A few people stated that once the player says during the investigation he intended to give his opponent something we have to DQ him for Bribery. I believe thinking this way is wrong and is reverse engineering your way of thinking. It was made clear before that the intent to give your opponent something in exchange for a concession or draw is completely legal, you are just not allowed to use this as an incentive.

The only think this discussion is about, really, is whether winking is enough of a sign to indicate the promise of something. Personally I would generally say it isn't but given context, being in the last round and on the verge of top 8 I will likely rule it is.
—————————————–

The DQ isn't for intending to give something. Intent is strictly in the mind. The DQ is for CONVEYING the intent with a wink so that the opponent is more likely to concede. The wink is an ACTION that transmits information, and in THIS context, that information is the promise of value - an offer, an incentive.

The intention to reward someone is not illegal. The transmission of that intent before the opponent acts IS illegal.

In the presented case the player told us that he used the wink to convey that information, so we know that the wink was a conveyance mechanism. Sometimes they use notes to convey, sometimes they use hand signas, sometimes (most of the time) they use spoken language to convey.

So, yes, by all means focus on the meaning of a wink. It is possible tha a player winks stricty due to physical or neurological ailment or duress, but this is very rare, so let's assume that he has winked intentionally - he executes a wink willfully.

Now, try to come up with reasonable and probable explanations for his execution of the wink right after saying “Will you concede to me?” What are your hypotheses here about the information conveyed by the wink?

-Eric S.

Some people are just overly expressive… I wink when I make jokes or want to disarm people.

The point I was getting at with context: What if this happened in Round 1, we are heading for a draw in a format where the draw bracket is home of a terrible deck. I ask my opponent, whom I have had a social and pleasant interaction with, if he wants to concede and wink. Do you think I am offering a bribe here? Or, more to the point, would you DQ me for bribery?

Edit: To be clear, this extends further. I am not saying I will only suspect bribery in the last round if someone winks. This is not the point of my comment. I am a bit afraid by how black and white we are making this out to be.

Edited Niels Viaene (Jan. 15, 2015 01:27:53 PM)

I think this is becoming far to over analysed. A wink means nothing without the context applied to it, winking when asking for a concession Round 1, likely jokey/jovial/nothing to worry about, a wink in a players win and in round where the opponent can't make it - something to be investigated if the player admits or you suspect they were using it to convey “I will give you something if you concede” then it's a DQ but to come to conclusion like many DQs you need to be there.

Originally posted by Eric Shukan:

The only think this discussion is about, really, is whether winking is enough of a sign to indicate the promise of something. Personally I would generally say it isn't but given context, being in the last round and on the verge of top 8 I will likely rule it is.

Suppose I am an honest player, and I want to ask my opponent if he concedes, without anything in exchange. I have a chance to make top8, he hasn't, makes sense to me.

Suppose I ask you, as a judge, an advice on how to correctly ask that to my opponent.

Would you answer “ask him, and for god's sake, don't wink”?.
Would you go that far?

Edited Francesco Scialpi (Jan. 15, 2015 04:40:21 PM)

Originally posted by Niels Viaene:

The point I was getting at with context: What if this happened in Round 1, we are heading for a draw in a format where the draw bracket is home of a terrible deck. I ask my opponent, whom I have had a social and pleasant interaction with, if he wants to concede and wink. Do you think I am offering a bribe here? Or, more to the point, would you DQ me for bribery?

I'm agreeing with what Eric is saying: Round 1 I'm not as suspicious that the intent here is Bribery. It seems the context to me here is not an incentive so much as avoiding the lower bracket.

Please guys, enough about winking, or high fives, or nods, or neck jerks that mean “rendezvous elsewhere.”

Think about this question: “is there additional communication such as body language or gestures that indicates there's more to this conversation than what is being verbally said?”

If yes, and it could be ANYTHING beyond just what is verbally said, then there's something extra there other than saying what is ok to be said. We tolerate a bit of verbal judo on discussing splits. We've had good examples in this thread of keeping outcome and splits separate. We allow that. Anything added on top of that should be investigated because it implies they're trying to do more than what we allow.

Some people are just overly expressive. I wink when I make jokes or want to disarm people.

The point I was getting at with context: What if this happened in Round 1, we are heading for a draw in a format where the draw bracket is home of a terrible deck. I ask my opponent, whom I have had a social and pleasant interaction with, if he wants to concede and wink. Do you think I am offering a bribe here? Or, more to the point, would you DQ me for bribery?
——————————–

That was my point with context, too. Context matters and can contribute to the DQ decision. Several posts in this thread are discussing winks as existing on their own and not in connection with other behaviors, intentions, or tournament statuses. My point was that the removal of the winks from the context of the tournament creates a straw-man fallacy that leads to unjustified conclusions.

As for your specific question, I would investigate the nature of the wink briefly. If I found that there was nothing else going on, I would not DQ you. If I found that there was more to the story and that more included a value offer, I may well DQ you. From your description it sounds like the former would be far more likely, and I would expect the investigation to be quite short.

