Well said Andrew. It's important to remember that Warnings are not a punishment, and we shouldn't try to avoid giving them out when necessary. If Neville commits an infraction it is our responsibility to step in and fix it as best we can, which includes applying the appropriate penalties.

Originally posted by Florian Horn:

In a PPTQ, Albus attacks with Khenra Eternal. Neville blocks with Harrier Naga. Albus casts Gift of Strength, then says “Oh, wait, you lose 1 from Afflict”. Neville answers “No, that's too late. Since you cast a spell, the trigger is missed.”

Do you intervene? If you do, do you give a penalty to Albus Neville?

If I overheard this exchange at my event, I would simply walk to the table and ask something along the lines of “Is everything going okay over here?” I am almost certain that this kind of situation would escalate to a judge call naturally, but if I am standing close enough to overhear, I am inclined to make my presence known as a way to remind players that a judge is available to assist them, if needed. If the players do respond, “yes, everything is okay,” then I suppose I would just “let the players play.” I don't think Neville has violated any rules, and if Albus chooses not to avail himself of a judge in this situation, then I think the game should continue as-is. However, it is difficult to imagine the players not immediately explaining their disagreement to the judge. Acting in this way is well within the bounds of policy, and frankly, just good customer service.

Once the players explain the situation, it is clear (based on the given description) that Albus has acknowledged his trigger before taking any game actions that could not have happened until after the trigger had resolved. Albus has not missed his trigger, per policy. I would remind both players to call a judge if they are ever unsure about rule or game interactions. I would also remind players not to offer rules advice to opponents nor to accept rules advice from opponents. The issue is resolved (correctly), both players are reassured, and both players a better educated for the future. Mission accomplished.

I would not issue an infraction to either player. I think issuing a CPV warning to Neville would be overzealous. The definition of derived information includes “Tournament Policy,” which in my interpretation, does not include the IPG, which is specifically a document directed towards judges, not players. Note that MTR 1.10 says players are expected to be familiar with the MTR, without mentioning the IPG. Additionally, this same section of the Annotated MTR (though not official) explicitly states that players are not expected to know the IPG. Perhaps my interpretation is wrong, so I would welcome and official interpretation. However, if players are expected to know the IPG, then why do judges exist at all?

Furthermore, especially if I don't suspect anything nefarious of Neville, I think issuing the penalty would do much more harm than good. Neville, is trying to stop his opponent from doing something Neville believe to be illegal, and ultimately he should punished for it? I think all that would accomplish is making Neville hesitant to call judges in the future, not to mention likely generally resentful of judges. Issuing a penalty in this case would feel much more punitive than educational, based on my understanding of the situation as described.

Bryn, I have a number of doubts about your post. Point by point:

Originally posted by Bryn Pitt:

If the players do respond, “yes, everything is okay,” then I suppose I would just “let the players play.”

This seems like it would violate the last paragraph of MTR 1.8, which reads “Judges do not intervene in a game to prevent illegal actions, but do intervene as soon as a rule has been broken or to prevent a situation from escalating.”

In my understanding, if Albus has demonstrated awareness of the trigger in time, but chooses to proceed as though the life loss did not occur, a rule has been broken, and a watching judge is obliged to step in.

Originally posted by Bryn Pitt:

The definition of derived information includes “Tournament Policy,” which in my interpretation, does not include the IPG

This seems like an untenably big stretch. It is very literally a document describing the policy that we apply to tournaments. Even if you somehow weasel your way out of excluding it, the very same sentence in MTR 4.1 inclures “any other official information pertaining to the current tournament,” which I think you can't possibly argue would not include the IPG.

Originally posted by Bryn Pitt:

Note that MTR 1.10 says players are expected to be familiar with the MTR, without mentioning the IPG. Additionally, this same section of the Annotated MTR (though not official) explicitly states that players are not expected to know the IPG. Perhaps my interpretation is wrong, so I would welcome and official interpretation. However, if players are expected to know the IPG, then why do judges exist at all?

