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And here is the scenario:

http://blogs.magicjudges.org/knowledgepool/?p=558

This scenario is Silver

“You are playing a Competitive REL Legacy event and, after you have finished your match, Anthony comes to you to ask you a question about a ruling he just received: he was solving a mulligan and drew again 7 cards and looked at them.

Both players immediately realized the mistake and called Marcus, the only judge in the event who is a L1 judge with little experience. Marcus gave Anthony a Game Loss for Game Play Error- Drawing Extra Cards while the right infraction/penalty should have been a Warning for Game Play Error - Improper Drawing at Start of Game. That player tried to appeal but as it was only one judge, it was denied.

Anthony is asking for your help, he wants to know if the Marcus gave him the right infraction/penalty. How would you handle this situation regarding Anthony? and regarding Marcus?

And what if you were the affected player? What would you do?”

Edited Josh Stansfield (Sept. 11, 2013 10:27:48 PM)

>How would you handle this situation regarding Anthony?
I would explain to him that while the judge in this scenario was mistaken, there's nothing that can be done about the ruling. I would stress that Judges are human, and we make mistakes, and generally try to help Anthony move past it and not let the bad ruling ruin his whole day. I would also encourage him to go talk it out with Marcus after the next match, or right now if there's time and Marcus isn't busy. Instill into Anthony that ‘talk to the Judge afterwards’ is a great thing to do regarding just about any penalty you disagree with or misunderstand, so long as he goes about it desiring communication and education rather than retribution or vindication.

>And Marcus?
I would likely keep away from that issue until the end of the event, if at all. I don't feel that it's my place as a player in an event to question the actions of a Judge, especially when I'm hearing about them second-hand. I might swing by and let Marcus know that I'm up to discuss rules/judging after my matches/after the event if he wants to learn some more. If he comes to talk to me about the ruling he punted I'll tell him what I told Anthony: Judges are human. You're going to punt rulings. Everyone has, and if they haven't yet they will. I'll try to help him treat it as a learning experience, as room to grow, and not let it get to him all day and get him in a funk that might cause further punts. And, of course, I'd explain to him the difference between DEC and Improper Drawing at Start of Game.

>What if you were the affected player?
After my appeal turns up nothing, I would accept the ruling and move on with the remainder of the match. After the match, I would track down Marcus and talk to him about why I disagreed with his ruling, and try to be as polite as I can. I'd approach him as a fellow judge wanting to educate, not as a player seeking vindication and “hah, I told you I was right”. Take the opportunity to talk to him about judging, about things he might have doubts for, and possibly make plans to grab a burger after the event and talk over policy more. As before, the key here is to focus on learning rather than ‘being right’.

Edited Trevor Nunez (Jan. 9, 2013 10:33:50 PM)

In my opinion, there are two things to take care of.

First: Anthony has the right to know the correct ruling and that the judge made a mistake. What is generally dangerous in such cases that the player might give you incomplete information and leaving out important details because he doesn't know that they are important. This isn't the case here, but that is the main reason that most often the answer in forum discussions about rulings is “You had to be there”.

Second: If I'm playing in an event I don't want to undermine the authority of the Judge of that event, especialy if I'm more experienced than the judge.

The solution I would favor is that Marcus goes to the player and excuses himself for the mistake and explains what would be the right ruling.

With this in mind I would tell Anthony something like this: “It seems that Marcus might have a made mistake, I will talk to him about this”. Then I would approach Marcus and talk to him about the ruling. This is easier if he knows me. I will check with him the IPG and suggest him, after he realized that he made a mistake, that he goes to the player and excuses himself and explains what would be correct. I will also give him ideas what he can do, if he gets appealed and he is the only judge:
- Tell the player, you are the only judge, but you will double check the documents (IPG, CR).
- You can use the judge chat to double check
- You can call another experienced judge you know

That doesn't mean he has to do one of this things, but that are possibilites depending on the call and appeal and the level of certainity he has about his ruling.


If I would be the affected player, I would suggest for the appeal that he might want to check the IPG about Improper Drawing at the Start of a game. If he doesn't do, I will accept the ruling (but I will not be happy) and talk to him in private after the match.



Everyone makes mistakes. And what I learned from my own mistakes, if you tell the player “Sorry, I have screwed up my last ruling, I'm sorry, this would be right” most of the times the player are happy that you told it to them. Players know that we also make mistakes. And if you tell it the players it is less likely that they will go around and complain everywhere how bad the judge was. If you don't tell it them and they realize themselfs that your ruling was wrong they are more likely to complain about you to their friends, in the internet etc.

It's really easy for players to miss something in a ruling, especially if the judge isn't used to delivering them and adapting his explanations to his public. For this reason, I'd retain myself to give any qualitative judgement on the ruling before I could get Marcu's side of the story. I'd probably tell the player that I'll need to discuss that with Marcus before I could give him more explanations on what happened, and invite him to come back later.

