shuffling your opponent's deck

[Jason]

After I present my deck to my opponent for cutting, he shuffles my deck. Am I allowed to then cut my deck once? I thought it used to be allowed but I didn't see it in the comp rules

[luma]

No, you are not allowed to do that anymore. Now the opponent will always be the last person to touch a player's deck. You can read the rule in Magic Tournament Rules, 3.8.

[Bryant Cook]

I know it's allowed by DCI rules and whatever. But whenever an opponent riffle shuffles my deck I have this urge to break their face. It's bending my cards, why can't these assholes just side shuffle and have some common courtesy?

[majikal]

I know it's allowed by DCI rules and whatever. But whenever an opponent riffle shuffles my deck I have this urge to break their face. It's bending my cards, why can't these assholes just side shuffle and have some common courtesy?
If you ask them to side shuffle when you present because you don't want to damage your cards, and they do it anyway, you can call a judge for Unsportsmanlike Conduct.

[cdr]

If you ask them to side shuffle when you present because you don't want to damage your cards, and they do it anyway, you can call a judge for Unsportsmanlike Conduct.

No, you cannot.

You can call a judge and tell the judge what happened, but you cannot suggest an infraction.

You can call a judge and tell the judge that your opponent shuffled your deck, but the judge will tell you that that's kind of what your opponent is supposed to do.

If you don't want your cards shuffled, don't play with them. You can request your opponent shuffle in a certain (legal) way, but he can shuffle any (legal) way he wants.

[majikal]

No, you cannot.

You can call a judge and tell the judge what happened, but you cannot suggest an infraction.

You can call a judge and tell the judge that your opponent shuffled your deck, but the judge will tell you that that's kind of what your opponent is supposed to do.

If you don't want your cards shuffled, don't play with them. You can request your opponent shuffle in a certain (legal) way, but he can shuffle any (legal) way he wants.

I think you misunderstood my post. If you ask your opponent not to bend your cards and suggest that they shuffle a specific way to avoid doing so, but they bend your cards anyway, you call a judge. You don't have to suggest an infraction, because the only possible intent of the action is to damage your cards and put you on tilt. I have seen this ruling handed out on several occasions at PTQs.

If there's some doubt as to whether it was intentional or not, I guess there's not much to be done, but generally, asking someone not to damage your cards and having it happen anyway removes any uncertainty from the situation.

[cdr]

No misunderstanding. Unless it's malicious, your opponent is absolutely allowed to bend (aka riffle shuffle) your deck. The intent of the action is to shuffle your deck.

At a vintage event the judges might be more sensitive towards concerns, those are almost always unsanctioned anyway.

[majikal]

No misunderstanding. Unless it's malicious, your opponent is absolutely allowed to bend (aka riffle shuffle) your deck. The intent of the action is to shuffle your deck.

This is what I was getting at. There's not really any uncertainty about intent when you ask them not to bend your cards and they defiantly do it anyway.

[whiteshepherdman]

some guy wasn't using sleeves and i rifle shuffled his deck and splt the corner of one of his unlimited U.seas lol, i loled when he got pissed and the judge said it was his fault for not using sleeves

[The_Red_Panda]

some guy wasn't using sleeves and i rifle shuffled his deck and splt the corner of one of his unlimited U.seas lol, i loled when he got pissed and the judge said it was his fault for not using sleeves

Yea man! I love it when I damage people's property, and then laugh at them!

Oh wait, no, I'm not a huge dick.

In other news, yea, the dude should have been using sleeves. Still, there's no reason to be riffling, and less reason to be laughing afterwards.

[Meekrab]

I know it's allowed by DCI rules and whatever. But whenever an opponent riffle shuffles my deck I have this urge to break their face. It's bending my cards, why can't these assholes just side shuffle and have some common courtesy?
Says the guy who plays with Japanese Foil cards so he can angle-shoot and take advantage of people not knowing the Oracle text on every card in Legacy. Hypocrite much?

[jrsthethird]

This probably happened because the dude was pissed for losing to turn 1 Grapeshot.

[paK0]

Good thing most of the guys aren't assholes. If you tell them to not riffle your deck most of them will listen.

But I think it is for the judge to decide if it is an infraction or not and will probably vary depending on what jude you ask.

[Tammit67]

Says the guy who plays with Japanese Foil cards so he can angle-shoot and take advantage of people not knowing the Oracle text on every card in Legacy. Hypocrite much?

If you don't know what a card does and don't ask a judge, it is your own damn fault. Is there a reason you decided to attack him?
Three options:
A) You know legacy: Ok so you know the cards and how they interact a.k.a. foreign cards are not an issue.
B) You just started out, perhaps looked at some decklists, or are learning the format: You know some cards, and the ones you don't you call a judge for. Not a problem
C) You never played before, or even researched interactions in this format: Then how the hell are you in the X-0 bracket playing Cook after 3 rounds? And what are you doing in the format?

[Valtrix]

I do have a relevant question on shuffling:

Why are opponent's even allowed to shuffle your deck to begin with as opposed to just cutting? Is a cut not enough after your own shuffling?