This seems like a conflation of a what players are obligated to know with what they are obligated to do. Players are not obligated to know the CR, either, but they are nevertheless obligated not to violate it. Players are not even obligated to know the power of one of their creatures, but they are certainly obligated not to misrepresent it. This is exactly analogous – since the IPG is derived information, they are not obligated to know it, but they are obligated not to misrepresent it, which Neville is clearly doing.

Originally posted by Bryn Pitt:

Neville, is trying to stop his opponent from doing something Neville believe to be illegal, and ultimately he should punished for it?

Neville is trying to avoid losing life by incorrectly rules-lawyering, and absolutely should be punished for it. Neville's reaction to that may possibly be unfortunate, but that's pretty normal. It will be both punitive and educational.

Originally posted by Jake Eakle:

Bryn, I have a number of doubts about your post. Point by point:

Originally posted by Bryn Pitt:

If the players do respond, “yes, everything is okay,” then I suppose I would just “let the players play.”

This seems like it would violate the last paragraph of MTR 1.8, which reads “Judges do not intervene in a game to prevent illegal actions, but do intervene as soon as a rule has been broken or to prevent a situation from escalating.”

In my understanding, if Albus has demonstrated awareness of the trigger in time, but chooses to proceed as though the life loss did not occur, a rule has been broken, and a watching judge is obliged to step in.

Agree to disagree, but the entire point of asking “Is everything okay?” is that the judge is not actually intervening in the game but rather giving players an opportunity to request assistance. From the given description, it is clear the opponent's are in the midst of a disagreement, and making yourself available to assist the players is entirely appropriate in this case. Who knows, maybe this situation has the potential to boil over into a full blown fist fight, and by simply making your presence known, you immediately deescalate the situation. Regardless, reminding players that you exist is not the same as intervening in a game. Also, as I said, if the players do not ask for the assistance of a judge, then I would continue to allow them to play.

Originally posted by Jake Eakle:

Originally posted by Bryn Pitt:

Neville, is trying to stop his opponent from doing something Neville believe to be illegal, and ultimately he should punished for it?

Neville is trying to avoid losing life by incorrectly rules-lawyering, and absolutely should be punished for it. Neville's reaction to that may possibly be unfortunate, but that's pretty normal. It will be both punitive and educational.

I don't think sufficient information to gauge the intent of Neville in this case. I know intent is not relevant in the case of CPV, but I have already explained why I don't think CPV applies here at all. I think knowing what Neville says following the reported exchange would be incredibly important to determining how to proceed, however. Perhaps Neville says, “It's too late; you've missed your trigger…. JUDGE!” Would that be CPV, even if we assume players are responsible for being familiar with the IPG (which I still maintain that they are not)? What possible positive function could a penalty serve in this case?

It appears that several people in this thread have jumped to the conclusion that Neville is a filthy scumbag, rule-lawyer, liar, cheater. There is absolutely nothing in the original post to substantiate that position. Sure, perhaps it's possible that Neville is angle shooting, but based on my experience, the far more likely and more common scenario would be that Neville is just a guy who wants to play some Magic, and now he's in a tournament and it feels like his opponent missed a trigger and wants to do a “takeback.” His immediate response is just to say, defensively, “No, you can't do that.” Without any evidence that Neville is attempting to explicitly express an (incorrect) representation of a game rule, I'm not going to equate that to a communication violation. The more likely reality is that Neville doesn't want to his opponent to get a takeback, and blurts out the first string of words to that effect that come to his mind. I bet when you walk to the table and ask players “Is everything okay?”, Neville is more likely to be the one who chimes in first…. At this point, I'm devolving into a totally hypothetical situation, and it is a meaningless to go into it any further. My real point is that I would encourage judges to approach situations with a bit more perspective and empathy before immediately assuming that someone is a liar or a cheater. I bet most of the Nevilles you're likely to encounter just want the situation to be resolved fairly, in accordance with policy.

Players are not required to know the IPG; I'm reluctant to say they're not expected to know it, as that implies it's unexpected when they do - and many do.

