No error, no warning. The deck was fully randomized, the cards she drew could have been anything, in any order, and we have no real way of knowing that she did, indeed, draw them in the wrong order. As such, I wouldn't give a penalty, but I would remind the player to be more careful, and give a direct instruction not to do it again.

After reading everything a second time, I would issue a ID@SOTG, and then I would deviate. I would issue a warning, and I would NOT force a card back.

Why? It's the philosophy as I understand it of the penalty. The reason we take 1 card more than the excess is that it's the “right” amount of penalty. If there was no penalty at all, cheaters would be highly incentivised to try it. Getting an extra card off the draw? Great! So there's a penalty. If it was a straight game-loss, people who accidentally drew one card too many would be incentivised to try and hide it, because it's a game loss anyways, why not hope it's not noticed, and try to get the win anyways? So it needs to be a middle ground between a game loss and no penalty. If it was going to the same number of cards, again, there's room for a “oops, sorry, haha, I drew one card extra and you noticed, I'll go to the right number now/Oh, hey, this hand desperately needs another land, I'll just ‘accidentally’ draw an extra card, realize it, and hope to get a dead card out for a better hand”, and again, there's incentive for cheaters to try shenanigans with little penalty. So there needs to be damages- in this case, a one-card damage is just the right amount. It prevents people from attempting to “cycle” a card from their opening hand, and provides a reasonable, yet non-draconian penalty on the error. In this case, this does not fall under a situation where there's a large potential for abuse (sure, there's a tiny potential in marked cards, but it's TINY), and as such, I would deviate from the fix, and not force an extra card out.

Edited Olivier Jansen (Aug. 29, 2014 12:19:43 PM)

Originally posted by Darren Horve:

HOWEVER - I just downloaded MTG Judge Core App and it does state what you are quoting.

Just casting an Interrupt here in response to an Instant…for MTG Judge Core App, I'll update the dates the relevant documents/databases are updated as soon as I can get my hands on the relevant documents. It can be quickly checked under “Version & About” of the app, and you can also check the validity of the documents in the first item for each of them, where it states “Effective Month Day, Year” (because I'm lazy enough to not do further automation).

Originally posted by Gareth Pye:

ID@SoG, warning, no fix.

I'm curious of your definition of No Fix.

Is No Fix putting card #1 on top of the library? Is it shuffling it back in to the deck? or is no fix leaving the extra card on the table and giving a shrug?

Good point. I meant put it on top of the library :)

Before reading other posts I was in “no infraction camp” but now I agree that we have IPD@SG with Warning. No problem there. So what about remedy? I would be glad to keep things as they are (A with cards 2-6, card 1 at top). Key question is do we need to apply “Additional Remedy” all the time? If answer is yes, then we don't have to much to do in that matter - “Otherwise, remove a number of cards chosen randomly equal to the excess plus one from the player’s hand and shuffle them into his or her library.”

Even after reading through the other responses, I still feel like I have to jump through hoops in order to consider giving out a penalty for ID@SoG.

The first comparison that came to mind was to compare this to GPE - DEC, which, to note, is a stricter penalty then ID@SoG. Imagine player A casts sphinx's revelation for 5. He/She lays out the cards to count them out, and, confusing the mana payed with the X value, lays out 8 cards. The cards were placed from left to right, card 1 on the left and 8 on the right. Player B quickly points out that X was 5, and A apologizes, picking up cards 1, 2, and 3 and placing them on top the library. A then proceeds to pick up cards 4 - 8 and put them in his/her hand.

Would this receive a penalty?

Can't be LEC. The cards remained facedown the entire time. Not DEC, they never touched the hand. You could give A a GRV, but what error was made? Player A drew 5 random cards, and the library is still random. Technically, it is a violation of CR 120.1, so for the sake of consistent rulings and following the letter of the law, this seems permissible. Definitely not an exceptional circumstance.

Now lets move to the actual example.

It is, in effect, the same scenario except at the start of game. ID@SoG exists in order to recognize that drawing extra cards at the beginning of the game is easier to do and has less potential for abuse than doing the same at later points in the game. Thus, drawing extra cards at the beginning of the game is a Warning with the additional downside (putting one extra back) instead of a Game Loss . However, since ID@SoG also deals with drawing too few cards and drawing too few cards has even less potential for abuse, it is just a Warning, with the fix putting no additional penalties on the player. Philosophically, if we are to give a player ID@SoG for drawing out of order, we would be “upgrading” the penalty in a case where there is less or equal chance for abuse or advantage. If this was where my train of thought ended I, assuming I was head judge, would consider this a circumstance worthy of deviation: It seems to be a clear oversight of the IPG, considering I see indication that this was the intended effect of ID@SoG.

