Subject: This whole cheating thing
Date: Thu, 07 May 1998 12:50:48 -0700
From: Ed Grubaugh <thebruce@uclink4.berkeley.edu>
To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com

        Nate Clark did bring the cheating concept into a more open forum
which is comendable.  He put himself on the line and that is somewhat gutsy
(or the sign of someone who simply doesn't care).  But he is dead wrong.

        The example about the life total switching is horrid.  It's
cheating, simply put.  If you're not keeping track of your opponent's life,
and they screw up, then you are retardedly putting yourself in a posistion
where your opponent can cheat you, and this life rearrangement problem won't
be a probelem becuase as a player you'd be ignorant.  If you are keeping
track of an opponent's life, and the opponenet recorrects the life
incorrectly, lowering your total of the life is, in effect, cheating.  You
are decreasing the realistic value of your oponent's life, knowledgably.
Doing it because opportunity presented itself does not make it just.

        The muscle sliver example is even worse.  The muscle sliver blocking
the mnemonic sliver obviously dies, and the mnemonic sliver also quite as
obviously dies with understanding of the rules.  The opponent should not be
responsible to tell you every time your creature dies, "Um... that thing's
dead."  That is poor sportsmanship and an attempt to cheat your opponent.
If the thing's dead, put it away.  Leaving it out until someone points it
out is not part of the game, and it is in effect cheating.

        The Cerulean Wyvern instance is also bad.  It's similar to trying to
plow a creature that someone just sacrificed to a goblin bombardment.  You
can't do it.  Don't do it.  Don't try.  Illegally killing targets is
cheating.  This one is more of a mistake on the opponent's part than the
other two, but it's cheating.

        Playing for blood and playing for fun are two different styles, but
that does not leave only two possible choices of action.  Playing for blood
and competition does not require dubious methods of winning nor does it
premediatate foul and unethical play.  Being competitive is not equated with
being a cheater.  Many competitive people have played in many games of many
kinds, but they have not all cheated.  There are good sportsmen renouned for
fair play, and though magic isn't a sport, the best examples are found in
sports.  Wayne Gretzky is well known for his clean play.  Sandy Koufax was a
great pitcher of his time, but he didn't need to throw at people similar to
Don Drysdale or like Randy Johnson does at times.  No one ever accused Larry
Bird of cheating or playing dirty, but no one thought he wasn't competitive
either.  There are choices to be made; $5,000 is quite nice, and odds are
there are no repercussions for bad acts, so there is nothing to make not
cheating more prosperous, but, there is the ethical question and the choice
to be a good sport or a bad sport.

        Taking advantage of a poor play is fair.  If an opponent doesn't
make the right play or forgets to regenerate or something of the sort,
winning and pushing said mistake to the extreme is completely fair and
ethical and legit.  Cheating to gain advantage is a sorry excuse for playing
the game.  It may be a part of the game to try to cheat opponents, but if it
is, that's a sorry part of the game.

Thanks for listening,
-Ed

P.S.-   Cheating is playing the game by means not allowed by the rules.
Breaking the rules of the game is cheating, and nothing less.  There are set
rules that leave most circumstances as black and white circumstances.  Doing
anything other than what is allowed is the cheating circumstance.  There are
no lesser forms of cheating, only cheating.