Originally posted by Jake Eakle:

Players are not obligated to know the CR, either, but they are nevertheless obligated not to violate it … since the IPG is derived information, they are not obligated to know it, but they are obligated not to misrepresent it

I think this statement can only be correct if we include “intentionally” - i.e., players can't intentionally violate the CR.

Originally posted by Jake Eakle:

which Neville is clearly doing

Please don't jump to conclusions without first conducting a reasonable investigation. We know that Neville is intending to have Albus miss the trigger, but we can't know that Neville intends to violate policy to accomplish that. If we were there - and none of us, except perhaps Florian (assuming this isn't another hypothetical scenario), were actually there. Lacking the opportunity to chat a bit with the players, let's not assume intent.

Originally posted by Bryn Pitt:

ask something along the lines of “Is everything going okay over here?”

Bryn, I like that - it's simple, it's friendly, it's customer-service-oriented, and it encourages the players to use the resource we provide, namely rules & policy expertise. And, as you noted, you aren't intervening, you're just offering an opportunity.

d:^D

Bryn, whether or not the IPG is derived information, you have agreed that the MTR is- and section 4.4 of the MTR describes how triggered abilities function.

Originally posted by Bryn Pitt:

Furthermore, especially if I don't suspect anything nefarious of Neville, I think issuing the penalty would do much more harm than good. Neville, is trying to stop his opponent from doing something Neville believe to be illegal, and ultimately he should punished for it?

If my opponent starts to return creatures to the battlefield from his Living End, and I tell him that he can't do that due to my Grafdigger's Cage, have I committed a violation?

Edited Isaac King (July 26, 2017 06:41:17 PM)

I think that seeing a warning as punitive is not a helpful perspective. Warnings do carry the threat of an upgrade for repeat offenses, but that's really it as far as actual punishment is concerned. As long as we couple the warning to educating Neville about the reason for the warning (unintentionally misrepresenting policy) as well as the way to avoid such a penalty in the future (call a judge if there's a question about policy), there's no reason to expect that Neville would be deterred from calling a judge in the future. Judges should not see themselves as punishing players for mistakes, but instead educating them and giving the education some teeth in the form of an incentive to “don't do it again.”

That being said, strictly speaking if we let the game continue Albus would be committing a GRV for not resolving his trigger, and would be committing it based on Neville's incorrect representation of policy. A situation like this would be almost a textbook case for CPV-rewind as well, which I think further bolsters the case for CPV here. If Albus earns a GRV for following Neville's instructions, then Neville should earn a CPV for giving such instructions in the first place.

If we issued a CPV every time a player said that the game worked in one way when it actually worked another way, it would quickly stop being my favourite infraction and start being the most commonly-issued one. (Am I a hipster judge?)

In my mind, Neville is either cheating or mistaken. If he's mistaken about how the rules work, is he technically committing a CPV? Possibly, it's certainly debatable. Am I issuing that penalty as HJ if i's appealed? Almost never.

It's not about punitive vs not, it's about logistics. If players know that getting a rule wrong is going to get them a warning, the number of calls we see per event will go up significantly. Heck, even as a judge I would never risk answering a question about how something works in case the floor judge disagrees with me and it becomes a problem. Plus as a TE, CPV upgrades on the second infraction…that is one scary possibility.

Originally posted by Chris Lansdell:

If players know that getting a rule wrong is going to get them a Warning, the number of Calls we see per event will go up significantly.

Isn't that a good thing? Don't we want players to call us when they are unsure about something, rather than just guessing and possibly being wrong?

Originally posted by Chris Lansdell:

Plus as a TE, CPV upgrades on the second infraction…that is one scary possibility.

I'm not sure that's something we should be taking into account. If we avoid giving players penalties for fear that they might later get upgraded to a game loss, doesn't that defeat the purpose of having an upgrade in the first place?

Edited Isaac King (July 28, 2017 03:08:43 AM)

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

Originally posted by Jake Eakle:

Players are not obligated to know the CR, either, but they are nevertheless obligated not to violate it … since the IPG is derived information, they are not obligated to know it, but they are obligated not to misrepresent it

I think this statement can only be correct if we include “intentionally” - i.e., players can't intentionally violate the CR.

