I have a small question from a Game day, which has happened once in small city in Ural mountains.

1. Its a final of a GD, so both players have shivering hands and the sweated foreheads. Candles are burning and the playmat with Sarkhan lies near.

2. Anry says “Dig”, taps 8 lands for mana, takes the library, looks through 7 cards, takes two of them in hand, the rest cards go to the bottom of the library.

3. Newton asks “Where is that DIG u have just played?”

4. Anry answers “Ah.. Here it is!” and takes a card (DTT) from the hand and puts it into his graveyard.

5. Assuming that there was no cheating, how should I resolve this situation?

Ofc, on a Competitive lvl its a GL (DEC), but on a regular…? No punishment -so we shall encourage players to cheat in a similar situations.

Edited Egor Dobrynin (April 20, 2015 04:24:51 AM)

Even at Compeditive REL this isn't a game loss, not putting the card
on the stack is a visible and catchable GRV (warning) preceeding the
drawing of cards. Even if Newton doesn't catch it till after Anry
starts looking at cards on the top of his library it still is before a
card is drawn so the legality of the play can be easily established.

At regular REL getting Anry to put the DTT from his hand into the
graveyard is a great fix and the one that I'd be likely to employ my
self.

I'm having a hard time applying “If a player forgot to draw cards,
discard cards, or return cards from their hand to another zone, that
player does so.” to failing to place a card in hand onto the stack, as
the card isn't ‘returning’ as it was never there, the other partial
fixes are clearly not applicable and thus I'm not sure the IPG
supports putting the DTT into the graveyard, which is just plainly
farcical.

On Mon, Apr 20, 2015 at 7:25 PM, Egor Dobrynin
<forum-17690-f7ab@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:
> I have a small question from a Game day, which has happened once in small
> city in Ural mountains.
>
> 1. Its a final of a GD, so both players have shivering hands and the sweated
> foreheads. Candles are burning and the playmat with Sarkhan lies near.
>
> 2. Anry says “Dig”, taps 8 lands for mana, takes the library, looks through
> 7 cards, takes two of them in hand, the rest cards go to the bottom of the
> library.
>
> 3. Newton asks “Where is that DIG u have just played?”
>
> 4. Anry answers “Ah.. Here it is!” and takes a card (DTT) from the hand and
> puts it into his graveyard.
>
> 5. Assuming that there was no cheating, how should I resolve this situation?
>
> Ofc, on a Competitive lvl its a GL (DEC), but on a regular…? No punishment
> -so we shall encourage players to cheat in a similar situations.
>
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–
Gareth Pye
Level 2 MTG Judge, Melbourne, Australia
“Dear God, I would like to file a bug report”

I'd resolve this by putting the Dig in the graveyard and let the players continue playing.

There's no punishment at REL because it's about teaching people, yes the leniency creates a potential for cheats, but with small prizes cheating should not be so attractive. I would definitely clarify why it's so important to play spells correctly and explain that this could look like cheating. If this was a consistent issue then we get into serious problems as defined in the JAR which have solutions with more teeth.

Also I'd make a suggestion that the failure to cast the Dig correctly (revealing it) would be an error before the cards were drawn and so at competitive I think we'd be looking for something other than DEC.

It's possible that the player didn't actually have dig in hand, and only drew the dig off of the cards he looked at. That's a high risk low reward cheat, though, so I wouldn't be looking for it specifically.

Originally posted by Bryan Li:

It's possible that the player didn't actually have dig in hand, and only drew the dig off of the cards he looked at. That's a high risk low reward cheat, though, so I wouldn't be looking for it specifically.

I suppose that there was no cheating, really.

This is something I would absolutely Game Loss for at Competitive.
The player took an action that we cannot verify the legality of. Now that this player has put two cards into his hand from the dig, there's nothing we can do to verify the legality of what happened.

We can't fix the game by just putting the card in the graveyard, and we definitely can't let this game continue by letting them keep a Dig in their hand when they've already cast a “free” one. I'm willing to accept the argument that this player gets a DEC because they have cards in their hand that can not be accounted for.

