There are some simple questions you can ask to investigate and try to determine what you think happened. If, for instance, a player has not played any shuffle effects or other effects that would require picking up their library, it is exceedingly unlikely that the card was dropped in gameplay. Conversely, if they have used several shuffle effects and always shuffle so their decks not over the table, it is much more likely that the card was dropped during the game. Obviously more options than this exist, but it is not at all impossible for you as the judge to reach a conclusion about when the card was dropped.

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Just correct my text to put the emphasis where it should be. Sorry if I hadn't made myself clear Jeremy.

The thing is, if you found it unlikely that the card was dropped during the game (maybe no shuffle effects were played at all during the turns that were played, no mulligans taken, etc), would you GL the player? What would be the recorded infraction?

Sherlock Holmes provided us with many great quotes; here's one that relates to this: “When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains - however unlikely - must be true.” (OK, so my memory might paraphrase a bit…)

If you eliminate the possibility of a card dropping during game play, then one of the players dropped a card during pre-game shuffling. Investigate - make sure the opponent didn't drop a card as a particularly nefarious cheat! - and what you're left with is the player presenting an illegal deck. That remains a D/DLP, and a Game Loss.

And that same quote applies to the original scenario, too - you eliminate the possibility that a card was dropped initially, because the opponent counted to 60; what remains is that a card got dropped during game play.

In the extremely unlikely event that none of those possibilities remain, then you have our (extreme corner-case) sympathies. ;)

d:^D

“If you eliminate the possibility of a card dropping during game play, then one of the players dropped a card during pre-game shuffling. Investigate - make sure the opponent didn't drop a card as a particularly nefarious cheat! - and what you're left with is the player presenting an illegal deck. That remains a D/DLP, and a Game Loss.”
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The problem with the above suggestion is that you cannot do it. There is no way to eliminate the possibility of a card dropping during gameplay. Well, I suppose I could create an extremely unlikely and imaginary scenario, but anytime someone “just finds a card on the floor”, you are pretty much out of luck.

Also, “make sure the opponent didn't drop a card as a particularly nefarious cheat” is remote. Any opponent who was able to sleight-of-hand a card to the floor without anyone seeing it is almost certainly going to lie to you and get away with it.

So, I'd like to suggest that the times a judge would issue a GL for this under the above logic should be extremely, extremely rare.

-Eric

In many cases (in almost every case), a player just found a card on the floor and both players had no idea when that card fall on the floor. When dropped? How dropped? Who dropped? No idea. Just a card on the floor.

Usually I ruled D/DLP Game Loss in this cases before, but after reading this thread, I pretty much inclined to rule as no-penalty-but-record-warning-for-both-for-tracking. Fix is just shuffling a fallen card into library. As Eric said it is difficult to confirm that deck was illegal at the begining of the game or confirm that opponent has intentionally dropped opponent's card.

Of course, if there are anything which indicate when and who dropped a card, that is different situation.

Originally posted by Kenji Suzuki:

Of course, if there are anything which indicate when and who dropped a card, that is different situation.

One major clue here might be where the card was dropped. If it was under the table of the player's previous match, we can be pretty sure he presented an illegal deck.

Originally posted by Jonas Drieghe:

One major clue here might be where the card was dropped. If it was under the table of the player's previous match, we can be pretty sure he presented an illegal deck.

Except it doesn't matter. We don't penalize D/DLPs that happened in the past. There was a knowledge pool not too long ago (sorry I'm on a bus and can't look for it very well) that discussed this exact issue. In that knowledge pool, we didn't give a D/DLP for a card found on the floor after multiple rounds.

I think this is clearly a LEC, as is any dexterity error that knocks a card out of the library while shuffling.

some misunderstanding appears to have crept in, here…

If we can conclude, after investigation, that an illegal deck was presented for the start of the current game, we most certainly can and will assess D/DLP, and (most likely) the Game Loss that goes with that.

If we believe (again, after investigation) that the most likely (only?) possibility is that the card was dropped during game play, then L@EC is a much better fit.

And, of course - regardless of what Eric says (heh!) - your investigation might conclude that Cheating did, in fact, occur. (Side track: I heard about an Appeals Judge at a GP, who said “I'm going to ask this player if he Cheated, and he's going to say ”yes" - and that's exactly how it happened. Unusual, perhaps - but sometimes honesty kicks back in and confessions happen.)

d:^D

To create a scenario that is the corner case of the corner case, if during investigation we find out that the card could only have been droped when being shuffled by it's owner because of the reset game effect of Karn's Liberated ultimate abilitie, what would be the most correct penalty to issue?
I'm kind of inclined to a GRV, because I believe in this case the pregame procedures are part of resolving an abilitie.

Originally posted by Thiago Perígolo Souza:

the corner case of the corner case

Have fun in your deep, dark corner… ;)

The reason I ruled out LaEC the first time I have seen Petr's question, is this line from LaEC definition:

if a player takes a game action after removing the card from the library, the offense is no longer Looking at Extra Cards.

Should we use this point only to distinguish if card is already drawn, or just looked at, not to every LaEC cases?

Originally posted by Nathen Millbank:

I think this is clearly a LEC, as is any dexterity error that knocks a card out of the library while shuffling.

Well, it's not “clearly” if several L2+ judges ruled differently prior to seeing this thread.

Tentative summary: I understand that dropping a card during gameplay is LaEC, dropping it before presenting is D/DP and if you don't know which it is, you should rule for whatever you think is more likely (this may be difficult, but we're judges).

Adam Kolipiński
The reason I ruled out LaEC the first time I have seen Petr's question, is this line from LaEC definition:

if a player takes a game action after removing the card from the library, the offense is no longer Looking at Extra Cards.

Should we use this point only to distinguish if card is already drawn, or just looked at, not to every LaEC cases?

That seems to be a valid argument that this is not a LaEC.

Originally posted by Petr Hudeček:

That seems to be a valid argument that this is not a LaEC.

Was the card actually removed from the library? If so, what zone had it moved to, and how did it move there?

The first part of the definition talks about the card being moved away from the deck, then we switch to library. I don't think that switch in language is accidental. (Especially since “touches other cards in their hand” refers to the game zone “hand”, not the cards physically in your hand since we don't apply LEC to someone who puts their hand down and separately looks at a bunch of cards for Dig Through Time.)

Originally posted by Chris Nowak:

I don't think that switch in language is accidental.

The IPG is not written with technical preciseness. This was said by high-level judges. And I don't think we should be making any judgments based on whether LaEC refers to the deck or the library, the author of the IPG surely didn't want them to have different meanings here. The Annotated IPG also doesn't say that there is any difference between a deck and a library.

What I'm saying is, you cannot expect a judge reading the IPG to make the same conclusion as you did in here. The reader doesn't usually even notice.