Originally posted by Sam Sherman:

are you able to imagine a situation in which a certain card is opened in
the pool, but a different card is marked on the sheet?

if this is adressed to me…..yes i can. The situation here is an example. But pool registration problems has to be anounced during the pool registration or as soon as you got your final pool and build your deck (where you should recheck the list you've got and confirm it to avoid a later D/DL-Problem). This point is more than over now, and the Priest is an illegal card for his pool

Correct his sheet and sign it with the Priest/Griffin (Cross the Griffen out, add in the Priest). Game loss to be awarded at the start of the next round for DL error.

…Just as a quick note, I checked Gatherer on this before answering, as well. I didn't know the rarity of the Setessan cards off the top of my head.

It seems pretty plausible that the card might have been mixed up, since they're both commons, and assuming the player has been (not?) using it, leaving it in his board until now, I agree with many of you, that he has presented a deck that doesn't match his registered sheet, and it becomes a TE - D/DLP, and he gets a Game Loss. Since none of the relevant cards are illegal for the format, or change the relative rarity of his pool (which would mean he had abnormal packs), I would correct his sheet to match his current deck (assuming I don't have any Griffins handy), and have the players continue, or take their slip, if that closed the match.

I would probably mention to him, though, that had he checked his pool a little more closely, this could have been avoided, especially since, if he's stuck around this far in the tournament, he's probably been hurt significantly by the GL.

I don't believe this penalty can be downgraded in this instance. The player did not call the judge himself; rather, the error was discovered by the judge who performed the checks.

First, we have a special comment in D/DLP section:
“This infraction does not cover errors in registration made by another participant prior to a sealed pool swap, which should be corrected at the discretion of the judge.”

This situation, as far as I understand, occured because of an error made by another participant prior to a sealed pool swap. And that means that we can't apply D/DLP in this case. Whether we warned all players to confirm contents of their pools or not, doesn't matter for this infraction, as this infraction still won't cover errors of registration made by another participant. Of course, our player committed an infraction by not confirming contents of his sealed pool. However, that's another infraction, Failure to Follow Official Announcements.

And that means that we issue Warning for FtFOA, remind the player to always check his sealed pool, correct the registration sheet, and move on.

Edited Alex Zhed (Dec. 12, 2013 11:09:37 PM)

Originally posted by Alex Zhed:

And that means that we issue Warning for FtFOA, remind the player to always check his sealed pool, correct the registration sheet, and move on.

Ah, I had misread the last line from the scenario - yes, it does seem like Alex (the player, heh) should receive FtFOA for sure, and the registrant of the sealed pool possibly ought to as well (I'd imagine that clear instructions were also provided to the sealed pool registrants to check it over).

Originally posted by Patrick Morina:

yes. i would correct the pool. two people confirmed that the card in his pool should be Setessan Griffin (probably three if he wasn't the person who rechecked the regestrated pool before swap) He confirmed that pool too. so he is playing an illegal card that shouldn't be in his pool. if it is a card out of his maindeck (which it isn't), he can find a replacement or he has to replace it with a basicland of his choice. out of his sideboard, he is allowed to find a replacement or that card is removed from his sideboard
(To note: the replacement has to be a Setessan Griffin). Thats my opinion on this.
I can see an argument to replace the griffon on his decklist with the priest. This argument would be, that he played the card in the round we check the deck. Like in a constructed format, where you match the decklist to the deck (if the card isn't illegal (Cheating if he uses it, knowing its illegal)), if something goes wrong. But that is not true for illegal cards. The Priest is general legal for use in a theros seald tournement, but its not legal for his deck (it wasn't in his pool/is not on the list of his pool)

Here's why I think folks (myself included) are arguing that you correct the decklist to include a Battle Priest, rather than asking him to procure a Griffin (or swap in a basic land): believing the player is a binary choice he either is or is not telling the truth about this being his pool.

A: If he's lying about it > DQ for USC - Cheating.
B: If he's telling the truth > GL for TE-D/DLP, fix the decklist to match the pool.

We're told by the scenario that we believe him, so that takes option A off the table, meaning the only option left is B. The scenario and the IPG don't give us an option C where we kinda sorta believe him, enough to not send him home, but not enough to fix the issue.

Yeah, wow, I totally missed that line about registration errors by other players.

I agree with the TE - FTFOA Warning for Alex. And depending on what the register-ers were told, possibly also for that individual as well (otherwise, a Caution).

Originally posted by John McCarthy:

A: If he's lying about it > DQ for USC - Cheating.
B: If he's telling the truth > GL for TE-D/DLP, fix the decklist to match the pool.