[Bryant Cook]

Says the guy who plays with Japanese Foil cards so he can angle-shoot and take advantage of people not knowing the Oracle text on every card in Legacy. Hypocrite much?



If you don't know what a card does and don't ask a judge, it is your own damn fault. Is there a reason you decided to attack him?
Three options:
A) You know legacy: Ok so you know the cards and how they interact a.k.a. foreign cards are not an issue.
B) You just started out, perhaps looked at some decklists, or are learning the format: You know some cards, and the ones you don't you call a judge for. Not a problem
C) You never played before, or even researched interactions in this format: Then how the hell are you in the X-0 bracket playing Cook after 3 rounds? And what are you doing in the format?

Thank you. However, I fail to see how I am a Hypocrite. I'm not riffle shuffling people's expensive decks.

If it's foriegnness, my boy uptop got chew.

[jrsthethird]

I do have a relevant question on shuffling:

Why are opponent's even allowed to shuffle your deck to begin with as opposed to just cutting? Is a cut not enough after your own shuffling?

There are ways to pile shuffle where you guranteed that every third card is a land, so this lets you ensure that the opponent's deck is sufficiently randomized.

[cdr]

There are ways to pile shuffle where you guranteed that every third card is a land, so this lets you ensure that the opponent's deck is sufficiently randomized.

Well, pile "shuffling" doesn't count as shuffling, but in general yes - shuffling your opponent's deck is a guard against cheats.

[nitewolf9]

Side question: Can you still request that a judge shuffle your deck for your opponent? Say, he starts shuffling a bit more violently than you are comfortable with and you stop him and call a judge to do it for him.

I have heard you can do this before but I'm not sure.

[DownSyndromeKarl]

@nitewolf9: Last I knew you could. I haven't read over the Comp Rules since February though.

[cdr]

You can request to have a judge shuffle if you have a good reason for it - not all judges might consider that a good reason. Once is probably ok, round after round and you're going to get shut down.

[coraz86]

You can request to have a judge shuffle if you have a good reason for it - not all judges might consider that a good reason. Once is probably ok, round after round and you're going to get shut down.

On a related note; one of my recent opponents, upon shuffling my deck, noticed a torn sleeve (which I hadn't, or I obviously wouldn't have left it there). He tossed it facedown on the table for me to replace, then began to flick through my deck facedown to check for more torn sleeves. He did keep the deck facedown, so it's not like he was searching my library, but I still felt like he was overstepping his bounds. Does it really fall to players to check their opponents' sleeves like that, or should he have called a judge? (For that matter, should I have called a judge when he took it upon himself to do this? It seemed like a dick move to me.)

[paK0]

On a related note; one of my recent opponents, upon shuffling my deck, noticed a torn sleeve (which I hadn't, or I obviously wouldn't have left it there). He tossed it facedown on the table for me to replace, then began to flick through my deck facedown to check for more torn sleeves. He did keep the deck facedown, so it's not like he was searching my library, but I still felt like he was overstepping his bounds. Does it really fall to players to check their opponents' sleeves like that, or should he have called a judge? (For that matter, should I have called a judge when he took it upon himself to do this? It seemed like a dick move to me.)


This seems like a nice one to me, since he gives you the opportunity to fix it without something happening. Consider he calls a judge, he find 3 torn ones and all of them are the same card, even if it is unintentional this might be considered marking.

[cdr]

On a related note; one of my recent opponents, upon shuffling my deck, noticed a torn sleeve (which I hadn't, or I obviously wouldn't have left it there). He tossed it facedown on the table for me to replace, then began to flick through my deck facedown to check for more torn sleeves. He did keep the deck facedown, so it's not like he was searching my library, but I still felt like he was overstepping his bounds. Does it really fall to players to check their opponents' sleeves like that, or should he have called a judge? (For that matter, should I have called a judge when he took it upon himself to do this? It seemed like a dick move to me.)

Checking the back of your opponent's sleeves while shuffling doesn't seem unreasonable to me. Or either of you could have called a judge and had the judge check.

[coraz86]

Gotcha, thanks for clarifying.

[Killing Joke]

Wouldnt it just make more sense to make riffle shuffling your opponents deck against the rules? Seems like it would solve a lot of problems, fears, and concerns people have.

[caiomarcos]

Wouldnt it just make more sense to make riffle shuffling your opponents deck against the rules? Seems like it would solve a lot of problems, fears, and concerns people have.

Yes, then everyone would bring their decks pre-shuffled from home.

[Valtrix]

Yes, then everyone would bring their decks pre-shuffled from home.

There's plenty of non-riffle ways to shuffle safely.

[caiomarcos]

There's plenty of non-riffle ways to shuffle safely.

I know, but riffle shuffling is not unsafe.
There is no reason at all to ban riffle shuffling. We should ban Goyf, Top and Island before taking action against the way people shuffle.
Just keep it decent, just like you do with your own cards and everything should be okay.

[oxeimon]

Wouldnt it just make more sense to make riffle shuffling your opponents deck against the rules? Seems like it would solve a lot of problems, fears, and concerns people have.

