TLDR - I feel as though Improper Drawing at Start of Game should not be lumped into HCE. The proposed fix is improper and unfair, and possibly gives the opposing player too much information on Turn 0 for what was originally cited as “generally a minor infraction (which) deserves a fairly minor penalty.” (Section 2.4 of this Old IPG)

Background:
Two Level 0's in my personal playgroup and I are in an 8man Standard event at Regular REL. Adam Sandler is on the play and accidentally draws 8 cards before Mulligans, and announces this fact. He and his Opponent, Norman Reedus, are both aspiring judges and ask me how to resolve the problem as though we were at Competitive REL. I gave them the “old” fix and had the offending player lay out their hand face down at random. I chose two cards, shuffled them into his library, and congratulated Adam on his prompt mulligan to 6.

I am now reviewing the IPG before HJ'ing an SCG IQ this evening, and was surprised to see that this rule is now lumped into HCE (the L0's have been notified of my mistaken ruling and they will be consoled with lollipops and munchkins to prevent permanent scarring).

However, I have issues with treating this scenario as HCE and applying the same effect on T0 before mulligans have been chosen.

Problems with lumping Improper Drawing at Game Start with HCE:
In this same exact scenario, how does this play out as HCE? Does Adam Sandler reveal his hand for a Perish the Thought before Norman Reedus chooses to mull to 6 or not? This would allow Norman to confer with his hand to see how it matches up against Adam's before the game even starts, and allows Norman information that may cause him to mulligan when he wouldn't have before. The amount of information revealed before mulligan choices are made seems to be too much.

Otherwise you have to have Norman Reedus resolve his mulligan before “Perishing”, and what if he mulligans to 6 and mulligan choices get passed back to Adam? Does Adam mulligan to 6 then get Perished?

What if Norman was on the play, makes his mulligan choices, then passes mulligan choice to Adam, who announces he has mistakenly drawn 8 cards? Now Norman gets to Perish AFTER being locked into a set of 7 cards.

Does it make a difference if Adam announces his mistake before Norman makes a mulligan choice? If that happens, does Norman (who is on the play) get to Perish before or after making a mulligan decision?

This difference in timing of the announcement of one's own mistake in drawing 8 cards at the start of the game, and leads to an investigation into Unsporting - Cheating.


Summarized Problems:

Treating Improper Drawing at Start of Game as HCE leads to a million different practical problems with mulligans and mulligan choices, depending on when the infraction is noticed, when it is announced, and also depending on which player is playing and which is drawing.

None of these problems happen if we stick to the “old” fix.

Edited Russell Deutsch (March 1, 2016 02:12:16 PM)

Remember that the opponent has the option of a Mulligan. The change to
policy gives them the option to reveal their 8 and stay at 7, or go down to
6 random cards. This gives the player making the error more options than
they had in the past, if they want to take a Mulligan (statistically
equivalent to IDSG fix) they can do so.
On Mar 1, 2016 3:05 PM, “Russell Deutsch” <

Giving them the option of a mulligan does not make all of the practical implementation problems I've outlined go away.

The answers to those questions are also unchanged from IDSG: The penalty
and fix are applied immediately when the error is discovered, and then the
normal sequence of mulligans is resumed.
On Mar 1, 2016 3:18 PM, “Russell Deutsch” <

Originally posted by Dan Collins:

The answers to those questions are also unchanged from IDSG: The penalty
and fix are applied immediately when the error is discovered, and then the
normal sequence of mulligans is resumed.

Yes, I figured as much. I appreciate you stepping up to help me with the ruling, but that's not what I was trying to call to attention here.

I'm making the assertion that the old IDSG fix was better because it was more fair to both players, and having the fix for IDSG differ from HCE is beneficial because it avoids the problems outlined above.

Edited Russell Deutsch (March 1, 2016 02:30:18 PM)

If a player doesn't want to reveal information to their opponents during this time , they should have been more careful about how many cards they had

It adds different problems, though.

ID@SoG only applied until you took a game action. After that it was DEC,
which is now HCE.

If a player realized they had mulled to 7 instead of 6, they could wait
until after they played a land to call a judge in order to make it
old-DEC-now-HCE. If you thought your hand was better with two random cards
dropped than with a card of the opponent's choice, you could call
immediately and get Hymned instead of Thoughtseized.

So you could choose which infraction you committed by deciding when to call
a judge. This determined which fix you got. This was really rough to
catch - the player was calling the judge on themselves most of the time,
which is something we want to encourage, and people would sometimes catch
things later, so the same sequence of actions are innocent a lot of the
time.

