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Would you change your mind if Mstring had said "Well how much would you pay me to?"?
What about if his opponent said "Scoop to me. I live on 6040 splitsville street."?
Or "If you scoop, it'll be worth it."
Or "If you make it worth it, I'll scoop."
All of those things (except maybe the first one) have happened at tournaments and are clear tournament collusion that compromise the integrity of the game. Because if even if both parties agree it was a joke how is it possible that you know they are still not colluding?
The difference between Mstring's case and your quarter case is this: There is an indisputable verbal exchange about the outcome of the match for an unknown amount of money.
Try to look at it from the perspective of a judge. There are two players who you do not know with a couple of witnesses (as was what the original situation implied things were being set up). You're called over and one player is accused of attempted collusion. You get them to recount the story and they both recount the same thing and Mstring claims it was an obvious joke.
From the judges perspective here are the possibilities of what actually happened:
Both parties really thought it was a joke and there will be no collusion and are being safe.
Mstring's opponent wants to collude and is being safe against witnesses.
Mstring wants to collude and is lying about it being a joke to cover himself.
The point is that if Mstring OR his opponent is dishonest about his intentions to the judge, the judge has no way of knowing that and the possibility of collusion is not high. Wizards wants to make it adamant that no player can gaurentee you by any type of private agreement anything on the outcome of a match that is not the finals. And even there you can only use the prizes of the match to barter.
EDIT:
Yes there are ways around the system by setting up agreements/secret code beforehand but there is no way to stop this. Besides often if you meet a friend at a deciding match you usually discuss who has better odds/needs the win more anyway and if there is a disagreement you just play. How to enforce this is one of the most hotly contested issues in competitive magic and there is a lack of a consensus from the player base.
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United States24634 Posts
On November 14 2013 00:53 Judicator wrote:
It's mostly up to their discretion, as in their view on the sequence of events. It's just that their views are very conservative in nature as if there's any reasonable belief that quarter is being dropped on the table is because you are dying of thirst and is sitting at 1.25 which puts you short for 1.50 for a drink so you decide to throw a game or match then you will be DQ-ed.
It's not as terrifying as people have made it sound, but if a judge just walking by overhears something like collusion and didn't take as a joke, then you could be very much be in trouble.
I understand where you are coming from micronesia, but people suck, people suck worse when there's stakes of any sort on the table, Yeah this I recognize for sure. so judges kind of have to do this. It's not black/white, but the shade of gray doesn't go too far. I think they (Wizards) should have you modify the rules to be a bit more clear, as you seem to be explaining this much better than they do. I don't totally agree with MTG's apparent stance on this issue (based on what you have all explained to me from your tournament experience), but I would be bothered by it much less if I felt the written rules were more clear on what judges will do at tournaments.
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That's pointless, judges have the discretion to do so, if you need to codify this to the letter, than it becomes more trouble than its worth. Judges are suppose to have this kind of power and as long as they don't abuse it (and it certainly hasn't been a problem) then its fine.
Given the severity of the situation (ie - if collusion was actually taking place), then its in everyone's best interests that you don't let things slide and take a more critical approach.
Wording is semi-ambiguous for a reason so humans can judge each other rather than some arbitrarily set of words that may or may not include what is actually going down.
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United States24634 Posts
On November 14 2013 01:57 Judicator wrote:
That's pointless, judges have the discretion to do so, if you need to codify this to the letter, than it becomes more trouble than its worth. Judges are suppose to have this kind of power and as long as they don't abuse it (and it certainly hasn't been a problem) then its fine.
Given the severity of the situation (ie - if collusion was actually taking place), then its in everyone's best interests that you don't let things slide and take a more critical approach.
Wording is semi-ambiguous for a reason so humans can judge each other rather than some arbitrarily set of words that may or may not include what is actually going down.
I absolutely disagree that the written rules couldn't be changed to better serve this situation. Once again, they say:
The decision to drop, concede, or agree to an intentional draw cannot be made in exchange for or influenced by the offer of any reward or incentive. Making such an offer is prohibited. Unless the player receiving such an offer calls for a judge immediately, both players will be penalized in the same manner.
They can be modified to indicate that an expressed willingness, rather than just an actual offer, is sufficient for disqualification. This is in addition to the obvious latitude judges have to deal with situations that come up. The rules can be clear to avoid any such type of behavior without listing exactly what is or isn't included, so that it could be intentionally "semi-ambiguous" as you suggested.
The rules are only banning a very specific behavior, even though more behavior than that is effectively banned (based on what judges are told to do in various situations). The rules should specify what is actually banned, and just not go into detail about interpretation.