This is very confusing to me. We give Warnings for GRV when a game rule is violated, regardless of intent, no? As I understand it, intent is the line between Cheating and other infractions, not the line between infraction and no infraction.

It seems like the same logic must apply to the IPG – no one is proactively quizzing you on your rules or policy knowledge, but if violate the rules or policy, you face the consequences.

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

Originally posted by Jake Eakle:

which Neville is clearly doing

Please don't jump to conclusions without first conducting a reasonable investigation. We know that Neville is intending to have Albus miss the trigger, but we can't know that Neville intends to violate policy to accomplish that.

When I wrote “clearly” I was not implying anything about Neville's intention, only making a statement about his behavior, which violated policy in that it misrepresented derived information.

Originally posted by Scott Marshall:

Originally posted by Bryn Pitt:

ask something along the lines of “Is everything going okay over here?”

Bryn, I like that - it's simple, it's friendly, it's customer-service-oriented, and it encourages the players to use the resource we provide, namely rules & policy expertise. And, as you noted, you aren't intervening, you're just offering an opportunity.

I fully agree that this is a great approach when players seem confused or otherwise show signs of having a problem, but as I said in my first post, the situation as outlined here seems to obligate a judge to directly intervene:

The IPG Missed Trigger policy was misrepresented.
The IPG is derived information, per MTR 4.1.
Therefore, derived information was misrepresented, which falls under CPV.
Therefore, a rule has been broken.
A judge saw it happen.
Therefore, MTR 1.8 obliges the judge to intervene: “Judges do not intervene in a game to prevent illegal actions, but do intervene as soon as a rule has been broken.”

There is one possible disagreement I can imagine here – someone might believe that MTR 1.8 refers only to CR rules, and not policy violations. If that's true, however, it just means that the judge is not obligated to intervene until the players have agreed that no life is lost and proceeded with the game, since at the point a CR rule has been violated. More importantly, though, I don't think anyone would really be willing to stand by that interpretation of 1.8 – if a judge sees UC-Major, they should intervene!

This seems like airtight guidance from the policy documents. If this is not the desired outcome from the perspective of the leaders of the program, I think MTR 1.8 needs to revised, and maybe the definition of CPV as well.

I feel like the situation more or less boils down to this: When we issue warnings, we are issuing them mostly for tracking purposes, to say “If this is a pattern of behaviour, we should step in and do something”. This is why we issue warnings for GRVs, because a mistake is a mistake, but multiple mistakes is a behaviour.

Coming at CPVs from this perspective, do we really want to track whether or not a player has adequate rules knowledge? I don't think it really matters until it becomes obvious that the player is trying to do something shady; having a database full of “these are the people with DCI numbers who don't know the rules well” really serves to help nobody. This is why, in my previous post, I said that I would likely not issue a CPV unless I have reason to believe that this payer might present a pattern of behaviour worth investigating.

Lyle, I think you end up making the opposite point than the one you mean to. You contend that a warning is a statement, “if this is a pattern of behavior, we should step in,” and then contend that we should only step in and issue a CPV after we have established that this is already a pattern, which seems to undercut the logic of issuing the warning in the first place.

Besides, it's by no means a sure bet that we are in the position to know this player well enough to have a reasonable suspicion that they may have a bad habit of misrepresenting rules to their benefit, even accidentally. How are we supposed to establish this pattern of behavior without using warnings?

Finally, by my reading the IPG prohibits considering a player's reputation when determining whether an infraction has occurred. If the line between CPV and not-CPV is a player's reputation for getting rules wrong, I don't know that we'd ever be able to consider a CPV in a case like this.

Originally posted by IPG - General Philosophy:

Knowledge of a player’s history or skill does not alter an infraction, but it may be taken into account during an investigation.

Originally posted by Andrew Keeler:

Lyle, I think you end up making the opposite point than the one you mean to. You contend that a warning is a statement, “if this is a pattern of behavior, we should step in,” and then contend that we should only step in and issue a CPV after we have established that this is already a pattern, which seems to undercut the logic of issuing the warning in the first place.

