First of all - sorry if I post this on incorrect forum, but could not find better one…

Last weekend I was on GP Stockholm (limited). During round 4 I had a judge call. In the middle of game 1, player draws a card and realizes it's a card from his sideboard. He is the honest one, and calls a judge imidietly. The card is kept separately from other cards in hand. It is clear both for me and his opponent that it was a mistake and a player has no intention to cheat or abuse the mistake. Good guy.

Of course all of you can image how the situation finished - HJ came and penaltized the Good Guy with game loss.

I had similar situations several times before. After each of them (including this one) I had a chance to talk with players (involved to the infraction or random spectators). Every time, the same questions and opinions appear:
“He was stupid to call a judge. Lawful, but stupid”
“I know not calling a judge would be cheating and DQ, but it has very small chance. Game Loss is certain”
“How would you know that if I didn't call you?”
“It is easy on Constructed to gues if card is from sideboard, but on Limited it is almost impossible and nobody would notice”

I know penaltizing such infraction with Game Loss for Deck Problem is correct according to current IPG. However, I totally understand players' feelings - they try to be honest and they end with Game Loss. “Be happy it is not DQ” is not very helpful. It is very easy to forget about one card from sideboard, especialy when last match finished after 5 turns of termination, I wanted to go to the toilet and eat something fast, and in general I was in a hurry. As a judge, when a problem or mistake occurs, I would like to help players, not to make more problems for them. And, what is the most important, I want to encourage fair play and honest behaviour. Game Loss out of nothing is not very encouraging from the players' point of view.

Last time we managed to fix unfixable Drawing Extra Cards with Hidden Card Error. Why not take one more step in that direction and try to fix Deck Problem? For example, with something like this:

Downgrade: If a player discovers incorrect cards in their deck and calls attention at this point with no possibility to gain advantage from the mistake, the Head Judge may issue a Warning and fix the deck. If that happened during a card draw, the player may NOT repeat the draw.

So, basicly, in most cases, player skips one draw, but can continue the match. This prevents from using this infraction as a “scry 1” tool and encourages fair play. The player cannot benefint from his mistake, but his honesty is taken into account and pays off. And the outcome is very similar to scenario “Card X was good against deck Y during last match, but here it does nothing. If I don't call a judge I will be fine with just one useless card in my hand”

Let me know what do you think of my idea and what is your opinion about that infraction in general.

I agree with the thought that we shouldn't punish someone for being honest. I don't know if there's a good way to create a rule that can cover all accidental situations without opening it up to abuse. By allowing a downgrade you lower the potential cost of cheating as well. My standard deck could easily abuse a change like you describe to hedge my deck against what my opponent is doing. It then can give me the option to switch cards based on the situation and only get a warning. I'd say anytime a card is being swapped there's potential for advantage. That's one of the reasons that it's a game loss at best if this issue is found. Also, how is this different than us doing a deck check, finding an issue, and the player going “oh man that's a sideboard card”? He's admitting to the mistake albeit after the issue was found by a judge rather than before. In both cases the deck presented didn't match the deck list and admitted that a sideboard card was in the main.

Looking over the IPG again DDLP is the only infraction with a downgrade path now and it happens to have two. The second one describes the downgrade you suggest with as little chance to gain advantage as possible:

If a player, before taking any game actions, discovers incorrect cards in their deck and calls attention to it at that point, the Head Judge may issue a Warning, fix the deck, and, if the player has drawn their opening hand, instruct the player to mulligan. The player may continue to take further mulligans if desired.

From a game standpoint I'd say this is the only point where swapping a card can't gain an advantage. This is assuming that you don't know any card in your opponents deck where at an actual event there's a decent chance that you do know colors/archetypes of various players.

“Oh, look, I drew that sideboard card … hmmm, not very good in this matchup, guess I'd better call a Judge right away…” - there are (some very good) reasons we didn't extend the “grace period” beyond the point of “taking any game actions”.

I agree, completely, with the “feel bad” aspect of this - but the player can verify this before presenting the deck, and has the responsibility to ensure the deck is legal before presenting. I really don't want to relieve them of that responsibility.

d:^D

Originally posted by Preston May:

My standard deck could easily abuse a change like you describe to hedge my deck against what my opponent is doing. It then can give me the option to switch cards based on the situation and only get a warning. I'd say anytime a card is being swapped there's potential for advantage.

Agreed, my downgrade rule may not be perfect, but I used it to have something to start with. My goal is to find best solution for the issue, not to force that particular idea I posted.

Originally posted by Preston May:

Also, how is this different than us doing a deck check, finding an issue, and the player going “oh man that's a sideboard card”? He's admitting to the mistake albeit after the issue was found by a judge rather than before. In both cases the deck presented didn't match the deck list and admitted that a sideboard card was in the main.

Well, in many cases deckchecks happen before players take any game actions, so one could use the same scenario you describe to use current downgrade option you posted. I assume that after deckcheck it is too late for any downgrade.

Originally posted by Preston May:

From a game standpoint I'd say this is the only point where swapping a card can't gain an advantage. This is assuming that you don't know any card in your opponents deck where at an actual event there's a decent chance that you do know colors/archetypes of various players.

