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07-09-2001
 Cheating - and the perils of playing Judge, Jury & Executioner
Last weekend I played in the last of the Sydney GP trials for GP Brisbane.
As always, Chris Foggin ran a great event.
An issue came up, however, and I feel I must make a post on the topic.
The topic is, of course, "Cheating".
The issue happened in the first round with 2 players (let's say Player B
& Player A). The match is locked at 1 game all and Player A thinks that there
is something fishy with the way that Player B has shuffled his deck.
Player A draws 7 cards, but only 1 land. He mulligans, reshuffles and
Player B again shuffles his deck in a dubious manner. Player A draws 6
cards and no land. Player B wins the third game as Player A has to take
a sub-optimal hand. Player A broods on the issue and mentions it to me
after round 4 and asks me what can be done about the result.
Answer: Nothing.
Player A's error was not calling a judge immediately. Nothing can be done
at this point except for starting rumours about Player B, which is
probably an even worse result.
Players who do not call judges over for infringements, no matter how small,
are not only robbing themselves of a fun day, but they aren't letting the
judges do their job. My point is that everyone makes mistakes, I've
made heaps myself, but if these infringements aren't tracked then the
DCI has a much harder job of finding out who the real cheats are. They
have penalty records for all players and can track patterns of
infringement over a period of time. If players accidentally draw extra
cards, then punish them in accordance with the DCI penalty Guidelines
(that's what they're there for). If they do it regularly then it becomes
a larger matter.
As for making comments to other players instead of calling a judge,
this would have to be worse than cheating itself and should have harsher
penalties. On the Pro Tour, most of the players are much more worried
about getting the stigma of being known as a "cheat", than the actual
penalty itself. Unfounded comments about players cheating can cause a
player to be hounded by all others, which is not really fair if the
error was a genuine mistake, and I think we've all made a few - I'll
list a few of mine:
I called the illegal deck, the marked sleeves and 2 of the 3
sideboarding offences on myself - so most people realise that it's the
latter, but these offences are of the same severity as "drawing extra
cards", "slow play" & "unsportsmanlike conduct - major". If I ever get
into trouble for one of these then I would appreciate some
understanding.
I'm sure you would to.
Unfortunately, this often leaves judges in the position of jury &
executioner as well. Nobody likes the cop that books you, nobody likes
the referee that penalises your team and nobody likes the judge that gives
you a game loss for a trivial oversight.
I'd really like to get this point across - what goes on during a match
should be left at the card table. On Sunday I played Ben Seck in the
last round and called a judge to monitor his sideboarding, as he was
taking too long. He was given the appropriate penalty. I called the
judges for slow play again later in the round (which, in retrospect, was
overkill), but at the end of the day we realised where we were both coming
from, and we would never hold our competitive natures against each
other. ("No", I don't think Ben would ever cheat and "Yes", he did beat
me).
At the same time we can draw other conclusions from this.
Everyone wants to win. That's the driving force that makes us
competitive - some people just want it too much, and that's the other
point I need to make - we play to have fun, if you think it's anything
more than that you really have ask yourself some serious questions.
What is the most we will ever get out of the game???
If you answered "fun/enjoyment", "no", "no" and "no" then hopefully
you understand why judges do what they do. As for keeping the "real
cheats" out of our game, I'll highlight the main points from David
Price's Mindripper article:
May 16, 1998
The full article is worth a read and is available at:
http://magic.mindripper.com/index.cfm?Site=1&Show=Archive
That's it from me. I'll see you at either the Wollongong GP trial this
Saturday or the IBC at Rockdale on Sunday. The full Sydney tournament
calender is available at:
"Foggo's house of fun & joy" - http://www.users.bigpond.com/egg/
All the best. |
