Originally posted by Anniek Van der Peijl:

I think obviousness of the intended card name can be defined by other things than familiarity with the format. I tend to look at things like whether the ‘candiates’ for possible card names are the same color as the rest of the deck / make the appropriate color of mana for the deck they are in. If someone writes ‘Vessel’ on a mono-green standard decklist, I'm willing to assume it's Vessel of Nascency. If the deck is red/green, tough luck. This way I don't need to know anything about the format, and I don't need to make judgements about what's strategically obvious.

But with this strategy you have to take into account what every mana generating card does. So you need to know that Modern Affinity can play Springleaf Drum which can make mana of any color. Therefore every modern legal card can be played in Affinity and we are back to familiarity with the format.

Originally posted by Anniek Van der Peijl:

I think obviousness of the intended card name can be defined by other things than familiarity with the format. I tend to look at things like whether the 'candiates' for possible card names are the same color as the rest of the deck / make the appropriate color of mana for the deck they are in. If someone writes 'Vessel' on a mono-green standard decklist, I'm willing to assume it's Vessel of Nascency. If the deck is red/green, tough luck. This way I don't need to know anything about the format, and I don't need to make judgements about what's strategically obvious.

If I read Eli's proposed downgrade clause correctly, there's not much guessing. We still have to perform a check to ensure the “ambiguous” card is an actual card and then fix the decklist to the full card name so as to remove the “ambiguity”.

Downgrade: If a decklist includes a small number of incomplete, abbreviated, or incorrectly transcribed card names that could refer to multiple cards, briefly look through the player’s deck. If the ambiguous names clearly correspond to specific cards in the player’s deck, the Head Judge may issue a warning and correct the decklist. The downgrade for “incorrectly transcribed card names” never applies to an item on a decklist that is the full name of a format-legal Magic card, even if the player obviously intended a different card with a similar name.

So even in the “Fire and Ice” scenario, we're going to check what the card actually is. Just that it happens if the player left off some wording when writing out their deck list, we can downgrade the normal penalty to a Warning. That seems a reasonable idea on the surface, since we still have to verify the card is what it is, and our only presumption is that the player had a small lapse when writing the list. Something more problematic, and the clause no longer applies.

My principle concern is that the clause is a addressing a relatively minor corner case scenario, where we're downgrading only a very small percentage of situations because stuff like “Lighting, Lighting” just doesn't happen that often. Yes, individual such occurrences stand out because we're really good at remembering these exceptions to the norm… But that's because people are better at recalling such exceptions and then we falsely project that as being a more frequent situation, when it is not. Hence my question of: How many such Game Losses become Warnings?

We don't craft policy by exception. We craft policy by examining player behavior and event situations, so as to address broad and frequent concerns. If this clause only addresses a very infrequent situation and would rarely be applied, then I believe it is adding more to a section of the MIPG that already suffers from a significant amount of density. We're not adding much value at all.

In which case, are we better off doing more with pre-event announcements and player education? Sure, we can forgive these “small lapses” in a few situations, but should we be doing more to prevent the problem entirely? That way players don't ever risk the “win, lose, or draw” outcome where an incomplete card name could be any one of three outcomes.

Not sure if this makes much of a difference, but how many of these sorts of errors are being detected outside of a deck check these days?

Originally posted by Gareth Tanner:

Not sure if this makes much of a difference, but how many of these sorts of errors are being detected outside of a deck check these days?

At smaller tournaments, many, where “smaller” is defined as “5 rounds of Swiss or less”. At tournaments of that size, judges actually have the time to read the decklists while they're counting them, and errors that pop up get dealt with. At least this is how it works at most events I've worked at. Also, the top 8 of every event should get the decklists scrutinized at least, so if there is an error there it will get found (although players who are good enough to Top 8 tend to also be practiced enough at filling out decklists to not make many of these mistakes, but that's another story).

I thought current philosophy was even counting lists shouldn't be something you look to do and being on the floor watching games is a better use of judge time.

Originally posted by Gareth Tanner:

I thought current philosophy was even counting lists shouldn't be something you look to do and being on the floor watching games is a better use of judge time.

While that is generally true, I also follow the same principle as Lyle in checking all the decklists of the top 12-16 players remaining in the event in the second to last round. At a minimum, this helps to ensure there are no decklist problems for the Top 8 players that are submitted to WotC.

Since each decklist usually only takes a minute or two to check, it doesn't take away that much away from floor coverage for too long. Though that depends on staffing for the event and other factors.

Originally posted by Gareth Tanner:

I thought current philosophy was even counting lists shouldn't be something you look to do and being on the floor watching games is a better use of judge time.

This is not something I've heard of. I've always seen lists being counted at every event I've worked at of any sort of importance (i.e. not at FNM, but at pretty much any tournament of higher level). Perhaps this is a new thing, or perhaps it's regional difference.

Originally posted by Lyle Waldman:

This is not something I've heard of. I've always seen lists being counted at every event I've worked at of any sort of importance (i.e. not at FNM, but at pretty much any tournament of higher level). Perhaps this is a new thing, or perhaps it's regional difference.

Kevin discussed this change for GPs in 2013:

The emerged part of the iceberg is that we are not trying anymore to count all decklists by the end of round 1 and focus on decklist sorting, deck checking and floor covering instead.

Over time, the decreased focus on counting has expanded at GPs - I don't think I've counted a list outside of a deck check at a GP at all in 2016.

As for in-store events, Uncle Scott made an Official Announcement about it last year:

So, here's the conclusion: don't waste round 1 counting to 60 (or 40)! Make sure you have a list for every player in the event, then get out there and do mid-round deck checks. Be aggressive doing deck checks - but not at the expense of floor coverage.

You may also have noticed a number of judges emphasizing this in the Tournament Reports forum - there are regular reports where judges count all the lists, go out and issue D/DLPs for clerical errors in Round 2 and 3, so they don't get to any actual checks until Round 4 or 5… when the players who may have been cheating are now in a position to draw into Top 8.