Watching the final of PT RtR made me think of the following family of scenarios, which some of you will probably recognize (up until the last part):

I'm playing in a Modern event at Comp REL against an opponent who is playing Second Breakfast. He has demonstrated his combo to the point that I am willing to accept that he has critical mass to play his entire library an arbitrary number of times this turn. I am willing to concede the game if he either reveals a win condition from his hand or lets me look through his library so I know which win condition(s) he is running to give me information about what to Slaughter Games next game (because I am an eternal optimist). My opponent agrees and gestures to his library. I pick up his library, start looking through it.

A) What if I don't actually find a win condition? I've now looked through his entire library. It seems odd that the game should proceed as normal from there.

B) If I do find a win condition, am I required to concede in accordance with our agreement?

C) Was my opponent technically empowered to allow me to search his library during the course of a game in the first place? He is clearly entitled to reveal his decklist and current sideboard, but he doesn't have access to the order of his library.

I think in this scenario, you should be conceding before picking up the library. A library is hidden information to both players while the game is going on so it's not technically possible to look through it with the game in progress unless a card like slaughter games tells you it's okay.

It's a little different if you agree for him to reveal his hand, which he is allowed to do.
Regarding B: I have not been able to find any rules/policy text that explicitly tells me you cannot ‘mind trick’ your opponent into reavealing his hand by saying you will concede (and then you don't). My gut feeling is that this is Pretty Damn Cheaty (TM). I am wondering what you would be getting out of it though. If you have an answer to one win condition but not another, you could have just waited out the game and play it if it turns out to be relevant, and if you don't have an answer you would have seen his win condition anyway when he kills you with it so you might as well scoop now.

I agree with Anniek. In fact, I would say that, given the terms of the agreement, you've implicitly conceded by picking up the library and looking through it. The agreement was not "I will concede if you let me look through your library and if I find a win condition there“; it was simply ”I will concede if you let me look through your library.“

That said, wouldn't such an agreement violate the technical definition of Collusion and Bribery in the MTR and IPG? The MTR states that ”The decision to drop, concede, or agree to an intentional draw cannot be made in exchange for or influenced by the offer of any reward or incentive."

(Regarding PT RTR, it's very hard to hear what went on, and the video also turned away from the players at that point. But it sounded like the combo player in that game simply showed the opponent his post-sideboard deck out of courtesy and/or as a mind game, not in response to an offer to a concession.)

I'd considered the bribery thing, you'd have to interpret ‘I will scoop if you show me your hand’ as the player asking the combo player to offer him something (the reveal) in exchange for the scoop.
The thing is, I'm okay with the question he's asking. It seems reasonable that he will end up seeing his opponents win condition and that he wants to save time by offering the scoop. It's not uncommon for players to voluntarily reveal the win condition in their hand to and to ask their opponents to concede and save time. I'm inclined to feel it's also okay to ‘offer’ this if you are not the combo player.
I do have a problem with the “am I required to actually concede” part of Joshua's question as it implies you would offer the reaveal + concession and then not keep your end of the deal for whatever reason I couldn't think of.

Combo decks like Eggs are better at pulling off their combo engines if they don't run win conditions. This is a simple statistical truth. This means that a player can gain advantage by sideboarding out all of his win conditions if his opponent is willing to concede to the engine coming online.

The Bribery argument seems frankly ridiculous to me. The decision is based entirely on the presence or absence of a way to win in my opponent's deck. I just want to know with certainty “Will you win eventually if you follow this to its logical conclusion?” There is absolutely no outside incentive here. I'm not trying to get any outcome different than the one the game would naturally reach. I just don't want to be forced to concede without knowing a win is possible or watch my opponent waste huge amounts of time that should be spent on subsequent games trying to bluff me into such a concession when he can't actually win.

EDIT: To be clear, I am not certain that “Can I search your library for literally any win condition?” is a request that I can make or my opponent can honor, but I am certainly not going to call it Collusion & Bribery if a player does this. If this is Cheating (and, full disclosure, I don't think it should be), it would be a Hidden Information Violation. I think if there is an infraction here (not sure there is), it is probably Looking at Extra Cards.

Edited Joshua Feingold (Oct. 24, 2012 03:03:32 AM)

Joshua: I agree that there is no outside incentive in making an offer like “I'll concede if you let me look at your library.” But the MTR and IPG don't draw a distinction between “outside incentives” and otherwise, which is why I brought up the issue.

I, too, would be very hesitant to disqualify someone for making an offer that is probably offered in good faith and (as Anniek and you have both pointed out) aimed to simply save time. But this seems to clash with the letter of the IPG, and I was hoping to generate discussion about that. Moreover, as Anniek pointed out, offers of this nature lead to very awkward situations about whether the game is actually over.

As an aside, regarding your last paragraph, “Can I search your library for literally any win condition?” is a very different request from “I will concede if you let me search your library.”

Putting aside the Bribery issue for the moment, I'll reiterate how I feel about the original question: by picking up the library, the non-combo player has implicitly conceded due to the terms of the agreement. Since the game is over, the usual prohibitions about looking through decks no longer apply, so the combo player certainly can allow his opponent to look at his deck at this point. If the non-combo player doesn't find a win condition, too bad; he's already conceded.

Most of the time these combo decks have a step where they shuffle. Making
the request during one of those shuffles and getting the combo player to
just flash the cards intended to win will usually get the happy concession.
While it might be strictly illegal to do it when you are doing a “shuffle
your graveyard into your library” I doubt anyone would ever care and doing
it during a “search your library” is I believe completely legal (revealing
private information).