When DEC was a game loss, they had a VERY strong incentive to catch it fast
and call right away. After DEC became a unique fix, it became…murkier,
and for not a lot of value.

Now you get the same fix either way, not radically different fixes based on
when you call a judge.


—
Rob McKenzie
Magic Judge Level III
Judge Regional Coordinator USA-North
Minnesota

I note that you don't seem entirely satisfied with the responses I typed up on my phone while in the lab earlier, so let me respond a bit more thoroughly now.

Originally posted by Russell Deutsch:

In this same exact scenario, how does this play out as HCE? Does Adam Sandler reveal his hand for a Perish the Thought before Norman Reedus chooses to mull to 6 or not? This would allow Norman to confer with his hand to see how it matches up against Adam's before the game even starts, and allows Norman information that may cause him to mulligan when he wouldn't have before. The amount of information revealed before mulligan choices are made seems to be too much.

At the moment the error is detected, the fix is applied. We can't go back in time and have the player reveal his hand earlier, and we also can't wait until some arbitrary future moment. Just as the IDSG shuffle-two-in was applied immediately, so is the HCE fix. The affected player, of course, may mulligan to avoid revealing information to his opponent if he wishes to do so. Regardless, the fix is applied when the infraction is discovered and the judge is called.

Originally posted by Russell Deutsch:

Otherwise you have to have Norman Reedus resolve his mulligan before “Perishing”, and what if he mulligans to 6 and mulligan choices get passed back to Adam? Does Adam mulligan to 6 then get Perished?

The fix is applied when the error is discovered and a judge is called.

Originally posted by Russell Deutsch:

What if Norman was on the play, makes his mulligan choices, then passes mulligan choice to Adam, who announces he has mistakenly drawn 8 cards? Now Norman gets to Perish AFTER being locked into a set of 7 cards.

The fix is applied when the error is discovered and a judge is called.

Originally posted by Russell Deutsch:

Does it make a difference if Adam announces his mistake before Norman makes a mulligan choice? If that happens, does Norman (who is on the play) get to Perish before or after making a mulligan decision?

Yes, because the fix is applied when the error is discovered and a judge is called.

Originally posted by Russell Deutsch:

This difference in timing of the announcement of one's own mistake in drawing 8 cards at the start of the game, and leads to an investigation into Unsporting - Cheating.

Yes, if a player notices an error and fails to call attention to it, or makes an error deliberately, you should investigate for cheating.

Originally posted by Russell Deutsch:

Yes, I figured as much. I appreciate you stepping up to help me with the ruling, but that's not what I was trying to call to attention here.

Glad I could be of assistance.

Originally posted by Russell Deutsch:

I'm making the assertion that the old IDSG fix was better because it was more fair to both players, and having the fix for IDSG differ from HCE is beneficial because it avoids the problems outlined above.

What problems? You've presented a number of situations, some of which are far less common than others, and you seem to assert that policy is broken because these different scenarios result in fixes where players have different amounts of information before they make a decision. However, in no case is a player gaining any advantage due to their error, when it's all said and done, and since the player can always choose to mulligan instead of revealing, the penalty is never more severe than the good old “forced mulligan”. And ultimately, the nature and timing of the fix follows very simple rules, which is great, because policy is best when it is easy to apply it consistently - and here, that means you apply the fix at the moment when the error is detected.

Edited Dan Collins (March 1, 2016 03:28:14 PM)

One inconsistency in execution I have seen comes from the practice of laying the hand out facedown before picking it up. For instance, Adam lays out 8 cards and notices as he picks up half of them that there are too many still laid out on the table. I have heard different opinions on whether HCE has been committed (and, more notably, if the standard HCE fix is to be applied) if the player has not seen the extra cards yet. If it is a standard HCE, then we should be revealing the hand (which is now seen for the first time by both players) and applying the Perish the Thought fix.

My inclination is that extra unseen cards can reasonably be considered “not drawn yet” and so we can simply return one of those at random to the library, but I do not think the judge community has full consensus on that approach.

Sent from my iPad

This doesn't address the OP, but the IPG does state the following with regards to cards laid face down:

A player is not considered to have looked at extra cards when he or she places a card face down on the table (without looking at the card) in an effort to count out cards he or she will draw.

(This within Looking at Extra Cards).

I take that to mean these cards have not been drawn.

The cards have not been drawn. This is not HCE. This has been addressed a
couple times in the past (back when it was not ID@SoG.) I know there was a
Knowledge Pool about it, and I believe also a Comp REL forum thread you may
be able to dig up.

@Joshua that was my interpretation as well. I believe it may be worth reiterating given that the infractions to which previous discussions referred are now wrapped into HCE that those discussions still apply.

Sent from my iPad