Previously, it was legal to 3-pile your opponent's double nickel to mana-screw them.

However, with the new change, when a player piles twice, they are breaking a rule. Not calling a judge on this, while knowing that you are supposed to call attention to your opponent breaking the rules, is Cheating.

Therefore, if you witness this situation, it may end up in a double DQ after investigation.

Is this correct?

I'm pretty sure that was also the correct solution before
Double nickel has always been ilegal, because the cards are in a not random order. I think that is a more serious problem than just pile shuffling twice

Unless I'm mistaken, the player performing the “defensive three pile” to undo the double nickel only has to pile count the deck once, right?

Since Scott has already confirmed in another thread that it is legal to pile count your opponent's deck once per game, I don't think the legality of the “defensive three pile” has changed.

The legality of not calling a judge on an opponent's double nickel has
changed.

Is there something I can make clearer in my OP? This is my second
discussion, and both times my point was completely missed. =(

2017-01-18 20:04 GMT-05:00 Dan Collins <

Originally posted by Dominik Chłobowski:

The legality of not calling a judge on an opponent's double nickel has changed.

Not really - the legality of the “double nickel” has changed, and it's never been OK to knowingly ignore an infraction … but what infraction is it, if you do a “double nickel”?

If you're just pile shuffling twice, maybe because that's what you learned, it's one of those (infamous but non-existent) Tournament Error - Other things. Or, not an infraction; we just educate and tell them not to do that again.

If you're intending to stack your deck, it's Card Manipulation - a form of Cheating.

Your point is OK, Dominik, but your phrasing is where people seem to be getting stuck. We didn't make it illegal to three-pile your opponent's deck because you want to make sure nothing's fishy. We did make it illegal to pile shuffle more than once per game, which is required to accomplish the mana weave (that double nickel, and it's cousins).

d:^D

I think what Dominik is trying to say here is that the ramifications of seeing your opponent perform a double nickel seem to have changed—not the legality of it happening, or the legality of undoing it.

Previous to the change if you saw your opponent perform double nickel, you could call a judge, or not call a judge, or perform a three-pile shuffle. Because there was no way for you to be certain your opponent was cheating (maybe they learned to do the pattern from someone else, but started with a randomized deck), you were not required to call a judge.

The question is: after the change, if you see your opponent perform a double nickel, are you required to call a judge? Now they are known to be breaking a rule—pile shuffling/counting twice for the same game.

This conversation seems rather esoteric to me. If you see your opponent perform a Double Nickel, as Uncle Scott said, that is Cheating, and the penalty for Cheating is a DQ. Conversely to said DQ, you have (or had, as whether or not this has changed seems to be the purpose of this discussion and is unclear) the option to pile-count your opponent's deck to undo their cheaty shuffle and mana screw them, which is roughly equivalent to maybe 75% of a GL (assuming mana screwing them has the effect of making them lose the game roughly 75% of the time).

Pragmatically speaking, as the opponent of this cheating player, it is in my best interest to get my opponent a DQ (which translates into a match win for me) rather than 75% of a GL (which is, best case, 33% of a match win), so I am incentivized to call a judge rather than try to 3-pile my opponent's deck anyway.

Speaking from a rules enforcement perspective, if it is my interest to make the event I'm playing as fair as possible, for the sake of all of my current opponent's future opponents, it is in my best interest to call a judge and have my opponent expelled from the tournament, to protect the fairness of the tournament.

I'm unsure in what case it is not in my best interest to call a judge, and instead 3-pile my opponent's deck, when I see my opponent attempt a double nickel, and hence I don't really understand the purpose of this discussion.

Edited Lyle Waldman (Jan. 19, 2017 07:29:34 AM)

Can someone define what à “double nickel” is?

Originally posted by Pascal Gemis:

Can someone define what à “double nickel” is?

Piles of five, repeated twice; another common version is six piles, then four. Try it out; start with a deck in decklist order, do either method, then look at the near-perfect “weave” of lands and spells.

Just don't do it in a tournament! :)

d:^D

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

I'm unsure in what case it is not in my best interest to call a judge, and instead 3-pile my opponent's deck, when I see my opponent attempt a double nickel, and hence I don't really understand the purpose of this discussion.

You're looking at the scenario as an outsider with perfect information where you “know that the player performed a double nickel.” Think about it as a judge who is called into the scenario part way through. A player is accusing his or her opponent of doing a double nickel. What if the opponent denies this? Do you DQ based solely on the accusation plus a fairly evenly distributed deck?

Now think about it from the point of view of the player making the accusation. Do you believe that it is a 100% DQ? Do you trust the judges enough to say that?

Originally posted by Riki Hayashi:

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

I'm unsure in what case it is not in my best interest to call a judge, and instead 3-pile my opponent's deck, when I see my opponent attempt a double nickel, and hence I don't really understand the purpose of this discussion.