As I can see, we are all concerned about the possibility of abuse. Maybe we should concider different approches to fix that situation:
1. Remove illegal cards. If deck has fewer than 60 cards, add basics lands (player still skips the illegal draw, so he can't abuse this rule to draw a land when needed)
2. Find all illegal cards in a deck. For each of them, the opponent decides if that cards: a) stays in a deck b) is replaced with a land c) is replaced with legal card of his choice that currently is out of the deck (similar to HCE that is designed to lower chances of abuse)
Maybe someone has better ideas? :)

Scott Marshall
the player can verify this before presenting the deck, and has the responsibility to ensure the deck is legal before presenting.

I agree with that in 100%
However, the player has other responsibilities as well: to follow game rules, not to look at cards he is not supposed to see, not to draw extra etc. In case of any mistake on those fields, we penaltize the player with warning. In most of the cases it is possible only because an opponent was vigilance enough to see the error and call a judge, and if he didn't the player would gain an advantage. In DDP, when drawing illegal card, the player is the only one who knows about the infraction, but if he is honest, the outcome is even worse than in case of other responsibilities.
We must also remeber, that this infraction may occur even if the player tries to ensure the deck's legality: The sleeves may stick while counting cards; the sideboard is OK, but there is a Pacifism of the previous oppoent in player's deck; the sideboard is OK and the deck has 60 cards, but a “friend” switched one forest with a plant token, because “it is just a prank, bro” (that really happened once). Of course, the player can double check everything, but this again would result in a suspicion of Slow Play…

As a judges, we should prevent problems from escalating. However, at this point I am feeling that I am forcing the situation to escalate. Player drawing card from the sideboard has now choice of concede the game by calling judge or turn the situation into cheating with a hope that nobody will notice the illegal card. Sadly, I am quite sure what many players would do with that choice :(

2. Find all illegal cards in a deck. For each of them, the opponent decides if that cards: a) stays in a deck b) is replaced with a land c) is replaced with legal card of his choice that currently is out of the deck (similar to HCE that is designed to lower chances of abuse)

I suppose one option that could potentially eliminate abuse would be to take the HCE fix further: player reveals their sideboard to their opponent, and the opponent decides which card (if any) with which to replace the not-a-real-maindeck card.

Unfortunately, we'd probably need to pull the decklist in order to do this properly, and fix all the cards that weren't de-sideboarded. This extra overhead, combined with the fact that this would be relevant in less than 50% of games, makes it seem impractical.

At this point, it's a delicate balance of
1) avoiding feel-bad for the player,
2) removing opportunity cost to cheating, and
3) keeping enforcement practical.

It might not be possible to achieve all three. Currently we have (2) + (3), which ultimately seem more important than (1). Remember that upholding (2) is providing customer service to everyone in the tournament, whereas upholding (1) is only providing customer service to a single player.

In addition to David's points, I'll argue that the difference between HCE and D/DLP (due to found sideboard cards after opening hand) is that players stick extra cards in their hands all the time - not just new players at their first PPTQ, but players on camera at the Pro Tour. And since it happened so often and every time would result in a player just dying on the spot, the fix was created. That fix wasn't cheap - it took multiple IPGs of iteration to get right, training judges in how to implement it is still ongoing, and there remain weird scenarios that come up that never were an issue when the game just ended.

D/DLP due to failure to de-sideboard, discovered after the game begins, happens much less often. Someone with a WLTR file could say for sure, but my guess is that we see fewer than five of these infractions at an average 2,000 player GP.

The cost of fixing such a rare error is higher than the benefit gained from fixing it.

Now, if you can come up with a solution for Tardiness, I think folks would be all ears :)

Having been on both sides of this feel-bad (both as the player receiving the game loss for calling a judge on myself for this kind of DDLP, as well as being the judge issuing a DDLP for a player calling this on themselves), I totally understand where you're coming from, Pawel. However, I believe that the current state of affairs is the best one. In addition to the points others have made in this thread, the issue becomes what happens when a player forgot to de-sideboard more than 1 card and/or the error is caught in a way that doesn't include a card draw. The former is very likely to happen, because it is rare that a player partially-desideboards and leaves only 1 card in, or sideboards only 1 card in the first place; often players will sideboard multiple cards and forget to desideboard all of them (funny story: actually I did partially-desideboard at the SCG Worcester Legacy Open a couple weeks ago and left exactly 1 sideboard card in my deck, which I drew in my opening hand at the beginning of the next game and was able to get the DDLP downgrade :p ), while the latter is common to happen simply due to the wide array of card manipulation cards that get printed on a regular basis (Dig Through Time, Fortune's Favor, fetchlands, just to name a few recent ones).

Originally posted by David Poon:

Unfortunately, we'd probably need to pull the decklist in order to do this properly, and fix all the cards that weren't de-sideboarded. This extra overhead, combined with the fact that this would be relevant in less than 50% of games, makes it seem impractical.

If we get to the point of considering this fix, the following has happened.
1. The player recognized the card belonged in the sideboard.
2. The player called the judge on himself.

