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Rules Q&A » Post: Two errors for the same infraction?

Two errors for the same infraction?

Feb. 24, 2015 11:40:58 AM

Ivan Markov
Judge (Uncertified)

Europe - East

Two errors for the same infraction?

So I've took a fast look at the latest IPG (love it for how compressed everything is) and I found this little thing here:

Game Play Error — Looking at Extra Cards
(A player sees the bottom card of his or her deck when presenting it to her opponent for cutting/shuffling)

Tournament Error — Insufficient Shuffling
(Players are expected to take care in shuffling not to reveal cards to themselves, their teammates, or their opponents)

Both require you to give a penalty for one and the same thing to a player who's saw the bottom card of his deck while shuffling the deck before presenting it to the opponent. What now? Giving both penalties seems to harsh as it could end in a double game loss for the player if he repeats the same mistake twice. And choosing just one of them feels arbitrary to me.

P.S. - I don't want to be nitpicking but you should probably make it to him or her instead of just to her opponent in the document. I guess that this was written with a specific case in mind but still - it feels much better especially since a lot of cards say his or her as well.

Feb. 24, 2015 12:53:06 PM

Scott Marshall
Forum Moderator
Judge (Level 4 (Judge Foundry)), Hall of Fame

USA - Southwest

Two errors for the same infraction?

Originally posted by IPG 1.3:

Separate infractions committed or discovered at the same time are treated as separate penalties, though if the root cause is the same, only the more severe one is applied.
In your example, it's the same root cause - i.e., the same (set of) action(s) - so apply “the more severe one”.

Now - which of those is more severe? Neither, they both come with a Warning.

I would assess the one that's more specific to the action(s) - in this case, Insufficient Shuffling (which happened to include seeing cards he shouldn't have).

d:^D