Originally posted by IPG 3.9:

If the player, upon drawing an opening hand, discovers a deck problem and calls a judge at that point, the Head Judge may downgrade the penalty, fix the deck, and allow the player to redraw the hand with one fewer card. The player may continue to take further mulligans if he or she desires.

A player presents his deck, but before drawing his opening hand, realizes that his deck is somehow illegal (notices sideboard cards off to the side; his deck feels too thin because he de-boarded but forgot to put main deck cards back in; he counts while opponent is pile “shuffling” his deck and he notices only 56 cards; etc.). So being a responsible player, he calls a judge to inform of the error. The judge of course knows this is a textbook case of downgrading the default Game Loss penalty for Deck/Decklist Problem to a Warning.

After a recent discussion and learning that many (at least some?) judges don't apply the “forced mulligan” in a case like this, either because they don't realize it's there or because this clause specifically says “upon drawing an opening hand”, I want to confirm whether the “forced mulligan” is correct here.

Some judges (and indeed, I made this same argument not long ago before reviewing the policy) argue that there is less advantage gained if an opening hand was never drawn, so a Warning alone is sufficient, and the “forced mulligan” is very feel-bad for the player (and even the opponent is usually surprised). I don't want players wishing they hadn't called a judge when they were just trying to do the right thing (in their mind, it feels strictly worse than just ignoring the error, because if the opponent missed it, how would anyone ever know if they didn't call it on themselves?).

And another scenario I encountered once: A player presents, draws a hand of 7, chooses to mulligan, then while pile counting and shuffling, notices the deck is 59 cards and calls a judge. Are we still within possible downgrade territory? If so, is the next hand drawn going to be 6 or 5 cards?

In the case where the player hasn't drawn their opening hand and notices the problem, the HJ can still downgrade the penalty to Warning. It is specifically described in the General Philosophy section of the IPG. The “forced mulligan” should only be applied when an opening hand has been drawn.

Plus, I'm not sure how you can draw 1 less card if you haven't drawn any cards yet.

As for the opportunity to downgrade after after taking a mulligan, I do not think that fall under the “calls a judge over immediately and before he or she could potentially benefit…”

Edited Shawn Doherty (March 5, 2013 05:05:37 PM)

Thanks Shawn. The Additional Remedy doesn't necessarily require the “calls a judge over immediately and before he or she could potentially benefit…” does it?

So the question becomes whether “opening hand” means only the first 7 cards drawn, or whether it's any hand drawn before deciding to keep. If I didn't notice a problem when I drew 7, but noticed a problem when I drew 6, is that too late? And what if it's just after the mulligan from 7, but before drawing 6 that the error is noticed?

Originally posted by CR Glossary:

Opening Hand
The hand of cards a player starts the game with, once the player has decided not to take any further mulligans. See rule 103.4.

Additional remedies are how we handle things after we apply the penalty. I believe that this particular remedy is just explaining how to deal with the situation where the player notices this mistake (D/DLP) and calls us immediately. The downgrade is not part of the additional remedy, it is the time when the remedy is used.

Per 103.4, the opening hand is the one you keep; if you're taking a mulligan, the cards you drew are not your opening hand.