A lot of players, many forum trolls, and some judges have a lot of misconceptions about what Magic judges are, and what their job is. I want to talk about that a little — about what a judge should do, and should not do. I’ll also look at issues like burden of proof and judicial certainty – and explain why they don’t apply to judging Magic. I’ll also throw out a couple scenarios, to illustrate how these principles apply.
A caveat: I am a DCI certified judge — Level 2. More importantly, I have had many opportunities to talk about these issues with some of the best judges around, and some of the powers that be at the DCI. Any credit for what I know about this comes from their teachings, interactions, and our discussions — and that includes everyone from Andy Heckt down to a couple of judge trainees and interested players. Any errors, of course, are all mine.
Let’s start with a couple of situations.
1) Time was called in round 4 of the prerelease pod five minutes ago. As you approach a table, you see two kids roll a die, then start filling out the match result slip. They did just roll for the win, but the kids are age ten and eleven and this is their first tournament. Do you DQ them?
2) You think you see a player palm an extra card. Counting cards shows the player has one more card than his opponent — but that player claims the opponent mulliganed. The opponent denies it, but neither player has any notes indicating a mulligan. Without any hard evidence of whether or not the other player mulliganed, can you determine whether the player should be disqualified for cheating?
3) You see a player start shuffling his deck for game 2 — and see that he has forgotten two Call of the Herd cards that were removed from the game in game 1. Do you say anything, or wait until he presents his deck — then give him a game loss for an illegal main deck?
4) A player took control of a Scragnoth with Dominate three turns ago, and has been blocking with it ever since. How do you fix this?
I’ll let you think about those examples for a while.
First off, I want to talk about what a Magic judge is not. It’s not this:
It’s not just that Magic judges do not wear wigs or robes. It is deeper than that. We are not legal decision makers. We are not arbiters in a contested legal process. We do not make decisions on the legality of the arguments made by the prosecutor and defense attorney, nor counsel for the plaintiff or defendant. Legal judges determine the appropriate penalty from within a range of options (although juries may have some of that responsibility).
Magic judges are not like that. We are more like this guy.
That’s an American football referee. (For those readers for who think football is a game played with the feet, the referee’s job is similar. I’ll try to translate — hopefully Craig can help keep me from screwing up too badly.) [No worries… here’s a ref that a few of our European readers may identify. — Craig.]
It’s not just that Magic judges dress more like referees – Magic judges have a function that is much more akin to that of a referee.
* Referees watch the game, and intervene immediately when required. Judges typically get involved long after the crime has happened.
* Referees have little discretion in determining the penalty. Judges have a lot more.
* Referees generally operate under less complex, and less internally inconsistent, sets of rules. Judges interpret the huge volume of complex, contradictory, and constantly changing laws.
* Referees are investigators and decision makers. Judges (other than in Napoleonic legal systems) are only peripherally involved in investigations.
Other differences exist, but let’s look at some of these in more depth.
The Rules:
Back when Magic began, the interactions between cards were less clearly defined. Judges often had to “break new law” when ruling on an interaction for the first time, since interaction rulings were nearly always based on precedent and similarity. This changed with Sixth Edition, which finally created rules that could actually be used to determine how any given interaction had to work. Before Sixth Edition, the ultimate argument was “the netrep said X.” Ever since Sixth Edition, the Comprehensive Rules provide a framework to determine exactly how something works — even stupid corner cases like Humility, Mycosynth Lattice, and Titania’s Song.
The Comp. Rules cover card interactions. Other tournament practices are covered by the Unified Tournament Rules, the Magic Floor Rules, and the Penalty guidelines. You can download copies of all of these here. The UTR cover the basics of tournaments: shuffling, tardiness, basic player and judge responsibilities, etc. The Magic Floor Rules define formats (e.g. Booster Draft, Standard, Vintage, etc.), explain how ratings work, and so forth. The Penalty Guidelines define the violations, and set the penalties for those violations.
A lot of very smart judges have put in a lot of time and hard work on developing the current penalty guidelines. They have been carefully crafted to be clear and consistent. One major goal was that, when presented with a given situation, any judge, anywhere in the world, should make the same ruling and assess same penalty. The penalty guidelines do a good job of making that possible. Sure, judges may make mistakes, but the new penalty guidelines make the penalties and remedies clearer, and more consistent. Messing up is harder than it used to be.
