A player reportes after a tournament that he suspects a player was cheating by shuffling their opponents' decks in a way that caused them mana problems. First of all, is it considered cheating to do so, and if it is, how could you deal with it?

Thank you for your help!!

It is considered Cheating to intentionally perform an action while shuffling that causes the opponent's deck to not be sufficiently shuffled. Such an example would be a discussion we had earlier of an opponent de-mana weaving a deck so that the player would only draw spells.

However, we do have an issue here. The issue was reported after the tournament had concluded - is the player still in the venue? How can we verify that he was, indeed, Cheating? If he is still in the venue, then you may want to take the time to ask him about why he shuffled that way (do note that we, the judges, haven't seen any of his shuffling). It is always possible that it is a distraught player that's reporting him, especially after a tournament has ended, but we want to curtail that behavior if possible.

The thing is, the tournament is over. We can no longer inspect his shuffling methods and verify that he was, in fact, using them in the tournament. From a penalty standpoint, there's not much to be done post-tournament.

What specific actions does the player suspect? It's kind of hard to manipulate your opponent's deck in such a way without blatantly looking through their deck.

Something similar to counting cards in poker. Basically, shuffling in a
determined amount of piles to increase the possibility of mana screw

Sent from my Windows Phone
——————————
From: Riki Hayashi
Sent: 5/2/2013 8:56 AM
To: oaamado@gmail.com
Subject: Re: Shuffling before a game (Regular REL)

What specific actions does the player suspect? It's kind of hard to
manipulate your opponent's deck in such a way without blatantly looking
through their deck.

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Originally posted by Oscar Amado:

Something similar to counting cards in poker. Basically, shuffling in a
determined amount of piles to increase the possibility of mana screw

If the player's deck was already randomized when presented, then shuffling into piles cannot increase the possibility of mana screw. On the other hand, if the player thought the opponent didn't properly randomize the deck and attempted to take advantage of that via a particular shuffle, that is a Serious Problem. There was recently a more-in-depth discussion of this topic here.

The easiest way for players to cheat when shuffling their opponents deck is to try to shuffle a bunch of lands to the bottom. This is accomplished by mash shuffling such that the short side of the card is nearly vertical. A slight bend while lifting them and a quick peak– while generally not enough for a player to find the exact name of a card can often show which cards are lands as well as what colors the opponent is playing.

Keep in mind that there are far more people with poor dexterity (shuffling is hard– especially with new sleeves or bigger cards) and people like to glance down when they mash shuffle in because they want to see that the two halves are lined up well enough to mash together. While it may make this method of cheating harder to catch, it also means that people can do things that might seem suspicious quite naturally when they aren't super used to shuffling cards.

Here is a really interesting article I found by Mike Flores. It talks about how some players can stack their deck while looking like they are shuffling. Check it out and use it for good! Use it to call people who do it, not so you can do it yourself, of course :)

http://fivewithflores.com/2009/05/how-to-cheat/

Originally posted by Peter Richmond:

It is considered Cheating to intentionally perform an action while shuffling that causes the opponent's deck to not be sufficiently shuffled. Such an example would be a discussion we had earlier of an opponent de-mana weaving a deck so that the player would only draw spells.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't we have a recent policy change that made this sort of “vigilantism” kinda-sorta legal? It is not considered cheating anymore, as far as I know, though I can't find the quote for the life of me. Can somebody help out there?

Yes we did. This thread is from a year ago, so at the time, these answers were correct.
De-manaweaving is not considered a problem anymore.

Mostly correct. It isn't so much policy change as it is policy clarification. It has long been not illegal, but due to miscommunications and local traditions, many judges and players still believed that this so-called vigilante “shuffling” was not allowed. I have personally been doing 3-pile “shuffles” of my opponents' decks for well over a decade and have on many occasions been challenged by judges and players only to have to ask them where they can find this been forbidden by policy.

Edited James Do Hung Lee (May 26, 2014 10:47:23 AM)

The action of 3-pile “shuffle” is legal, and always has been.

Doing it when you KNOW your opponent did a mana-weave before presenting, instead of calling a Judge, was - until recently - an example of Fraud in the IPG. Doing it when you SUSPECT your opponent, however, remained legal. We finally came to the conclusion that the 3-pile should just be a legal action, at all times; while we still want players to get us involved for suspect mana weave or similar shenanigans, we aren't going to legislate that.

And, like Benjamin, I can not find the quote that discussed this … even though I suspect I wrote it! :)

Huh. Looking at the date of the original post I have no idea why the forum presented this thread as “new” to me. My bad, I didn't want to use thread necromancy on it. So sorry!