I've just read on an old topic speaking of 3 pile shuffle after seeing an opponent mana weaving in REGular forums.

That's what Uncle Scott said on the topic :

It is no longer illegal to do a 3-pile shuffle instead of calling a Judge when your opponent has done a mana-weave without thorough randomization afterwards. Yes, we still prefer that players get us involved instead of applying their own “fix” - that much of what I previously said holds true.

Is it the same in COMPetitive REL?

(for those who want to read the full topic : http://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/topic/3842/?page=3#post-62017

That is correct for any REL.

d:^D

Why is this legal? Your opponent did not sufficiently randomise their deck, either intentionally or accidentally. Instead of calling attention to this error, you proceed to break the same rule (not randomizing the deck) in order to gain an advantage. This seems like texbook cheating.

This was changed back in February 2014, you can read this blogpost by Toby
Elliott
<http://blogs.magicjudges.org/telliott/2014/02/03/born-of-the-gods-policy-changes/>
elaborating on why this is allowed.

//DLI

you proceed to break the same rule (not randomizing the deck) in order to gain an advantage

TE - Insuffiscient Shuffling is only for your own deck.

Thanks for the link David. :)

Edited Pascal Gemis (May 30, 2016 09:53:42 AM)

That article seems to go against a lot of other policy. It says:

If the deck is randomized, a three-pile shuffle is a totally acceptable way to randomize the deck.

Well no, it's not. If the manner in which you move the cards around allows you to know the location of a card afterwards, the deck was not sufficiently shuffled. It doesn't matter what the starting configuration of the deck was. In fact it can't matter, as you don't know what the order is when you start shuffling.

There's also the part that says:

First of all, a stacked deck is not something you can ever be sure about. Yeah, maybe your opponent didn’t shuffle as well as you might like at the table, but that doesn’t mean you know that there’s a problem. […] So, if you always three-pile your opponent’s deck, you end up in a weird situation where you might or might not be cheating based on what you thought of the opponent’s shuffling.

This also seems to go against other policy. If you think, but aren't sure, that your opponent has done something incorrectly (such as writing down life totals or forgetting to draw a card), you need to call attention to it. This part of the policy is less clear-cut, but I see no reason why it shouldn't apply to shuffling as well.

Originally posted by Pascal Gemis:

TE - Insufficient Shuffling is only for your own deck.

The TE is only for your own deck, yes. But the comp rules definition of shuffling applies to any shuffle. When you shuffle your opponent's deck, you are just as responsible for correctly randomising it as your opponent was.

Edited Isaac King (May 30, 2016 11:46:42 AM)

I can't agree with the first quote Isaac pointed out either. A three-pile shuffle is no more acceptable a method of “randomizing” as a six-pile count, or whatever number a player decides to use. We would never allow a player to simply pile count their deck and consider it randomized just because they say it started that way.

On the other hand, although we'd like players to inform us when they think but aren't sure something has gone wrong, we're not going to penalize them for not doing so in most cases. So, while we will advise players to involve a judge if they think their opponent has not randomized their deck, I don't see how we can infract them for “Well, I thought maybe he didn't shuffle enough but I wasn't sure, so I did this three pile thing just in case.” Players are not under an obligation to Sufficiently Randomize their opponents deck. That's kind of an absurd requirement, because if you could get infracted for doing so, you should simply always cut and never shuffle, and that's clearly not what we want.

Sent from my iPad

Originally posted by Justin Miyashiro:

I can't agree with the first quote Isaac pointed out either. A three-pile shuffle is no more acceptable a method of “randomizing” as a six-pile count, or whatever number a player decides to use. We would never allow a player to simply pile count their deck and consider it randomized just because they say it started that way.

Actually, yes, we would. We do not force players to run a full 8 shuffles between each instance of Mind's Desire on the stack, and we don't require players to do 16 shuffles (instead of 8) to shuffle twice during the resolution of Green Sun's Zenith. Once a deck is random, randomizing again doesn't make a difference.

Originally posted by Eli Meyer:

Once a deck is random, randomizing again doesn't make a difference.

That's true. But when the opponent hands you their deck for shuffling, we have no guarantee that it was random in the first place. That's why we get to shuffle.

