Let me repeat myself.Originally Posted by I am the brainwasher
This guy is makes money from cheating people. He is a professional scammer. He does it on purpose, publicly and without remorse.
Do you seriously think that he is going to publicly admit it? His behaviour shows signs of psychopathy.
STOP BEING NAIVE.
Its clear to anyone with half a brain that Alex is a rampant cheater. This is more than just sloppy play. And haters gonna hate.. are you kidding me ? You dont accidently pre board in sowers vs plat angel. Or Timely Reinforcements vs rdws... or double explores or ancestral recall with ure brainstorm, then right after 4 card brainstorm haha.. lol.
If you play alot of competetive magic you will know how rampant cheating is. Few do it as heavely as Alex does. But shady playing and shuffeling is a very common thing in the competetive scene.
I hope Alex will be made an example of, and im looking forward to his final sentense!
I will let this case be the decider, with a move that i have been considering for a while now. To sell my entire collection and move to Magic Online. I would hate to do this becouse i like the social part of magic. But cheating is to easy, and something i dont want to see in magic. MODO for competetive magic and cube drafting with friends on the side will do.!
/sry for the bad english, its not my native language :P
He'll get what's coming..
The link is broken.
I've followed this thread for the past couple of days, and I've read the blog post by Drew Levin, a couple of other threads on other Magic forums (Svenskamagic.com to be precise), and I must say that I have a hard time being completely neutral towards AB right now. The evidence is overwhelming, and I hope that the DCI will take swift action in their investigation. I also hope that SCG will postpone paying out his last $10k, in case he did cheat at the Invitational.
That said, I have no idea how I would have reacted myself if he had cheated against me. I remember spectating a game at a small, local, unsanctioned event a couple of years ago, and I noticed one of the players drew an extra card one of the turns. The player in question is a really cool, really friendly and funny guy and if someone had blatantly told me before the match that he was going to cheat, I would have laughed. When I did see it happen before my eyes, I didn't know how to react. Since there were no judge there, and his opponent didn't notice, I just walked away, disgusted.
I don't like how the whole deal with AB has become public spectacle, but there is no room for cheating in this game, where people pay money to participate in events with cash prizes.
Fixed link: http://www.mtgcast.com/?p=22067
Are there still any "old school" card game events? You know, taking place on a steamer boat on river Mississipi, when caught cheating there is a man overboard... no need to prove anything on court or to DCI, SCG...
DCI or SCG do not need really take care of professional cheaters. Both organizations are doing their job for profit. They dont care who will win and how.
Friends in our playgroup are doing martial arts, own some samurai swords, and when they show me how many weapons they carry I felt really safe :D At some time cheaters started to avoid our playgroup. But not for reason that our friends are armed... Playing casual do not bring profit or personal credit (at least not overtime when you realize that your oponnent used to lie when you was asking something), and when the cheater is found really no personal satisfaction or fun to the guys who are trying to cheat.
And guess what... Most of the cheaters got back to the official club here, causing that the club has 20 members in city with 500 000 citiziens, and at least 400 active magic players. Those people are still attending official events, gaining money and personal credit for some years, until caught at cheating or coercing (which is most common here)...
But thats only a story of a local MTG club and growing group of casual players.
I get what you're saying, but juries don't find people innocent. They find them "not guilty". There is a subtle but distinct difference.
That pdocast was terrible. He really had no defense and just claimed sloppiness and "poor me".
Tom? Is that you? I thought you were going to go work on DnD?
oh my god his guiltiness is just awkward in this podcast
kid can't even defend himself and he's constantly stumbling over his words and doesn't know how he wants to lie and keeps fucking up his responses
That was my take on it too. If anything, it made him sound much worse than before.
Tom? Is that you? I thought you were going to go work on DnD?
Hearing him talk about the Kira incident, I remain convinced that this scrutiny is necessarily. If he was going to pull out the win, the Kira was the best way to do so. Without the knowledge of the backup JMS, I think that against a player with only one more card in hand, a merfolk deck could come back.
