Hello, all.

After some video of players cheat at high level tournament and some research, I came with some ideas that I want to talk with.

Unknowing zone is the best place where people often cheat with. This include deck shuffle and draw cards. And for shuffle decks, is “easier” to do on opponent's decks. The reason why players cheat is because they know they are hard to catch, and the reason why I say it, is because there are players who even cheated on camara, and still not been know after the mach. (change into(Let's change the policy!))

So, about deck check, it is a good way to tell players that, “hey! we are aroud, so don't cheat.” But we are just like openning packs. We all know that majorty of players don't cheat, and if we caught some players who were cheaters, it would just like opened a mythic rare, which we know you wouldn't open the one you want.

Well then, don't buy packs! But, there is no singles to buy because we do not know who will be cheating in the future, unless we can cast mind control or go to Dominaria to find Teferi to help us,
but is not the case.
Portent all the packs are mythic rare, would you buy packs?
Portent all the players are cheater, would that be easy to pervent?

I don't konw about the first question, beacuse even all the cards are mythics, it doesn't mean so they all good cards, but for second one, I have some Ideal ideas.

Players will cheat to their opponent, which is reasonable. But would you cheat to players who's on another table? Let's change the policy! Is the time to For each time that requirement shuffle, past th deck to another player, and a random player will give a randon deck for sure because there is no reason to cheat on somene who one's not playing aginst. And for Top two and professional REL, judges should involve in all the shullfes.

Hand zone(this will be mostly professional REL)
This is the other which founds that's common for player cheat on. For players, they shouldn't know any thing about card they shouldn't know, but not for judges. So if judges can ever seen the top three cards, then the game stage would be as “real” as possible after something got wrong.

This is what can I think of so far, and please have any common, suggestion or talk. I would like to see them.

–John B

John, my compliments and respect for thinking outside of the box and coming up with interesting ideas to prevent cheating. It takes courage to challenge the existing systems and traditions and come with a brand new perspective!

However, there are several issues with your proposals. While they prevent some opportunities for cheating, they create a whole lot of new problems. Having others shuffle your deck will cause significant delays, it will break other player's focus and concentration, and most importantly, it will suck all the fun out of the game. It also causes logistical problems: carrying the decks over a certain distance will increase the likelihood of dropping it, having someone who is not invested shuffle the deck may increase the likelihood of damaging the cards.

Having judges know the top card sof the library and use that information is, as you said, not feasible. Not even at Professional REL as you said, only on feature matches would this be a possibility. However, adding 2 judges per match, just to constantly look at and remember cards… sounds as bad use of resources, still is unreliable, and makes judges prone to (the perception of) being open for bribery.

More in general: we need to strike a balance between cheating prevention and enjoyability/playability of the game. We can't have both at maximum level, and we already sacrifice some at both ends. For example, we do deck checks, which is inconvenient for the players, but helps us in preventing cheating. On the other hand, we allow players to shuffle their own decks, which is convenient, but allows cheating. While it might be an interesting discussion where we want to be on this spectrum, I think it has already been discussed quite a lot, and we slowly moved away from being extremely wary of cheating (20 years ago, an illegal decklist meant a DQ!).

I, personally, like this very much: in the end, it's a game, and we want players to enjoy it. We have several ways of discouraging cheating, we keep our eyes open, but I don't want to punish 99% of the player sby making them jump through all kinds of hoops to prevent the 1% of using some marginal cheating opportunities.

Hello Jphn,

I like the idea of wanting things to improve but I see several flaws in your methods :

- It is true that not shuffling your opponent's deck but another player's eliminates one way of cheating but nullifying the incentives, but how is that even feasible? Let's say that the shuffles at the start of the game are all done at the same time and that we can ask all players to do that, but for the remaining of the game? Would it be normal/fair/conceivable to ask you at anytime to shuffle a random deck you have to interaction with whatsoever? That is a lot of work and annoying players during their games. To put it short, your method probably deletes one kind of cheat off the map (and it is only one among many) in exchange of making all players' lives miserable. I do not think it is worth it and if I had to do it as a player, I would probably prefer to stay at home rather than doing that in a tournament.
- Involving judges , Do you mean that we should watch players shuffle their decks or do it ourselves? Either way, i do not think that we have enough manpower to do so because it would probably require almost as many judges as players to do a task that I do not see myself adding much value in the process. Plus that would remove much much floor covering and cheating would be easier outside of shuffling because all judges would be busy shuffling the decks during a tournament and could not watch matches.

Really, I see your idea improving a very minor point by degradating much more others and I don't think it is remotely logistically realistic implementing it anyway.

Hand zone - why professional only? Does that mean that profesionnal tournament players have advantages on non-pro events players? We can already use coverage cameras in real needs in this environment and if we can use judges in the case you describe, that should be apllied at all levels (which I do not think it is a good idea, ie. my friend is playing and does a mistake involving a card in this hand (so I assume what is covered by HCE anyway?), is it a good idea that as a Judge and as a friend I make a decision that noone else can really verify?).
What don't you like on how HCE covers things today?
The incentive of this kind of cheat is removed by the HCE fix if the error is caught.

Thinks for the feed backs!

I was drawing some ideas form what have I watching from the video, and felt bad for the players who been cheated, and not even realized after a day or so. This gives me an idea of
“why we didn't caught that?”
“How do player felt for the one that's on camera, who might of gets the price during PT or World champion?”
“Our job is to make sure tournament goes well And players are happy, but would any one be happy to lost by a cheater, and take that feeling into video while all of as are watching?”

This topic is not asking for a physical change, but as I said, most cheater only cheat if they know is hard for us to catch, and well, I do liked HCE a lot, but is only if we could caught them at that moment, and this even requires an evidence. I like to be a judge, and I think we are professional. The reason that I say professional only is because I know where will not be enough man resource for event like RPTQ, because the players # are sooo huge that is impossible to get every in a perfect place. SO I came with an idea that
"How about the one's that are important, and has less player for us to worry?

What I real wanted to see is just some Ideal Ideas, and I'd like to see more Commons!
Once again, thinks for the feed backs.
Indeed
–John B