The Burden of Correctness
RIP, table judging. We hardly knew you.
Perhaps an explanation is in order. Those of you who have played in the elimination rounds of a Pro Tour Qualifier or watched the coverage of a Professional level event in the last few years may have noticed a judge sitting at the table, tracking the match and officially keeping track of the game state. Almost as if the judge was serving as a human version of Magic Online.
You may not have noticed, however, that this practice ended in the last year.
Given the prizes at stake in the Top 8, especially in high level events played for large amounts of cash, this doesn't make obvious sense. Intuitively, it seems like table judging is the right thing to do: ensuring correct game play and tracking accurate game state, so that everyone can be sure that nothing goes awry during these high profile matches.
So why has table judging gone on indefinite hiatus, and is that a smart decision in the face of events like the Top 8 in the 2007 MSS Championships?
Responsibility
For those of you who have played Magic Online, have you ever gone on auto-pilot? Just mindlessly clicking the OK button to pass priority until something interesting happens, and then cursing yourself madly when you click past a trigger you didn't mean to skip or past a phase where you needed to do something?
If you've gone through a stretch where you only played online and got used to it before returning to playing Magic in real life, you may have found that it dulled your instincts about the game and made you miss things that you didn't used to forget. An effect here, a card interaction there, a trigger or two—nothing that seems particularly major, but that all add up to cost you a close, frustrating game.
These problems are neither uncommon nor hard to understand, and they share the same root cause. At its core, Magic is a game about interactions, and becoming highly skilled at the game largely boils down to seeing all of the interactions, both the ones visible from the public game state and the potential interactions that might come about from hidden information. Magic is thus designed to provide many of these interactions in every game, and a big part of success comes from keeping track of them all.
Magic Online, by virtue of its design goal of ensuring technically correct play and guaranteeing accurate game state, handles does a lot of this tracking for the players. It assumes responsibility for tracking game state, triggers, and other parts of the game, and players naturally come to rely on this and stop tracking those things themselves.
Table judging had the same goals and used the same methodology, but with an important difference. Computers are consistent, and other than the occasional bug (which will always occur predictably), are not prone to the types of mistakes that players make. Judges, on the other hand, are. They will forget information about the game state, lose track of events when the pace of play is too quick, and will otherwise simply make mistakes. Even so, players will still rely on them as if they were infallible.
This abdication of responsibility caused table judging to backfire, resulting in some of the most high-profile mistakes [For example, the nonexistant mana in Billy Moreno's quarterfinals match at Pro Tour LA in 2005 -Seamus] in Magic's history. Players abdicated their responsibility for their own games, which ironically led to there being less vigilant eyes on a match rather than more, even with the addition of an extra person. They also began to blame judges for their own actions, decisions, and mistakes, because responsibility felt like it rested with the table judge.
Ending the practice of table judging and making it clear that responsibility rests with the players has helped to reverse these problems and lessen the number of mistakes that occur. And though mistakes are still inevitable from time to time, those mistakes are psychologically easier to swallow because they are under the player's control, not ones thrust upon them by somebody else.
Mistakes
When we say that responsibility for a match falls with the players, this refers to more than just the inner workings of the game state. It refers to everything that happens surrounding a game of Magic and anything that can possibly go wrong with it. From the deck that a player builds, brings, and registers to the reporting of the final result, every player is responsible for what happens throughout.
If something does go wrong, the judges are there to fix the situation as appropriate, issue penalties, and to make sure (as much as possible) that the mistake doesn't unduly affect the fairness of the game for either player.
Of course, nobody likes to make mistakes and nobody likes to be penalized under any circumstance, but some penalties seem to sting more than others. Errors that have to do with core gameplay (drawing extra cards, forgetting a trigger, playing a spell improperly) are unfortunate, but it's obvious that they've affected the correctness of a game and need to be rectified.
Penalties like tardiness, registration errors with a decklist, or sleeves that have become marked through wear and tear, however, can be much more frustrating. They have to do with tournament policy, rather than actual gameplay. In many cases, players feel like they shouldn't be as important because they aren't intentional and don't lead to any "actual" problems. The impact of these types of problems is much less obvious, as is why they matter, which leads to much more negative reactions to these penalties.
Take, as an example, a mental lapse that leads to a problem with a player's decklist in a constructed event. These errors sometimes seem to be clearly accidental, innocuous, and easily corrected. And yet, there's a nontrivial penalty associated with any such error. Given that there are mistakes that can happen during a game, where an actual game rule has been broken, which result in the same or lesser penalties, how does this make any sense?