We're told by the scenario that we believe him, so that takes option A off the table, meaning the only option left is B.

I think this neatly summarizes the initial options in the scenario - and I would agree with it, but for the registration error/discretion line in IPG 3.9 D/DLP
“This infraction does not cover errors in registration made by another participant prior to a sealed pool swap, which should be corrected at the discretion of the judge.”
In my opinion, this applies here (we've already established that the player is telling the truth, so we know this error was "made by another participant prior to swap“).

So we have discretion here as to what to do. I'd certainly fix the decklist to match the deck per normal D/DLP fixing procedure (since we have to do something about the mismatch, and this would be the usual procedure for one); the question is whether there should be a Game Loss.

I think there are two ways to look at it. First, my ”long“ analysis:
The player is playing using the cards from his pool.
The player is not cheating.
There is no risk to the integrity of the tournament.

There being no rules or tournament integrity issue, we should consider the customer service angle. It's a huge feel bad for the player to get the GL for something so small, and the educational value to the player is low. As such, I wouldn't give the Game Loss.

Of course, some might think that the educational value is high enough that we should give the Game Loss. Rather than arguing relative weight of education vs customer service, I instead present my alternate ”short" analysis:
“This infraction does not cover…” So this isn't a D/DLP. So precisely what infraction would we be issuing the GL for?

Warning for FtFOA, and hope that some day players start paying attention to Deck Registration sheets…

Edited James Winward-Stuart (Dec. 13, 2013 02:40:50 AM)

The was reading the IPG, I understood that the purpose of the exception is to not punish people for other people's mistakes, and thus if the player had called it on themselves I would have applied this exception. We do want people to check the entire pools, not just the card they'll be playing.

If we do want to apply this exception here, and I think it would be better if we did although I initially wouldn't have, then Failure to Follow Official Announcements in the right infraction, and I would issue them a warning.

A number of people are suggesting an infraction for Failure to Follow Official Announcements here. I do not think this is appropriate here.

That penalty is meant for when a player either does something everyone has been told not to do (e.g. “No outside food allowed in the tournament hall”) or fails to do something everyone has been told to do (e.g. “Check that the sealed pool is properly registered”). I would give this penalty if a player blatantly ignores the instruction, maybe by playing Plants vs. Zombies instead, but not if a player just misses something while trying to validate a decklist. We don't have any information given in this scenario to indicate that Alex ignored an official instruction this way, just that he was careless.

I am not clear as to whether the exception for Deck/Decklist Problem applies here. By the text of the IPG, it does, so I would give Alex a stern talking-to, but I would not assign any infraction.

Most of what had to be said has been said already. I would give that player a game loss for D/DL problem, and correct the decklist to match what I believe to be the correct pool.
If the player hadn't been playing white and didn't have any Plains in his sideboard, I would probably have considered downgrading as the Battle Priest would clearly have been a card he did not play at all. However, since it was actually in his deck (meaning he sideboarded it in), it seems perfectly normal to apply the standard penalty.

To the people who doubt Alex's version of the story: remember that Setessan Battle Priest is hardly a great card. If you're going to cheat and risk at the very least a GL, you're probably going to use something that gives you a bigger edge.

Edited Nathanaël François (Dec. 15, 2013 08:01:48 AM)

Originally posted by Nathanaël François:

To the people who doubt Alex's version of the story: remember that Setessan Battle Priest is hardly a great card. If you're going to cheat and risk at the very least a GL, you're probably going to use something that gives you a bigger edge.

So are we going to treat this infraction differently than if it were a foil Elspeth?

Originally posted by Adam Zakreski:

Nathanaël François
To the people who doubt Alex's version of the story: remember that Setessan Battle Priest is hardly a great card. If you're going to cheat and risk at the very least a GL, you're probably going to use something that gives you a bigger edge.

So are we going to treat this infraction differently than if it were a foil Elspeth?

we can't handle any situations differently, when there are different cards involved (but the situation is the same). And only because we think the battle priest is a bad card, doesn't mean that anyone else believe that it is a bad card. Do we handle the situation differently if he hasn't got any card in his pool, that will trigger heroic, or if his pool is full of thinks that will trigger it? NO! We are not allowed to do that

Edited Patrick Morina (Dec. 16, 2013 05:52:36 PM)

Originally posted by Adam Zakreski:

So are we going to treat this infraction differently than if it were a foil Elspeth?

Patrick Morina
we can't handle any situations differently, when there are different cards involved (but the situation is the same).

I pretty much echo what Patrick just said, though I will say that I think we can take the actual cards into account during the investigation, just not the determination of an infraction and remedy.