Assessing Penalties:
The Penalty Guidelines are technically “guidelines,” but circumstances have to be truly exceptional before a head judge can vary the penalty. In nearly all cases, the penalty guidelines define both the offense and the penalty that should be assessed.
Let’s compare the role of legal judges and football referees again. Let’s look at some common situations. According to the intraweb thingee, the most common crime is burglary. The most common football penalty is false start.
Once a court of law has convicted a defendant of burglary, the judge has to decide on a sentence. The judge has a range of allowable sentences, and may step outside the range given aggravating or extenuating circumstances. For example, the typical range may be probation to ten years imprisonment. The judge may take number of prior convictions, age of the defendant, the defendant’s employment and marital status, use of firearms in the crime — or practically any other relevant factor, into consideration when setting the sentence.
If a football referee calls a player for a false start, the penalty is five yards. Period. (For the “other football,” imagine an obvious offside decision — and the standard penalty for that offense.)
It does not matter if the team that committed the penalty is about to score, or if the offense wasn’t intentional and the game is in the balance — the question is simply did the offense occur. If so, you penalize.
Let’s look at the first example from the early part of this article:
1) Time was called in round 4 of the prerelease pod five minutes ago. As you approach a table, you see two kids roll a die, then start filling out the match result slip. They did just roll for the win, but the kids are age ten and eleven, and this is their first tournament. Do you DQ them?
As a judge, the first thing you will do is investigate. Let’s assume that you ask them what the die roll was for, and they tell you that if they drew, neither player would get prizes. If either won, that player would get some packs, so they rolled a die to decide who got the win.
Yes, that is bad. It is a clear case of Unsporting Conduct — Randomly Determining a Winner (Sec. 143 of the Penalty guidelines.) The penalty for that offense is Disqualification without Prize. That’s what happened, and that’s the penalty that should be assessed.
Yes, they are kids. Yes, it is their first tournament. Yes, they did not realize that rolling a die was a DQ offense. That does not matter — those are not exceptional circumstances. (Everyone has a first tournament. Everyone is young, once. Being a new player is no more a reason to downgrade or ignore than being a pro is reason to upgrade. The penalty guidelines have levels of rules enforcement built in. Judges do not need to — and should not — adjust the PG results further to reflect level of tournament or player experience.)
In short, you DQ the kids.
Sure, you feel bad about it. I’ve been there; I know. DQing kids ruins your whole day. That does not matter, either. You do your best to explain why it’s a big deal*, how tournaments work and that you have to assess the penalty. You might even ask the T.O. to get the kids into another event for free, but you still DQ them.
* Explaining the reason: Another sports analogy. Your favorite team — the Green Bay Packers, of course — is 11-4-1 on the season. The divisional rivals (Bears & Vikings) are still playing, and are both at 11-4. If either of those teams wins, they take the division with a 12-4 record. If they tie, the Packers win the division. The Bears and Vikings are tied, with two seconds left in the last overtime period, and are at midfield. Then the teams flip a coin, the Bears snap the ball, hand it to a Viking, then stand around while the Viking walks into the end zone. As a Packer fan, how does that make you feel? (For those “football played with feet” fans, it’s the last day of the season, and if Bolton beat Aston Villa, they slip into the last European qualifying slot. Same goes for Villa if they beat Bolton. However, if they draw the match, Manchester City — who are currently in the last European slot – keep their place. At Bolton versus Villa, It’s one-all with three minutes of stoppage time to play. The managers flip a coin, and Villa — who lost the flip — simply sit down while the Bolton attack force walk the length of the pitch and tap in an easy winner. Manchester City fans will be crying over that.)
