Originally posted by Huw Morris:

So when is it into hand? 25% overlap? 50%? 100%? I'm still waiting for an answer to that one. I suspect the answer is going to be “use your judgement”, which sounds like common sense, but can only lead to less consistency.

I think this kind of situation is rare enough that true “consistency”, which strikes me as more “uniformity” in this case, is unlikely. Especially comparing two scenarios that do have differences.

I think the similarities have been argued in an objective sense, and I think the differences have been argued in a qualitative sense. Both seem consistent with policy in arguing how to handle the card as being drawn or not. However, I think Scott's point that “barest touching =/= drawn” is appropriate, since it is (at best) an extremely technical definition to use for the card being drawn/chosen. That is an approach consistent with MIPG 2.

Personally, I don't see this as DEC at any point. The card is not truly “extra” in the normal sense of the infraction. The player should put the card in hand as part of the spell resolving. It's the “putting back” and making a different choice that is a potential issue. Which, IMO, is not that problematic here.

Just my two bits.

Originally posted by Huw Morris:

So when is it into hand? 25% overlap? 50%? 100%? I'm still waiting for an answer to that

OK, 11.713% - be sure to use your DCI-approved micrometers to ensure uniformity…

All kidding aside, Brian provided a nice summary.

Also:

Originally posted by Huw Morris:

“use your judgement”, which sounds like common sense, but can only lead to less consistency

This also applies to at least one other current thread in these forums: I submit that the most likely source of inconsistencies is not the various judges' understanding of policy, but rather the unavoidable variance introduced by players. If you provide the exact same scenario over & over, 100 times for 100 different judges, you'll still see some variance - but not nearly as much as 100 variations on that scenario.

d:^D

Quoting from Riccardo Tessitori's head judge report from PT Brussels:

A card is considered to be drawn when it touches the other cards in hand; the reference of this in our policy documents is “Players are considered to have looked at a card when they have been able to observe the face of a hidden card, or when a card is moved any significant amount from a deck, but before it touches the other cards in their hand”. This rule exists to define a clear line between “not drawn” (the infraction is called “Looking at extra cards” and the penalty is a Warning) and “drawn” (the infraction is called “Drawing extra cards” and the penalty is a Game Loss); between the moment the card is on top of the library and the moment the card is shuffled into the hand, there are many intermediate states; the easiest state/moment/event that we identified is the moment the card touches the other cards in the hand, and it has been chosen as the line that defines “drawing”. There is no difference between the cards being face down on the table in a horizontal position and being in the hand of the player in a vertical position (otherwise we would need to define another line that should be used to differentiate between “drawn” and “not drawn”).

This directly contradicts what has been said by high level judges in this thread.

The “touches” being discussed are quite different though, the one that Riccardo is talking about the card is definitely on top of the hand in the example being discussed here (at least how I've been reading it) you'd have to look very closely to be able to tell they were touching, well it might be slightly more than that, but I do feel we are in a situation where if someone said “hey, those cards are touching” we'd have to at least move to see if it was the case.

I agree with Mats, that it seems we now have a contradiction:

• Scott is saying ‘a small overlap of a corner of a card’ is not ‘drawing’.
  
• Riccardo is saying ‘the moment the card touches the other cards in the hand… has been chosen as the line that defines “drawing”.’

Riccardo also notes that whether the cards are in the hand or on the table is irrelevant.

Before this (& related) threads, other judges I'd talked to about this (& past discussions on forums) all held to the line Riccardo describes. Then this thread seemed to give us a different approach, and now Riccardo is still using the previous approach…

So is it “touched=drawn” or “use your own judgment”?

Originally posted by Gareth Tanner:

The “touches” being discussed are quite different though, the one that Riccardo is talking about the card is definitely on top of the hand in the example being discussed here (at least how I've been reading it) you'd have to look very closely to be able to tell they were touching, well it might be slightly more than that, but I do feel we are in a situation where if someone said “hey, those cards are touching” we'd have to at least move to see if it was the case.

I don't see that the original scenario of the question calls into question whether the cards touched, they take it as part of the scenario that they did touch. So that's can't be the distinction.

He places it such that the very corner of the card he chose touches his face-down hand of 2 cards.

This is the point I'm calling up, it seems like an almost incidental touch rather than a “full” touch and that's what I'm been getting from Scott's answers, I could be wrong

Originally posted by James Winward-Stuart:

So is it “touched=drawn” or “use your own judgment”?

No one in this thread has suggested any change to what the MIPG says. Let me reiterate that: No one has suggested any change to what the MIPG says. At no point can I find where Scott has said that, and certainly it isn't what I've said.

What HAS been suggested is to avoid approaching the MIPG in such a draconian fashion that it overlooks various other elements of the MIPG, such as MIPG 2's clause on “playing in a way that is clear to both players”, the definition of “Caution” in the MIPG, and even policies in the MTR. This suggestion is not a new thing and has been brought up in various threads over the past year where it has been pointed out that it is possible to apply the MIPG in an overly burdensome manner. Certainly the point I've intended is to get people to look at the definition and think about it in context, and not to just say “this is the definition, I enforce that”. This goes to both “why” the definition exists and even ensuring a proper judicious enforcement of policy, or the “how”. Especially dealing with situations that do have differences to them.

That being said, it should not be a big surprise to anyone that two judges of any level (even L5s) can have differing opinions on a situation. Being L5 or L1 is largely a moot point, and it is frankly distressing to see it bandied about that somehow an L5 has a better ruling or opinion on the matter. Moreso, when people suggest one opinion is right or wrong by virtue of their being a difference of opinion when, as far as I can tell, Riccardo's ruling at the PT isn't about this situation. And I wonder if he would agree with his ruling being used in this fashion.

