You aren't going to get very far performing an investigation if your policy is to never trust players.

I'll take my response to that in private to avoid getting off-topic here. But I have no problem trusting players. Even after the high-profile suspensions.

Originally posted by Sean Stackhouse:

I'm not going to trust his opponent and ask him to do the same.

I understand your concern - the opponent may not feel at all comfortable with that situation. However, it's OUR job, not theirs, to decide if we believe the player, or not.

Keep in mind that, essentially, we trust the players to follow the rules and maintain the integrity of the game … 99.9% of the time. The amount of time where we have to get involved in games and sort out whether or not our implicit trust has been violated is, really, almost negligible. It just seems like a lot, because it's the most interesting part of what we do - but if we spend 10 minutes in a 50-minute round dealing with 2 or 3 moments like this, out of the dozens of other 50-minute matches we aren't involved in? Yep, 99.9% trust seems like a reasonable estimate.

I don't think this is what you implied, Sean, but I'll take the opportunity to be very clear: please, everyone, do NOT approach your duty as Judges with a suspicious mindset. Most players are honest, and most who cheat are what we call “cheats of opportunity” - i.e., an opportunity presents itself and they make a bad choice - and those players are honest most of the time. It's very rare to find a player who intentionally, repeatedly, and with forethought, cheats as their standard mode of operation.

If you approach an event with the idea that “there's cheaters everywhere, gotta catch ‘em all”, you probably won’t enjoy the events - and there's a good chance that'll affect the overall mood of your players, too.

OK, Sean, thanks for giving me a soapbox - and don't take any of it personally. Just giving in to my natural tendency to expound at great lengths… :)

d:^D

Thanks Joshua for summing up the why-not-to-shuffle argument significantly better than I managed to do myself.

Also I'm prepared to backtrack a little on the issue of accepting input from the player whose library was cut. In general I'm still against using this method to fix problems (the opponent not being able to verify the truth is clearly an issue - it's why we upgrade penalties for certain GRVs), however in this particular situation the odds of the player managing to pull of anything even remotely shady there seem like “getting struck by lightning while purchasing a winning lottery ticket” kind of odds. If a player names five cards and I find them all together in the middle of the library, it makes very little sense not to believe them about what they put to the bottom.

Thank you, Scott, for giving us an ‘O’fficial answer to the shuffle or not issue. While I put forth reasons why a fully randomized deck would be preferable, I never out and said that I would actually preform the shuffle. Why not? Because I can't find it supported in policy. As for the asking for the 5 cards thing, it's extremely unlikely that they could randomly know a 5 card pocket, but it is possible if they resolved a previous DTT. Would this stop me from asking them anyway? No, but it is something to look out for if you think they're cheating. Also, lying to a judge is bad, and hopefully, if a player chooses to do this, you'll be able to tell based on their tone and whatnot. As Scott said, most cheaters are cheaters of opportunity, and I know I'b be hard pressed to convincingly lie in that situation.

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

Follow policy to the best of your ability; when the situation is just weird enough to cause these kinds of problems, then be sure to follow the guiding principles of philosophy as best you can.

I think I've let this one ramble on too long, so:
1) DO NOT SHUFFLE the deck to fix this.
…
4) DO NOT SHUFFLE.

I think Josh Feingold gave us a very good analysis, trying to keep people from getting lost in the weeds.

Point of clarification: Is the “DO NOT SHUFFLE” statement because shuffling is actually a policy violation? Or, are we already deep enough in the weeds that we have no policy, and we are avoiding shuffling because we'd be doing harm to the gamestate in violation of “the guiding principles of philosophy” in the IPG?

While Personally I'd be all for attempting to determine where the cut occurred, I do have to point out that in *certain* matchups in standard cutting like this and leaving it be could be extremely damaging to the player whose deck was cut–say it's a control mirror and he's digging for a one or two-of win-con. His opponent just arbitrarily cut both of them to the bottom and he's that much farther away from the card he's digging for. It's this type of scenario that would lead me to even consider shuffling in this situation had I not read this thread and the official response. Obviously the preference is that the deck is obviously cut and easy to reverse. But just pointing out that that type of action *could* actually be seriously deterministic to game outcomes. It gets even shadier in legacy with the solidarity/high tide builds, where it's not uncommon for a player seriously going off to actually draw their entire deck looking for a 1-of win con.

Eli - I think rather than a violation it's better to think that a shuffle isn't supported by policy. The only times policy allows us to shuffle is either in a Looking at Extra Cards or if we are rewinding a shuffle.

Michael - but we don't take things like match up or deck choice into consideration when looking for an appropriate fix

Many thanks to everyone for the answers :D
I learnt and understood so many things thank to your points of view :)

Originally posted by Gareth Tanner:

Eli - I think rather than a violation it's better to think that a shuffle isn't supported by policy.

Yep, that's it.

All the logic that people supplied to support a shuffle was just that - their logic. It's not policy, and - in my view, anyway - it doesn't follow the guiding philosophy behind policy.

The reason I emphasized that so much, was to ensure no one would take away a message of “oh, Scott wouldn't shuffle in this case, but maybe my logic is OK for other instances kinda like this…” - nope, that's getting lost in the weeds. That reference (“lost in the weeds”) came from many people trying to analyze some number of factors to support their creative fixes; Josh's explanation that I called out helps us understand it's really much simpler, there's no weeds to get lost in, just stick with policy and you'll be fine.

d:^D

I'm in the shuffle camp. Maybe I'm reading to much on this but the only place in the documents that refers to cutting is the CR where it's used as an alternative to a full shuffle, where the IPG the mentions cutting it does in a context where it's interchangeable with shuffling, the MTR doesn't mention cutting at all and where we allow cutting the MTR mandates shuffling*, so I think that in policy cutting an opponents deck it's the same as shuffling it, and the fix for a shuffle is another shuffle.

@Esteban, It has already been established in this thread by logic previously provided by Josh Feingold and repeated by Scott Marshall that we should not shuffle in this situation. It is not supported by policy, and the sections you refer to are not applicable for this particular situation. In a similar manner if we back up a draw we take a card from the drawer's hand and place it on top of their library, we do not shuffle it in; however, they now know what the top card of their library is. What about when a player uses a card with the scry ability, now they know the position of a card in their library. So it is acceptable that players know the position of cards in their library under certain conditions. Policy for this situation does not support a shuffle in the fix for the appropriate infraction and we should not shuffle the library.

Does policy support the “reverse the cut,” though?

Edit: would reversing the cut count as “backing up?”

Edited Eli Meyer (March 6, 2015 06:28:51 AM)