But, that led me to a missing piece of my own comprehension of ID@SoG. The wording specifies that a player makes an error while drawing their opening hand. The error here, under my understanding, would usually be a GRV, but since it occurred during the pre-game drawing procedure, it became ID@SoG. So if a player drew 7 and accidentally revealed the top card of their library, would that be considered ID@SoG instead of LEC? How about if their opponent mulliganed and they accidentally began shuffling their library? ID@SoG instead of GRV?

My intuition says no, but it's been wrong before.

Following that though process, I'd issue a GRV for violating rule 120.1 and leave it at that, placing the last undrawn card on top of the library (since, as far as the game is concerned, it always was). If that intuition was wrong and it was ID@SoG, I'd issue ID@SoG but deviate as to put the undrawn card on top and shuffle instead of putting the undrawn card + 1. The only difference between the two being the shuffle (shuffling random cards to put them into another random state), I wouldn't be overly concerned with which conclusion I reached.

Feel free to tell me I'm wrong :P
(As I finish writing this I'd like to give a big Shout Out to the Knowledge Pool people. This made me think and analyze far more than I usually do. I've gained quite a bit more understanding of my understanding of the IPG :D )

Edited Suhas Arehalli (Aug. 29, 2014 07:06:58 PM)

If you were standing next to this table watching the start of game procedures and instead of calling the judge the player just said, “Oops, should be six,” then put that last card back on top of the deck and continued on, would you have any issue with it?

I've thoroughly enjoyed the last few days of discussion about this, and I really like the fact that this scenario is actually fairly common, having both seen it as a judge and done it as a player. This exact scenario has come up in these forums before, most recently in this thread from April. For those that don't care to read the full thread the main take away was this:

“I have to agree that *accidentally* drawing cards 2-8, instead of 1-7, because of the scenarios described above, shouldn't be an infraction. Technically, they've done an odd “cut” of their library after the opponent has shuffled & returned it. That is no longer allowed - but it's one of those MTR things that's not a specific infraction.” -Scott Marshall

As a few people have stated it appears that the IPG may have changed since then to be phrased “A player makes an error while drawing his or her opening hand” I find I don't really have a leg to stand on saying that the player didn't make an error, but I still firmly believe that the potential for abuse is absurdly low, and since all the cards are random it does no damage to the game to place the un-looked-at card back on top and have them continue mulligans. If you felt that shuffling the un-seen card into the deck, I feel that would be fine as well, but since its still a random card and the deck is random it would be an unnecessary delay.

No Infraction, No Penalty, Put the face down card on top, Remind AP to be more cautious. Thank them for calling a Judge.

^^^ This, absolutely this. While policy may back you being pedantic and forcing an extra card returned, that's not going to increase the integrity of the tournement. It's just going to generate a story for the player about “That time a judge was an @$$#0£€ to me.” We should be there to IMPROVE play experience.

If the player “made an error”, then there was an infraction by the definition of IDaSoG. A Warning isn't a death sentence, and the fix will definitely encourage the player to be more careful in the future. Also, if this player has a habit of messing up draws in this way then issuing no trackable penalty makes the problem invisible.

I am concerned if we don´t hand out a warning here, no matter how we fix the situation. Likely it was just a mistake, but in rare cases it could as well mean someone has marked cards or is otherwise able to know his top card (like a heavily bent foil).
Without a warning we maybe won´t notice a pattern. Like Michael said, a Warning is not a death sentence.

Originally posted by Thomas Ludwig:

Likely it was just a mistake,

It was exactly that. A mistake.

Originally posted by Michael Shiver:

If the player “made an error”, then there was an infraction by the definition of IDaSoG. A Warning isn't a death sentence, and the fix will definitely encourage the player to be more careful in the future. Also, if this player has a habit of messing up draws in this way then issuing no trackable penalty makes the problem invisible.

Very true. Which is why this might be a situation where you issue the direct instruction and follow-up on it later. Certainly you can treat this as an infraction and proceed accordingly. But, IMO, that is a far more mechanical and technical approach than might be necessary here. Especially since we state in MIPG 2.2 that counting out cards face down is not LEC. (And the 7th card is still face-down and unknown, it's not in the player's hand, and the mistake was caught by the player pretty quickly.) This situation hardly feels like an infraction to me, given that wording and considering it in a broader, organic fashion.

The answer is not helping me in any way, Eric..
In this case it is a mistake, because we are in the knowledge pool, but that´s not the thing I am worrying about.

The penalties we hand out don´t only look at the current case only, the penalties are linked to how easy something is to exploit, how hard it is to spot, how much impact it has on the game and the like.

The penalties don´t change just because we are in the knowledge pool.

Here is were I start. If I don´t hand out a warning for this mistake, I won´t be able to notice a pattern if someone abuses this.

P.S:: Still not sure if I was able to point out what I mean .:(

Edited Thomas Ludwig (Aug. 30, 2014 12:15:40 AM)

What abuse are you concerned with, Thomas?