I think one major difference between the Chapin incident and this incident is that in Chapin's case, the call was made after Chapin put the other cards into the bottom of his library which can be seen as finishing the resolution of the ability. I believe this is part of the reason why Riccardo ruled it as a GPE-GRV upgrade to GL. In this scenario, the call was made the moment after Adrian swapped the cards during the resolution of the Anticipate.

Edited Kin Yen Lee (April 22, 2015 08:33:26 AM)

I think many are getting too focused on “touching” as a definition rather than its intention of saying that the cards could reasonably be understood as together. Cards distinctly held apart (not touching) are clearly not drawn.

I made this little thing in powerpoint. The white cards are the hand face-down on the table. The gray card is the card in question of being “drawn.”



I assure you that “F” is touching based on powerpoint's grid feature. I'd like to illustrate the point that many judges may or may not disagree on some of the closer “touching” based on orientation and overlap. I imagined this scenario was in the “C” or “E” camp, and I would assert those are sufficiently distinct, whereas “B” and “D” are not.

The more you try to fine-tune the parameters of overlap/orientation, the more there will be “judgment” and differences between judges. That's ok, and many are asserting that the IPG is best viewed as a strong framework for sculpting your approach. You can't lean heavily on the word “touching” as a catch-all. That's the point others are trying to make here.

Edited Evan Cherry (April 22, 2015 08:46:54 AM)

I think what's really troubling a lot of people is that if, after reading the MIPG, finding the specific clause relating to the issue at hand, and *still* end up applying it incorrectly, then there is a problem with the MIPG. The definition for L@EC states, “Players are considered to have looked at a card when they have been able to observe the face of a hidden card, or when a card is moved any significant amount from a deck, but before it touches the other cards in their hand. … Once a card has been placed into his or her hand … the offence is no longer Looking at Extra Cards”.

This does not *explicitly* state that the moment a card touches another card in hand, then the card is assumed to be drawn, but it is the only reasonable conclusion. The offence above is no longer Looking at Extra Cards, it has become Drawing Extra Cards. DEC happens when “A player illegally puts one or more cards into his hand..” Interestingly, the definition for Drawing Extra Cards does *not* make any mention of when exactly a card has been put into a player's hand. We can only infer this from the moment that L@EC becomes DEC.

I don't think it's asking too much to ask that a sentence or two be added to the MIPG under the definition of DEC, to clarify exactly when a card has been drawn? Such as “A card is considered drawn when it has moved a significant amount from a deck and touches another card in a player's hand. A card is not considered drawn if the touch is brief and/or marginal.”

The above sentence allows a certain degree of latitude on the part of the judge as to what constitutes brief and/or marginal. However, it fits exactly with how Scott and Brian have said how this kind of situation should be judged, and it is much clearer for anybody reading the MIPG. If it is decided that the Tessitori approach is correct, then the second sentence can be omitted. Either way, I urge TPTB to address this contradiction, decide on one approach or the other, and amend the MIPG accordingly. At the moment, too many of us are just plain confused.

“The more you try to fine-tune the parameters of overlap/orientation, the more there will be “judgment” and differences between judges. That's ok, and many are asserting that the IPG is best viewed as a strong framework for sculpting your approach. You can't lean heavily on the word “touching” as a catch-all. That's the point others are trying to make here.”

Evan, the problem I have with this approach is that the MIPG very explicitly tells us not to deviate. Therefore if the MIPG tells us to do x in case of situation y, we do x. If the players have a problem with this, we can point to the MIPG and tell them to blame policy, not the judge.

Riccardo and I are in complete agreement.

If that's not clear, then I submit that your reading of this scenario, and my responses, is the likely source of confusion.

d:^D

Originally posted by Huw Morris:

Evan, the problem I have with this approach is that the MIPG very explicitly tells us not to deviate. Therefore if the MIPG tells us to do x in case of situation y, we do x. If the players have a problem with this, we can point to the MIPG and tell them to blame policy, not the judge.

Glib: The IPG cannot be written comprehensively for all situations and include qualifiers for all statements.

Deviation occurs when the course is clear and you decide mitigating factors warrant an outcome not consistent with what is written. I feel this discussion is about something that is not totally clear in the documents, though from the scenario given and within the discussion from many others is “clearly” not an issue.

Using your most reasonable judgment BASED ON SOUND KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING OF THE IPG in situations not clearly covered is not deviating. Your concern about bias is valid, and in this case by following the document but having an “unclear” course (again, I think it's pretty straight-forward), you can point to the document and say "I followed the documents, and they couldn't say EXACTLY how to handle this, so I followed them as best I could in issuing ."

If they're unhappy, you can still shift the focus to what the documents DON'T say. Huw, as much as I don't share your concern in this scenario, I think you're on the right track by exploring and sharing ways to make the documents promote consistency.

Edited Evan Cherry (April 22, 2015 12:50:05 PM)

Before reading this thread, I would have ruled A-E as drawn, and F is like a “had to be there” scenario.
After reading this thread, I would rule A as drawn, and B-F as not drawn, as it was “never actually difficult to distinguish that one card from the others”.
After watching the Pro Tour incident, I would rule A, B and D as drawn, and C, E and F as not drawn.

So I can understand Huw's point, and agree that after reading this thread there's some confusion, where there was none before this thread existed.

I always thought, that in a nutshell regular REL is “use your own judgement”, while competetive REL is “only use your own judgement, if the IPG doesn't cover this specific case”. This thread tells us, that even when the IPG says “Once a card has been placed into his or her hand … the offence is no longer Looking at Extra Cards” (implying that once the cards touch, it's DEC) we should use our own judgement when determining if a card was drawn or just incidently touched the other cards in hand.