Actually once upon a time when I was like 12 I used to periodically mana-weave my decks, and only block-shuffle them. Block shuffling only breaks adjacency relations once per "shuffle" (where here a shuffle is picking up a block from the bottom and dropping it on top), so a reasonable shuffling consisting of around 10 individual shuffles leaves most of your mana-weaving relatively intact. If you, for example, only block shuffle your deck twice-ish after mana weaving, and present it to your opponent who then only performs another 8-ish individual shuffles, then you're mana weaving is still intact and as such gives you a significant advantage over your opponent.

On the other hand, it's important to note that riffle shuffling will do very little to affect the "x positions from top/bottom" property of cards (especially when x is a very low number). In other words, riffle shuffling n times will on average keep the top card within the top n/2 cards (for small n), so it's important to follow a riffle shuffle with a block shuffle, or vice versa.

Pile shuffling however usually produces sufficient randomization by itself, but it's slow and has a fixed time commitment.

Anyway, I'm usually more worried about them damaging my sleeves with riffle shuffles than my cards...

[jrsthethird]

Pile shuffling however usually produces sufficient randomization by itself, but it's slow and has a fixed time commitment.

If you arrange your deck so that every third card is a land, and then pile shuffle, when you stack the piles on top of each other you will preserve the general pattern of every third card being a land. Pile shuffling is not really shuffling, it's actually stacking your deck. It's a good way to count the cards in your deck (or your opponent's) to make sure that you have the right number, but besides that, it does NOT provide sufficient randomization by itself.

Usually I begin with a semi-random deck (cards I've seen in the previous game are usually mixed together and placed on top of the remaining library), pile "shuffle" it to count, and then riffle the piles together to randomize, and finish with a mixture of riffles and slide shuffles.

If you don't want to riffle, a combination of "block" shuffling and slide shuffling should provide sufficient randomization.

[lebarion]

If you arrange your deck so that every third card is a land (...)

If people start doing this, I'll start pile shuffling in three piles. :tongue:

[cdr]

If people start doing this, I'll start pile shuffling in three piles. :tongue:

In all seriousness, if your opponent does not sufficiently randomize his deck, call a judge. If you try to take advantage of an opponent's insufficiently randomized deck, you will be DQed.

[leander?]

If people start doing this, I'll start pile shuffling in three piles. :tongue:
Haha, I loled. That'd be epic :D

[kilukru]

Now, this is an exemple of shuffling abuse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LIJQ95-adQ

You can thank leyjay for this find

[Bardo]

Now, this is an exemple of shuffling abuse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LIJQ95-adQ

Eh? Seems fine.

[Jak]

Eh? Seems fine.

Only thing sketchy that I saw was he could easily glimpse the bottom card of the deck shuffling like that.

[rogue.nine]

Look at it again.

Not only can he see the bottom card but while shuffling he moves that card to the top and the top is never shuffled, then repeats the process insuring that the top is stacked with cards he got to see from bottom.

[justjake54]

I just don't see any reason an opponent would need to riffle shuffle your deck. it randomizes your deck just as well as side shuffling does. Also how can a judge determine you tried to take advantage of an opponents insufficiently shuffled deck? Is it really a players job to make sure their opponent is properly shuffling?

[cdr]

I just don't see any reason an opponent would need to riffle shuffle your deck. it randomizes your deck just as well as side shuffling does.

There's no reason they wouldn't need to riffle shuffle your deck. Riffle shuffling is legal, they can do it if they like.

Some people only know how to riffile (even an easy shuffle like side shuffling takes some practice). Riffle shuffling has different characteristics than side shuffling - doing both may well give you a better randomized deck.


Also how can a judge determine you tried to take advantage of an opponents insufficiently shuffled deck? Is it really a players job to make sure their opponent is properly shuffling?

If you three pile after your opponent mana weaves and doesn't shuffle enough afterward, that's Manipulation of Game Materials on your part - DQ. If your opponent somehow screws up his mana weave and you think it's in your favor so you don't call a judge, that's Fraud - DQ.

It is your responsibility to watch whether your opponent shuffles sufficiently.

Also, remember that mana weaving is (unfortunately) legal so long as you shuffle sufficiently afterward.

[yankeedave]

Haha, I loled. That'd be epic :D

This happened at a pre-release tourney I was at, the guy weaved his deck ie, 2 spells, 1 land, rinse, repeat and presented his deck. His opponent un-weaved his deck and put all the land on the bottom and handed it back. Was highly amusing to watch the guy try and actually play it out, rather than just admit he was an idiot and scoop. I know this was illegal from both sides, but we didn't care, it was only a pre-release!

[cdr]

This happened at a pre-release tourney I was at, the guy weaved his deck ie, 2 spells, 1 land, rinse, repeat and presented his deck. His opponent un-weaved his deck and put all the land on the bottom and handed it back. Was highly amusing to watch the guy try and actually play it out, rather than just admit he was an idiot and scoop. I know this was illegal from both sides, but we didn't care, it was only a pre-release!

A prerelease is still a sanctioned event. Please bring a situation like that to a judge's attention next time. Those players need to either be educated (if ignorant) or DQed (if malicious).