I am confused too.

I fully agree that “your opponent chooses a card from your library” is an awkward fix.
Still, it is the procedure documents call for.

Any clarification is welcome.

In the (also corner-case) scenarios where a player shuffles his or her hand into their library, then, yes, that exact situation is covered by Toby's blog post - where he discusses that exact situation. (Note that we had a good laugh when we realized that HCE could finally put a stop to those “what if a player shuffles away their hand?!??!?OMG?!??” forum posts … silly optimism on our part. :p )

No matter. This is not that.

The shady part of this - putting an unknown card in hand, then putting an unknown card in the library - is a red flag, and worthy of investigation … but Cheating is a separate topic; we never have to fix the game state after we decide on Cheating.

Either he put back the same card (which is a GRV, as no game effect allows that action) or he put back a different card (also a GRV, if it's not Cheating) after finding the card he wanted. Even if we apply the HCE fix some suggest - having the opponent choose one card from the entire library - we still can't know if the card in question is the same one originally searched for, so we can't mitigate the problem of him keeping the card originally found, plus another. Again, it's unlikely that could be an honest mistake - but if we decide that, we have to apply one of the proscribed remedies - and I maintain that GRV is the more appropriate infraction, and the remedy - leave things as is (after finishing the shuffle) - is a much better outcome.

Now, if you decide that you simply must apply HCE to this situation? that the IPG gives you no alternative? Well, have fun with that.

d:^D

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

In the (also corner-case) scenarios where a player shuffles his or her hand into their library, then, yes, that exact situation is covered by Toby's blog post - where he discusses that exact situation. (Note that we had a good laugh when we realized that HCE could finally put a stop to those “what if a player shuffles away their hand?!??!?OMG?!??” forum posts … silly optimism on our part. :p )

Scott, forgive me the abuse, but to my fellow judges which (sometimes, and like me) have difficulty understanding the peculiarities of the English language, allows me to leave here the direct answer from Elliot to this corner case, hoping also it will redeems me from what I incorrectly stated before.
"Ilan says: How does HCE apply if a player accidentally shuffles their hand into their library in the middle of a game (not connected to mulligan decisions)?
telliott says: Reveal library, opponent gives you a hand.” http://blogs.magicjudges.org/telliott/2016/01/25/the-hidden-corners-of-hce/

(Please note that some of the corner cases were subject to an update on
http://blogs.magicjudges.org/telliott/2016/04/04/revisiting-the-hidden-corners-of-hce/)

While I think I understand why you choose to correct this way Scott, and while it also respects the spirit of “if HCE would do silly things, please reconsider”, it is in my opinion a bit too convienient to say that it is a GRV.

GRVs are supposed to be GPEs that are not covered by other infractions, but this totally falls under HCE in the spirit of the error, so applying GRV here feels like a deviation, however it seems far more reasonnable.
We are often told that we should not retro engineer things to land on a fix we desire and then give the corresponding penalty and I feel that it is what you (you does not points directly at you, but also at Toby) are asking us to do in the specific context of HCE.

I understand how silly things can seem to be if we apply this, but the article of Toby covers a case that seem far worse than this one (shuffling the whole hand), and he still suggests a fix. While I like having real arguments to deviate from silly strict policy application, the examples that we have been given do not really allow to put this case enough in a corner to deviate.

And while those cases are corner cases all over the place, it is probably not fair to expect judges to do differently from what Toby suggested on a case that is close enough. That is why I find the sentence :

Now, if you decide that you simply must apply HCE to this situation? that the IPG gives you no alternative? Well, have fun with that.

a bit harsh.
Toby, by giving that exemple, kind of set a precedent on how we can correct even grotesque situations.

Edited Théo CHENG (May 27, 2016 10:02:58 PM)

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

Either he put back the same card (which is a GRV, as no game effect allows that action) or he put back a different card (also a GRV, if it's not Cheating) after finding the card he wanted.

I'm gonna agree with the other judges who posted that I'm not quite sure where you're coming from here. Either of these scenarios is a game play error which cannot be corrected using publicly available information–that's the literal definition of HCE, is it not?

OK, I surrender. (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love HCE…)

Since this is only likely to happen about 7.3 times per decade, I can live with the (seemingly extreme) fix of revealing the entire library, and letting the opponent choose which card was put back illegally. Or, as I started to write before - I pretty much agree with Francesco, here.

(I reserve the right to feel kinda dirty about it, maybe even guilty… LOL!)

d:^D

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

Since this is only likely to happen about 7.3 times per decade, I can live with the (seemingly extreme) fix of revealing the entire library, and letting the opponent choose which card was put back illegally.

I'm not actually advocating this fix, for the record; I happen to agree that the solution of “whoops, you did a thing. No fix.” is much cleaner. I'd really like to apply that fix. However, I've been repeatedly cautioned by many judges, including yourself, on the dangers of deviation from Policy. So if you are willing and able to tell me fficially that I don't need to perform the ridiculous fix, I'd be more than happy.

Though honestly, you're 100% correct that this will almost never happen. I've seen it happen in friendly EDH games, so it's entirely conceivable a first-time player at Competitive might not understand why his actions were not acceptable, but a lot of things need to go wrong at once to end up with this outcome…