I'd introduce myself to Marcus if we don't already know, ask him how his tournament is going, and ask him if he doesn't mind telling me about the ruling that happened here. Only once I got confirmed that something got wrong I'd feel comfortable telling Anthony that an error have been committed. Ideally, Marcus would be the one to talk to Anthony first, but I'd make sure Anthony could also use me to vent or to discuss the general philosophy of the penalties he's inclined to.

It may be because one of my pet peeves are those rulings stories told amongst playgroups or the Internet based on misconception and accidental disinformation, and that I think that they are far, far more easy to prevent before they could snowball by double-checking the facts before giving your opinion than to correct them once they started to go wide.

I would tell Anthony that - based on what he's telling me - Marcus applied an incorrect penalty. I would pull up the relevant section of the IPG on MtG: Judge Core and show it to him so that he understands what the correct infraction and penalty were. I would also suggest to him that he approach the TO about a refund, either full or partial. This is a Comp level event. Since Marcus is the only judge, I am working under the assumption that we're not talking about an SCG Open, but there is almost certainly some sort of significant prize on the line; perhaps it's a GPT or a local store $1K event.

I would find Marcus as soon as he has a free moment (there's no need to interrupt a working judge to point out a mistake that it's too late to correct anyway) and talk to him about what I was told. Once I verified that he had ruled incorrectly, I would explain to him that his ruling was incorrect and give him the correct ruling. At that point, that's all I would say to Marcus. It's embarassing to give a wrong ruling and suggesting that he apologize to the player or adding to that conversation in any other way is going to sound like me TELLING him what to do, no matter how pleasantly it may be phrased. Hopefully Marcus will apologize to Anthony on his own, but it's not my place to push him to do so. I am not a judge at this event, I am a player and there is a hard and definitive line between those roles.

If I were the affected player, again, Judge Core is coming out. I would explain to Marcus that I am also a judge and show him what the correct infraction is. If, for some reason, he insisted on the DEC penalty, I would probably ask the TO for a full refund and I would talk to some of the senior judges in the area the next time I saw them.

I think that it's important in this scenario to keep in mind that while everyone makes mistakes, it is far less acceptable for judges to do so than it is for players. When a player makes a mistake, he impacts the tournament for himself. When a judge makes a mistake, it impacts the tournament for two people immediately and can spiderweb from there as the story goes around about the improper ruling. It seems like there is a somewhat indifferent attitude towards mistakes in some of the previous respondants' entries. I would never claim that I don't make mistakes. I'm one of those relatively inexperienced L1's. But I also know that every mistake I make negatively impacts my players, and while I can brush off harm I've done to myself, I cannot just brush off harm I've done to others.

Hello Guys,

Personally, I never feel good about telling a player that a judge was wrong (the “W” word). I always remind myself that I wasn't there and don't really know what happened. Even with the best of intentions, players forget things or maybe just embellish their story a tiny bit to make them look a little better (or the judge a little worse).

I might say something like, “Well, I don't know if I'm missing some of the facts, but there are lots of situations where this ruling would be right, but there are sometimes situations that might mean this is actually something else”. I'd describe Improper draw at the start of game, but I wouldn't insist I was right. I'd volunteer to go speak to the judge on his behalf.

After introducing myself to Marcus I'd ask if he had tome to tell me about his ruling and what happened. I could then say, “So, you did XXXX, but let me ask you if you considered doing YYYY and whether that was possible? However, I'd try and steer clear of using the ”W" word. I'd probably encourage Marcus to find the player and talk to him a bit more about it.

I've made incorrect rulings, but if you get the chance to go back and explain the correct ruling to the player yourself, you'll almost always be MORE respected by the player for having the guts to come back and correct yourself.

There are a few things I would aim to achieve with this scenario:

a) Help Anthony move on from the incorrect ruling so that he still has respect for Marcus and can hopefully enjoy the rest of the event.
b) Help Marcus learn the correct ruling.
c) Not interrupt the tournament or cause inconsistencies in how this tournament is being run.

To do this, when talking to Anthony I would try to emphasize what Marcus got right. He made a ruling where the players would likely have disagreed with each other, and kept the tournament moving forward instead of escalating into a serious problem.

I would also tell Anthony that I really admired his dedication to seeing tournaments run to such a high standard and ask him if he'd ever pursued becoming a certified judge before. I would talk about how we all work as a team to improve our knowledge together and that we all genuinely care about each other and want to help each other out.

If I'm unable to satisfy Anthony to the point where he'll be able to enjoy the rest of the tournament, I might offer to take him out for a beer to help move on, or suggest he play a side draft to take his mind off of it, or something to prevent him from getting more upset.

I would talk to Marcus, but not until after the event is finished. By waiting, I can accomplish B while maintaining C as well. If Marcus finds that his ruling was incorrect in the middle of the event he could do a couple of things:
i) He could start issuing the correct ruling for the rest of the tournament. In my opinion, it's worse to have two different rulings for the same situation in the same tournament than it is to have the same ruling issued incorrectly, but consistently both times. (I'm going to clarify this by saying that I'm using judgment on that for this specific mistake, there are bigger mistakes that I wouldn't apply this to)
ii) We might shake Marcus's confidence in the middle of an event, which might cause other players to notice and lose confidence in the event as well, which could ruin everyones day.