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On November 14 2013 02:07 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2013 01:57 Judicator wrote:
That's pointless, judges have the discretion to do so, if you need to codify this to the letter, than it becomes more trouble than its worth. Judges are suppose to have this kind of power and as long as they don't abuse it (and it certainly hasn't been a problem) then its fine.
Given the severity of the situation (ie - if collusion was actually taking place), then its in everyone's best interests that you don't let things slide and take a more critical approach.
Wording is semi-ambiguous for a reason so humans can judge each other rather than some arbitrarily set of words that may or may not include what is actually going down. I absolutely disagree that the written rules couldn't be changed to better serve this situation. Once again, they say: Show nested quote +The decision to drop, concede, or agree to an intentional draw cannot be made in exchange for or influenced by the offer of any reward or incentive. Making such an offer is prohibited. Unless the player receiving such an offer calls for a judge immediately, both players will be penalized in the same manner. They can be modified to indicate that an expressed willingness, rather than just an actual offer, is sufficient for disqualification. This is in addition to the obvious latitude judges have to deal with situations that come up. The rules can be clear to avoid any such type of behavior without listing exactly what is or isn't included, so that it could be intentionally "semi-ambiguous" as you suggested. The rules are only banning a very specific behavior, even though more behavior than that is effectively banned (based on what judges are told to do in various situations). The rules should specify what is actually banned, and just not go into detail about interpretation.
It's much the same with laws that include the words "reasonable" or "prudent person", the judge is there to interpret the rule because there are so many ins and outs and loopholes that could be found it would be pointless to list every behavior. I think the rules make it adamantly clear that Colluding or Coercing your opponent to alter match results will result in a DQ. Asking them to pay you to scoop, whether jokingly or not, certainly falls in this category.
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United States24634 Posts
On November 14 2013 02:19 red_hq wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2013 02:07 micronesia wrote:On November 14 2013 01:57 Judicator wrote:
That's pointless, judges have the discretion to do so, if you need to codify this to the letter, than it becomes more trouble than its worth. Judges are suppose to have this kind of power and as long as they don't abuse it (and it certainly hasn't been a problem) then its fine.
Given the severity of the situation (ie - if collusion was actually taking place), then its in everyone's best interests that you don't let things slide and take a more critical approach.
Wording is semi-ambiguous for a reason so humans can judge each other rather than some arbitrarily set of words that may or may not include what is actually going down. I absolutely disagree that the written rules couldn't be changed to better serve this situation. Once again, they say: The decision to drop, concede, or agree to an intentional draw cannot be made in exchange for or influenced by the offer of any reward or incentive. Making such an offer is prohibited. Unless the player receiving such an offer calls for a judge immediately, both players will be penalized in the same manner. They can be modified to indicate that an expressed willingness, rather than just an actual offer, is sufficient for disqualification. This is in addition to the obvious latitude judges have to deal with situations that come up. The rules can be clear to avoid any such type of behavior without listing exactly what is or isn't included, so that it could be intentionally "semi-ambiguous" as you suggested. The rules are only banning a very specific behavior, even though more behavior than that is effectively banned (based on what judges are told to do in various situations). The rules should specify what is actually banned, and just not go into detail about interpretation. It's much the same with laws that include the words "reasonable" or "prudent person", the judge is there to interpret the rule because there are so many ins and outs and loopholes that could be found it would be pointless to list every behavior. I think the rules make it adamantly clear that Colluding or Coercing your opponent to alter match results will result in a DQ. Asking them to pay you to scoop, whether jokingly or not, certainly falls in this category.
If I am a judge at a competition to farm the best vegetables, and there has been a big problem with people using pesticides even though we don't want them to, I will indicate that in the rules, of course. If the rules are "You may not spray your garden with pesticides" and then I DQ someone because they asked another contestant if they had any pesticides, then I really should update the rules to be a bit more inclusive. That is how I see the current magic rules, but just a bit less obviously.
As I said, I'm putting aside the fact that I don't really like how magic is handling what is a very real problem, but at the very least I think the rules should be sufficient that a player will know without having to ask players who have competed before that you can get into trouble for any mention of things related to collusion that could possibly be interpreted as offers or prospective offers, rather than only if you are caught making (or receiving) a specific offer.
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On November 14 2013 02:29 micronesia wrote:
If I am a judge at a competition to farm the best vegetables, and there has been a big problem with people using pesticides even though we don't want them to, I will indicate that in the rules, of course. If the rules are "You may not spray your garden with pesticides" and then I DQ someone because they asked another contestant if they had any pesticides, then I really should update the rules to be a bit more inclusive. That is how I see the current magic rules, but just a bit less obviously.