From those two points it is reasonable to assume that the player knows which cards belong in his sideboard, and will be honest about it. Therefore pulling the decklist is not required. You can let the player tell you which cards are wrong and apply the fix. If further errors are discovered later in the game, then a cheating penalty is likely.

It's been suggested that this situation is very rare, and I would agree that penalties for this situation are fairly rare. However, I believe a significant portion of these go unreported, and I would like to see that change.

It's an interesting idea. I don't think that it's the optimal way, but it does suggest some potential paths. For example, I think it's better if you don't fix the deck.

It does run into some problems when you start thinking about non-draw discovery (Future Sight, scrying, tutoring). But maybe those can be overcome. Kudos for thinking outside the box.

I agree that changing this policy in some way so that we could avoid giving players game losses would be great. As we've said, the current system doesn't give players much incentive to be honest when they notice a mistake, which isn't where we want to be.
When I've spoken to players, if they weren't aware it was a game loss, the common expectation is that they'll be able to continue to play that game out in some fashion. There's a range of how they expect that to actually happen, but I have yet to meet a player who wasn't surprised to receive a game loss (again, not counting experienced players who have already encountered this ruling).
Perhaps someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe aligning policy with players' expectations is a goal when possible.
How much potential for abuse would there be if we simply had the player move the offending card to exile/their sideboard if they caught it and called the judge on themselves? If they weren't permitted to draw a card to replace it, failing to desideboard would still carry a reasonably significant penalty to the game, but this would match player expectations far better and create fewer feelbads every event. This fix would also sidestep the problem of needing to dig up the player's decklist.

Here's what that might look like:

If a set includes sideboard card before sideboarding is permitted and the player with the error immediately calls a judge, the Head Judge may downgrade the penalty to a warning.
The card is immediately removed from play and placed in the individual's sideboard. No additional cards are added to this set to replace this card.

This basically means that if you draw a sideboard card, you lose the draw, scry, choice, etc. It goes away and is gone. You suffer the major disadvantage of being down a card but you aren't out of the game.

Marc, that suggestion (the card just gets set aside for the remainder of that game) is intriguing, but I have a concern. Usually, forgetting to undo sideboarding involves more than one card. Would you apply this fix each time a sideboard card is drawn? or would you remove the drawn/scry'd/etc. card, then search for all other sideboard cards?

The current policy includes “fix any failures to de-sideboard, restore any missing cards ” in the Additional Remedy, and I still think that's preferable to simply removing a card when discovered.

Also, I'm intrigued by something Toby said: “I think it's better if you don't fix the deck.” In essence, you investigate, if you decide on a Warning, then they're stuck with the accidental sideboarding they did. Of course, there's a big hole here, too, if the honest mistake is hugely in their favor - for example, their burn deck now has 4x Pyroblast against a “Fish” deck, for game one, or Rest In Peace against Dredge, etc. Granted, that influences the investigation, but honest mistakes will happen, and cheaters will sometimes seem honest.

Potential for advantage - such as those I just described - is one of the factors that influences policy, and a big reason why Game Loss was the norm, for a long, long time (and before that? DQ!).

d:^D

Marc, that suggestion (the card just gets set aside for the remainder of that game) is intriguing, but I have a concern. Usually, forgetting to undo sideboarding involves more than one card. Would you apply this fix each time a sideboard card is drawn? or would you remove the drawn/scry'd/etc. card, then search for all other sideboard cards?

In my opinion, either one of these would be preferable to the current policy. Both have some clear problems, but either method would give players a chance to continue the current game rather than losing on the spot. As is, the players' only incentive to play honestly here is fear of a judge 1) watching their match 2) knowing it is a pre-boarded game 3) noticing the offending card/s in that match 4) knowing enough about the format to know the card doesn't belong in the main deck – that may be relatively clear in a Modern match when you see something like Stony Silence or Choke, but it could as easily be much less obvious.
If I'm playing 4 Swords to Plowshares and sideboard 2 Path to Exile, for example, I could draw both Paths without it being clear to a judge watching my match I had failed to desideboard.
Even less clearly, I could have 2 pack Damnations in my deck and 1 promo Damnation in my sideboard, so that it would be clear to me, as the player, that I had failed to desideboard but basically impossible for a judge watching to guess.
If you begin to think about games of limited, the chances of a judge knowing a sideboarding error has occured by watching the match drop to ~0%.

The current system gives players close to zero incentive to behave honestly when they discover they have made an error, unless the offending card is obviously a sideboard card and it's early enough in the round it would be unreasonable to assume it was G2.

For my money, any policy that encourages experienced players to cheat AND doesn't match new player expectations needs to be revamped.

I am not sure I fully understand the propositions to change our actual
policies, so I will give a situation as an example:
If I am playing two pyroclasm main deck and two in the sideboard, and end
up accidentally with all four in the main deck game one, what do you
suggest to be fair and consistent fix and penalty when I draw my first
pyroclasm? When I draw my third?

- Emilien

Le 16 sept. 2016 09:18, “Brook Gardner-Durbin” <