You're looking at the scenario as an outsider with perfect information where you “know that the player performed a double nickel.” Think about it as a judge who is called into the scenario part way through. A player is accusing his or her opponent of doing a double nickel. What if the opponent denies this? Do you DQ based solely on the accusation plus a fairly evenly distributed deck?

This is not a situation I have had to deal with before so honestly I couldn't tell you. However, an accusation of a double nickel combined with a deck that appears to have a random distribution consistent with a double nickel would raise very high suspicions to me, and I'm pretty confident I could say that I am more likely to DQ than not based on balance of evidence. Of course, that doesn't preclude additional evidence changing my mind, but with that evidence I would need some pretty darned convincing counterevidence to not DQ.

Now think about it from the point of view of the player making the accusation. Do you believe that it is a 100% DQ? Do you trust the judges enough to say that?

I would prefer to answer a different question: If the judge I call isn't 100% to DQ my opponent, what do I lose by calling the judge, if anything?

If I am the judge handling this situation, presumably what has happened is that the player executed the double nickel (or supposed “double nickel”) and then presented his deck, at which point I was called (obviously I would confirm this with the players before proceeding). There are basically 2 outcomes:

1) I believe the player has executed a double nickel: DQ, game over.

2) I do not believe the player has executed a double nickel: At this point, the situation is that the player has still presented their deck. Calling a judge does not change that fact. Therefore, the opponent (who is the one who called the judge) is the one who gets first (and last) touch of the deck after this point. As the opponent, if I believe my opponent has executed a double nickel and the judge does not believe so, then it is at this point that I could 3-pile the deck, just in case the judge is wrong.

Therefore the situation is win-win for calling a judge: If I call a judge and I'm right, I get a match win, and if I call a judge and I'm wrong, then I can still 3-pile my opponent's deck, just to be sure (as Uncle Scott said in the other thread, pile counting your opponent's deck once per game is legal). In either case, I am still incentivized to call a judge before doing anything else.

Edited Lyle Waldman (Jan. 19, 2017 09:07:01 AM)

Lyle, I think you're missing the point of the original question. Yes, it's a narrow question, so calling it esoteric seems fair. But where else is someone supposed to ask it than here?

The question, as I understand it, is asking if the new rules change forces a player to call a judge on an opponent performing a double nickel.

It's not questioning if a double nickel is or was legal.
It's not questioning if undoing a double nickel is or was legal.
It's not questioning if calling a judge is the better or more correct course of action.

From a practical standpoint, there do exist people who would be hesitant to call a judge in this scenario (some because they don't like to call a judge, period, and some because they're unsure if they really saw cheating occur). Does the new rules change effectively force them to call a judge because what they saw (two pile shuffles) is now unambiguously illegal as per the rules?

David,

If I understand your question correctly, a player that observes his or her opponent performing pile counting twice must call for a judge due to violation of MTR restriction of one pile counting per game. Otherwise, in your opinion, this is Cheating. And this is not related really to the fact that the procedure “looks like” double nickel or some other fishy thing.

Cheating definition in IPG requires a player to notice the offense and ignore it for own benefit. In our case the offense is violation of MTR restriction, right? I doubt there's benefit here though.

(One of) the main ideas why we have now this restriction in MTR is to prevent players to waste time. With that in mind, I don't think a player can benefit from his or her opponent performing a second pile counting, because the opponent is still wasting the time of the match, which is detrimental.

As for “preventive” 3-piling of opponent's double nickel (which is in the topic title), I'll elaborate a bit on Scott's message.
MTR says that a player must (strong word) call for a judge if he or she believes (subjective, requires judgement and denounces the strength of the previous “must”) that the opponent didn't make a reasonable effort to randomize the deck.
MTR also allows you to pile count your opponent's deck.
So, much like we don't rule cheating right away if the player mulligans to 1 or 0 (i.e. as long as it is not slow), I don't think it is a good idea to rule cheating in this case, where a player is doing a totally legal action.

Does it make sense to you?

Lev

My theory was that the Cheating only comes into play if the player ignores
it in order to 3-pile shuffle, which I argue is to his benefit.

2017-01-20 4:46 GMT-05:00 Lev Kotlyar <forum-32874-cdfc@apps.magicjudges.org

Dominik, you and Dave seem to be asking (or focusing on) different questions.

Once again, preventive 3-pile-counting (unweaving/stacking) is legal since 2014 (see BNG update by Toby http://blogs.magicjudges.org/telliott/2014/02/03/born-of-the-gods-policy-changes/).
New policy doesn't change it, because pile counting is still legal. As we've established previously, pile counting doesn't change the quality of the randomization: if the deck was stacked it remains stacked (2 spells + 1 land pattern becomes 40 spells followed by 20 lands), if it was randomized properly, it remains randomized.

Now, back to Cheating.
Cheating requires an offense, benefit and acknowledgement of doing the illegal thing.
In your scenario, Dominik, let's clarify: what is the offense? what rule is broken or illegal action taken?

Lev