Besides, it's by no means a sure bet that we are in the position to know this player well enough to have a reasonable suspicion that they may have a bad habit of misrepresenting rules to their benefit, even accidentally. How are we supposed to establish this pattern of behavior without using warnings?

By, well, using “knowledge of a player's history or skill”. I'll get to that in a moment.

Finally, by my reading the IPG prohibits considering a player's reputation when determining whether an infraction has occurred. If the line between CPV and not-CPV is a player's reputation for getting rules wrong, I don't know that we'd ever be able to consider a CPV in a case like this.

Originally posted by IPG - General Philosophy:

Knowledge of a player’s history or skill does not alter an infraction, but it may be taken into account during an investigation.

This sentence makes no sense to me. So, for example, say you have a player who you know from history (previous events you've judged, reports from other judges, etc) has a habit of being sketchy. You see him being sketchy. You go to investigate; what, precisely, can you use form his history in your investigation? “In addition to this event, why did you also commit the same GRV 3 weeks ago at that other event?” That's not helpful; either the player is cheating now or he's not, and what he did 3 weeks ago isn't important; maybe he cheated 3 weeks ago and isn't cheating now, or maybe the other way around.

The way I read this is that you should be even handed; if a less-experienced player commits a GRV, you give that player a Warning, same as if the same infraction was being done by LSV or PVDDR. However, if the player has a history of similar GRVs, you might want to consider the possibility of a DQ for Cheating more heavily and investigate more deeply than if it was someone without that history.

That's basically what I'm saying here; by default I would not issue a CPV. However, if I think something shady is going on, I would consider the possibility of issuing CPV more heavily.

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

The way I read this is that you should be even handed; if a less-experienced player commits a GRV, you give that player a Warning, same as if the same infraction was being done by LSV or PVDDR. However, if the player has a history of similar GRVs, you might want to consider the possibility of a DQ for Cheating more heavily and investigate more deeply than if it was someone without that history.

This is an accurate interpretation. We don't take player history into account when looking at normal infractions- it doesn't matter whether we consider it “reasonable” for the player to have made that mistake due to their level of experience. We are allowed to take past behavior into account when looking at infractions that require intent (cheating and stalling), because that allows us to see if there has been a pattern of behavior.

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

by default I would not issue a CPV. However, if I think something shady is going on, I would consider the possibility of issuing CPV more heavily.

Here's where you're going wrong. If you believe the player might be committing the error intentionally, it's time for an investigation and possible DQ. For exactly the reason that you explain above, we don't look at a player's history or motivations when issuing GPEs and TE- a mistake was made, they receive the penalty, clear and simple.

As Andrew pointed out, Warnings are for both education and tracking. If you only issue the Warning when you believe that the player might be doing something shady, it is serving neither of those purposes- education is moot if the player is actually intending to cheat, and the tracking is unnecessary since you're already aware of the problem. We need the Warnings in order to establish a pattern in the first place.





That said, I think we've gone a little off-topic. The original question was whether this (honest) mistake by Neville is worth issuing a penalty for- I think that's what we should be discussing.

This is not a hypothetical scenario - it happened in a PPTQ I was judging last week.

I was not far from the table (not watching the game, just in the general area) when I heard Neville say something about a trigger being missed. Neville was one of the most experienced players in the room (he had played in several Pro-Tours and had some success in GPs) and Albus did not seem to contest his statement. Nevertheless, I decided to ask what had happened, as the Missed Trigger policy is confusing for many players.

They agreed on the description I gave in the OP. I explained that playing an instant was not enough to miss a trigger, and I encouraged them to call a judge in these situations. I had a short private discussion with Neville, to make sure that he was mistaken rather than lying, and to impress upon him that giving wrong rulings in his favor could very well be considered Cheating.

I did not issue a CPV at the time, at first because I was not sure I should, and then because I was distracted by other preoccupations. I think I should have, just in case there was a pattern of favorable misinterpretations.