Good Practices #7 - When Did You Look at Those Cards?

The first example for the infraction Looking at Extra Cards (L@EC) is "A player accidentally reveals (drops, flips over) a card while shuffling their opponent’s library." This is straight forward enough, and it is probably one of the two most common ways that this infraction occurs. The other being the second example: "A player accidentally reveals (drops, flips over) a card while shuffling their opponent’s library." It's almost like these are good examples or something!

As a Scorekeeper, I see judges write descriptions for infractions on the backs of slips, and the first example for L@EC is one I've seen variations of plenty of times. But "flipped over card while shuffling opponent's deck" as a description tells less than half the story. Think about it this way. Seeing a card in your opponent's deck confers an information advantage, but the potential for that advantage can vary wildly depending on when this infraction takes place.

The most impactful timing is when a player shuffles their opponent's deck prior to the first game of the match. Barring information from scouting, which could be intentional or just from sitting next an opponent in the previous rounds, players don't have knowledge of what deck archetype their opponent is playing at this point in time. Early game decisions, particularly mulligan decisions, are made in this haze of ignorance.

Flipping over a card while shuffling prior to Game 1 can lift that haze. Imagine this happening in a Modern match and a Baral, Chief of Compliance gets flipped over. Aha! U/R Gifts Storm! This information can certainly inform a player about the kinds of hands they should keep. Even something as innocent as a land can provide information. For example, Horizon Canopy is featured primarily in creature-based strategies.

This type of information gain loses effectiveness the deeper you get into a match because a player will naturally see more cards from their opponent's deck through game play, and the deck archetype will reveal itself somewhere in the middle of the first game.

Any time we speak of the potential for advantage, we should also consider the potential for cheating. Generally, more advantage means more potential for cheating. A player committing a L@EC infraction for flipping a card while shuffling their opponent's deck during Game 3 has almost zero advantage, and we can quickly dismiss cheating based on context. But when this happens prior to Game 1, it deserves more scrutiny. So what does that scrutiny look like?

First off, ask about the timing in the match. Sometimes this is obvious. If you get called over at the beginning of the round and there are no permanents out, you know that it's prior to Game 1. But specific timing still matters here. Is this during a mulligan shuffle? Did the opponent keep? If the answers are "yes" and "yes," you can tick the advantage bar down a notch because the player can no longer use this information to help with their mulligan decisions. These are small pieces of information that can help you during a quick investigation.

The thing with this type of investigation is, it's highly unlikely to yield a guilty verdict. For one, most of these infractions are innocent mistakes. Second, a player intentionally committing L@EC to see opponent's cards most likely looks like all the innocent players. Unless you happened to be watching and saw a very suspicious shuffling style, it's hard to sort the malicious from the innocent via a post-incident interview.

Thus, our best line of defense becomes recording the infraction and looking for a pattern. And this is where I return to my original point; judges need to write down when the "card flip L@EC" takes place. Was it during a mid-game fetch? Was it shuffling up before Game 2? These both rate on the innocent side. But if we are recording infractions to look for patterns of potentially malicious behavior, this is an absolutely important one to record in more specific detail. If a player commits multiple L@EC infractions, all while shuffling prior to Game 1, that's a lot of potential advantage, and someone that I'm a lot more interested in talking to or watching while they shuffle before their next Game 1.

Good Practices #6 - Clomp Around

Of all the strange things that I do in judging, this might take the cake. I couldn't even tell you when I decided upon this course of action. This good practice comes from Professional REL called drafts that take place at Grand Prix and Pro Tour tournaments. During these called drafts, players are seated in pods of 8, and follow the directions of a draft caller judge to pass packs, pick up packs, and select cards. These drafts are run this way to reduce the possibility of draft errors, and to make sure all draft tables finish at the same pace.

One of the biggest concerns during any draft is peeking. If an unscrupulous player catches a glimpse of their neighbors pick(s), that knowledge can give them a huge advantage. Instead of having to read signals via cards in the pack, they just know what color(s) their neighbor is on. Judges on the floor during a called draft, focus their attention on watching for peeking. They stare intently at players, scrutinize the position of the player's eyes, and sometimes even crouch to get a "player's eye view" of the situation. I've seen judges park on a particular table for the duration of a pack, just staring. Sometimes this results in a DQ, and if you're a judge who thinks you've seen some suspicious eye movement, by all means let the stare down begin.

But here's the rub. There are a lot of players. I took a look at a Limited GP that I Head Judged (Milwaukee 2016). 368 players qualified for Day 2. That's 46 pods. Excluding myself and the draft caller, there were 16 judges available on the floor during the draft. That's almost 3 pods per judge. So if you park on one table, that's opening up two others tables that are going unwatched.

This is why my preferred mode when I'm on the floor of a called draft is to be on the move. If a judge near me is in park-and-watch mode, that means I have five pods to patrol. With that many pods to monitor, the efficacy of me being able to watch any particular player is pretty low, but if you can't actually catch a cheater, you can deter them. This is why I intentionally clomp around my patrol zone with heavier than usual footfalls. No, I don't stomp like I'm crushing grapes. Just enough to put it into player's ears that "there's a judge walking around."

One thing I do is pick up the paper wrapper garbage from the packs. (GP and PT packs are opened, stamped, and rewrapped with slips of paper indicating the event.) This is a bit controversial among judges. Some will say that judges shouldn't pick up garbage because they aren't watching for peekers. But I've found that leaning in here is a good way to establish the presence of a judge and deter peeking. Heck, some players will even help you out by passing you their refuse.

In the end, this is mostly just theatrics. Another judge compared it to "parking your state trooper car on the side of the highway with the headlights on." It's very hard to actually catch a cheater this way, but if other judges are parked and focused on that, go for a stroll to fill that space.