At a legacy tournament yesterday, I encountered this situation in the final:

Player A cast Ponder and chose to shuffle his library while resolving the spell. Then he picked up his library and seeing through it before performing the shuffle.

His opponent called judge at this point, asking “can he see the content of his library while shuffling?”

I answered “yes”, saying “as long as the deck is randomized by the time he finishes shuffling, it's fine.”

Both players noticed that A might want to check his library to see if there is anything else in his library to use as a threat, but he wasn't doing so through a “search” effect.

When the tournament is over and I discussed this case with fellow judges, they pointed out that players could take advantage of this to “know” which cards were exiled face-down by Bomat Courier (or other exiling face-down effects).

Can this be treated as “looking extra cards”? (Though the penalty and remedy won't help much as players already got the information they need.)

I'd say yes, definitely.

Player A is accessing hidden information he isn't allowed to see. There's even an advantage to this as you pointed out, but the definition of the infraction was already fulfilled.
So LEC, Warning, shuffle your library.

Note that if you believe the player knew he wasn't allowed to look at his library this probably becomes Cheating.

Edited Àre Maturana (Sept. 2, 2018 06:49:33 PM)

I was in the discussion alongside other judges on this topic, my reasoning was that the “facedown-exiled cards” situations were rather corner cases in similar situations. And I agree that as long as the player randomizing the deck enough afterwards, it's ok.

Can we have an “O” answer here? I believe this was the reason for Zhaoben's post in the first place.

This is a bit of an odd circumstance, and I'll admit I'm undecided as to which infraction fits best. Looking at Extra Cards is intended for accidental errors that result in one or more cards that may have been seen. This isn't that!

I'd start by finding out if the player knows they shouldn't do this. Assuming it's an innocent mistake, I'd probably assess Hidden Card Error. If there is some knowledge to be gained - like the Bomat Courier example - then HCE's remedy addresses that.

In any case, which infraction you assess is less important than the education of the player, teaching them that their action is not allowed.

d:^D

The ‘intent’ of LEC is certainly for accidental errors. Maybe a little clarity can be gained by thinking of a related situation. If I just pick up my library and look at the card on the bottom that I scryed there earlier, would we rule that GRV or LEC? I think LEC is fine here, even if it's not accidental. I think we probably should apply the same infraction to this situation as to the OP's.

If it's not LEC then I'd argue GRV. Looking at the HCE definition it's arguable that it just doesn't apply - it can be corrected by only publicly-available information. In addition, they're not really ‘in a distinct set intended by the player’. If you look at how HCE fixes work, they really only make sense if they move between sets, not just within one. I don't agree that HCE remedies address the information gain in the Bomat Courier case. There's basically nothing in the Additional Remedy section of HCE that I want to do in this case. In fact, what I want to do is exactly what LEC tells me to do - ensure the library is shuffled afterwards.

We should definitely give out one of those infractions though, and investigate for intent and knowledge to consider a disqualification.

However, to paraphrase the O answer to several other questions over the years ‘if it looks like LEC, it’s probably LEC, don't think too hard about it'

Also, as was pointed out to me by Norman Ralph (thanks), the Philosophy of LEC is given in the IPG as:

A player can accidentally look at extra cards easily and this infraction handles situations where a dexterity or rules error has led to a player seeing cards in a library they shouldn’t have.

(emphasis mine). So we can definitely use LEC in non-dexterity situations, at which point it definitely is the best fit for this infraction

I agree with Matthew on this not being HCE
HCE is supposed to be applied in cases where we can't correct the error with only publicly available information. But in this case, even if we have perfect information, there's no way to “undo” the error of the playing gaining access to information they weren't entitled to have (in this case, what cards were exiled with Bomat courier)
Also, I don't see how any of the remedies of HCE could apply in this situation, since we have no extra cards in any set, nor any failure to reveal. I guess what you intended to do is to reveal the whole library to the opponent, maybe only the cards exiled face down or maybe even both, shuffle them and go on with the game. To me, this looks more to what we discussed some days ago in another thread, when someone suggested that if a player commits LEC while shuffling their opponent decks before the start of the game, we should just reveal a card at random from their library as a way to balance the advantage gained to both players. And as it was said in that thread, that's not the idea behind the remedies we apply. There are some cases like HCE where we want to neutralize the potential advantage of the player committing the infraction; but even in those cases we don't have the opponent draw an extra card to offset the advantage
I'd just go with LEC, and even GRV looks like a better fit as a “catch-all” infraction

PS: Maybe the intended remedy was to reveal everything and now the opponent chooses which cards were exiled with Bomat courier? I think that would be too disruptive and not really correcting the game state. Plus, the sets were never joined, so I just don't see it as an option

Thanks for the reply!

To me it looked like an LEC situation where your opponent accidentally looked at some of your cards while shuffling - we’ll be issuing LEC for this as the opponent saw information they were not entitled to see.

But when the active player accidentally saw the contents of their library themselves while shuffling, we would treat it as “not having finished shuffling/searching yet” and just instruct the player to shuffle more. This might be fine as most “shuffle” instructions come with search effects, but Ponder might be somewhat different.

Well, at least I can educate the players to keep their eyes away from the library while shuffling - regardless of whose deck it is! :)

Sorry but shouldn't GRV be also considered? I mean Ponder says shuffle not search and the player actually disobeyed the card text and went to search/look through his deck. Since LEC intention is for accidental errors for 1 or more cards.

Originally posted by Chuanjie Seow:

Sorry but shouldn't GRV be also considered?

Not if it fits LEC. Specific infractions take priority over generic GRVs. From the GRV section of the IPG:

This infraction…handles violations of the Comprehensive Rules that are not covered by other Game Play Errors.