GP Denver: A look at Marked Cards, LSV's DEC penalty, and My Personal Highlight

So this topic came up on Twitter, when I said that I don't understand why players will complain or argue with a judge when they receive a penalty, simply because they weren't aware of the policy before they entered the event. Policies are publicly available (The IPG, the infraction procedure guide, which instructs judges on what penalties to apply in various situations), and while I don't expect players to know them perfectly, I do expect them to be prepared to accept their penalty if they receive one, and further to understand that arguing with a judge about it is useless. We don't have the option to change the policies on the spot, we just enforce them.

Some defended those players citing unfair or unintuitive policy. So I posed the question which policies were unintuitive, and got some interesting discussion out of it which I'll talk about here. Further, I'm going to give my opinion on the LSV ruling, which I will dub" the GL heard 'round the world" (although I was working at the event and didn't hear about it until afterward, so maybe only "the GL heard in the feature match area and on the interwebs".

The first policy brought up was by @lowbeyonder, (a great person to follow too, a Vintage specialist, also a certified judge). A link to a portion of the conversation is here. We talked about Tournament Error - Deck/Decklist Problem. The default penalty for this is a Game Loss, and James feels in certain cases this is too harsh. The IPG does give an option for the HJ to downgrade in one case, that the player uses a truncated card name but the HJ feels it is obvious what is meant. However, the case where a player leaves off basic lands only, was suggested as an additional downgrade option. I don't agree in this case, because it allows the player to swap the assortment of basics they are using from game to game, or perhaps they just realized they made a deck building error, and want to adjust what they originally submitted in the middle of an event. If we are going to try and hold people to the decklist they submit at the onset of the event, we need to have a complete list of their main deck to do so, and assessing a severe penalty of GL is necessary to offset the potential for abuse, in my opinion. James did bring up an example that I agree could have a downgrade clause offered in the IPG. If a player submitted a list with 64 cards, for example, because they listed 4xThoughtseize twice on their list, and this is the only error in their deck. We could downgrade there, because there is no potential for them to abuse here. If their physical deck has more copies than are legal of a card, that is a different story, but this is a clerical error that has literally no way to provide advantage unless the player is actually presenting an illegal deck. Perhaps the clause might read: "If a players decklist shows the same card in the same quantity written more than once, but the deck and decklist are otherwise matching and legal. Correct the list and downgrade to a Warning". I'm glad James brought this up, as this is something I want to discuss with other judges and perhaps pose to policy makers. If I'm missing a reasoning as to why there's some potential advantage here, I'd love to hear it.

With regards to the GL LSV received on Day 2 of the Grand Prix, I have a number of things to say. You can find text coverage of the feature match here. First, if you aren't familiar with what Game Play Error- Drawing Extra Cards is, I'd suggest giving it a quick read at this link. As stated, what he's done certainly falls in this category. To be very clear, we don't use this penalty if we think he intentionally took the extra card, that would be Cheating- Manipulation of Game Materials; with that said, this is the penalty assigned when we believe the extra card was drawn by accident People's complaint about it seems to be, that since he calledit on himself immediately, that this penalty is too harsh. The problem with that, is once he brings those cards to his hand, there's literally no way for anyone to verify which card draw was the extra card. Even if we believe the player who has committed the error, he could be incorrect, especially in the case that multiple cards were just drawn at the same time, and they could be wrong about which order they were drawn. The IPG gives the philosophy:

 "Though this error is easy to commit accidentally, the potential for it to be overlooked by opponents mandates a higher level of penalty. If the identity of the card was known to all players before being placed into the hand, and the card can be returned to the correct zone with minimal disruption, do so and downgrade the penalty to a Warning."

 In this case, the card was not known to all players. Even though he called this on himself, as no one else noticed the error, it is also possible he could continue with out noticing either. If that were to happen he gains significant advantage, and in these cases we have to provide the appropriate penalty. I understand that some people would say, that since he would be drawing that card via a legal play in the immediate future, that this could be forgiven, and that is a logical connection to make. However, it is impossible to make policy so that it takes into account future actions of players. As is, we already don't take into account the matchup or the gamestate or the format (unless decklist issue). Reason for this, is even if the error seems obvious, you're expecting the judges to make decisions based on perfect knowledge of a format/game in progress/strategic information and, that the players involved were also aware of some future strategic line of play, and there would be simply no way to enforce such things equally in all scenarios. We do allow the Head Judge of an event to deviate from the IPG policy, if they feel it's appropriate, and especially at Grand Prix events, which typically have HJ's who are of the most Senior of levels (who can more comfortably use the latitude given to HJ in the IPG without scrutiny). This is a Professional REL event on day 2 of a GP where as on Day 1 it is a Competive REL event. The IPG is what governs these two levels of event, and they are extremely similar. The differences mostly govern the presence of spectators but also how lenient the HJ will be with downgrades. That being said, had this been on Day 1, this would unlikely be downgraded either. If this guy wasn't LSV playing in a feature match, and was just Grinder Joe sitting accross from you, do you really thing anyone would second guess if what was done deserved a deviation from typical policy? It seems much more unfair to me to assess penalties inconsistently, just because we want to be nice to a well-known pro who is especially gracious even in the face of a severe penalty, who is on a feature match against another well liked pro. The issue is viewers on coverage don't always have a good grasp on what is going on from a policy standpoint, and that's a resource I think could be easily accounted for at most any event that runs video coverage. i'd love to see support for @marshall_LR and others so that they can quickly inform viewers about the philosophy behind these policies so they don't appear to be mere technicalities spoiling someone's chance at a top finish in the event. I Want to thank Marshall for giving me some really good insights about how these things appear to spectators.

