Editor’s note: The stories in this article were used primarily for illustrative purposes. The specific example about Fred in the introduction was taken from a match that occurred two years ago, and the specific wording has been lost. Fred’s implied intent in the story is assumed for the purpose of comparison between his and Zack’s situations. The story will be preserved to further the discussion about what constitutes cheating.

And just for reference, cheating is defined in the Magic Penalty Guidelines as “intentionally committing an infraction that can give the player a significant advantage over others.”

— Lauren Lee, Content Manager

Take a Magic player. We’ll call him Fred. He’s done well in his local scene and is currently transitioning upward—yes, Fred is playing at his second Pro Tour with a truly innovative deck. Later it will be described as the original Stoneforge Mystic/Jace deck, well before the dominance at Pro Tour Paris and the subsequent elimination of both cards from Standard (the first bannings in that format for over seven years).

There are three rounds left in the tournament. If Fred wins this one and the next one, he can ID in the third and make the Top 8.

Making Top 8 his second ever Pro Tour!?

This is real, this is happening, and it’s giving him determination. Whatever it takes, he thinks. But it might take more than the deck can manage—Fred’s staring down a board full of enemy Vampires, his life total dwindling away. At one, he Deprives a lethal Malakir Bloodwitch, but the assembled Vampires will certainly kill him next turn.

He untaps and draws. Excitement shows in his face. He equips two Adventuring Gears to his Kor Skyfisher. “You’re at 10?” Confirmation received, Fred throws down the card from his draw step—a Scalding Tarn. “I can get four triggers on my Adventuring Gears—that’s lethal. You’re dead.”

His opponent bites his lip and surveys the board. Fred’s palms are sweating. Finally, the opponent nods and concedes. Fred is so carried away that he tries to shake his opponent’s hand, who politely reminds him that it’s only game 2. Nevertheless, the third game goes resoundingly in Fred’s favor with a Vapor Snared Malakir Bloodwitch going the distance against stranded Consume the Meeks in hand. That Scalding Tarn off the top won Fred the match, and with it he made the Top 8—with massive implications in money, fame, and Pro benefits.

But wait.

The Truth about Jedi Mind Tricks

Did you catch it?

Fred was at 1. He couldn’t sacrifice his Scalding Tarn. He tricked his opponent into conceding a game he couldn’t possibly lose.

…

In case you weren’t already aware, Fred is me. I pulled off that very win at Pro Tour San Juan 2010 in round 14, won round 15 in ordinary and legitimate fashion, and intentionally drew with Brad Nelson in round 16 to make my first Pro Tour Top 8. If it wasn’t for that Scalding Tarn, no Top 8; without the Top 8, no Level 7 benefits through 2011; without those, I wouldn’t have made it to the Pro Tours last year and racked up two more Top 16s; without those, you probably wouldn’t be reading this article today.

So here’s the crux of the matter: did I cheat? Or did I pull off a masterful Jedi mind trick and get deservedly rewarded?

Hopefully your answer isn’t that I cheated. I also hope it’s not that I pulled off a masterful Jedi mind trick, because I like to think that the people who read my articles are thoughtful and intelligent. The thoughtful and intelligent response is, “I don’t know. I need more information.” Matters like these are notoriously delicate. Here’s a partial list of questions that might spring to mind after reading the opening passage:

• Did Fred throw Scalding Tarn directly into the graveyard or did he leave it in play?
• Was there a life total discrepancy?
• What was his precise language? Did he say, “I can get four Adventuring Gear triggers,” or, “I have four Adventuring Gear triggers on the stack,” or. “My guy has ten power?”
• Did he pick up or start searching his library at any point?

I’m sure you can think of more. The point is that the line between legitimate and dirty is very fine. Whether or not Fred (me) cheated depends on whether or not he willingly misrepresented game state in his attempt to convince his opponent to concede. In all but the most blatant cases, that’s not going to be at all clear from a cursory knowledge of the facts.

On Zack Hall and Mike Flores

It’s very fortunate that the average poster on the Internet is both thoughtful and reflective and hesitates to voice any opinion on a potentially serious matter without first considering it from all angles.

I kid, of course. The average poster on the Internet is more than willing to shout and scream and finger-point after reading three sentences on some guy’s blog. There’s a very low signal-to-noise ratio out there, and it’s frustrating to read through the 6000+ responses to threads on this very topic and see how few people actually get to the point.

Personally, I was withholding any response to this whole debacle until the world heard from Flores himself on how it went down. There’s a context to these affairs that’s impossible to get from anyone but the two people who are directly involved in it. Having heard that, here’s my view:

Zack Hall, at best, made a very scummy play. Whether or not he cheated depends on what his intent was while making it, but it is a possibility.

Let me explain. First, a few words on shortcuts:

When I played Lost in the Woods at the Pro Tour, after I resolved the eponymous enchantment I picked up my library and revealed it to my opponent. In fact, I basically spread it out on the playing field in front of my lands. You know what he didn’t do? Call a judge and demand that I be disqualified, for attempting to illegally put 35 Forests onto the battlefield.

You might ask: why not? I did, after all, put 35 Forests onto the battlefield. But both my opponent and I understood that it wasn’t a literal game action—it was an illustration. “This is my deck; you’ll never be able to damage me with a creature for the remainder of the game. Do I have you?” It saves time. It’s normal. This happens all the time; we don’t even think about it.