On the flip side, assume a known cheater discards just one card — a non-land — when resolving Compulsive Research. You have previously DQed this player at other events three times, he was suspended twice, and has a widely- and commonly- known reputation as a card mechanic and rules breaker. However, on investigation, he looks and acts as if he made a real mistake. This one is trickier, but it is the flip side of the above example. The offense is Card Drawing – Failure to Discard (PG, sec. 214.) If you really cannot say that the evidence lead you to believe that he did it deliberately — and in this example it does not — then that is the penalty. Just as being a kid is not an exceptional circumstance, neither is being a known cheater. Each tournament is unique, and while a player’s past actions may influence how thoroughly you investigate, the decision must be made solely on the facts, evidence and events which occurred in this tournament.
Burden of Proof:
Here’s a comment I have often heard in the forums: “There is NO WAY they could have found him guilty of cheating based on that!” The exact wording varies, but these comments all confuse the role of judges and referees. Burden of proof issues are, at their heart, legal nuances. Legal judges determine questions of burden of proof. Referees decide whether something happened.
Judges actually deal with a number of different burdens of proof. “Beyond a Reasonable Doubt” is the most widely known, and the one that figures in most criminal trials. “Preponderance of the Evidence” is another burden of proof, and the burden that is required in most civil trials worldwide. Some U.S. civil trials require the plaintiff to meet a higher standard of proof — that of “Clear and Convincing Evidence.” At the bottom end is “Probable Cause,” the standard required to issue search and arrest warrants.
Magic judges have a much different burden of proof. The very first paragraph states that “Judges should not intervene in a game unless a rule violation has occurred [or] they believe a rules violation has occurred…” Once they intervene, the judge’s first job is to determine, if uncertain, whether a rules violation has, in fact, occurred. For most problems and violations, that is pretty clear.
Most plays are either legal or illegal. Other factors may be involved, and may generate penalties. For example, assume you see a Spike Feeder with no counters on it. Since a Spike Feeder with no counters is a 0/0 creature, it should be dead. It appears that a rules violation has occurred. As a judge, you have to investigate.
In this case, one of three things has happened. First, it could be that the Feeder has used its counters, but something you did not notice is raising the toughness. If so, this is legal — as a judge, you find out what is going on, grant a time extension if necessary and move on. Alternatively, the Spike Feeder may have used its counters, but not been placed in the graveyard. In this case, the controller should get a warning for Game Play Error — Illegal Game State (PG sec. 122), and the opponent should get a warning for Game Play Error — Failure to Maintain Game State (PG sec. 125. — because it is both players’ responsibility to make sure the game is not messed up). Finally, it could be that the Spike Feeder should have its counters, but the player is too lazy to put them in place. In this case, the controller should get a caution for Game Play Error — Incorrect Representation (PG sec. 121) and be told to get some counters on the Feeder.
Things can get a little trickier when the answer is not so clear-cut. As a judge, I hate calls where the players “fail to agree on reality.” This happens when players are uncertain whether one has played a land, have a discrepancy in life totals, or otherwise disagree about something that cannot be empirically determined.
Take life totals, for example. As a judge, sometimes you can work it out (Okay, let’s walk down your score pad. There’s a fetchland in the graveyard — that would be one damage, or did you discard it to something else? And so forth). Other times you just cannot tell (on one side, Soul Warden with a Robe of Mirrors. On the other, a Prodigal Pyromancer. Both have been in play for almost a dozen turns, and players are using dice to keep track of life totals). In the later case, you make your best educated guess based on players’ descriptions of the game, and decide. That becomes the new life total.
The Penalty Guidelines go into a bit more detail on burden of proof for disqualifications. The third paragraph in the DQ section (PG sec. 20) reads:
Disqualification can occur without proof of action so long as the Head Judge determines sufficient information exists to believe the tournament’s integrity may have been compromised. It is recommended that the Head Judge’s report to the DCI reflect this fact.
Remember the second hypothetical example?
2) You think you see a player palm an extra card. Counting cards shows the player has one more card than his opponent — but that player claims the opponent mulliganed. The opponent denies it, but neither player has any notes indicating a mulligan. Without any hard evidence of whether or not the other player mulliganed, can you determine whether the player should be disqualified for cheating?
You believe you saw a player palm a card. The player has one more card that s/he should. If this were a criminal trial, the “he mulliganed” defense might create reasonable doubt in the jury’s mind. In this case, though, you have met the burden in the PG — there is certainly sufficient evidence to think that the player deliberately drew an extra card. That sort of cheating does undermine the integrity of the tournament — and you should DQ. You should also explain fully in your report to the DCI, including everything you know about the mulligan dispute.
