Originally posted by Nathen Millbank:

To me, the IPG states that a missing sideboard card should not result in a penalty, this is game two where any individual card in Jake's pool can be considered a sideboard card, so there is no D/DL penalty right now.

IPG 3.5 Sideboards are considered to be a part of the deck for the purpose of this infraction. If sideboard cards are missing, make a note of this, but issue no penalty.

You are correct that missing sideboard cards won't cause a GL, but is it a sideboard card that's missing?

Let's think about the definition of what a sideboard card is. 100.4b In limited play involving individual players, all cards in a player’s card pool not included in his or her deck are in that player’s sideboard.

Does that mean during games 2 and 3, main deck cards that are sided out (or lost) become sideboard cards?

This seems like a DDLP - GL. Jake presented an illegal deck for game 1 of 3 matches (rounds 3, 4, and 5), and we penalize him with a GL for that, even if his match is already finished.

I wouldn't give him a ML (3 GLs for 3 DDLPs), as the root cause is the same, I would only give 1 DDLP here.

Originally posted by Sal Cortez:

This means A: he knows he's missing a card and did not tell a judge, and B: he fixed it himself by adding a card to his deck from his sideboard so he has 40 cards.

Or C) he ended up with another card in his deck by mistake. He might have forgotten to de-sideboard; or, given that many players are using similar sleeve, he may have accidentally shuffled in an opponent's card into his library(though that just kicks the question down the line, since we don't know why that player didn't notice a problem)

Deck - Decklist Error, Game Loss applied to the current game of the current Match (game 2). Players may sideboard for game 3 if Jake won game 1. Perform a deck check on Jake's pool, make sure that there are no cards in there from outside the registered pool. A brief interview with Jake about how and when his card might have gone missing and when was the last time he remembered seeing it, just to rule out the possibility of cheating. Since Jake cannot show us the Abzan Guide that should have been in his main deck Game 1, we can safely prove that it wasn't in his deck for Game 1 of the current match and therefore he was playing with an illegal deck. If he had it in Game 1 and he never left his seat between the end of Game 1 and now, then he should still have the card. We CANNOT prove anything about Jake's deck during previous rounds of the tournament, since the card we found might not have been Jake's, or maybe Jake found another Abzan Guide lying around and assumed it was his missing card, and then lost it again in a previous round.

I am also very curious to learn how the card's owner was discovered if he didn't call a judge on himself.

Edited Kainoa Pestana (Nov. 10, 2014 05:42:01 PM)

Originally posted by Joshua Feingold:

How this situation arose will be explained in detail on Tuesday.

Oh boy! Today's the big day! I'm anxious to know what exactly happened :p

It's time to bring this week's discussion to a close. We have a pretty even split in our answers between a single Game Loss for a Deck/Deck List Problem and no infraction. Since we have an area on which we are focused, let's dive into the relevant bits of the definition:

Originally posted by IPG 3.5:

A player commits one or more of the following errors involving deck contents or registration:

• The contents of the presented deck and sideboard do not match the decklist registered.
  

Sideboards are considered to be a part of the deck for the purpose of this infraction. If sideboard cards are missing, make a note of this, but issue no penalty

When we discover that Jake does not have an Abzan Guide in his deck, we can say that the contents of the presented deck and sideboard do not match the decklist registered. However, if we keep reading, we see that if sideboard cards are missing, no penalty is issued. Because we are in game 2 of the match, the Abzan Guide is considered to be part of his sideboard along with all other cards that he opened and is not currently playing in his presented deck. This means that no penalty will be issued based on the current game.

However, we also have to contend with the issue of the previous games in which we know he was playing without Abzan Guide even though it was required to be there because he had marked it in his “played” column. This is easily resolved by looking at the language of the IPG: "the contents of the presented deck and sideboard do not match.“ Notably, this sentence doesn't say ”did not." A D/DLP for a mismatch between a deck and deck list can only be assigned based on the currently presented deck in a currently ongoing game. Currently, there is no infraction, so we issue no infraction.

Return Jake's Abzan Guide to him. Remind him to check the play area carefully when he stands up. Issue the appropriate extension, and have the players play on.

If you are interested in finding out how the real version of this situation occurred and was investigated and resolved, read this tournament report.

I have visited the blog today and noted that no answer has been posted. Next week will be 3 months since the original blog thread was posted. Will there be a post, so we can all learn how to handle this situation in the future?

In this situation, it would be important to me how he constructed his first deck of each round, which is supposed to be the same. Yes, he has 40 cards in his deck, but is one of them another Abzan Guide? Maybe he pulled two from his Sealed Pool and was using the second one instead of the first. I guess there's just more we need to know about the scenario to help determine a penalty (like TE-D/DLP).

The answer is in the post just above yours.

Edited Scott Marshall (Jan. 28, 2015 05:06:28 PM)

The blog post has also been updated; it seems the KP team missed posting that answer - Sorry!