I'm confused as to why everyone commenting on this particular point is
ignoring the fact that Ward does not actually know his opponent has
mana-weaved, but is doing it every match on the off-chance his opponent may
have…


2013/4/17 Peter Richmond <forum-3842@apps.magicjudges.org>

First of all I would like to thank you for sharing your opinions on this issue.

My personal opinion on manaweaving is this: At its best, you're wasting time. At its worst, you're cheating. So you're better off if you just don't manaweave your deck, no matter if you're shuffling “properly” or not. That's why I'm in for intervening whenever manaweaving occurs.

Edited Jasper König (April 18, 2013 03:29:17 PM)

Originally posted by Dominik Chlobowski:

I'm confused as to why everyone commenting on this particular point is ignoring the fact that Ward does not actually know his opponent has mana-weaved, but is doing it every match on the off-chance his opponent may have…

Because it doesn't matter. He tries to do something that is against the rules (he's not allowed to stack his opponent's deck), and he does it to gain an advantage. The fact that he sometime fails to achieve his goal doesn't mean his behavior is one wanted on events, it just means that he's not really efficient in pulling his trick.

The infamous 3-pile shuffle isn't stacking the deck, it's just another method of randomization.

That method was frowned upon because players were using that, instead of a judge, when they suspected insufficient shuffling, esp. after a mana weave. It wasn't the method they used, it was the intent: we want players to get us involved, not apply their own “fix”. And if someone truly is stacking their deck, we really need to get involved.

A 3-pile shuffle is not illegal. Doing it instead of telling a judge about questionable deck ordering is illegal.

Scott, would you not consider someone 3-piling opponents deck is doing something suspicious? As Jim Shuman said: A 3-Pile shuffle is infact derandomizing the deck! If it was for the lone purpose of counting he could count the cards in one or maybe two piles, instead he 3 Piles and hopes to “randomly” catch a mana weaved deck and hides himself behind the curtain of: “I am doing this with every deck from my opponents, when I catch one, its their problem”

I think to end the everlasting shuffle discussion the rules should definetly state which sort of shuffle should not be allowed and in addition offer methods in which way a deck has to be shuffled in order to be maximum randomized.

A 3-Pile shuffle with a randomized deck still results in a randomized deck, so doing a 3-Pile is not suspicious. As Scott said, doing one is not illegal. If your doing it, because you like to get an advantage because you probably know that your opponenents deck wasnt randomized, then your in trouble.

Whenever the discussion of mana-weaving comes up, I usually first ask “Why do you manaweave?”. The response is usually “To get rid of mana clumps and reduce mana screw.” To which I then explain that Magic is not a game about who has the best super-secret shuffling technique. As such, if your mana-weave is actually doing anything to help you, it's cheating by definition. Your choice of shuffling method can NEVER legally have an impact on the game.

Originally posted by Vincent Roscioli:

Ward Poulisse
Why am I cheating in this scenario? I don't know for a fact that the opponent mana-weaved…

Players are obligated to call a judge when they notice an infraction that has occurred in their match (per MTR 1.10). Intentionally not doing so in order to gain an advantage therefore meets the requirements for USC-Cheating (if they know that what they are doing is illegal).

Yes, but I have never seen any infraction from my opponent at that point. The moment I start suspecting things is the moment when they have mulliganed, at which time I am already “guilty” of my infraction…

Also, I'm currently at the point that I just suspect about 25% of the legacy-players to mana-weave their deck, based on the mulligan-statistics that I get after de-weaving or shuffling. I can certainly just start every match by calling a judge and telling him I suspect my opponent of mana-weaving, but
a) That'll delay the tournament significantly.
b) The judge won't be happy about it after two or three rounds.
c) I'd become a jerk.

Jim Shuman

Ward Poulisse
Why am I cheating in this scenario? I don't know for a fact that the opponent mana-weaved…

You are cheating here because you as a judge know you are supposed to shuffle your opponents deck. We teach all of our judges in my area that a pile shuffle isn't a shuffle. Shuffle = Randomize and your method is obviously not randomizing your opponents deck.

I disagree… My opponent presented me a deck and to the best of my knowledge that deck is sufficiently randomized. Pile-shuffling a sufficiently randomized deck will result in a sufficiently randomized deck again. My shuffling might not be sufficient, but in the end, the deck is sufficiently randomized to the best of my knowledge.

Michael Wiese
A 3-Pile shuffle with a randomized deck still results in a randomized deck, so doing a 3-Pile is not suspicious. As Scott said, doing one is not illegal. If your doing it, because you like to get an advantage because you probably know that your opponenents deck wasnt randomized, then your in trouble.

Except… I can only suspect something in hindsight… And I will not even be certain of it, because I can't see the difference between an opponent that mulligans after I have done this, because his hand is bad and he shuffled sufficiently and an opponent that mulligans after I have done this, because he drew 7 lands in his first hand.

On Tue Apr 23 11:49, Colleen Nelson wrote:
> Whenever the discussion of mana-weaving comes up, I usually first ask “Why do you manaweave?”. The response is usually “To get rid of mana clumps and reduce mana screw.” To which I then explain that Magic is not a game about who has the best super-secret shuffling technique. As such, if your mana-weave is actually doing anything to help you, it's cheating by definition. Your choice of shuffling method can NEVER legally have an impact on the game.

