Subject: incident at worlds.
Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 17:01:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: Michael Feuell <elf@cie.cendant.com>
To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com

I've little doubt in my mind that there will be a degree of public
crucification of Mike Long for receiving a match loss at Nationals.
I caught plenty of the early witch hunt while I was out there. And so
while I had the opportunity I conducted my own investigation of the
matter discussing in quite some degree of detail the match with about
dozens of relevant people and countless people that just had an
opinion. (of which there appeared to be a great supply) :*)

My conclusion in short is that regardless of his past and reputation
for "alternate interpretations of fair play", despite all that, in
this case he really wasn't guilty of any wrong doing. I'm quite sure
of this. I personally table judged Mike Long in the finals and several
times during the swiss. His style of play (shifting around, chattering,
distracting mind games) leads to very suspicious looking behavior and
so I maintained a close watch on him (as I did on a lot of the players
there). I believe that this time (at the very least) he played without
cheating. In paticular during the last rounds of the swiss, his
strategy appeared to be less about winning or losing and more about
not getting ejected for something dumb.

As many people know from my experiences with the MPA and setting up
the ethics committee for the MTPA, and my experience as a level III
judge, I am very intolerant of any style of cheating. However I don't
think we should be calling people on things that didn't happen.

The kind of stuff I was hearing people saying was shocking me, mind
you it was all based on second hand rumours, and they were ready to
string this guy up. I'm not sure how many of the facts I'm allowed to
discuss without betraying the trust the DCI has in me as a level 3
judge, but I suppose I can say that he had a 60 card deck, and that
witnesses recall that he pile shuffled his deck and there were 60
cards in his deck at the beginning of the game. (I mention this one
point solely because a number of the rumours I heard were based on a
mistaken assumption that he had 61 cards in his deck, and only 60 at
the beginning of the game). (note complete deck lists are posted on
the WOTC website www.wizards.com).

My final comment on the matter is that if you do have any real
evidence of cheating you should not skulk about it or jump into the
rumour mill. Go staight to the DCI and present them with what you know
and your impressions of the matter.

-Michael Feuell
-DCI Level III Judge
-|elf| on #mtg