As I said, I'm putting aside the fact that I don't really like how magic is handling what is a very real problem, but at the very least I think the rules should be sufficient that a player will know without having to ask players who have competed before that you can get into trouble for any mention of things related to collusion that could possibly be interpreted as offers or prospective offers, rather than only if you are caught making (or receiving) a specific offer.
I think a better analogy would be to find that contestant at a pesticide shop and he says he has the intention to prank the shop owner. You have no way of knowing if he bought pesticides there but have a pretty strong case that he probably is using pesticides.
The rules shouldn't have prospective offers or attempted collusion clause because that gives too much power to the judges to the point of your quarter argument. Saying "How much money do you have?" in that context (Assuming no one is joking) is making an offer to concede in exchange for a reward, exactly like it says in the rules. With a large enough sum of money he will concede.
I agree it's pretty silly on how strict some magic rules can be but at the same time I understand why it has to be that way. I've had many of these types of debates on these sorts of rules calls with lots of L2+ Judges ranging from what constitutes fishing for information to what constitutes a marked card to what constitutes slow play and the most contested one is this one**. It's still very strict but what constitutes an offer will vary from judge to judge what all of their responses have in common is "it depends". From context to context they will give you different answers because things in magic change greatly in context it's very difficult to have a concrete definition for collusion so we leave it to the judges to evaluate the context.
**Actually it's fishing for information but this one carries heavier consequences and comes a close seconds when you get into semantics.
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United States24634 Posts
On November 14 2013 03:55 red_hq wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2013 02:29 micronesia wrote:
If I am a judge at a competition to farm the best vegetables, and there has been a big problem with people using pesticides even though we don't want them to, I will indicate that in the rules, of course. If the rules are "You may not spray your garden with pesticides" and then I DQ someone because they asked another contestant if they had any pesticides, then I really should update the rules to be a bit more inclusive. That is how I see the current magic rules, but just a bit less obviously.
As I said, I'm putting aside the fact that I don't really like how magic is handling what is a very real problem, but at the very least I think the rules should be sufficient that a player will know without having to ask players who have competed before that you can get into trouble for any mention of things related to collusion that could possibly be interpreted as offers or prospective offers, rather than only if you are caught making (or receiving) a specific offer. I think a better analogy would be to find that contestant at a pesticide shop and he says he has the intention to prank the shop owner. You have no way of knowing if he bought pesticides there but have a pretty strong case that he probably is using pesticides. I honestly don't get your example/analogy...
The rules shouldn't have prospective offers or attempted collusion clause because that gives too much power to the judges to the point of your quarter argument. The judges already seem to have more power than what is written in the rules. At the very least the rules can warn that they will very strictly be on the lookout for statements that could be considered collusion/etc. Like I said, based on the current wording you aren't breaking the rules unless you make or receive a specific offer.
Saying "How much money do you have?" in that context (Assuming no one is joking) is making an offer to concede in exchange for a reward, exactly like it says in the rules. With a large enough sum of money he will concede. I tried not to bring this back up earlier in the page, but it seems unavoidable. I do not agree that it is making an offer. It is possibly expressing an interest (and of course as we all said it was obvious joking anyway). If expressing an interest in collusion is not allowed, there is no way to know it from the rules. Telling someone they are being dropped from the tournament for 'bribery' when they neither bribed anyone nor were bribed, nor made an offer that could possibly be agreed to, nor neglected to report an offer that could possibly have been agreed to, is not acceptable to me. The rules could easily be modified to give the judges an actual legitimate reason to DQ the person on the circumstances described earlier, without giving judges the power to drop people for 'any reason.'
I agree it's pretty silly on how strict some magic rules can be but at the same time I understand why it has to be that way. I've had many of these types of debates on these sorts of rules calls with lots of L2+ Judges ranging from what constitutes fishing for information to what constitutes a marked card to what constitutes slow play and the most contested one is this one**. It's still very strict but what constitutes an offer will vary from judge to judge what all of their responses have in common is "it depends". From context to context they will give you different answers because things in magic change greatly in context it's very difficult to have a concrete definition for collusion so we leave it to the judges to evaluate the context.
**Actually it's fishing for information but this one carries heavier consequences and comes a close seconds when you get into semantics. Some of the strictness is definitely understandable, and I'm sure a lot of it comes from prior experience. The only one I have an issue with the implementation of currently is the anti-matchfixing policies (both written, and apparently not written).
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United States24634 Posts
edit: hit wrong button and created new post
On MTGO are there problems with respect to bribery and collusion? Or does the online platform make this much less of an issue? Are there precautions taken by MTGO staff? I just ask this out of curiosity.
