This thread is for discussing the article Investigations - The Search for Collateral Truths (Part 2) by Eric Shukan

While I loved Part 1 (I think I will improve a lot because of it), I would like to read some discussion about the weight of this “risk vs reward” approach. In particular, the problem that “good” cheaters can understand this approach and use it as an advantage.

For example, I'm under the impression that “good” cheaters try to cheat in small stuff (let's say, not anouncing a painland damage in the first round of an FNM) becasue they understand that is very unlikely that somebody will DQ them under those circumstances, and they try to gain these small advantages in order to give themselves an edge. Normally, if they are discovered, they will say… “o yeah, sorry, I didn't notice”, and won't even call a judge.

As Eric says, is risky to make a decision involving just this… but to estimate how important it is, is difficult to measure.

Joaquin, I feel like this was exactly the point of the first part of the article - sure, the risk of getting caught in your scenario is small, but so is the potential reward. At Competitive events, we use Warnings to track this sort of behaviour. At Regular, other people are going to notice if you're consistently the guy that forgets to take 1 damage from his own painlands, but never forgets about your opponent's.

I think the point to be made here is to identify whether or not you believe there is sufficient incentive to suspect that advantage was purposefully gained. I don't think the point here is to determine “good” or “bad” cheaters based on how well they can weight risk and reward.

I think you can make the case for a mindset of “is this something a reasonable person would do?” If it's wholly unreasonable, you might be able to dismiss it. Whether or not this person actually IS a reasonable person can be something you determine by collateral truths. :)

Like many other techniques discussed and TBD, Risk vs Reward is another tool. Whether you believe it is important or not, it's to your benefit to consider it.