Alexander activates Domri Rade's plus ability, looks at the top card of his library, then puts it in his hand without revealing. He realizes his error and calls a judge. His hands consists of 3 creatures.

Is this downgradable to a warning by revealing his entire hand to his opponent because the not-revealed card is certainly a card matching the criteria, or not because the not-revealed card is still not uniquely identifiable?

This is not something we should downgrade. Also note that in the IPG revealing the entire hand is not one of our additional fixes.

Ben, this exact same scenario happened today at GP Houston.

What would be your ruling for this? I was on call for this and let me give you my side.

Aaron activates Domri Rade's ability and during resolution, looks at the top card and puts it directly into hand.
Nigel notices this and calls a judge.

I personally ruled DEC - GL since revealing as part of the resolution of the ability is not required unless you know the card is a creature and by the time the card hit the hand, no other GRV preceded it.

However, I had a fellow L2 also mention that this could be a GRV - upgraded to GL due to failure to reveal, but as I said…revealing isn't required unless you know it's a creature.

The difference between GRV upgraded due to not revealing to check legality and DEC ultimately doesn't make a huge difference - the penalty is the same, it's just the name of the infraction. I'm not suggesting that we look at the penalty first then determine the infraction, but ultimately if 100 judges had to rule on this situation and 40 of them ruled DEC and 60 ruled GRV upgraded, is the final outcome any different?

In saying all of that, it does seem a little weird to ignore the specific ability that is being resolved. If you ask the player “Why did you put the card in hand?” unless they were specifically cheating and being very honest, they're going to answer along the lines of “I forgot the ability said reveal” or some other “I forgot” answer. So are we now going to prescribe an infraction that is nothing to do with what actually happened?

I can see why someone might want to just go with DEC and fundamentally it really doesn't make any difference to the player outcome, but I think we really have to take into consideration what actually happened and issue the infraction that fits what actually happened.

Allow me to disagree with the L3s here.

I think we can reasonably downgrade this if the player volunteers to show that his whole hand is full of creatures. We cannot tell the player to reveal his hand, but if he does so, we can go that path. (We can even offer him the option away from the table, but he can decline if he doesn't want to reveal SB cards or thinks he's losing the game anyway or whatever.)

Here is my thinking: This is GRV upgraded as old Failure to Reveal.

Originally posted by IPG 2.5:

An error that an opponent can’t verify the legality of should have its penalty upgraded. These errors involve misplaying hidden information, such as the morph ability or failing to reveal a card to prove that a choice made was legal. If the information needed to verify the legality was ever in a uniquely identifiable position (such as on top of the library or as the only card in hand) after the infraction was committed, do not upgrade the penalty and reveal the information if possible.

In this situation, we can reveal a superset of “the information needed to verify the legality” along the lines of “the only card in hand” provision by showing an entire hand composed entirely of cards that Domri could legally have put there.

Furthermore, we should investigate whether any effects allowed NAP to know any part of the contents of a player's hand prior to the Domri draw. For example, if the opponent cast Duress last turn and AP has drawn 2 creatures since, he can just reveal the 2 creatures even if other cards (with previously known identities) are in his hand.

If a player simply exclaims “Look, all my cards creatures!” while revealing his hand, I certainly understand why one would want to downgrade to Warning. (I sure would!) But, we run into a lot of issues:

1. If I were the player, being instructed to reveal my entire hand would feel a little weird. Why should my opponent get to see all my other cards when it's only “this one” that he should see? It feels like a “feel-bad” solution to me. And I understand that getting a Game Loss is probably a “feel-worse” solution, but I don't think that the “lesser of two evils” fix is that good from an image perspective.
2. What if the player has a handful of creatures, says that he does, but doesn't actually reveal his hand? Do you instruct him to reveal his hand, and if he doesn't, he gets a Game Loss? If you do that, then you're giving him a choice in what penalty he receives. Seems like a slippery slope to me.
3. What if the player has a handful of creatures, but doesn't say anything? Is he at a disadvantage, simply because he's not outspoken or as willing to reveal his hand as the original guy? If you see his handful of creatures, do you offer him the option away from the table? Doesn't that REEK of favoritism, even if it isn't?

