At GP Cleveland, the following happened:

Players call me over to the table. Ashton tells me that, after dealing his opening hand, he flipped the top two cards of his library over. I look at the table and see seven face-down cards in the center of his playmat and his library to the right, with the top two cards askew, but currently face-down. After asking more questions, I learn that both players have seen the front of the cards. I gave a ruling and moved on.

Throughout the rest of the event, after Arrowsmith suggested I do so, I talked with more judges about this. I found that there was not a consensus as to what the ruling should have been. So I am here to ask two questions:

1) What ruling would you give? What infraction, if any, has a player committed, and what fix, if any, do you apply?
2) Does your answer change if you learn that Nolan did not see either of the two cards?

Why did AP flip the top 2 cards over? was this an accident? how did it happen?

Ashton through an error in manual dexterity has looked at two cards he isn't entitled to so has committed Looking at Extra Cards and will get a warning. Nolan holds no blame in what happened so while they have information about those two cards they have committed no infraction.

Apply standard fix of shuffling the unknown part of the library.

1.) Seems like a pretty standard Looking at Extra cards.
“B. A player flips over an extra card while drawing from his deck.”

2.) No not at all.

As Nick said, unless there is more info here we are not being told. there is nothing out of the ordinary from a LEC ruling.

Edited Steve Wellington (April 2, 2015 03:48:58 PM)

Originally posted by Nick Rutkowski:

Why did AP flip the top 2 cards over? was this an accident? how did it happen?

While putting his deck back, he had an error of dexterity and accidentally flipped the top two cards.

Ashton has dealt some cards from the top of his library face down on the table. Has Ashton drawn a card yet?

Originally posted by Pi Fisher:

Nick Rutkowski
Why did AP flip the top 2 cards over? was this an accident? how did it happen?

While putting his deck back, he had an error of dexterity and accidentally flipped the top two cards.

Ashton has dealt some cards from the top of his library face down on the table. Has Ashton drawn a card yet?

Ashton claimed that he had “dealt” the opening hand, so presumably we take his word and the 7 face-down cards are the opening hand. If the cards have been seen, it's drawn. If they have not, they're 7 random cards, which is perfectly sufficient to leave as an opening hand.

I'm not sure what you're getting at with this line of questioning.

We could argue about technicalities, but why did Ashton deal thise 7 cards face down? Yeah, that's supposed to be his opening hand there. After your opponent gave you back your deck after presenting, drawing 7 cards is the only legal and possible thing to do.

I don't see any reason to not give a L@EC Warning: it's a reminder for Ashton to be more careful in the future.

Edited Dustin De Leeuw (April 3, 2015 07:51:02 AM)

Is this about whether people would choose to leave the seven cards or shuffle them in when applying the fix (assuming that they haven't seen them)

No way I'm going there, that woudl be a huge potential for abuse! “Hmm, I don't like my 7 cards… guess I'd rather have a Warning than a mulligan, so let's flip over some extra cards and see if the judge is willing to shuffle my bad hand away.”

I see no reason to shuffle those 7 drawn cards into the library. At all.

Originally posted by Dustin De Leeuw:

No way I'm going there, that woudl be a huge potential for abuse! “Hmm, I don't like my 7 cards… guess I'd rather have a Warning than a mulligan, so let's flip over some extra cards and see if the judge is willing to shuffle my bad hand away.”

I see no reason to shuffle those 7 drawn cards into the library. At all.

Completely agree. The fix for LEC includes shuffling away the extra cards. Doing anything with the opening hand would be a deviation, and I also don't think that's warranted here.

I'm not sure what question you're trying to raise - there are a lot of “creative” ways you could try to handle this, and without knowing exactly what happened, I can't really refute your solution.

I agree with L@EC. “So this is your seven card hand? OK. We need to shuffle these extra two cards into your library. Are you going to keep or mulligan?” Then have them shuffle and give the warning.

It isn't IDSG. Cards are generally considered to be drawn when the come into contact with the player's hand. That hasn't happened here and there isn't any specific alternate definition in the IPG for IDSG, so this is not IDSG. Since the cards in hand were at all times distinct from the two extra cards, it is not necessary to force a mulligan.

You shouldn't choose to shuffle the player's hand in, as that would be a deviation. You shouldn't have him keep the two cards that were revealed and four or five of the other seven, shuffling the rest in, because that would be silly. You should make sure that the 2 extra cards were kept distinct from the hand because otherwise it is in fact IDSG and you would choose 3 of 9 and shuffle them in.