Magic the Gathering

Update: The offi­cial story has been pub­lished by Wiz­ards con­cern­ing the dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion. Read the full expla­na­tion here.

The offi­cial rules for ‘Fraud’ are as follows:

Def­i­n­i­tion

A per­son inten­tion­ally and know­ingly vio­lates or mis­rep­re­sents rules, pro­ce­dures, per­sonal infor­ma­tion, or any other rel­e­vant tour­na­ment infor­ma­tion. Note that Fraud, like most cheat­ing, is deter­mined by an inves­ti­ga­tion and will often appear on the sur­face as a Game Play Error or Tour­na­ment Error.
Addi­tion­ally, it is Fraud if a player (or team­mate) notices an offense in their match and does not imme­di­ately call atten­tion to it.

Exam­ples

• A player enters a tour­na­ment under an assumed name and/or using a dif­fer­ent DCI num­ber in an attempt to manip­u­late ratings.
• A player alters the results of a match after the match is over.
• A player lies to a tour­na­ment offi­cial to gain or keep an advantage.
• A player lies to his oppo­nent about his life total.
• A player observes his oppo­nent or team­mate make an ille­gal play but does not call a judge because it is to his advantage.
• A spec­ta­tor gives false or mis­lead­ing infor­ma­tion to a tour­na­ment offi­cial that helps another player to cheat.

If you attack with a Sil­ver­coat Lion, and your oppo­nent blocks with a Glory Seeker that should not die in the com­bat due to Vet­eran Armor­smith that is on your opponent’s side of the bat­tle­field, you have a respon­si­bil­ity to let your oppo­nent know—if they try to put their crea­ture in the graveyard—that it has not taken lethal dam­age. Will­fully fail­ing to do so is Fraud, and will result in the same penalty that Gindy received: Disqualification.

1. From every­thing I am hear­ing on var­i­ous sites, I guess it involved a mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Game State involv­ing Mas­ter of the Wild Hunt, but we are wait­ing to hear for sure.

   TheCounterGuy | November 19, 2009, 1:54 pm | #

2. that sucks! gindy gets hit in the face while kibler walks free

   KT | November 19, 2009, 6:53 pm | #

3. I guess it depends what exactly he said, but I don’t see how the post-game ques­tion proves he was aware of (and “inten­tion­ally allowed”) a mis­play at the time it occurred dur­ing the game.

   JJ | November 19, 2009, 10:16 pm | #

4. WOW! How hyp­ocrit­cal can Magic get. Brain Kibler wins a pro tour with­out hav­ing a legal tar­get avail­able and Gindy gets Dis­qual­i­fied from worlds for the same thing. I’m so glad there is so much con­sis­tancy in Magic. It really makes me want to play in tour­na­ments. Hope­fully, I’ll get a judge thats on my side since Magic is a com­pe­ti­tion of who you know not how you play.

   ryantc1983 | November 20, 2009, 9:32 am | #

5. I will now quit play­ing Magic in protest of this unbe­liev­able awe­ful hyp­ocrit­cal rul­ing. Magic judges are all hyp­ocrites and should be fired. Way to go Wiz­ards for loos­ing fan support.

   John Paul VD | November 20, 2009, 9:38 am | #

6. Re: com­par­isons between the sit­u­a­tion at Austin vs Worlds, I’ll quote another judge on the subject:

   “Oh, so you’re psy­chic and know all the details of each sit­u­a­tion? Astound­ing! Don’t start with your arm­chair judg­ing with­out access to all the facts of the sit­u­a­tion and dis­cus­sion with the players.

   “Even with the scant infor­ma­tion, the sit­u­a­tions are already very dif­fer­ent: the biggest dif­fer­ence being that Kibler’s mis­take was noticed after the tour­na­ment was over and done with.”

   Also, Mas­ter of the Wild Hunt was Gindy’s card. It was in his deck. It is there­fore dif­fi­cult to credit the idea that he does not know how his card works. Angel of Despair was Kibler’s opponent’s card, and it is there­fore more plau­si­ble that the missed trig­ger was a legit­i­mate mistake.

   David Zimet | November 20, 2009, 1:41 pm | #

7. So, Gindy got DQed because Kibler didn’t know the rules…

   JD | December 10, 2009, 1:54 pm | #

8. No JD, Gindy played against Antoine Menard not Kibler. Menard didn’t assign com­bat dam­age and Gindy was dq’ed for it. Seems pretty janky to me.

   Adam | December 19, 2009, 2:43 pm | #

9. Some­thing like this hap­pened to me once. I was play­ing in a Type 2 tour­na­ment dur­ing Tempest/Urza blocks, run­ning a WW deck. I had Soltari Priest and Wor­ship in play slowly pick­ing my oppo­nent to death. He was run­ning G/R Zoo and played Earth­quake for 3 on his turn. I put my Priest in the grave­yard for some dumb rea­son, fail­ing to real­ize it had pro­tec­tion red. I real­ized my mis­take one turn later but my oppo­nent said it was too late. I was naive and inex­pe­ri­enced so I thought thats how the rules worked. It was DCI sanc­tioned so I should have called a judge over. I didn’t and ended up los­ing. It was the semi-finals match and I got 4th place.… just out­side of the prize range. My oppo­nent that cheated got 3rd and I had to watch him get the prize. I’ve been bit­ter about tour­na­ments ever since. Remem­ber kids if you ever have a sit­u­a­tion best to just call a judge over I could have made it into the top 3 in my very first tour­na­ment had I got a judge involved. I’m glad Gindy got dq’ed because he cheated. Lame.

   Adam | December 19, 2009, 2:54 pm | #

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