[Article] The Exiled: a look at the DCI suspended players list

[nedleeds]

That's also cheating, BTW. You yourself would be DQed if you got caught doing that.

Sorry for lack of context in my post, this was uh 12 years ago. The wild west with respect to penalties and rules and enforcement.

[dontbiteitholmes]

I had #2 happen a couple of times, never had #1 happen. I might have come across the table. Another very popular ploy was land stacking, 2 spells 1 land. Combined with a marked deck it made for an interesting situation. You could unpile and present if you suspected it.

I got DQ'd in the top 8 of an SCG event years and years ago because somehow one basic land from my deck ended up several seats down from me under a chair on the floor. I can't say for sure what happened but if I did drop exactly one card from my MD that obviously never would have been SB'd out and didn't notice it would have been the first and only time in 17 years of playing Magic, so take that how you will.

I used to have people try to stack lands on me at FNM as recently as Kawigama block, then they would get pissed when I shuffled their deck. There was a famous pro-tour story where someone drafted I want to say Alliances and used Mirage lands then his opponent easily separated his deck into two piles put one on top of the other and handed it back.

[cdr]

Sorry for lack of context in my post, this was uh 12 years ago. The wild west with respect to penalties and rules and enforcement.

Right, just pointing out that you shouldn't be doing that kind of thing now in case anyone is tempted.

[Phoenix Ignition]

Interesting article. You probably should have touched on the kids who got a lifetime ban for stealing though, that was one of the biggest DCI-ban stories of all time.

As for the guy who remembers all the cheating back in the day you forgot two of the worst ones...

#1- I go to cut your library and palm a card then kick it under the table and call a judge. When we count your library it's 59 cards, game loss.

#2- We start the game. I draw 6 you draw 7. After several turns I call a judge and say you drew extra cards. Judge counts up cards and decides you drew extra and gives you a game loss.

#1 happened just last year when I was at a PTQ in Hong Kong. One guy shuffled the other's deck when it was presented and casually slid off a card into the seat next to him, underneath his own backpack. When a deckcheck was called the 59 card victim got a game or match loss and once it was reported a neutral party helping them found the 60th card. The judge said since it was already reported that he lost there was no way of taking it back (even though this was at the very start of matches, with plenty of time to play it out).

Then again in Hong Kong people cheated in any opportunity they had, they just seemed to think it part of the game and the better cheater wins.

Moral of the story is if your opponent decides to shuffle your deck stare at it intently, for they could not only be trying to get you a game loss, they could be trying to steal a card or something else.

[evanmartyr]

Cheating wasn't just rampant back in the day, it's rampant in any play group where people are starting to move beyond the "hee hee, magic is fun!" stage towards the "winning matters" stage, and where people aren't mature enough to understand that it's a game, or when there's some sort of monetary gain associated with it.

Like, when I was a kid, everyone cheated at least some. Making sure that one Mahamoti Djinn was in the top half of your deck, etc. It was kind of accepted because no one really cared about actually winning, you just wanted the game to be good, and drawing Holy Strengths and Pearl Unicorns and nothing cool for the first 45 minutes of play in a multiplayer game just wasn't; there was no good "story" there, no interesting interactions, which was the whole reason to play in the first place.

But I remember thinking to myself, the first "real" tournament I played, that I *could* try to make sure I always had a Plague Spitter in my opening hand against Blue Skies, but I'll be damned if I lost out on a 1000$ scholarship for some stupid shit like that.

Didn't win it anyway, but there was that one point where I decided not to cheat. I can understand, though, why people do it.

Although, I really do not understand why Saito got all this player support after his banning. He doesn't just play slowly. He goes into the tank in ridiculously simple situations, usually towards the end of the match and in situations where it benefits him for the game to end in a draw. If he's winning, he plays at a regular, reasonable pace. If he's losing, all of a sudden he needs to think for 5 minutes about his board of 6x Islands and hand of a Daze and a Force of Will. There are situations where he'll sit there, flipping his hand around, shuffling his lands around into different piles, when there is LITERALLY nothing to do...if it benefits him to take as much time as possible to run the clock.

He got slapped by the DCI for stalling, and it was a fairly cut and dry case, with plenty of evidence over multiple tournaments of his play rate not varying based on difficulty or number of decisions to make, avenues of play to consider, but on match time left.

Honestly, I'd rather people who cheat just cheat outright. Let their competency with sleight of hand be their ruin or benefit. Slow play and stalling bugs the shit out of me, because judges usually feel it's subjective, and they need to witness it firsthand to act on it. Me saying "Hey, look at that, he palmed an extra card right there." and being backed up by the players around me is a lot more cut and dry than "He's stalling." Even if the judge thinks it *may* be slow play, they'll usually err on the side of the person being dumb and needing time to think, or being stressed and needing time to think, or something.