"I don't recall most of them[mistakes]..." - Alex Bertoncini
He seemed to remember the Explore and Kira situations pretty well, with a surprising amount of detail given he had just played '19 rounds of magic.'
Wow, this guy stutters when he's lying more than Porky Pig with parkinsons...
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
Yeah; this is pretty darn transparent in my mind. Sure, you could argue it's nervousness, but, c'mon this is a podcast... You can can totally tell when he has to make stuff up on the spot because it's so disjointed and weird sounding, but when he talks about his Magic career, travelling to events, playtesting etc. he speaks much more fluidly and with more confidence.
Or you know, answering questions about accusations of him cheating, regardless of whether it was intentional or not, would put anyone on the defensive. It makes sense to naturally not respond to those as well. All it shows to me is that he's less comfortable addressing the accusations as he is talking about stuff that doesn't have his credibilty on trial.
Did anyone else notice that when he says "I consider myself a pretty good deck tuner" it first sounds like he's going to say "I consider myself a pretty good cheater"? Found that rather amusing.
Other than that, this thread is ridiculous.
It's the interview BEFORE the questions about it that indicates it for me. He's so on edge... very nervous. This is the act of a man who wants to keep playing Magic. Will he fool everyone? We'll see about that.
They absolutely want their own stars. The problem is their main guy is clearly more than a 'villain.' He is a serial cheater. I don't think it's a coincidence he's suddenly decided to quit next year, according to his twitter.
This definitely isn't what SCG wanted, but they're handling it the best they can.
Also in response to some other posts I saw in various forums suggesting SCG judges would not act on Alex cheating if they saw him do it-
Anyone who thinks a judge would purposely look the other way to protect someone is just clueless. Judges are still members of the DCI judging family regardless of where and who they are judging for.
No judge in a sanctioned tournament looks the other way, ever.
Honestly it just seems like Berto is really good at slight of hand and alot people miss what he's doing, including live commentators who have won PT's like Kibler.
He's probably quitting in anticipation of being banned. He'll get to keep his prizes. It's the best scenario at this point. Maybe he creeps back in a couple years with a new maturity level and puts his past behind him, maybe he never comes back.
The hope is the DCI acts upon the reams of information they have and actually does something about it rather than wait for him to cheat again if he does continue to play.
- Dave
9/19 Legacy for a Lotus! http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...cy-for-a-Lotus!
I was thinking a bit more on the possible banning of Bertoncini by the DCI. Has a player ever been banned in the past strictly on the basis of video evidence such as this? It seems like it's usually a case of a player who was caught cheating by a judge during an event. Has Bertoncini ever been caught cheating and DQed from an event? If not, it may be more difficult for the DCI to make a decision to ban him, especially if there exists no precendent for banning a player on video evidence alone. Although Bertoncini looks extremely sketchy in some of those videos, there is not 100% proof that his intent was to cheat in any of them. Personally, from what I've seen, I'm more inclined to believe that he is a serial cheater than he is not. However, I think that there's at least a decent chance that the DCI will not ban him.
Another question is if the DCI bans him and SCG tried to withhold the prize money from last weekend's event, would a law suit come out of this?
I see more than others do because I know where to look.
I've never been to one of these events, but are the players required to sign any kind of legal document?
If there was no legal contract then really only in Nevada is it a crime to cheat. But I don't think he'd have much of a case in a lawsuit.
In regards to him quitting Magic, I don't think he has any other options. He will be already satisfied with the prizes and feel embarrassed enough to leave now. If he doesn't leave a lot of people will be against him and he'll have a very hard time participating in organized play and facing people. I imagine he'll be outcast in casual games as well aside from suck-ups and wanna be youngsters.
It's hard to carry such a low reputation and much easier to walk away and try to remember the fun parts (10K, anyone?).
The best way to fight cheaters is to cheat yourself, in order to level the playing field somewhat.
Also, having that extra Brainstorm up your sleeve for when you really need it is too convenient to be ignored.
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