In general, judges seem to say that we do not penalize or give infractions for offenses that occured in games already finished. However, I could not find actual policy support for this. Perhaps you can help me?

Suppose a player plays with a 59-card deck, wins and during sideboard, discovers the problem. Do we issue him a gameloss for the next game?

Or suppose the player paid 3W for Wrath of God in a game. Following that, his opponent scooped, and then we discover the issue. Do we give him the Warning for GRV?

For both situations, I welcome both policy and philosophy explanations.

There are several issues with giving retroactive penalties. One of the major issues is knowing whether or not the penalty actually occurred. Most of my argument will be based upon Philosophy.

Take your 59-card question, for instance (this is a rather common problem judges get called for). The player is currently sideboarding, meaning two things, granted that the contents of the deck + sideboard match that of the decklist: one - that we cannot determine ourselves that the deck was indeed illegal during said game and; two - the deck is currently legal, as it has not been presented as such for the upcoming game. In my experience, players who realize this mistake will usually concede on their own conscience, even after being told that there is no penalty (assuming that a Cheating investigation comes up empty). In addition to this, but on a much lesser note, not retroactively penalizing such an infraction prevents opponents from holding this knowledge when they are winning a game, then calling a judge over to get a GL and win the match. Such instances are much rarer, but this standpoint prevents such a scenario.

Towards the GRV question, it's a matter of when the issue was discovered. Say the opponent had scooped and just then and there realized the mistake while we could still verify it. At that point, a penalty may be able to be issued on the judge's discretion. But if the opponent had scooped and the Wrath of God player had already cleaned up, then it becomes unverifiable.

This is my personal take on the situation, although do note that others will have theirs as well in due time. Hope this helps. :)

As Peter mentioned, there is no direct evidence of the infraction at this point because the game doesn't exist anymore.

Even more importantly though, one of the primary goals of assessing penalties is to educate players. If a player is sideboarding, realizes he has only 59 cards, and calls a judge, what lesson do we really want him to learn? The player knows he is supposed to have 60 cards. He knows not having 60 is a big problem. He knows he is supposed to call a judge when he sees a problem. But we can't positively prove that there were only 59 during the game, there is nothing to fix at this point, and the player is calling the infraction on himself.

So if we give him a game loss now, the only thing the player learns is that calling a judge on himself is a bad idea. That isn't a lesson we want players to learn, so giving this penalty just doesn't make sense.

I would like to point out that there are some penalties that we do hand out retroactively. You can hand out a DQ’s for Cheating/Bribery after the tournament has ended if you believe these offences occurred.



I would go so far as to say that I can’t find anything in policy to support giving out, or not giving out any penalty after it has happened. So I believe that you’re within the guidelines if you want to give out a GRV for something that happened in a previous match. But, unless the infraction is a “serious problem” I think you’d be doing more harm than good, so don’t do it.



From: Petr Hudecek
Sent: July-20-13 4:07 AM
To: thatoldguy81@gmail.com
Subject: Retroactively giving infractions (Competitive REL)



In general, judges seem to say that we do not penalize or give infractions for offenses that occured in games already finished. However, I could not find actual policy support for this. Perhaps you can help me?

Suppose a player plays with a 59-card deck, wins and during sideboard, discovers the problem. Do we issue him a gameloss for the next game?

Or suppose the player paid 3W for Wrath of God in a game. Following that, his opponent scooped, and then we discover the issue. Do we give him the Warning for GRV?

For both situations, I welcome both policy and philosophy explanations.

——————————————————————————–
If you want to respond to this thread, simply reply to this e-email. Or view and respond to this message on the web at http://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/post/28823/ <http://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/post/28823/%20>

Disable all notifications for this topic: http://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/noemail/5108/
Receive on-site notifications only for this topic: http://apps.magicjudges.org/forum/noemail/5108/

You can change your email notification settings at http://apps.magicjudges.org/profiles/edit

Once the match has ended it's tricky to go back and give an infraction based on what is most likely inaccurate information. If the game is already over just thank the players for their honesty, remind both players that they're responsible for the game state and then move on. It's a rough precedent to penalize someone long after the fact. Again, cheating/severe USC things fall outside this realm.