Exploitability
Take any possible infraction that might happen during a match. What kind of disadvantage might a player be at if their opponent commits that infraction? In some cases, this is an easy calculation to make. Drawing extra cards, for example, is clear—having an extra card relative to an opponent is clearly a big advantage. In others, it's less obvious. Being a little late to a match possibly disadvantages your opponent, who has a right to the entire match time in which to attempt to win two games.
Obvious or not, every infraction has some way in which it might lead to an advantage for one player or a disadvantage for the other (while these are fundamentally the same, thinking of it one way or the other can sometimes make it more clear what the possible problem is). And whether or not the full extent of that advantage was manifested in any specific infraction, the possibility for that advantage is the metric that is used, in order to prevent judges from having to determine exactly how much advantage was or wasn't gained (particularly because these judgments frequently require a level of strategic insight that judges aren't required to have).
This is not, however, the only reason for penalties. One of the least-well kept secrets in any sport or activity that involves rules and judges or referees is this: not every mistake is caught, and not every problem is corrected. Again, this falls back to the fallibility of people—they can't see or keep track of everything that happens.
Penalties are not simply reactive; they don't exist solely to punish those who have already committed an infraction. There is also an element to them which is proactive. Because not every infraction is going to be caught and corrected, it is in everyone's interests to put some effort into preventing them from happening in the first place, to minimize the number of occurrences of these mistakes. The best way to do this is by making sure that players pay close enough attention to make sure that they don't take place.
By and large, players want to do the right thing. They want to play the game cleanly and fairly. The penalty guidelines and associated list of infractions provide a framework that allows players to do this. By indicating the types of things that might go wrong, as well as associating those things with penalties, the penalty guidelines bring these issues to players' attention. And the various levels of penalties associated with each helps prioritize which ones are more dangerous and which are less. Ideally, this wouldn't matter, and people would avoid making any mistakes whatsoever. Realistically, though, people will make accidental errors from time to time, and it's better for everyone if these errors fall into the camp of the less serious rather than the more serious. Having a prioritization helps players to know which is which and focus more on avoiding the problems that are more severe.
There are, however, unfortunately some people who aren't out to do the right thing. An unfortunate truth to any game is that there are always some players who don't intend to play by the rules. Who set out to cheat to try and gain an unfair advantage in the hopes of doing better than they otherwise might.
Of course, cheating is entirely unacceptable and is dealt with harshly—disqualification and possible DCI sanction, regardless of the specific infraction. This is parallel to the standard penalties for infractions for a specific reason—committing any infraction deliberately, rather than accidentally, constitutes cheating and is not tolerated. Oftentimes players who are being penalized with a game loss feel like they're being accused of cheating and wonder why they're being called out for trying to gain an advantage when they made an innocent mistake. This is not what's happening, however. If a judge actually believes that an infraction was committed on purpose, then cheating comes into play and the penalty is something else entirely.
Unfortunately, like with everything else, judges don't always catch everyone who's cheating, and sometimes deliberate infractions aren't seen as deliberate. This is, unfortunately, not an easily solved problem, if it is possible to solve it at all. The penalties for offenses that are not deliberately committed are thus also written to try and improve this situation as much as possible.
They are written to be sufficiently harsh as to be a deterrent for anyone who might be tempted to cheat casually, so that they remember to do what's right. For those who proceed anyway, even in the situations where the deliberate infraction isn't seen as such, the penalties are designed to be a fair offset to the advantage that might have been gained, so that at least the situation at hand is rectified as best as possible, and in a consistent way that accounts for the fact that various judges might have different skill levels, and may have differing levels of ability to deduce what's happening.
The combination of these factors leads to the underlying philosophy behind the penalty guidelines—the concept of exploitability. How much advantage might have been gained by an infraction, to what degree is it important that we deter it from happening, and how bad would it be if somebody chose to exploit that behavior to their benefit anyway? The more exploitable an infraction is in terms of potentially producing advantage, the higher the penalty to compensate for that infraction, and to serve as a deterrent against it happening in the first place.
This principle can help to make it clear why some factors external to actual gameplay are penalized so heavily. Consider, as a common example, the case of marked cards with a pattern. A pattern can be as simple as a noticeable scuff from shuffling on a set of lands, or on a particular batch of cards that share a common property (burn spells, white cards, etc …). These oftentimes can develop over the natural course of play, through wear and tear and through the particular ways in which players physically manipulate their cards.
Many times, players aren't aware that these markings have developed. They didn't deliberately cause them to occur, nor is there any advantage being gained from them. And yet, the penalty for marked cards when there is a pattern is a Game Loss. At first blush, this seems harsh when no advantage was gained, and this is a common argument that judges hear from players receiving that penalty.