A few examples: on turn 1, I play a land and say, “Go.” I don’t say, “Pass priority in my upkeep, play a land in my first main phase, then pass priority, pass priority in my second main phase, pass priority in my end step.” Or when playing Elves in Extended, you don’t have to announce all your triggers then resolve them sequentially. It’s accepted that if you have three Nettle Sentinels and a Heritage Druid, you can get three green mana for each green spell cast. You can drop a Llanowar Elves and tick your green mana count up by two. Or if you’re going off with Flash/Hulk and you drop Carrion Feeder, Reveillark, Body Double, and Mogg Fanatic all onto the table at the same time, it’s understood that you’re not literally attempting to Tutor them all up from a single Protean Hulk trigger. You’re illustrating to your opponent that he can concede the game without you having to go through the technical motions. (Of course, he can wait and hope you screw it up; also a valid option.)

There have always been a few players, though, who try and take unfair advantage of what should be a healthy, sensible framework. It’s possible to deliberately create miscommunication issues that favor you. Classic example: “Can I Lightning Bolt you?” If you’ve only been playing Magic for a few years, you might not be familiar with exactly how this one works. It goes like this:

Player 1: Attack you.
Player 2: Ok, take some damage.
Player 1: Moving into my second main phase. Hmmm, what should I cast?
Player 2: Hey, can I Lightning Bolt you?
Player 1 (confused): Uh, sure, I guess.
Player 2: Cool, so you’re passing priority. I’ll pass it back now. We’re in your end step.
Player 1: WHAT!?!?!?

Yeah, that one’s not legal anymore, fortunately. It’s for precisely this reason that judges go to great lengths to emphasize how important proper communication is. It may not matter against 99% of opponents, but there’s always the 1% who will try and screw you over any chance they get. Katsuhiro Mori was a famous high-profile case who took an extended vacation because of repeat offenses. Things like these leave a really bitter taste in players’ mouths. They know they’ve been cheated, but not in a blatant Mike-Long-palming-cards style—a more subtle execution. It’s almost worse because there’s doubt about whether you actually were cheated, and you know you could’ve been clearer and not allowed that scummy guy his way out.

So.

Zack Hall: Show me.

Much has been made of those two words. Zack could’ve intended to say a lot of things. In Flores’s position, I would assume, “Show me the combo and I’ll concede,” as that’s what I personally would intend. But he could’ve legitimately meant, “Go through the technical motions of killing me to prove that you know how your deck works.”

What is clear is that Flores interpreted, “Show me” as, “I will concede if you demonstrate your deck contains the required pieces.” That’s a legitimate interpretation, and even if Zack didn’t intend to say that, he surely realized that’s what Flores was doing. Fanning out the deck and pulling out Narcomoebas, Dread Return, The Mimeoplasm et. al. is essentially what I did with my deck of 35 Forests. It’s not a game action. It’s Flores saying, “Look, I didn’t sideboard out The Mimeoplasm or something equally cheeky. I realize you’re a sensible guy, you’re not going to concede without full knowledge that I’ve got you, but I really do.”

For Zack to then say, “Let me know when you’re ready to move to your draw step,” requires willful misinterpretation of Flores’s actions. Any Magic player can tell the difference between, “I’m casting these spells and putting these triggers on the stack in order to combo you out,” and, “I’m showing you my hand/library and giving you the option to concede.” People have made all sorts of ridiculous inferences based on pulling Narcomoebas out and the like—but that’s what you do when you’re illustrating your combo! You take all the relevant combo pieces out and say, “Hey look, they’re all here; this is how it works.”

If Zack genuinely did want Flores to do the technical stuff and was misinterpreted, the right thing to do was to let Flores know. He could’ve asked something like, “OK, so what phase are we in?” or, if he wanted to be a little subtler, “Are you targeting your Cephalid Illusionist with your Nomads en-Kor a thousand times then?” Even the basic, “So your deck’s in your graveyard?” would’ve sufficed. There are a lot of clarifications Zack could’ve made instead of letting Flores continue misinterpreting, “Show me.”

In Flores’s testimony, he said decidedly that he was not actually trying to go off and that he was demonstrating to Zack that he had the combo. If you don’t believe him, fine; we can agree to disagree. But if you do believe him and your response is, “Play tighter, dummy! It’s the SCG Invitational!” then you’re missing the point. Flores used an acceptable shortcut based on what he thought the game state was. Zack, knowing this, proceeded to rathole him. Maybe it doesn’t qualify as cheating exactly but… Let’s just say I won’t be lending Zack money anytime soon.

For me, the clincher is something non-quantifiable—it’s that the player who lost was left feeling cheated by the other person. When this happens, there’s a good chance someone was in the wrong. After all, most communication is non-verbal, and those of us outside the match are left never exactly knowing the full story. But Mike Flores does, and Zack Hall does. And one of them feels like they got done by a band of gypsies, while the other feels like the kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Back to Fred

But wait, who am I to get on my moral high horse? Didn’t I run the cheats back in 2010 at a Pro Tour playing for Top 8 no less?

Well, it comes down to perspective, and some people are bound to disagree. But I don’t think so. I put the Tarn into play; I never sacked it or started searching my library. I didn’t claim triggers were on the stack or that my creature was currently ten power. At any point he could’ve glanced at his score pad and said, “But wait, you’re at 1,” and I would’ve smiled and extended the hand. But I told him I had him, and to my very great surprise and relief, he believed me.

The crucial point for me: my opponent in round 14 of San Juan was Zohar Bhagat of the USA. I told him after the match exactly what had happened in game 2, and he shook his head. A slight smile crossed his face. “I wish you hadn’t told me that.” He acknowledged that he’d “been got,” and he respected me for being able to pull it off. I can still say hi to Zohar when I run into him at events now and again—I did in Amsterdam and again at Grand Prix Pittsburgh last year.

If you take away one thing from this article, make it this: there’s a social context in Magic. Ignore it at your peril.

Until next time,

Jeremy