Hello fellow Judges,

At a Sealed PPTQ we have had an Uncommon Situation. It was the beginning of round 3. While counting the last Decklists we track down one list with 98 instead of 84 cards in total. 14 cards equal one Boosterpack.

We decided to deck-check the player’s pool the next possible time. And the list fits with the actual pool.

We counted the remaining Boosters in the last Display. And one was missing. So we know the failure passed different instances. The tournament officials handed him 7 Boosters. He doesn’t realize it while he opens the Boosters. The player sitting in front of him did not realize it while watching him opening the Boosters. And the player sitting in front of him did not realize it while he registered the cards.

We talked to the player and it really seems like it was neither intentional nor has he realized that he received one extra Booster.

We talked to the player who registered his pool, and it honestly feels like he has not realized it as well.

Question:
Do you know if there is an official way to solve this? If not, we would like to hear your ideas about how to handle this situation. It would be nice if we come up with an official solution in case this happens somewhere again.

I will tell you Tomorrow how we solved it.

Not an official solution by any means, but I've seen this solved at a GP by
removing 14 random cards from the pool according to their rarity (1
rare/mythic, 3 uncommons, 10 commons)

//DLI
On May 9, 2016 5:33 PM, “Max Tiedemann” <

David, provided that in this set in particular there is *at least* one
Double-Faced Card that takes a common slot, would you consider to take one
of them at random (DFCs in packs can also be rare/mythic)?

Not an official solution by any means, but I've seen this solved at a GP by
removing 14 random cards from the pool according to their rarity (1
rare/mythic, 3 uncommons, 10 commons)

//DLI
On May 9, 2016 5:33 PM, “Max Tiedemann” <

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That was my solution at same problem in a PPTQ i detect it at finish of
round.

i selected (1 rare/mythic, 3 uncommons, 10 commons)

jsoe

2016-05-09 11:57 GMT-03:00 David de la Iglesia <

DLI but that only works before deck building doesn't it? Because when youy (as in the above example) only realise by round 3 and you potentially remove parts of his deck from his pool he needs some more deckbuilding time creating a huge mess…

I'm the guy that DLI saw, applying that remedy, at a GP in San Diego - during Innistrad, ironically.

The first thing we did was investigate - how could this guy not notice so many cards?! - but I came to the conclusion it was *probably* an honest mistake. (Like most investigations, I'll never know, only the player truly knows…)

Once I determined that the player would be allowed to continue playing, we had to solve it - somehow. I decided to do as DLI described - randomly removing the appropriate number(s) from each rarity. Fate was smiling on us, and that player, as the dice consistently chose cards that turned out to be in the player's sideboard (?!!??!) - so no re-construction was necessary, just list correction.

Christian, you're correct - that player could have been required to rebuild, and thus introduce a further delay; as I recall, my mindset was to address the unusual circumstances as best as I could, and quickly. I wasn't inclined to delay the event for this player, however - had he needed time to rebuild, he'd have had until the next round began, no more (and possibly less - certainly no more than 30 minutes). After all, it was his mistake that got us to this point…

When I realized I needed to randomly remove cards, I also realized I had no dice available, and I had to ask to borrow some. All I could quickly find was a couple six-sided dice, which I initially thought would be problematic - but then I realized, there's five colors, and a sixth group of everything else (artifact, nonbasic land, etc). I used one six-sider to choose a color, then randomly chose a card from that color; repeat three times for Uncommons, then some more for Commons.

An interesting side effect of this solution: Patrick Chapin overheard me borrowing six-sided dice, quickly did much deeper math than I could, and wanted to argue that I couldn't get the right results from six-sided dice. He had no idea how I was using those dice, and assumed a different - and very incorrect! - approach. I didn't want to delay the event by explaining in detail, so he never got a satisfactory answer.

And, to this day, a friend of his insists I'm the Worst Judge Ever, because of that misunderstanding… :p

d:^D

/technically/, in a pool with 3 White rares, 1 each Blue, Black, Red, and Green, the method you suggest is biased towards non-white rares. There's a 20% chance you will remove the U rare, 20% the B, 20% the R, 20% the G, and 6.67% each of the W rares. A truly random method has a 42.7% chance of removing one of the White rares (and if your pool has 3 White rares, you're probably playing White), your method has only a 20% chance of removing one of them.

Shuffling each rarity and selecting the top N after shuffling is probably the most statistically sound method, as long as the pool isn't partially sleeved.

</pedant_mode>

heh - and if his pool had contained 3 rares in one color, that might have occurred to me at the time…

d:^D

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

After all, it was his mistake that got us to this point…

The judges are responsible for the distribution of sealed product, and the judges are responsible of knowing the correct sealed deck procedure. It's certainly not the player's fault if a player is handed more than six boosters and he doesn't notice. If the player notices, realizes it's a mistake and doesn't say anything, then we're in cheating territory (I guess), but I think it's wrong the blame the player if he doesn't notice.

That being said, I think it's really harsh to randomly remove cards from the player's pool and taking the risk of forcing the player to rebuild the deck while only having time until the start of the next round. What if it's just five minutes? What do you do if the player doesn't finish rebuilding the deck in said time?