• Would I believe that someone mistook a Setessan Battle Priest for a Setessan Griffin when reviewing their pool and decklist if they weren't playing any white? Almost always - you'd have to be answering in the most suspicious way possible for me to doubt that. You're gaining no advantage, it's an easy mistake to make, and I could see where you wouldn't scrutinize that part of the list too closely if you already ruled it out.
  
  
• Would I believe that someone mistook a Setessan Battle Priest for a Setessan Griffin when reviewing their pool and decklist if they were playing white? Probably - the cards have almost the same name, they're both common, they're both creatures; it's a totally understandable mistake, and I'd be inclined to believe them unless they gave me reason not to do so.
  
  
• Would I believe that someone mistook a Foil Elspeth for a Setessan Griffin when reviewing their pool and decklist? Here, I'd be a little skeptical. We're looking at a huge bomb that one builds their deck around; the only thing it has in common with Setessan Griffin is that they're both white and they both use the common slot. In this case, if player told me that he didn't notice it the mistake on the decklist, I'd probably ask a few more followup questions, and want to find the person who registered the deck and ask them about it as well (they may have snapped a picture of the pool before passing). It's possible that it was still a mixup, but we're now in the land of massively not paying attention to checking your list vs pool - I'd hope that you'd review your list one more time after building your deck and call for me when you notice the discrepancy then, rather than having it not come up until round 6.
  
  
• Would I believe that someone mistook six Foil Elspeths for various commons when reviewing their pool and decklist? Almost certainly not. Laying aside the laws of probability and how Wizards collates product making this pool unlikely to exist, the idea that the original deck registrar marked the wrong card six times, and they all happened to be foil mythics, and the same foil mythic, makes it really hard to buy this story. I'm not saying I never would (for example, during registration, if I was called to notice this mistake, I'd have a chance to ask the folks sitting near you if the pool ever left the table, and to check with the original registrar), but it'd be a toughie.
  

In any cases, however, the results are still the same: if I believe the player, we fix the decklist, if I don't, he or she is going home. We're not changing the infraction based on which card it is, just whether or not we believe that their story is plausible. I agree that it's dangerous for us to try to evaluate cards or decks based on how good they are, but I think there's value in asking a few more questions when a player's statement seems suspicious.

And in this scenario, it's irrelevant - we're given that Alex is telling the truth, so the only option we have no matter what is to fix the decklist to match the pool. Even if he had six foil Elspeths.

Edited John Brian McCarthy (Dec. 17, 2013 04:44:22 AM)

Although Alex is playing a card that was not listed in his pool, the card has actually been there the entire time. This initially looks like a Deck/Deck List Problem, but the Definition of D/DLP stipulates “This infraction does not cover errors in registration made by another participant prior to a sealed pool swap, which should be corrected at the discretion of the judge.” So, this isn't D/DLP, but we do need to correct the player's list.

We also issue a Warning for Failure to Follow Official Announcements. Fundamentally, the error Alex has committed is failure to confirm the contents of his entire pool. This needs to be tracked so that if a pattern of “accidentally” having the wrong card marked emerges, we will have a record of it. Just because we don't think Alex is cheating, that doesn't mean we're right!

(The correct infraction and its justification was nicely summed up by Alex Zhed, who is becoming an ace at my KP scenarios.)

This week we intentionally did not ask for infraction, penalty, and fix. Instead I wrote ‘What do you do?" This is more open ended question, in line with the realities you are faced with as a head judge. And, in reality, believing a player is being honest with you doesn’t mean your job is over once the infraction is handled.

Once you have the match going again, it is entirely appropriate to initiate a follow-up investigation. Although your initial impression is that Alex made an honest mistake, you want to be as sure you can be. If possible, find the player who registered Alex's pool and Alex's past opponents. Ask them if they saw either Setessan Battle Priest or Setessan Griffin during registration or in their matches with him. Keep in mind, the Battle Priest was in the player's sideboard. It's entirely possible that no opponent has seen the Priest. Everything is consistent as long as they haven't seen the Griffin. If you discover Alex is cheating through your investigation, you can always DQ him at that point. If his story checks out, by doing the investigation as follow-up, you have avoided giving out a 25 minute extension just to discover everything was actually fine to begin with.

An additional step you can take to help avoid these situations is to have the players swap pools for confirmation between initial registration and deck building. This will not eliminate 100% of errors, but it should help prevent most of them.

Thanks to everyone who participated this week. We'll back tomorrow with an enticing new scenario, sure to beguile and delight judges everywhere.