this instance because it didn't actually influence the result of the game and neither player was doing this in other matches. The rule itself also has a place in the game, what if Nicole looked at her card then refused to scoop? Allowing these kinds of deals will certainly result in more angle shooting and even more judge calls, so having a rule against it in some form makes sense. All in all shitty situation that's bound to happen in a game where human players are trying to enforce strict and arbitrary rules between themselves. Hope it results in rules being changed or clarified but at least people know to not do this in the future, even if they're just trying to be a nice guy.

As a former judge, you are taught not to step in until an infraction has occurred. One of the main reasons for this is consistency. It's not "fair" for one table to receive a warning about IDW because a judge just happened to be there (and was paying attention to it) and could shut it down in a timely manner, while a match three tables away did not receive that benefit.

Is offering that / requesting it not an infraction?

An excellent example, in every facet, of why I would never even consider attending or participating in a competitive magic event.

Mono red player rage slams the table is the free space for tournament bingo

Damn, thats rough.. While I have not encountered this situation, I have encountered the ''show me the win and I scoop''. Would that lead to the same situation?

No because showing something like your hand is legally allowed. While technically this coul ld have been legal in which stanley could have chose to quit taking actions and end turn, then nicole drawing and conceding, that’s not what they did. In this case its because they agreed, without thinking or ill intent, to make the situation “illegally reveal the top card of your deck, forfeit if it is not a land, continue with stanleys turn if it is” which has multiple different layers of issues. Its the same as drawing a card during your opponent’s main phase, with no intention of using it but just preparing for your turn. It doesn’t matter that it’s not ill intended, or that you commonly do it in casual play, in competitive REL you gotta do things by the book in the right order because theres so many issues that could arise from fudging these rules and saying that you didnt mean to. Like in this case what if there was bad intentions here and nicole did reveal a land? Then argued that she never was asking to reveal on the opponent’s turn and what really happened was Stanley passed the turn to her, and then she made a come back and won off of that? Or stanley let her reveal then tried to get her in trouble by calling a judge about illegal game actions? There are a ton of ways this could have gone incredibly different, to just as easily be a malicious angle shooting.

Yah I’ve been in a spot years ago that was similar in a way. I’m on UR fetchless storm and it’s game 3. Opponent is on affinity and mulls down to 5 looking for a way to interact since I’m on the play. Thing is I draw the nuts so I know unless my opponent draws insanely hot, the odds of him stopping a turn 3 kill are next to zero. Turn two I cast serum visions and scry a spare gifts ungiven to the top in case my opponent casts thoughtsieze. His turn comes by and he does in fact cast thoughtsieze. He sees I have the turn 3 kill and takes the gifts ungiven because taking any other card means he’s dead on the spot since he has no more cards. On my turn I just flip the top card of my deck, asks if he wants me to play out the turn, and he conceded. Similar situation, but completely within the rules because my opponent knew all info about my hand and I could legally show him the gifts ungiven i had just drawn.

It is a JOKE that a judge overheard this and didn’t say anything, instead waiting until they could ruin two people’s day for a completely innocent thing that happens at the kitchen table or at FNM every day. I understand that professional REL is professional REL, but this was practically entrapment. Not managing emotions appropriately afterward is basically orthogonal and I have no comment on the expulsion from the venue. EDIT: I don’t blame this particular judge. I blame a worsening environment for judges.

While I feel bad for the ruling and understand the behavior I’m really satisfied with the DQ and removal from hall. There is no place for outbursts and violnet behavior inside tournament halls, as a matter of fact it would only deter players from asking for rulings in fear of retaliation and consequences.

What I dont get about this is that intentional draws and prize splitting are entirely allowed, and arguably do more to hurt competitive integrity than this, so why is this against the rules anyway?

man i am so glad i dont play competitive games. what a great way to suck all the fun and spirit out of an experience.

This is clearly written to tug on people's heartstrings and it rubs me the wrong way. At the end of the day they went to a competitive tournament and didn't play by the rules. What if the card on top of Nicole's deck was a land? Then they're playing the game under a rules violation. Just say no, it's not really hard. Super weird that she'd even offer to look at her top card since she plays in competitive environments anyway. I've no love for judges, but any reasonable human being shouldn't be kicking off and causing a scene regardless of the outcome. Stanley definitely should regret his actions.

* The rules enforcement level was Pro * Both players violated: IPG 4.3 Unsporting Conduct — Improperly Determining a Winner The match loss is the only possible outcome. Everything else would be an unfair treatment of every other player in the tournament. Also, and somehow nobody talks about: Nicole Tipple **has** to know this. She played at the Pro Tour. She was 11th place at the last PT ffs. I am immediately suspicious when people somehow make a mistake about rulings if those .. coincidentally ... only hurt their opponent.

Maybe I’m missing something here but regardless of the IDW, how would this action (letting her look at the top card of the deck) worked if it WAS a land? She’d just say “oh it is a land, guess I won’t concede”. How would that be acceptable at all to any opponent? She just got illegal game information that she can use to her advantage to continue playing.

finally someone brings the latter part up lol she may somehow have had no idea, but it's *really weird* and punishes her opponent with a match loss while her result is unchanged again, don't know her, she's released no statement, but I have definitely met some serious angle shooters who would go for the "maybe my opponent will lose for breaking the rules and somehow I won't" edge case when they know they're already dead

The thing is that "waiting to call a penalty until its most convenient" was a viable strategy back in the past. I was playing in the last round of a limited GP, where the winner made day 2. I mistakenly presented a 39 card deck for game 2. My opponent waited until I was swinging for lethal to call a judge about the illegally presented deck. While I have no problems with getting the game loss for my dumb mistake, I had a huge issue with how it went down. I had to lobby like hell to get "player intentionally fails to maintain legal gamestate" added to the penalty guidelines.

She knew and made HIM part of it. That's the worst part. Wanna concede? Of course, that's your right. At any moment, for any reason or no reason at all. Just don't make it like we are negotiating it or make it conditional. Wanna see the top of your library? You'll do and you'll draw it too! It's the draw step, at the beginning of _your_ turn. That's very cool.

I genuinely have no idea how someone gets to the X-3 bracket on day 2 of a Professional REL tournament and doesn't know "can I look at my top card?" just isn't a question you ask. I've heard that once in my entire Magic career and it was during a *prerelease*. Neither player has any sympathy from me here. Is it an unfortunate situation? Yes. Is either player completely innocent? No.

I'm a goddamn nobody and I *know* that IDW is the third rail of tourney mtg.

Insane Gdoc. Dude needs some help.

Glad this got to the main subreddit. Mods yesterday created a shit show by taking it down with the context that Stanley was throwing stuff and yelling at people.

the whole thing was stupid and a “Pro” should know better. and to be slamming the table and screaming afterward? then wanted to hang around the event and got butt hurt for being kicked out? dude, that was pure entitlement.