There will be enough times where a player doesn't argue or doesn't freely offer his hand, that downgrading for the player who DOES do those things seems unfair to the rest of the players. I wouldn't downgrade here.

By the Philosophy behind the GRV-upgrade, I am very much on Joshuas page here.
The IPG (not word-by-word, but pretty obviously ‘between the lines’) says ‘If a player failed to reveal information to his opponent, upgrade to a Gameloss - due to the big potential for abuse - unless you can still verify that no illegal play has been made. If you can verify that the card not revealed was legal, reveal the information to the opponent - since this eliminates all potential for abuse’.

I do see that this is not an obvious ‘downgrade of the upgrade’, but I feel that it is what the paragraph has been meant to do.
Yes, this gives the infracting player the choice of his penalty, but I don't see the problem of Jason here. I'd simply tell the player who commited the Infraction - in presence of his opponent, so it doesn't reek favoritism - ‘This is a GRV, which normally results in a Warning, but the IPG tells me to upgrade this to a Gameloss unless we can verify to your opponent that the card drawn was in fact a creature-card.’
Point is, I will have to give this explanation to the players one way or the other - if I give the player GRV - GL, I will tell him ‘This is upgraded because your opponent could not verify that the card you looked at was a creature. Would it still be identifiable, this would not have been an Upgrade.’ - which, in this case, where it is verifiable, would auto-trigger discussion and appeals in most of the cases anyways. Even if you tell the player that this GL has been cleared by the HJ (which it should be), I feel that he would appeal this. At least I know I would, every time, since the fix for the problem is so obvious and intuitive that I would want to propose it to the HJ…

This way, 1) is eliminated because the player is not instructed to reveal his hand - he is basically given the choice to. Which he may or may not do at any other point in the game, too…
2), as I said, doesn't look like much of a problem to me. The important part (to us) is the Infraction (not the penalty), and that doesn't change. Trackingwise, it won't change anything either, because one way or the other, you'd comment on the Infraction that it has been a problem with hidden information.
3) is eliminated by me stepping ahead and saying ‘you have only creature cards in your hand, you can reveal it and only get a warning’ through the flower.

Allow me to disagree with the L2 (and totally not kiss up to the L3s).

As judges there's a very fine line between making players happy and making more work for ourselves than we really should be taking on. Anything that requires more than a cursory backtracking of game state is leaning into the latter. Joshua's reasoning is on track; the problem is that it isn't currently supported by the IPG, and while we don't necessarily like giving out GLs, we cannot casually give a player an “out” from an upgraded penalty -after the fact-. The IPG prescribes -fixes- to things that happen after the infraction and penalty has already been determined.

Jason covers the main points above; my viewpoint is, as judges, let's not burden ourselves with unnecessary work by inventing solutions looking for a problem.

This isn't a downgrade. This is neglecting to upgrade. I know that sounds like splitting hairs, but I actually don't think it is in this situation.

The reason I bring up this distinction is that the player has committed a GRV. Normally, when a player commits a GRV, we default to a Warning. We require a special circumstance to upgrade to a Game Loss. That circumstance is that the opponent cannot verify the legality of the play. Since revealing the entire hand absolutely verifies the legality of the play, we simply do not have the special upgrade condition anymore. (And we don't need to look for a special reason to downgrade because that isn't what we are doing.)

I don't see any slippery slopes or favoritism here. I would offer the full hand reveal option away from the table. I would explain the upgrade condition and how it fit (or did not fit) to both players just as I did in this post regardless of whether the option to reveal was taken. I really don't think either player would be confused or upset by this ruling.

In San Diego, for Pro Tour Dragon's Maze, a hall-of-fame player appealed the Game Loss for a mistake very much like this. He had the game well in hand - about to attack for lethal, I believe, or certainly within the next two turns; his opponent really had no outs. Despite that, the HoF player activated Domri Rade, just out of habit … and put the card directly in hand without revealing.