OTOH, if your shuffling technique doesn't break up clumps adequately, they may think that this is helping. Preceeding it by a pile shuffle can help with that. I suggest you recommend that to them, rather than mana weaving. Even better is a short overhand/mash/riffle to put the deck in an unknown (but not well-mixed) order, followed by a pile shuffle, followed be alternating overhand and mash/riffle shuffles.

Matt

Originally posted by Ward Poulisse:

Also, I'm currently at the point that I just suspect about 25% of the legacy-players to mana-weave their deck, based on the mulligan-statistics that I get after de-weaving or shuffling. I can certainly just start every match by calling a judge and telling him I suspect my opponent of mana-weaving, but
a) That'll delay the tournament significantly.
b) The judge won't be happy about it after two or three rounds.
c) I'd become a jerk.

Couldn't you ask the HJ to make a regular announcement each Legacy tournament that such behavior is strictly forbidden and will be punished harshly etc?
This also informs other players to better watch their opponents.
If it's that widespread something must be done beyond the individual level, no?

Originally posted by Jim Shuman:

You are cheating here because you as a judge know you are supposed to shuffle your opponents deck. We teach all of our judges in my area that a pile shuffle isn't a shuffle. Shuffle = Randomize and your method is obviously not randomizing your opponents deck.

This is a scary line of thought. I don't believe we should hold any player- be it a Hall of Famer, Scott, Toby, an L1 candidate or Richard Garfield - to a higher or lower standard of enforcement because of who they are. I don't disagree that doing this is a Very Bad Thing (TM), but it has nothing to do with the perpetrator being a judge.

You can achieve basically the same result with a 2 spells-1 land stacked deck using a 6 or 9 pile shuffle that you would get for a 3 pile shuffle, if you put the piles together correctly afterwards.
I point this out to make clear that if someone would like to use this method, it is possible for him to do it without appearing suspicious. Especially if you consider that the player could shuffle, in case of the 6 pile model, the 2 matching piles together without having an effect, before putting them back.
If he cuts the deck afterwards you would optically have witnessed a serious shuffle involving 3 different methods guaranteeing that a mana-weaved deck will be sorted.
Using a default shuffle method that leaves randomized decks randomized, but negatively impacts stacked ones seems acceptable to me.
I would strongly discourage criticising a shuffle method that reduces cheating.
For the record I am only referring to the default situation, where I do not know if the deck is stacked or not. If I know it is stacked, calling the judge is a given.
Out of curiosity:
What answer would you give a player that asks you how he could protect himself from opponents with stacked decks?
If your answer involves shuffle well, the follow up question will be: can you demonstrate that shuffling?

Originally posted by Chris Lansdell:

I don't believe we should hold any player … to a higher or lower standard of enforcement because of who they are.

MTG-IPG Section 1, General Philosophy
Treating a player differently because he or she once played in a Professional event would mean holding each player to a different standard and would produce inconsistent rulings that depended on the judge’s familiarity with the player. Professionals should be able to play in events without being held to a higher technical level of play against less-experienced opponents who may not be as familiar with the rules.

Not only does Chris make a great point, he's supported 100% by policy.

Jim Shuman
We teach all of our judges in my area that a pile shuffle isn't a shuffle.

That's not quite correct. A pile shuffle is a poor method of randomization, and by itself is likely to be insufficient. However, it is a valid technique when used in combination with other techniques. We even encourage players to use some form of pile shuffle, in order to count their deck, before they present (and, thus, avoid a very common infraction).

Steve Hatto
You can achieve basically the same result with a 2 spells-1 land stacked deck using a 6 or 9 pile shuffle that you would get for a 3 pile shuffle, if you put the piles together correctly afterwards.

And here, Steve touches on a key point: we can't say “3-pile shuffles are illegal”, any more than we can say “mana-weaving is illegal” … because there's alternatives that may not appear to accomplish the same effect (but do), or - worse, in my opinion - may be completely ineffective yet convince a suspicious judge they're Cheating.

Above all else, please: stick to teaching current, written policy.

Not only does Chris make a great point, he's supported 100% by policy.

How about judges? Should judges be treated differently just because they are judges? What if a judge makes a mistake during play is this cheating because he should know how its right?

Originally posted by Joaquim Neumann:

Not only does Chris make a great point, he's supported 100% by policy.

How about judges? Should judges be treated differently just because they are judges? What if a judge makes a mistake during play is this cheating because he should know how its right?

I think there's two different things to consider here…

(1) Is your investigation affected by the experience level of the person involved?
(2) Does your conclusion of infraction/penalty change because of the experience level of the person involved?

…and I think that it is reasonable to say “Yes” to the first, with some caveats. Scott, unless I'm putting words into his mouth, is speaking to the second. Which should definitely be a “No”. We don't want to change the penalty we issue because someone is more/less experienced than the average person.

And the first is really something that we all want to be careful with, as it is very easy to jump to the conclusion that an experienced player knows the rules very well and it is “impossible” for anyone to not understand how a spell or ability works. Or even a judge for that matter. We might be a bit more doubting of someone's knowledge that something is “really bad” or even that they don't know the policy. So, we might ask some tougher questions to ensure the person is truly ignorant of the situation and genuinely overlooked that Black Knight has protection from white.

But, the point is that we might adjust our investigation and line of questioning; not that we actually conclude a different infraction/penalty strictly on the basis of the person involved. We still let the evidence and information carry us to the correct conclusion, not adopt a stricter stance on the nature of what happened.