Since I started writing this, I was pointed at a post by Toby Elliot, a Level 5 Judge who manages a majority of the DCI policy, and i'm glad to know that upon review of video, LSV did indeed put the extra drawn cards into his other hand, even though he didn't remember doing that. I like that he emphasized that even though when the players disagreed on what physically happened, its not that one person was lying. This actually perfectly illustrates what I said above about how we can't just go by what the player says he did, or these potential other "feel good" fixes, but by a fairly strict policy. I highly suggest reading his post, which comes from much more experience and knowledge about why the IPG is the way it is.

The reason this is important to me, is I want to lessen the barrier between players and judges Players often feel bad about calling judges because they don't want to "seem like a dick". or they fear that they will be punished. Remember, we're here for fair play, and its our job to enforce penalties evenly and fairly to all players, while no one l ikes receiving a penalty, how would you feel if you found out someone won the event and had been able to skirt some penalties because your other friend played him in a earlier round and neglected to call a judge. You later got paired with this player and lost. These sorts of things actually ruin the integrity of the event, even if you don't know that they happen. When players don't receive the appropriate penalty for their errors, while other players are, there's an inequity there. We want to assign the penalty, but we as judges, also want to educate the player on how to avoid that penalty in the future if it was indeed unintentional.

Separately from all of this, I got to judge my first GP this weekend, and it was awesome. I had one incident I'd like to share, that really made me glad I was a Judge. I was working at a side event on Sunday (Sealed Super Series, Competetive), and I observed a match where a player was being overly fidgety, whistling, singing/chanting, and bouncing in his chair. I saw another judge over his shoulder observing, and I watch closely too. As I observed, I learned that this player was anxious because he was upset his opponent was playing slowly. After the other judge moved on, i continued to watch, and his commentary got more and more angry and aggressive. I sat down at the match, mostly to ensure the player wasn't playing to slowly, and also to monitor the interaction between the two players. As the match was ending, the player started directing his commentary at the opponent for his reaction, rather than more chanting/mumbling to himself. At which point I said, "Verbally abusing your opponent isn't the best way to deal with Slow Play." (There's certainly an argument that I could have given an Unsportsmanlike Conduct-Minor, which is just a Warning, but I did not.) After their match ended I pulled the player aside, and had a talk with him. I felt pretty good about that conversation, because during his match he was saying things like, "I'll never play live Magic again! I want my chess-clock back! {referring to MTGO, of course]" As we talked, I could feel his tension release a little. He told me how early in the the GP day 1 he had a match go to a draw and he said he conceded so he could stay out of the draw bracket to avoid the Miracles deck [likely a sub-optimal choice, IMO]. He said he also drew again late in the day, and he felt both of these time issues weren't his fault. I told him a bit about how I love to play competitively too, and in order to help yourself succeed in those situations, you need to approach things differently than what I observed. (At one point in his chanting/mumbling during his match he had even verbalized "That's what I get for playing fast to compensate for a slow opponent." he was excusing himself for punting) Instead,  Bring a judge in. I told him after I made my presence known at his match, his opponent was playing at a reasonable pace, and if he had been playing slower previously in the round, just bringing a judge over to watch often solves the problem.. He said he didn't wan't to do that and appear to be like a jerk. I raised my eyebrows and said, "Do you think the alternative you chose was better? In all seriousness, you may simply tell the judge you'd like to ask a question away from the table if you prefer. We really encourage you to call us for these things. It helps us finish matches on time, which is important to everyone in the room." His face changed and I could tell he suddenly came back to reality and realized what went wrong. He apologized to me and I saw him go apologize to that opponent.

 [And Pro Tip? That's like a judges favorite call to take, a "watch this match for pace, please.". A reason to sit down and watch Magic, and an opportunity to issue a slow play penalty without feeling bad about it. Slow play penalties are really hard for judges to give, because its up to their discretion. You don't want to be a dick, and you don't want to be unfair, so most judges err on the side of no-infraction.Giving a penalty that has a cut and dry description in the IPG is easy, but judging for yourself how much time to give a player to act is delicate. If you're worried about sounding like a dick, you can always say "can i speak to you away from the table, and then ask the judge].

And after we talked, I saw him later in another event joking around with friends. Talking that player back from his metaphorical cliff made me feel pretty good about making the trip to Denver, and more so about devoting more time getting involved in the judging community.