This player had a lot of very logical, sensible alternative “fixes”. Of course, he wants to avoid the Game Loss, esp. for a game he was clearly about to win. However, I wasn't about to deviate so significantly - esp. not in such a high-profile environment. One of the worst things to happen, when a Pro Tour or Grand Prix Head Judge deviates, is that judges all over the world hear part of that story, and decide they can deviate “just like that Head Judge did”. (Which, as you might imagine, is almost never “just like that” - the story never comes through completely and clearly.)

If the opponent had been extremely generous - and there was no reason to expect that - he could have just conceded. That was, in my opinion, the only option to enforcing the standard penalty. That didn't happen, so a Hall of Fame player was awarded a Game Loss (GRV upgraded due to failing to reveal).

On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 10:08 AM, Joshua Feingold <
forum-4642-e870@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:

> I don't see any slippery slopes or favoritism here. I would offer the full
> hand reveal option away from the table. I would explain the upgrade
> condition and how it fit (or did not fit) to both players just as I did in
> this post regardless of whether the option to reveal was taken. I really
> don't think either player would be confused or upset by this ruling.


Allowing players to choose both the penalty they should receive and the
remedy for their error–whether at the table or away from it–seems a very
bad idea to me.

Just to scratch the surface, this is incredibly difficult to turn into a
clear, formal, and repeatable policy. For example, consider the recent
gyrations we just went through for missed triggers. I think we all know
missed triggers are a pretty special case in that we allow the opponent to
decide whether to stack an ability (opening strategic options and
flexibility for game state decisions) – but we NEVER allow the players to
choose a penalty. I think this is a very important separation.

–David

–
Ab ovo usque ad mala. – Horace

This seems like one of those situations where in this very specific instance we could offer a better fix than what policy mandates. But there is a very good reason why we do not deviate from policy, except in “significant and exceptional circumstances”: consistency. This is basically what protects us - individual judges and the whole judge program - from allegations of favoritism and inconsistency. It also prevents us from making mistakes, and helps players understand policy better - see Scott's comment. Protecting judges from those allegations or impressions in turn is necessary for the tournament scene to flourish and for Magic to be perceived as professional and fair.

So Scott has a specific example of the course of a top-level match being changed because of this. Our primary goal as judges is to maintain the integrity of our event. In Scott's real world example, the “wrong” player won, despite proof that the illegal action would have been legal had the player revealed the card. I'd say this compromised the integrity of that event. We already, by policy, issue Warnings in this situation if the card “drawn” is the only card in hand, because the player can prove the action was legal. Some here (including Uncle Scott) advocate issuing a Game Loss to a player for an action that would have been legal if the opponent could have verified the legality via reveal and STILL can be verified as legal by revealing a set of information for which the offending player has access and authority to reveal. I find this overly punitive, and counter to the purpose of having judges in the first place.

Topher

Topher, I see your point, but you're discarding two important facts:
1) the player made the mistake - not us;
2) we (Judges) avoided a different mistake, which would be handling this situation differently than the other 80-90 times it happens. (Actually, the original example of a hand containing only creatures is probably more like 1 in 1000…)

While I'd love to judge in a world in which every judge is properly trained and equipped to apply ultimate wisdom and thus make extremely fair & just rulings without following strict guidelines … that judge just doesn't exist. Instead, we'd have 100 judges facing the same situation, and making a handful - or even dozens! - of different rulings. It wouldn't take long before the players would lose all trust in the judge program, only because they'd have no certainty of fairness or consistency.

Turning my scenario around, in a very fair and realistic way, the message is quite clear: do not make silly mistakes at the Pro Tour.

From a practical perspective:
If the player who committed the error simply went “oops! Look at my hand- it's all creatures,” and the opponent was cool with that then we never would have received a call in the first place.

At the point where we arrive at the table for a judge call, it is time to go by policy.