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I think the major/only disagreement is what constitutes an offer to collude and I can't really see where you're coming from when you don't think that constitutes an offer to collude.
To me "I'll scoop if you give me lots of money" isn't different enough from "I'll scoop if you give $100" or "I'll scoop if you give me $100 000." for me to make a different call. The intention is the player is willing to compromise the outcome of the tournament for money.
This is much the same way if you ask a police officer not to write you a ticket and he responds with "It depends on how much money you have." He has very clearly offered you to take part in bribery.
For mtgo bribery is almost non-existent because of the chat log. Your account would likely be banned very shortly after you offered a bribe because your opponent would report it. In addition there is no way to intentionally draw so there are a fewer situations where you would want to collude in such a manner.
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United States24634 Posts
On November 14 2013 04:29 red_hq wrote:
I think the major/only disagreement is what constitutes an offer to collude and I can't really see where you're coming from when you don't think that constitutes an offer to collude.
To me "I'll scoop if you give me lots of money" isn't different enough from "I'll scoop if you give $100" or "I'll scoop if you give me $100 000." for me to make a different call. The intention is the player is willing to compromise the outcome of the tournament for money. Actually I agree with you. "Will you scoop?" "Yes if you give me money" is making an offer. The offer is "if you give me money I might scoop."
"Will you scoop?" "How much money do you have?" is not making an offer, though. An offer has to be something that the other person can agree to.
This is much the same way if you ask a police officer not to write you a ticket and he responds with "It depends on how much money you have." He has very clearly offered you to take part in bribery. My problem with the cop saying that isn't that he made an offer to be bribed, but that he is an authority figure and can't say something like that. If he had said "give me money" that would be an offer for bribery.
edit: The irony is that extortion is a legitimate tactic in MTG!
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I've split drafts in mtgo a few times. Works fine. I usually concede to the other guy since I don't care about the QPs but sometimes you let the die roll decide for example. There are no consequences.
E: 6 packs is much preferable to 4, and 8 isn't THAT much better than 6 in the grand scheme of things. Its all about having enough to do more drafts  Plus I'm rarely that confident in my deck XD
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The biggest thing against MTGO collusion is in the way the client and the internet itself works. Its impossible to trust the other party to keep there word unless you personally know them. You can offer you opponent all sorts of things and if they dont report no one will be the wiser but how do you know he's giving you X packs/tickets before you give up and how does he know you will give up once he hands over the goods.
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On November 14 2013 04:40 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2013 04:29 red_hq wrote:
I think the major/only disagreement is what constitutes an offer to collude and I can't really see where you're coming from when you don't think that constitutes an offer to collude.
To me "I'll scoop if you give me lots of money" isn't different enough from "I'll scoop if you give $100" or "I'll scoop if you give me $100 000." for me to make a different call. The intention is the player is willing to compromise the outcome of the tournament for money. Actually I agree with you. "Will you scoop?" "Yes if you give me money" is making an offer. The offer is "if you give me money I might scoop." "Will you scoop?" "How much money do you have?" is not making an offer, though. An offer has to be something that the other person can agree to. To me they convey the same message: With a large enough sum of money I will scoop.
Show nested quote +This is much the same way if you ask a police officer not to write you a ticket and he responds with "It depends on how much money you have." He has very clearly offered you to take part in bribery. My problem with the cop saying that isn't that he made an offer to be bribed, but that he is an authority figure and can't say something like that. If he had said "give me money" that would be an offer for bribery. edit: The irony is that extortion is a legitimate tactic in MTG!
Only in RTR draft
And neither can an opponent when you are trying to determine a winner fairly . In the infraction guide the if you apply the philosophy behind the rule "Bribery and wagering disrupt the integrity of the tournament and are strictly forbidden.", I feel that if a player has made herself open to bribery (by indicating she can agree on a sum of money to throw the match) she is disrupting the integrity of the tournament.
In other news the wednesday mtgo downtime is over and I need to make mad tixs on momir basic ques and practice for the sealed PTQ on Sunday. I hope dailies come back soon though.
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United States24634 Posts
On November 14 2013 05:03 red_hq wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2013 04:40 micronesia wrote:On November 14 2013 04:29 red_hq wrote:
I think the major/only disagreement is what constitutes an offer to collude and I can't really see where you're coming from when you don't think that constitutes an offer to collude.