At Regular, just put it in the yard, but at Comp+, I can't see any penalty from this that allows this game to continue.

was there really no chance for the opponent to verify no Dig has been cast/put on the stack during the casting of it, the period of priority passes and when the spell is resolving?

Originally posted by Gareth Tanner:

was there really no chance for the opponent to verify no Dig has been cast/put on the stack during the casting of it, the period of priority passes and when the spell is resolving?

nope. as i have already said, AP looked through 7 cards, took 2, 5 on bottom. the hand was taken (like 4 previous and 2 new cards).

I also think that on gpt i should GL:DEC

but now im confused a bit

Originally posted by Egor Dobrynin:

nope. as i have already said, AP looked through 7 cards…

At this point, the opponent definitely has a chance to notice there is no Dig Through Time on the stack. I've never seen a Dig Through Time resolved so quickly the opponent has no time to notice an error in casting before the caster is finished.

If the player did not physically put the spell on the stack and just picked up the top 7 cards to look through, we have a preceding GRV so DEC cannot apply.

If this were Treasure Cruise the situation gets a bit more complicated…

As this was posted in the Regular REL section is it worth moving this part of the discussion elsewhere?

Originally posted by Gareth Tanner:

As this was posted in the Regular REL section is it worth moving this part of the discussion elsewhere?

I think “yes” - cuz for me its still not clear - if it is a DEC or LEC on a comp. lvl ? And other judges have different opinions

Edited Egor Dobrynin (April 20, 2015 12:15:27 PM)

I agree, and thus moved this to the Comp REL forum.

Of course, doing so means that the Regular REL aspect of this discussion will now “flare up”… ;)

d:^D

Originally posted by Egor Dobrynin:

No punishment -so we shall encourage players to cheat in a similar situations.

I don't think that's a particularly helpful conclusion. In this case, we are fixing an error. It is unlikely that another one of these will be met with reasonable doubt, so if they feel like trying to run this by again they strongly risk getting DQ'd. We will match the severity of the intent with the appropriate fix.

If we allow for “discard a Dig now”, we can ask away from the table what cards were kept and whether we believe the Dig was originally there. Questions include: When was it drawn? What were you waiting for? These are collateral truths, and it's in our power to investigate whether he tried to fake a dig and got lucky enough to hit one in the top 7 and “discard the Dig I forgot earlier.” As others have pointed out, it's super risky.

Jeph Foster
I'm willing to accept the argument that this player gets a DEC because they have cards in their hand that can not be accounted for.

The cards can be accounted for - we can reasonably know number of cards before casting Dig, and that +2 cards came from the “invisible Dig” with +1 cards expected due to not moving the Dig to the stack/graveyard. The identity of them may be unknown, but they're not “unaccounted for.”

In applying DEC, if the draw was confirmed it is not DEC. If Player A says “Dig” and Player B says “ok”, I feel there was opportunity for Player B to catch it as Josh is suggesting. I agree with Adam that a GRV preceded this and DEC does not apply.

Jeph Foster
The player took an action that we cannot verify the legality of. Now that this player has put two cards into his hand from the dig, there's nothing we can do to verify the legality of what happened.

That's an interesting take. The only given examples from the IPG are misplaying morph or not revealing to ensure a legal choice was made, though the paragraph seems to imply that there could be more situations. I'm not saying that you're wrong, but I have yet to apply this to anything else that I can think of off the top of my head.

Originally posted by Josh Stansfield:

At this point, the opponent definitely has a chance to notice there is no Dig Through Time on the stack. I've never seen a Dig Through Time resolved so quickly the opponent has no time to notice an error in casting before the caster is finished.

Agreed, it's GRV not DEC. But it's still upgradable to a game loss. Quoth the IPG:

An error that an opponent has no opportunity to verify the legality of should have its penalty upgraded. These errors involve misplaying hidden information, such as the morph ability or failing to reveal a card to prove that a choice made was a legal one.