The rules are pretty clear that revealing information that you're not allowed to reveal in order to gain an advantage is a hidden information violation. Same goes for illegally seeking information that is not previously known to you. You just don't have the authority within the rules to offer your deck to your opponent to look through in a game.

I guess in a case like this it all comes down to the agreement between the players. If the non-combo player tries something like “Can I look through your library? If I find a win condition, I'll concede” that's a case of a hidden information violation to me. If the combo player allows without first getting a concession from the non-combo player, that's a hidden information violation for them too.

If instead the agreement is “I'll concede if I can look through your library and find a win condition” and the combo player offers the deck to the non-combo player, that seems like a clear-cut concession. If the player tries to say “But I didn't concede!” after their (potentially fruitless) then we're back to a hidden information violation.

As somebody already pointed out, there's nothing wrong with revealing your sideboard. Showing that you have either the Grapeshot or Pyrite Spellbomb (but not both) in your SB is a much better way to go about this with less grey area.

And on reflection, the word clear-cut can never apply here because it depends on exactly what the players both say during your investigation :P

Revealing cards from your library (that you are currently permitted to look at) is explicitly not a Hidden Information Violation. It's stated in both the IPG and MTR that players are permitted to reveal hidden information available only to them unless otherwise prohibited by the rules, and the contents of the library fall under that blanket. As long as the combo player can legally look at the cards in his library, he can reveal those cards to his opponent.

From the IPG:
Note that, in general, players are allowed to reveal information that is hidden to their opponents unless is it explicitly banned by the rules of the game or format.

And the MTR:
However, players may choose to reveal their hands or any other hidden information available only to them, unless specifically prohibited by the rules.

Sure, when the opponent is in the midst of a search action, that's obviously fine.

I think this discussion has led me to conclude that the situation I originally described of asking to see a win condition with the intent of conceding is Looking at Extra Cards for the combo player if he agrees and no infraction for either player otherwise. The combo player is essentially looking at his library at an inappropriate time without malice or the intent to gain advantage and sharing that information with his opponent. Tell the player to wait until he actually draws a win condition or is at a point where he can legally search his library.

When considering whether this is Cheating, consider that nobody is actually trying to do anything fishy or inappropriately determining the outcome of a game. They just want the game to wrap up in a timely fashion, but with exactly the same outcome it otherwise would have had (which is also exactly what we want.) We don't want to DQ anybody for trying help the tournament run smoothly.

If the game is not over for some reason, shuffle the revealed library and stick around to watch for Stalling or Slow Play.

In the case where the player finds the win condition but still refuses to concede, I am inclined to say that's a Hidden Information Violation because he is tricking his opponent into revealing information to which he is not entitled. The fact that his opponent “agreed” is, in this case, negated by the fact that the pretense of the agreement was false.

Two things about this conversation make me uncomfortable.

First, on its face, an offer like “I'll concede if you do <X>” is always Bribery, regardless of whether X is “give me a backrub” or “give me $50” or “show me your deck.” The notion was brought up that offering incentives that are “inside the game” shouldn't be Bribery, but this distinction is not based on the IPG. I apologize for continuing to harp on this, but this just seems like a dark road to go down.

Second, I actually disagree that we want the players to “wrap up the game in a timely fashion, with exactly the same outcome it otherwise would have.” What we want is for the players to play Magic (and to have fun doing so). What Gareth and Callum have stated about “flashing the cards intended to win” during a shuffle action is completely reasonable. But, as recent dialogue on the Four Horsemen deck has shown us, you don't win a game of Magic by showing that you will win the game with 100% certainty if you are allowed to carry out a certain combination of actions in a non-deterministic time period (like mill my library infinitely until I assemble my Blasting Station by Dread Returning these Narcomoebas into Sharuum). You have to win the game by actually playing cards that make your opponent lose.

In other words: I don't think that the non-combo player should be going to any great lengths to look through his opponent's deck, during the game, when the rules do not allow him to do so. And I don't think we (as judges) have any particular obligation to provide special consideration to a player who commits infractions in the process of doing so.

I think we shouldn't be too zealous about what “anything of value” means when it comes to Bribery and Wagering. For example, is it bribery to say “It would really make me happy if you concede to me.”? Is that offering you “a sense of satisfaction at making someone happy” in exchange for a concession? Of course, not everyone would assign the same value to that, but still. The Bribery clause is there to serve tournament integrity. Do you feel that asking to see the deck if you concede is damaging the integrity of the tournament?

Originally posted by Josh Stansfield:

Do you feel that asking to see the deck if you concede is damaging the integrity of the tournament?

Josh, that is precisely the kind of guideline/distinction I was looking for. That clears things up a great deal. I was really hoping someone would come up with something to help me out, so thank you!

In this case, I'd say that “I'll concede if you show me your library” only affects the match being played between the two players, and its effect on the tournament as a whole is small-to-nil. I still think that particular combination of words is unfortunate and should be avoided, but everything makes more sense now.

Well it's certainly possible for one match's illegal result to affect the integrity of the tournament (e.g., actually offering something of value in exchange for a concession), because the result is not borne out of the game of Magic.

However, “I know how this match is going to end because I don't have any way to interfere in your combo, so just show me how you're going to kill me to speed this up and we can grab some food,” is essentially a result borne from the game of Magic (even if the “shortcut” proposed is not necessarily one supported in policy).

Originally posted by Josh Stansfield:

Well it's certainly possible for one match's illegal result to affect the integrity of the tournament (e.g., actually offering something of value in exchange for a concession), because the result is not borne out of the game of Magic.

Certainly. I should have been more clear what I meant by “its effect on the tournament of the whole”. :)