Now, the flip side, if I am the affected player, I have to ask myself if I'm going to be able to enjoy the rest of the event. If I can move on and enjoy the rest of the tournament, that's what's best. If I'm too upset to do so, it's time to call it a day, and maybe go see a movie.

If I'm the affected player, I likely wouldn't talk to Marcus personally, as it might appear adversarial. I would probably talk to another fellow judge and ask him/her to talk to Marcus when they can.

Mike sent me a wonderfully helpful PM about my first post here, which helped me realize that the way I wrote it in my original post was probably the incorrect way to handle it.

I forgot something that I used to teach to people (strange how things can get lost when we don't use them). I forgot to keep in mind that an important thing about handling difficult situations is that you give the person what they want first. In this case I believe Anthony is seeking validation (or at least I hope he is, because the head judges ruling is final, and I can't really do much else to help Anthony).

I should probably start the conversation with Anthony with the validation that I went with later on instead. Start by complimenting his dedication to seeing tournaments run better, inquiring whether or not he'd ever considered pursuing judging himself and then after that's done suggest the solution of moving on and downplaying the mistake.

It's always better to start with the understanding first, to let the player know that I'm on their side.

In this new season of the Knowledge Pool we would like to let everybody knows that our answers are, by no means, unique and absolutely right but a suggestion about what we believe is one of the most appropriate ways to proceed on each scenario.

This is our proposed solution:

First of all, when Anthony comes to you, you still don’t know Marcus’ version, you just know Anthony’s so you just have half-truth about what happened so we really shouldn't be too eager to jump immediately by saying “that is the wrong ruling”. In this case, you should talk to Anthony and help reinforce the authority of Marcus as the Head Judge so the tournament won’t suffer more due to this. Telling Anthony which is the “right” ruling for that infraction won’t be the better approach as he will surely engage with Marcus using the information you provided and that will only bring more problems than solutions.


You could take an uncompromising position with any part claiming that you are a player in that event, not a judge. A clear “hey, I'm not the judge today” should suffice. Although Anthony deserves to know the right ruling, we believe this is a task for the responsible judge (Marcus) and any intervention without knowing all the facts might harm the integrity of this event.

You should also talk to Marcus privately so you can give him some feedback and to inquiry about what happened. You could approach gently by asking something like “hey, here's what I heard - is this accurate?” … “oh, well, did you know that …” and then educate him in a nice manner. Help him realize that we are subject to make mistakes at any time and that will be a nice gesture to come by and explain the player how he/she went wrong and apologizes, that way he'll grow and you'll grow as well by giving some mentoring. After all, remember that he is an inexperienced L1 judge and he surely haven’t had enough contact with IPG and that is very hard to handle a tournament by oneself. Giving him a harder time won’t benefit anyone.

We, as judges, are expected to exhibit a fit behavior no matter what is our role in an event, and our main focus must be to keep the event fair and fun to everybody and to collaborate with the integrity of that event as well. We all have made a wrong ruling sometime, but the best way to keep a good customer experience is realizing that and be responsible for it. By going to talk to Anthony, Marcus can make him feel better and gain respect as that will show him as a god judge who worries about his tournament and about growing as a judge. We shouldn't talk about other judge ruling with a player as that will only bring more problems to that judge and to the event, especially as we weren't there at the moment of the calling.

After (hopefully this is the case) Marcus decides to talk to Anthony, we should go with him to serve as backup and to prevent any kind of heated discussion that might arise. By being there we can provide both of them support and show concern and willingness to help recover a nice tournament environment. And then Marcus will gain knowledge and respect and Anthony will feel that he is being taken into consideration.

After that, if we feel that Anthony is handling it in a good manner and is interested, we might encourage him to learn more about the Judge program and give him some headlines about us and what we do, and we might be having a new future L1 candidate among us. Thanks to Michael White for this great suggestion

We are a team, all judges have a responsibility among others to share their knowledge and help grow each other. Providing and receiving a Feedback by a fellow judge shouldn't be considered like a bad critic but as a way of improving myself and others. Remember that Marcus is a non-experienced L1 judge who is judging by himself a CompREL event, he might be worried about doing it well, we should reassure him so he can also enjoy the event. Provide him feedback in an courteous manner and help him to move on as well.

If you are the affected player who got the bad ruling, you can always request to discuss with the judge away from the table. Be nice, polite and accurate by explaining why his ruling is not the one that should be so he/she can maybe change the ruling when you appeal and he can explain to your opponent why this is the right ruling and why he got confused. It is very important that everything is well supported by the rules so it won't appear like you are influencing the less experienced judge to try to “get your way”.

Thanks to everybody who participated on this discussion. As a finisher, please read Eric Shukan's excellent article about this at http://blogs.magicjudges.org/articles/2012/12/12/when-judges-are-playing-not-judging/

See you in the next The Knowledge Pool!