You could just give the player the full 30 minutes of deckbuilding, but that would mean taking the risk of delaying the tournament massively. Is giving the player the benefit of doubt by only removing cards from his sideboard not an option? I sure know this feels like an unfair advantage, but I'd rather give him an unfair advantage and take the blame as a judge than giving him an unfair disadvantage and an awful tournament experience. It's MY fault in the end. I know this is not a good solution, but I think it's the best. Players have extraordinarily good sealed pools, this is just something that happens. It surely shouldn't happen this way, but anyway. It's certainly better than “Please rebuild your deck in five minutes.”. I'm still not sure what you'd do if the player can't finish rebuilding in that time.

Edited Jasper König (May 9, 2016 01:11:10 PM)

Players are expected (and directed) to verify that the product mix they
receive is correct, and to bring any irregular product or registration
errors to the attention of a judge. In some cases, players are even
directed to verify that they have the correct number of cards registered
(on a set by set basis) at GP events, via a small “checklist” printed on
the decklist: have you registered all the cards you opened, have you
registered the right number of cards in the pool, have you registered the
deck you're playing, have you registered basic lands, have you listed your
name, have you listed your table number.

Originally posted by Jasper König:

You could just give the player the full 30 minutes of deckbuilding, but that would mean taking the risk of delaying the tournament massively.

That's just not going to happen; it's horrible customer service - to all but one of the 1000+ players in the event.

Originally posted by Jasper König:

Is giving the player the benefit of doubt by only removing cards from his sideboard not an option?

It's odd that it worked out that way, but - no, we should randomly remove from the entire pool, and then let him rebuild from what's left (if necessary).

Originally posted by Jasper König:

I think it's wrong the blame the player if he doesn't notice.

I guess we'll just agree to disagree, then. My stance is based on the requirement that players know and comply with the MTR, which specifies the correct allocation of product for Sealed Deck.

d:^D

You could just give the player the full 30 minutes of deckbuilding, but that would mean taking the risk of delaying the tournament massively.

Even if some of cards in his maindeck was removed in the process, he doesn't need full 30 minutes.
One, he already knew all of his pool. We only remove cards, not add.
Two, he don't need to fill out decklist at that time. It can be done later.
Three, as some of you mentioned, it's partly his fault.

So even if he lose some cards in his maindeck, he only needs like 10 minutes. If we don't have 10 minutes before next round, start that round anyway and we can give 10 minutes time extention for that table (quite normal time extention).

So how should we select 1 out of 7, 3 out of 21, 10 out of 70 cards…? hmm interestiong question. Maybe we can do it with 6 sided-die and 10 sided-die.

These comments feel like they are underestimating the amount of
changes one would want to make to their deck with just 3 or 4 key
cards removed. Yes much of the time the changes needed will be minor,
but it doesn't feel all that unlikely that the random 14 cards may
include the 3 cards in a colour that were the main reason for playing
that colour. Potentially that colour pair may be now untenable.

But I also understand the needs of the tournament. I'd feel inclined
to give the player the option of a Match Loss if after seeing which
cards are removed they feel they need more than 10 minutes to deck
build.

Originally posted by Gareth Pye:

These comments feel like they are underestimating the amount of
changes one would want to make to their deck with just 3 or 4 key
cards removed. Yes much of the time the changes needed will be minor,
but it doesn't feel all that unlikely that the random 14 cards may
include the 3 cards in a colour that were the main reason for playing
that colour. Potentially that colour pair may be now untenable.

But I also understand the needs of the tournament. I'd feel inclined
to give the player the option of a Match Loss if after seeing which
cards are removed they feel they need more than 10 minutes to deck
build.

While I would try to avoid giving an excessive amount of time, I'd honestly have to consider different things when considering how much time they would get to fix their deck after the process.

If they finished their match in 20 minutes and we have 30 left in the round? Sure, take your time.
Mid-match? 10 minute base time and possibility for 5 extra minutes if we say, hit 15 white cards when they were playing white or they seem quite distressed in general about the time limit.

This is a case where I don't think we CAN simply write up a clear cut A-B-C procedure and we do have to use some of our judgment skills as to how much time is reasonable. When push comes to shove, if they lost half of their deck and they can only be given 10 minutes, sometimes that is how things unfold, and we can't ignore the rest of the room for the single player's sake when they could have pointed out ‘hey, I got 7 boosters’ pretty easily earlier in the event.

How we did it:
Since we have not had instantly a solid ruling, we decided to delay the decision. We told the player, to continue playing and we will come up with a ruling as soon as possible.

We know that he accidently got an illegal card pool with an unfair advantage. We went through different scenarios to figure out what penalty it is, if any, and how we could fix it.
Since Stefan is quite good connected to the northern Europe Judge network he soon came up with the solution that was described here.

We decided to delay the tournament.

The player received a Match Loss for illegal decklist and we removed one random Booster from his pool. Our method was shuffling the Rares to pick one, shuffling the UC to pick 3 and shuffling the C to pick 10. Before shuffling the C we replaced the double faced cards with basics.

Thereafter he gets 30 min. to build a new deck with the remaining pool in another room. There were 43 players and it was between round 3 and 4. The weather was sweet and there was a supermarket closed by.
We made a Judge Announcement and set a timer to 30 min. for the players.

After 30 min. we continued with the tournament. To me it felt like everyone was okay with the delay. But it was a nice and friendly player community anyway.