Consider, however, the exploitability. The possible advantage gained from this pattern is immense, and it could lead to a form of stacking the deck. Giving out a game loss for this happening inadvertently isn't a statement that a judge believes that something deliberately unfair happened (that falls under cheating, as all other deliberate infractions do), but it is a statement of how much advantage might have been gained that the judge and other player might have missed, and of the degree to which the DCI believes it's important for players to stay vigilant against this infraction, to prevent it from ever happening in the first place.
Preventative Measures
In trying to avoid a marked cards penalty, players occasionally resort to a practice commonly used in many situations to try and gain assurances that nothing is awry. They'll ask a judge to confirm that everything looks okay and then proceed with reckless abandon, assuming that they're immune to having to worry about the issue for the rest of the tournament.
This is, however, another manifestation of the problem that removing table judges was designed to fix. It's an attempt by players—though usually not consciously or maliciously—to abdicate responsibility for their own actions and decisions.
What matters, when everything comes down to it, is whether the game is fair for both players. Because the players are the ones actually involved in the game, manipulating materials and making decisions, this is something that only the players can ultimately ensure, and is a responsibility that is explicitly assigned to them. Every player is responsible for making sure that they play in a manner in which no potentially undue advantage is gained through the violation of rules or policy.
This doesn't mean that the judges aren't involved, or that they don't want to help. As best as they're capable, each judge is there to provide more data to help players to make the right decisions. This is different, however, from taking over the responsibility for those decisions, for a number of reasons.
A judge's perspective is their best attempt, at a particular moment in time, at determining what's happening. Sometimes this snapshot won't be accurate. Some problems that end up obviously leading to advantage later aren't obvious before the fact, and won't always be caught by any given judge. Sometimes things will change between when a judge renders an opinion and when a problem is actually detected. In the worst case, a malicious player might deliberately change things to give themselves an advantage after they've gotten an okay from a judge to presumably shield them.
This is a distinction that isn't always communicated well. Answering whether or not sleeves are marked, whether a decklist looks okay, or any of the other common questions a judge might receive before a tournament begins, is fine, and something that judges are generally happy to help with. But that answer is just a consultation, and is only advice. Ultimately, it's still the player's responsibility to have done things correctly and to ensure that there is nothing exploitable in their deck or in their gameplay. Any other policy would require something impossible from judges and would ultimately be exploitable in its own right. This is something that judges need to do a better job of communicating, and for any of you who are judges, this is a good thing to remember and to work on spreading throughout your player base.
Case in Point
All of this leads to the situation in the quarterfinals of this year's MSS Championships. Ingrid Lind-Jahn, the head judge of that tournament, has already written about the details of the game loss that was issued.
Hopefully, if the rest of this article has been clear, the principles behind Ingrid's decision and why it was correct should mostly already be spelled out. It's unfortunate that there was a judge appearing to okay the deck in question, without sufficiently communicating the fact that the player remained responsible for the integrity and fairness of the deck, but it's important to be aware that that responsibility is not one that can ever be abdicated by a player.
The other contentious point of this specific situation that hasn't been addressed yet is the timing. It tends to make a penalty feel worse when it happens in the middle or near the end of a match, and particularly if it ends up being (on the surface) the deciding factor in that match. Especially when it's a match that somebody was "about to win".
The idea that an appropriately applied penalty is the deciding factor, however, is fallacious. This specific case is a good example of this. Would the game have unfolded the way that it did had the marking of the deck not been present? There's no way actually to know, since the state of the game was invalid in the first place due to the infraction. So there are many factors involved in how the game played out and how it ended, not simply the penalty itself.
It's very common for attention to be focused on the player who receives a penalty whenever a high-profile situation develops. It's natural to assume, unless they were cheating, that they are the protagonist and to be sympathetic to their position. Remember, however, that customer service and treating the player base right means watching out for the interests of all players, not just the one that you're addressing at that moment.
Put yourself into the shoes of the opponent, knowing that you've played the match at a disadvantage because of something that your opponent did that was out of your control. Suppose that no penalty was issued because it was "too late", or because the judges didn't want to have a penalty be the "deciding factor". Putting yourself in their shoes makes it much more obvious that it's not fair to focus only on the penalized player and what they might have missed out on; there's somebody else who's equally exposed to possibly losing out. It also makes it clear that even though it's obviously more ideal to catch and correct things early, so that as much of a match as possible can be played out fairly, it's still better to correct a situation late than it is to let it go and never correct it at all.