The standard for a DQ is spelled out. For everything else, the standard is, basically, do you believe that an infraction has occurred? As in the Spike Feeder example, some infractions are easy to determine. Others are judgment calls.
Slow play is the obvious example. Players are required to play at a reasonable pace. Judges are trained in ways of determining what constitutes slow play, but in the end, it is still a judgment call.
Time for a football analogy: is something a legal tackle or is it unnecessary roughness? (Hey, I think that works about the same in football-with-helmets and football-with-feet.) The referee has to watch the play, and decide.
Preventing Penalties:
Here’s another area where Magic Judges should be thought of more as sports referees: whether they should prevent a penalty from happening.
In American Football, the two sides line up along an invisible line — the line of scrimmage. An Off Sides penalty is called when a player starts the play at least partially on the wrong side of the line. The penalty is not called until the ball is snapped to start the play. More importantly, if a player lines up off sides, or “in the neutral zone,” the referee does not tell player to move back. The referee (technically, the line judge) just waits for the snap, then calls the penalty.
The third example, above, addresses just this event.
3) You see a player start shuffling his deck for game 2 — and see that he has forgotten two Call of the Herd cards that were removed from the game in game one. Do you say anything, or wait until he presents his deck — then give him a game loss for an illegal main deck?
The answer is that, as a judge, you say nothing, and if he presents a 58-card deck, you then assess a game loss for illegal main deck.
It is the player’s responsibility to avoid making mistakes, not the judge’s to prevent them from happening.
This is really hard for many judges — and this exact example has generated a lot of discussion on the DCI judge mailing lists, and in IRC. Judges often get into judging because we like to teach the game and we really want to help players. DCI policy, however, is really clear on this — judges don’t prevent penalties from occurring, they penalize when infractions have occurred. Going back to the first paragraph of the Penalty Guidelines, judges should only intervene in a game in one of four circumstances:
1) A rules violation occurs.
2) They believe a rules violation may have occurred.
3) A player has a concern or question.
4) To prevent a situation from escalating.
Just to prevent confusion: number three covers players asking everything from “where’s the bathroom” to “does this card do this?” It’s any request for information — with the caveat that judges won’t answer strategy questions.
Number four does not apply to a penalty that is about to happen — it covers situations where tempers and voices are rising and the situation might turn into a shouting match or fight.
Although, personally, I hate having to watch players make mistakes that lead to penalties, there are some good reasons that the DCI policy is what it is.
First of all, judges cannot prevent all mistakes. At your average PTQ, at any given time, a dozen players may be presenting decks. If judges cannot prevent an infraction from occurring everywhere, then they cannot fairly prevent it anywhere.
Imagine that two players are both presenting 58-card decks. Is it fair to prevent the one penalty, because you are there, but to give the other a game loss because you weren’t? Do you even the playing field by waiving all game losses for that penalty, because you prevented some from happening? What about the player that “forgets” the four worst cards in his deck? Believe me, this turns into a mess no matter which option you take to try and fix the issue. The only real solution is the one the DCI has adopted — judges do not try to prevent mistakes, just penalize when they occur.
Even with a judge at every table, watching every match, mistakes happen. In past years, we used to have table judges at each match of Top 8s charged with preventing game errors. Everyone can probably remember a horror story or two about situations where that did not work. The simple fact is that Magic is a very complex game, and players make mistakes. If two players watching a match cannot prevent them all, what would make anyone think one more pair of eyes would be able to see everything? The policy now is “if you cannot prevent them all, you cannot fairly prevent any” — and table judging has disappeared. Judges still watch, but they are there solely to answer player questions and to assess penalties — not prevent infractions.
Second, an infraction has not occurred until it occurs. That may sound obvious, but what if one player is trying some sort of “Jedi mind trick?” In football terms, suppose an offensive player lines up on the defense’s side of the ball, the jumps back to the offense’s side just before the snap, in an effort to confuse or distract the defense. (And assuming this is not a violation of some obscure part of the football rules — I don’t know.) Would it be fair or reasonable for a referee to stop play and tell the player to move back?
