A player (AP) has the reputation of trying to trick his opponent to be on the play during FNM. I’ve never met this person personally, but many people at my LGS told be about him and asked me what I would do if, while judging an event, this situation happened.

While both players are shuffling their deck, before the first game, AP offers to roll 2 6-sided dices to determine who will chose to play or draw. NAP agrees and rolls 8. Then AP rolls 6 and immediately says “I’ll be on the play” as a statement. NAP verbally agrees by saying “sure”, “OK” or any words of the sort before realizing his opponent lost the die roll. If NAP says something like “Wait a minute, I won the die roll. I’ll play first”, AP then says it’s too late because he agreed to be on the draw.

Most players (NAP) just don’t bother and accept to be on the draw even if they would’ve chosen to be on the play.
AP tries this “mind trick” every time his opponent should have the choice between play or draw (even between games).

I feel this is very unsporting but I haven’t found anything in the IPG or MTR regarding this kind of situation.

Edited Nicolas Mihajlovic-Gendron (Feb. 16, 2015 08:52:51 PM)

Let's take a look at the Judging at Regular REL document (affectionately called the JAR):

Regular REL is many players' first experience of tournament Magic, so ensuring a welcoming and inclusive atmosphere is important. A player whose behaviour may be upsetting others or making them uncomfortable should be educated and asked to stop immediately. If they make no attempt to correct their behaviour, applying a Game Loss may reinforce the seriousness of the issue. If this does not stop the behaviour, or if a player is being threatening, aggressive or harassing other players, these situations are Serious Problems.

and

Certain actions will not be tolerated under any circumstances. Every effort should be made to educate players before and during events; however, ignorance is not an acceptable defence of these actions.

and, finally

Intentionally and knowingly breaking or letting an opponent break game or tournament rules, or lying, in order to gain an advantage.

You mention “I’ve never met this person personally”, so I am a bit concerned about “hearsay” - i.e., what you heard, then what I say about it, then what others hear you say about what you're reading … well, it can go horribly wrong, very quickly.

However, if I were to actually hear what you describe, I would take the following steps, in order:

1. explain to the player that's not how it works, and let the opponent choose to Play or Draw;
   
2. monitor to see if they ignore my “education” and try this again;
   
3. follow the guidelines in the “JAR” to remove them from the event for a Serious Problem.
   

But, please, Please, PLEASE do not tell your friends that I told you to tell them to DQ this guy. If you can't take care of it in person, perhaps a conversation with whomever does run FNM at that store is in order, to show them the guidelines I've quoted from, above.

d:^D

That's not a mind trick, it's just being a jerk. If a player wins the die roll, they get to pick, and getting confused and responding to the losing player's statement with “ok” doesn't waive that. Just ask the player to knock it off and, if called in to adjudicate, rule that the player who won the roll gets the choice.

First, this is FNM, I can't think of a single line in the IPG that could apply in this situation, only the JAR, CR and MRT will apply.
The CR and MTR both lay out that a mutually agreed upon method should be used to decide play/draw. The players have chosen rolling dice, and the AP in your example intenionally misrepresents the winner of the die roll to manipulate their opponent. This isn't something we like to see. As the judge in the event, I would personally talk to the player and advise them that Magic is not a game of ‘Gotcha’ and instruct them not to attempt to trick their opponents in any way, shape or form. A tournament offical instructing a player not to do something has many options to go to from there if the player in question continues the behavior.

I agree with the responses presented here, but I'm curious how this would work at Competitive. Is the winner of the die roll Public or Derived information?

Edited Bryan Li (Feb. 16, 2015 09:17:05 PM)

Originally posted by Bryan Li:

I agree with the responses presented here, but I'm curious how this would work at Competitive. Is the winner of the die roll Public or Derived information?

I don't know that it falls under the communication policy at all… I guess if you had to, you could shoehorn it in as “Details of current game actions and past game actions that still affect the game state,” which is free information.

But, really, people seem to be making die-rolling more complicated than it needs to be. Figure out with your opponent a random way to decide who goes first. Then start playing the actual game. If you can't get through that part without making an ordeal of it, you're in for a long fifty minutes.

Originally posted by Bryan Li:

I agree with the responses presented here, but I'm curious how this would work at Competitive. Is the winner of the die roll Public or Derived information?

You're overthinking it. At Competitive you would handle this the same way.

We already had a very lengthy conversation about how to determine who goes first, so I'm removing posts that head off on that tangent; this thread is not about that.

d:^D