Originally posted by Isaac King:

we have no guarantee that it was random in the first place. That's why we get to shuffle.

Very true - but we are not required to “sufficiently shuffle” our opponent's deck. It's a very good idea, and the MTR says we do have to shuffle - not cut! - but there's no infraction if we don't.

I'm going to risk putting words in Toby's mouth, here, but I suspect that sentence in question should be written:

Toby
If the deck is randomized, a three-pile shuffle is a totally acceptable way to shuffle the deck.

That's really what we mean by that change in the rules: if you want to use a 3-pile shuffle, even if it's to counteract potential deck manipulation, it's no longer forbidden.

d:^D

Eli, apologies for lack of clarity. What I meant was that, if a player sat
down at the table, pulled their deck out of their box, pile counted it, and
presented, we would never accept that as sufficiently random just because
the player proclaims it was random when it came out of their box. I'm sure
you would agree that sufficient randomizing was not done in that case.

As an extension to the examples you used, if a player resolved Mind's
Desire and, instead of riffles or any other method, simply pile counted out
their library and proclaimed it random because it started that way, would
you accept that?

Either way, these examples are somewhat moot, as the question was in
regards to shuffling/randomizing an opponent's deck, and Pascal correctly
pointed out that TE-Insufficient Randomization does not apply to your
opponent's deck, in addition of course to the Official Word from Scott.

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

we are not required to “sufficiently shuffle” our opponent's deck.

I would argue that the MTR implies differently. It says:

players are required to shuffle their opponents’ decks after their owners have shuffled them.

The comprehensive rules define shuffling as:

To shuffle a library or a face-down pile of cards, randomize the cards within it so that no
player knows their order.

I would argue that we are required to “sufficiently randomize” the deck, we can't take the opponent's assurances that it has been shuffled correctly on faith. The Mind's Desire example is a little different, because in that case both players have had a chance to shuffle the deck. Once both players have finished shuffling, the game treats the deck as having been shuffled, so we can shortcut through multiple redundant shuffles. However, when we are shuffling our opponent's deck as a part of the randomization process, we don't yet view the library as having been shuffled sufficiently. Until both players have had a chance to shuffle the deck, we don't consider it “randomized”.







Let me present a separate argument. The MTR, section 3.9, states:

If the opponent does not believe the player made a reasonable effort to randomize his or her deck, the opponent must notify a judge.

In the discussed situation, that's exactly what happened. The player saw the opponent insufficiently randomize their deck, and chose not to call a judge. While unintentional violations of the MTR are not usually penalised, doing it intentionally in order to gain an advantage is still cheating.

Edited Isaac King (May 31, 2016 12:58:08 AM)

A player when shuffling their deck should shuffle it to the point of being sufficiently random before presenting to the opponent, it's their responsibility to make sure their library is random the MTR rule is “not enforced”, being part of the MTR their isn't an infraction for not doing so anyway, but the rule itself exists because some cultures it is an insult to request to shuffle your opponents deck so the players have something to point to in the MTR and can say “I have to the rules tell me to” taking the blame away from the player and putting it on the rules.

Isaac, you're illustrating perfectly the exact logical conclusion we were hoping to eliminate, by eliminating that example from the IPG. We do NOT want someone DQ'd just because they did a 3-pile shuffle of their opponent's deck.

Yes, we prefer that they notify a judge if they saw something suspicious - but what's the threshold for that? what if you just heard from others “don't trust that guy's shuffles!”, and you want to be safe? what if you caught a glimpse of something, but can't describe it - and thus can't expect a judge to detect anything by looking at the deck? There's just so many reasons why we chose to remove that example, and - at that time - make it clear that this is not an infraction, much less a DQ.

d:^D

I personally wondered why there is no stricter definition of a shuffle. We could clearly forbid “only pile shuffling” and then elliminate a future shuffle.

“Pile shuffle only” is not a full shuffle.
Opponent has to cut the deck or shuffle.
If Opponent shuffled you cut.

Where a cut is dividing the library into two piles and put one of the piles on the bottom.
This eliminates a lot of cheating and makes it faster for players to respectfully shuffle after our opponent shuffled.

I hope this is not too off topic but i think it is a great solution for some cases of sleight of hand since no player ever gets full agency over the last shuffle.