A lot of Magic judges have spent a lot of time and effort determining what is a legal “Jedi mind trick” and what is not. In some cases, making it look like you are going to violate a game or tournament rule, but not doing so at the last minute, could be a legitimate ruse. A judge should not mess that up.
Fixing the Game:
As a judge, you typically find yourself in a situation where something illegal has occurred, often several turns ago, but the game has progressed. The question is always not just what penalty do you assess, but how do you make things right? Remember the fourth example?
4) A player took control of Scragnoth with Dominate three turns ago, and has been blocking with it ever since. How do you fix this?
Scragnoth has protection from Blue. Dominate is a Blue instant. The change of control should never have happened. If it had not, the Green player would have won. The Green player had two Scragnoths, and the Blue player was at three life and had nothing but lands. The stolen Scragnoth has blocked the other Scragnoth for three turns. Both players have empty hands, and have drawn nothing but lands until this turn, when the Blue player ripped a fat Moti that will win him the game in three turns. Then the players realized what had happened and called you over.
Yes, I have created a scenario where the correct resolution just feels wrong.
The correct answer is that you do not “fix” this situation. The penalty guidelines say that you give both players warnings (Game Rule Violation and Failure to Maintain game State), and the Scragnoth remains under the control of the Blue player. The Blue player will indeed win the game, solely because s/he made an illegal play.
As a judge, you back up illegal actions only if they are caught immediately. Three turns later is not immediate, no matter how you stretch the definition.
You also resolve any state based effects immediately. If the Blue player had taken control of Scragnoth with Persuasion, a Blue aura, then state based effects (Blue aura enchanting a permanent with pro-Blue) would kill the aura and the Scragnoth would revert to the other player’s control. However, Dominate is an instant, and no state based effects would make control of the Scragnoth revert to the Green player.
Yes, it feels wrong — but look at it another way. The Green player failed to remember that his card had protection from Blue. That makes it his fault. Imagine if the situation was slightly different — the Blue player still at 3 life, but he tapped out to cast Fat Moti, and the Green player does not attack because he thinks Mahamoti Djinn will block and kill the Scragnoth. Same problem — the Green player forgot about protection from Blue — but that does not feel so “wrong,” does it? In that case, you just conclude that the Green player screwed up.
Judges are not around to correct bad plays. Illegal game states — yes. Bad plays, or the results of bad plays — no.
Years ago, the old penalty guidelines used to include procedural errors, and judging philosophy include the concept that a procedural error would be upgraded from warning to game loss if the game state was “unrecoverable” or “seriously compromised” — basically, unfixable. This created two bad outcomes.
First of all, the penalties and remedies that would result from certain errors varied by judge and area. Take the above example, and apply the old concept. Is the game state irreparable? If you give the Green player back the Scragnoth, he probably wins next turn — unless the Blue player topdecks something. Do you say three turns is too long, and upgrade to a game loss? More importantly, a very good (or very bad) might see the situation as less irreparable than a mediocre player — meaning that the penalty might depend on the play skill of the judge.
None of that is good customer service. A player should be able to walk into a tournament anywhere in the world and expect the judge’s call to be consistent. The new penalty guidelines are much better at making that happen.
Second, having warnings for procedural errors upgraded to game losses if the game was irreparable provided an incentive for players to wait until it was too late to back up, then call a judge. True, that sort of fishing for game losses was cheating, and the player were supposed to be DQed for knowingly doing so, but it is extremely hard to prove that a player knew and waited, instead of finally realizing what happened six turns later.
The current system is never perfect — no method of trying to undo or remedy past mistakes ever is. The current system is, however, the best compromise that the DCI can find — and that is after a lot of very smart people have spent a lot of time, brainpower, and testing on the developing them.
Winston Churchill once described Democracy as “the worst method of government — except all the others that have been tried.” That statement could be said of the current PG as well. So, before everyone heads for the forums to complain about the results in some corner case or special circumstances, remember that all the other options have similar, albeit different, shortcomings.
PRJ
Wearer of DCI stripes — not judicial robes.