Subject: Nate Clarke on Cheating Date: Wed, 06 May 1998 04:25:55 -0700 From: Michael Bahr To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com [This is a response to the article by N. Clarke on cheating] I've just finished reading Nate Clarke's thoughts on ethics and cheating at MTG tourneys, and the events in which he let an opponent's error go uncorrected for his own benefit. As much as most of us would like to be honourable and we pretend that we'd always do the right thing, I fear that the truth is closer to what Nate said... with $1000's on the line, if the opponent screws up to your advantage, that lip's getting buttoned faster than a lesbian's fly after a bad blind date. I've seen "opponent screwups" as a judge and it's always the shittiest thing to have to intervene and correct, and to be fair I'm sure I miss far more of them than I'll ever spot... most commonly we have cases like Nate's Muscle Sliver event and the like where a creature possibly has protection from a color or a bonus from Parapet or similar effect, and is used as a chump-block or whatever by its owner, only it did not truly die by the rules and cannot legally be placed in the graveyard. I do my best to look impartial as I correct the situation and tell the players to continue, but the "winning" player wishes I'd have just looked the other way, no matter how "ethical" they are, and the "losing" player knows they REALLY got lucky and should probably have lost out entirely (the "Street Fighter 2" concession). At the very worst I at least hope the "losing" player knows to watch more carefully from then on. I don't play as much anymore, I mostly just judge. And let me tell you, as a player the temptation to cheat is just rife. I don't know how most players can stand it these days. It's so blasted *easy* to do.. and so hard to catch, even when I'm actively looking for it. If you're going to a Stronghold sealed event, of course you take a mint-from-the-pack Sword of the Chosen in just in case you pull a Mox Diamond or Dream halls, to replace and record for registration. If I catch it, I'll definitely nail the guy... but how the hell can judges ever catch a thing like that? I'm CERTAIN it's happening, because when I'm going over the registered decklistings prior to the judging staff handing them back to the players there is ALWAYS a distinct lack of quality rares. But when you see six decks registered with Lichenthropes in them, you don't know who got lucky and walked away with a Undiscovered Paradise after pulling the ol' switcheroo, and who actually pulled a Lichenthrope for real and registered their deck honestly. As a judge, you have no way of knowing, unless you're DAMNED familiar with the players in question and know one to be a habitual cheater. So what do you do? Not a damned thing... ideally, you could hand all *those* decks back to their original registerers, but usually the tourney computer program handles who gets what and/or it's done completely at random by handout, so in practice it probably never happens. And unless we get a sudden surge of extra judges (not likely to happen with the current problems happening in that area), we won't have enough people walking the floor to dissuade sleight-of-hand of this sort. I guess the question has to become "How far will a person go to maintain their integrity at a $$$ tournament?". My disappointed response to that question is "apparently not very far at all." -- - Mike Bahr - - d u r n i k @ g o o d n e t . c o m - - DCI Level II Judge -