-Eric S.

Suppose I am an honest player, and I want to ask my opponent if he concedes, without anything in exchange. I have a chance to make top8, he hasn't, makes sense to me.

Suppose I ask you, as a judge, an advice on how to correctly ask that to my opponent.

Would you answer “ask him, and for god's sake, don't wink”?.
Would you go that far?
————————————————–

Would I go that far?

Usually, no. But if I thought the player might go so far as to wink to offer value, then absolutely yes.

In fact, we do something similar to this quite frequently. Most judges would not say “Ask him”, but instead would say something like “Ask him, but please don't offer anything for the concession.”

When we include the “…but please don't offer anything for the concession.” we ARE going that far, but we are using general language about offers, because we don't normally expect people to wink at their opponent. We lump unwanted behaviors into the phrasiology “…don't offer…”.

Your question appeals to emotion rather than logic. Let's take the emotion out of it, and I'll return the straight-forward question:

Might you answer “Ask him, and please don't offer anything for the concession.” ?
Would you go so far as to say that that is appropriate?

-Eric S.

I think another way to break this down is as follows:

If this type of ambiguous conversation (i.e. ambiguous on the verbal portion) is overheard and a non-verbal queue is heard/seen that a judge interprets to be conveying intent to bribe then we should initiate an investigation. I think everyone should agree with that.

If the investigation turns out like the case being discussed where the player admits the intent to bribe I think almost everyone is on board for the DQ.

However, if the investigation yields no admission that the non-verbal queue was an attempt to convey that concession would be rewarded do you let it go? I think this is where we get into the context of what round it is, the standings of each player, etc…

What criteria are you looking for in the face of a denial to make you pull the trigger on the DQ? Is it purely down to if you believe their denial or not?

edit: Corrected the use of “verbal” to the intended wording of “non-verbal”.

Edited Chris Shannon (Jan. 22, 2016 04:37:05 AM)

On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 3:47 PM, Chris Shannon
<forum-15377-636f@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:
> However, if the investigation yields no admission that the verbal queue was
> an attempt to convey that concession would be rewarded do you let it go? I
> think this is where we get into the context of what round it is, the
> standings of each player, etc…
>
> What criteria are you looking for in the face of a denial to make you pull
> the trigger on the DQ? Is it purely down to if you believe their denial or
> not?


Largely. The things you mention (standing, etc) will hold some weight
in your thinking as it goes to motive, it's hard to believe players
with no incentive are doing the wrong thing.

–
Gareth Pye - blog.cerberos.id.au
Level 2 MTG Judge, Melbourne, Australia

Originally posted by Gareth Pye:

Largely. The things you mention (standing, etc) will hold some weight
in your thinking as it goes to motive, it's hard to believe players
with no incentive are doing the wrong thing.

–
Gareth Pye - blog.cerberos.id.au
Level 2 MTG Judge, Melbourne, Australia

I definitely agree that players with no incentive should be given the benefit of the doubt generally speaking (each case has its own circumstances obviously). But is the reverse true as well?

Or to ask the question more directly: Is the observation of what we interpret to be a non-verbal bribe supported by situational incentive (i.e. occurring during a relevant round with players likely or already guaranteed to get prizes) enough to DQ?

I'm not convinced the question can truly be answered in the abstract. But I am also somewhat uncomfortable with that as a conclusion because it makes me think we are just saying “go with your gut”. And I think there is a reasonable argument that our gut feeling is insufficient to DQ a player.

I apologize if I am beating a dead horse, so to speak, but I am wrestling with both sides of this and trying to come to a set of guidelines or a philosophy I can use going forward.

On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 2:52 PM, Chris Shannon
<forum-15377-636f@apps.magicjudges.org> wrote:
> I'm not convinced the question can truly be answered in the abstract.


I'm convinced that the questions can not be answered in the abstract.
You do have to be there.

All we can ever do is collect the evidence we have and then make a decision.

If you think it happened DQ.

If you think it could have happened, don't DQ.

–
Gareth Pye - blog.cerberos.id.au
Level 2 MTG Judge, Melbourne, Australia

My advice to players that ask me this, and they certainly is a few that do every event, is simple.

Make sure your statements do not include if. If there's an if, you're gonna have a bad time.

And if you must include the words (or variations of) ‘split prizes’ and ‘concede / draw’, make sure they are in two different sentences entirely. Of course, this only applies to tournament prizes, and only where applicable. Some prizes cannot be split.

Don't:
- If I…
- If you…
- I'll give you (non-tournament-prize) if…
- Concede to / draw with me and we will split prizes…

Do:
- Would you like to split prizes? (then, if yes) Would you like to concede? / I concede.


Now I'm sure there are other good ways to explain it, this is just the way I've found works. Of course, intent is everything, obviously being nitpicky over specific wording isn't really ideal here, we are judges in a card game not the supreme court. But you get what I'm saying, and so will the players.