My opponent incorrectly picks up the top card of his library (for example, he thinks the Howling Mine is still on the battlefield), looks at it and considers whether to put it into his hand or to play it (for example, it's a Miracle card — edit: bad example; Miracle does not work this way). At this point, I already know that he made an error (Looking at Extra Cards) because I remember I destroyed the Howling Mine last turn. But I wait and when, after a few more seconds, my opponent puts the new card in his hand, I call a judge who then gives a Game Loss to my opponent for Drawing Extra Cards.

Did I do something wrong, and specifically, did I Cheat?

Edited Petr Hudeček (March 26, 2015 05:47:50 AM)

Definition
A person breaks a rule defined by the tournament documents, lies to a tournament official, or notices an offense
committed in his or her (or a teammate's) match and does not call attention to it.
Additionally, the offense must meet the following criteria for it to be considered Cheating:
• The player must be attempting to gain advantage from his or her action.
• The player must be aware that he or she is doing something illegal.

You know there is something wrong + you know you gain advantage from his aciton.

You have noticed an error that the opponent has made, and chose to not call attention to it / tried to delay calling attention to it until it would be “more beneficial” to you. You are attempting to gain advantage by doing so and, if you were aware that not calling attention to errors was illegal (as determined by the HJ's investigation), you would be Cheating.

IPG 2.6 says:

A player allows another player in the game to commit a Game Play Error and does not point it out immediately. If a judge believes a player is intentionally not pointing out other players’ illegal actions, either for his or her own advantage, or in the hope of bringing it up at a more strategically advantageous time, they should consider an Unsporting Conduct — Cheating infraction. Not reminding an opponent about his or her triggered abilities is never Failure to Maintain Game State nor Cheating.

So, yes. This is Cheating.

The difficult part for you as a judge is to detect the intention.

The hard part of this is in the final definition of cheating:

“The player must be aware that he or she is doing something illegal.”

The player knew what his opponent was doing was illegal. The player was attempting to gain an advantage by not immediately calling a judge. The question is whether the player is aware that they must call a judge as soon as their opponent does something illegal.

Unless the player was very inexperienced (like, playing in their first Comp REL event), it's hard to believe that you wouldn't know to call a judge immediately. So, most likely UC - Cheating. If you buy the “I didn't know I couldn't do that!” defence, then GPE - GRV, and a very good talk with the player about how close he/she was to being disqualified.

Originally posted by Huw Morris:

it's hard to believe that you wouldn't know to call a judge immediately

This is actually required knowledge, per the MTR:

Players are responsible for:
…
• Maintaining a clear and legal game state.
…
• Calling attention to any rules or policy infraction they notice in their matches.

The sticking point is that the immediacy with which they call attention to the infraction isn't explicitly stated.

Like Huw, I'd find it very hard to believe that a player could do that and not know that it's inherently wrong. Imagine playing Monopoly, and an opponent miscounts, landing on your Boardwalk (with hotels, of course) instead of Go; it's clearly wrong not to tell them they miscounted, and that they're safely sitting on Go instead of owing you oodles of rent. This feels like a similar, basic, fundamental rule of gaming, and seems like an easy DQ.

Having said that, I've begun a number of investigations by asking another judge to get some blank sheets of paper for the ensuing DQ … only to determine that nothing really was wrong. “Never say Never”, in other words…

d:^D

What about this case, which seems somehow similar to me:

Ajani and Nissa are about to begin their match, Nissa pile shuffles her deck, keep shuffling it after, and then presents it… Ajani takes Nissa's deck, pile shuffles it and inmediatly calls a judge, he says “Nissa presented me a 59 cards deck” when I determine the deck is actually missing 1 card, I ask Ajani why did he pile shuffle just to count them, to which he replied “I saw when Nissa pile shuffled, that there was a missing card in her last pile”.

So… Ajani knew Nissa was going to present him an illegal deck, but he waited for it to actually become a Game Loss.

I think this feel the same as the L@EC waiting to become DEC. What do you guys say about this?

Santiago, in your scenario no other infraction has been committed until the deck is presented. Can't be cheating if no rule has been broken. Its super shady and not cool.

Originally posted by Santiago Calderon:

Ajani knew Nissa was going to present him an illegal deck, but he waited for it to actually become a Game Loss.

No infraction had occurred until Nissa actually presented. Up until that point, Nissa was shuffling around 59 Magic cards which is a perfectly legal thing to do. Obviously Ajani strongly suspected that Nissa was about to commit an infraction, but he's not obligated to stop her from doing so. He's only obligated to call a judge after it happens.

Oddly this is exactly the same situation that occured to me at a Regular REL event. (I obviously informed my opponent at the time that he was possibly missing a card after noticing him end his pile count on the 3rd pile instead of the 4th as would be the norm for 60 card deck into a 7 pile shuffle).

But I did wonder the ramifications and requirement to inform my opponent should it have been a Comp REL event. The general consensus was that it was a shady (very shady) thing to do, but ultimately was within the rules.

As another example - a player notices that his opponent has put two small deckboxes on the table. One contains his deck, the other contains his sideboard and some other cards. The player waits until his opponent has presented his deck (and has not presented his sideboard, it's still in the deckbox with the other cards) to call judge. No D/DLP has been committed, either in my situation or in Edward's, until the deck has been presented. It's a rules-sharking thing to do, but it's legal to wait until the deck has been presented to call attention to the error.