Abstract philosophy aside, here are some thoughts on the most common viewpoints that we saw in the forums of Ingrid's report:
- "A game loss at this point in the match is effectively a DQ." There is a big difference between a disqualification for cheating and a game loss for marked cards with a pattern, even when that game loss effectively ends the tournament for a player. A disqualification for cheating states that the judges believe that the infraction was intentional, and results in an investigation that may lead to sanctions including suspension, as well as a player forfeiting any prizes they may otherwise have won. The game loss issued, on the other hand, reflects the fact that the judges believed that there was no malicious intent and is confined to this tournament, as well as allowing the player to still collect any due prizes.
- "Game losses shouldn't be handed out during the Top 8. If it's not cheating, then play on, or at least handle the penalty next round when it doesn't end the match." This sounds good only when looked at from the perspective of the player who committed the infraction. It's an innocent mistake, so why not give them a chance to continue on and play with an "appropriate" remedy rather than end their tournament? From the perspective of the other player, though, this is blatantly unfair. The infraction well might have cost the other player the match, and though they're the ones that were wronged, they're out of the tournament and it's the next opponent that gets to reap the benefits.
- "How can a player be expected to worry about this after a judge has signed off on the deck?" The key point here is, all that a judge is capable of doing here is offering their opinion on the current state of the deck. This can't be construed as absolving the player of the overall responsibility of playing with a fair and unmarked deck, and it's not even reasonably possible to do this even if it were the intent. Too much can change between when a judge sees the deck and the point at which a problem is discovered, and in the worst case, it's too easy for somebody to get sign-off before going and cheating intentionally (or making sure that their deck is marked in a way that is difficult to detect so that the judge will miss it). This is why it's important that the standard is that the deck must always be fair and unmarked, and no amount of assurance in advance can change that. This is the point, as Ingrid mentioned, where the biggest problem took place. The player involved didn't have it sufficiently well communicated that overall responsibility still resided with them, and communication of this policy is something that the DCI as a whole needs to get better about.
- "Giving a penalty at the end of Game 3 is substantially different than issuing one at the beginning of the round." Other than the perception of the players involved, there's little difference between the two. Suppose the game loss had been handed out at the beginning. We "know" that the next two games they played were split between the players, so the same result would have occurred anyway. A reasonable argument could be made that we don't know that that's the case, since the first two games might have played out differently if the penalty had been issued and the infraction corrected right off the bat, and this is true. However, this is a statement as to how things have unfolded differently due to the infraction in the first place, and argues why it's not fair to just let the results stand the way they were.
- "The Head Judge's word is final, so their approval of the deck should have been sufficient." This is a bit of a fine line, but there's a difference between having final jurisdiction and being fully responsible for everything that happens. The head judge does have final say on how things will be ruled, but this does not mean that their decisions are set in stone and unchangeable even when new data comes in. In the end, the head judge's responsibility is to make sure that the right thing happens in any circumstance that comes up in that tournament given what they know at that time. Again there are evidently some communication issues here and this is something that the DCI continues to work on, but players aren't intended to have the impression the that head judge's okay for the current state of a deck absolves them of the responsibility of making sure that it actually is, and that it remains that way. If it becomes clear that there was some potential advantage gained that wasn't evident before, that situation needs to be corrected regardless of any previous statements.
Wrapping Up
High-level DCI philosophy regarding such issues as penalties and tournament procedures are constantly on the move, as we find newer and better ways to make tournaments more fair, more sporting, and better for all players. Keep in mind that this is my own explanation for the current state-of-the-art in policy, rather than an official statement. That said, through discussions with many other high-level judges and officials in the program, one blanket idea is clear as the message that you should take away. Judges are here to ensure, as best as we can, a level playing field and the integrity of a tournament, and policy is written to allow us to do so consistently, regardless of personal experience or strategic skill. Yet, ultimately, responsibility and accountability lies with the players, who are responsible for the game, their own actions, and their own decisions.
Given recent events and the stakes that are sometimes involved in penalties, this is obviously going to be a contentious subject. Any and all are encouraged to make their thoughts known in the forums, though please remember to keep things civil.
Thanks, as always, to Karen Degi, for her appropriately brutal feedback.
Next week: Sheldon Menery returns with his ballot for the Magic Hall of Fame.
Next month: The topic previously intended for this month. One of the most visible and common functions of a judge is to watch the floor, answering rules questions from players as those questions come up during a match. Since the match is in progress, the answers necessarily can affect the way that match unfolds. While it's important to address these questions to make sure that interactions play out correctly and no game rules are violated, it's also the case that these questions can violate the impartiality so important to effective judging. How do we walk that tightrope, and where is the line between informing and coaching?
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Nicholas J. Fang
DCI Certified Level 3 Judge—Redmond, WA
mtgjudge@gmail.com
Agbaar and Ag|Work on EFnet's #mtgjudge
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