To me "I'll scoop if you give me lots of money" isn't different enough from "I'll scoop if you give $100" or "I'll scoop if you give me $100 000." for me to make a different call. The intention is the player is willing to compromise the outcome of the tournament for money. Actually I agree with you. "Will you scoop?" "Yes if you give me money" is making an offer. The offer is "if you give me money I might scoop." "Will you scoop?" "How much money do you have?" is not making an offer, though. An offer has to be something that the other person can agree to. To me they convey the same message: With a large enough sum of money I will scoop.
So this is specifically where we disagree. I don't think we can change each other's minds to be honest.
Show nested quote +This is much the same way if you ask a police officer not to write you a ticket and he responds with "It depends on how much money you have." He has very clearly offered you to take part in bribery. My problem with the cop saying that isn't that he made an offer to be bribed, but that he is an authority figure and can't say something like that. If he had said "give me money" that would be an offer for bribery. edit: The irony is that extortion is a legitimate tactic in MTG! Only in RTR draft
What about this for vintage??: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=45279
And neither can an opponent when you are trying to determine a winner fairly . In the infraction guide the if you apply the philosophy behind the rule "Bribery and wagering disrupt the integrity of the tournament and are strictly forbidden.", I feel that if a player has made herself open to bribery (by indicating she can agree on a sum of money to throw the match) she is disrupting the integrity of the tournament.
This brings up a separate issue. If I was to play you in a real life magic event in the near future, and you were to offer me a billion dollars to throw my match (which frankly I would probably lose anyway) and I felt we could totally get away with it, I would probably accept, as much as I generally frown upon match fixing. Throwing a game in some fairly minor tournament would be a small price to pay for all the good I could do with that billion dollars (plus I could pay off my darn student debt!) Most people who claim they wouldn't accept under such a (fictitious) scenario are probably full of crap.
Does my willingness to throw the game under such extreme conditions mean I shouldn't ever be allowed to play magic? Frankly, that situation isn't going to come up and I'm not going to match fix. However, if we are okay with thought crimes, I just admitted that I would collude under some circumstances. In my opinion, without evidence that I am actually trying to collude, I shouldn't be held accountable (except perhaps when it comes to invitations to invitational events perhaps if I have outwardly discussed my views).
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I mean of course that situation would be ridiculous and I would eat a DCI ban if it mean I could get shit tonnes of cash. What I said is what I meant "The player has shown herself to be open to bribery within that tournament." And I agree that anyone who wouldn't do that is full of crap.
It doesn't mean that you shouldn't play magic, it just means you should be ready to keep your mouth shut about those things while playing competitive magic. 
In Mstring's situation the judge only had the documented conversation and Mstring's word that he wasn't trying to collude and from what I described earlier the judge can evaluate four cases:
Both parties really thought it was a joke and there will be no collusion and are being safe. (Neither is Lying)
Mstring's and/or his opponent wants to collude and is being safe against witnesses. (Opponent and/or Mstring is Lying)
Mstring wants to collude and is lying about it being a joke to cover himself. (Mstring is Lying)
In three of four cases the tournament is compromised and any admission of a lie here results in DQ or worse. So if someone wants to collude they won't tell the judge and the only course of action to repair the tournament is to issue the player who alluded to fixing the match a DQ. If a DQ isn't issued it will set a precedent that you can chat about collusion in this way.
It is because of this matrix and the in-ability to read minds that judges have to be so strict on collusion.
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United States24634 Posts
red_hq as I said the rules can be updated to reflect this. Do not chat about collusion is not in the rules currently. All it says is not to collude. If you don't want people to make comments which make it harder for judges to tell who might be trying to collude, make it clear that such comments should not be made.
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I don't see what's so absurd. The rules are pretty clear about consequences for collusion/bribery/etc. so it's on you if you want to do anything that could at be construed as such.
I mean honestly it's not that big a deal to just, I dunno, NOT make jokes about bribery/collusion/etc. If I enter a tournament I just want to play some MtG, I'm not entering to exercise the freedom to be like "dude I'll scoop if you offer enough incentives lol jk totally no bribery going on here wink wink." Sucks that people get hit with DQ's for not thinking before they speak, but that's a small price to keep jerks from getting away with collusion/bribery because they were "joking" or "hadn't made an actual offer."
The current rules are fine. If people want to see how close they can toe the line instead of just staying clear of behavior that can be construed as problematic, that's their problem.
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United States24634 Posts
It's only potentially a problem for new players (the apparent disconnect between the written rules and what is actually not allowed)... not people who either have played in these events already or have discussed it in places like here. Most of you have no personal need for a rules change due to your experience so it's harder to care that it might actually better to have rules that are clear for new players who are reading the rules and entering a real event for the first time.
Note that I personally have never had a problem with this.
@MCMcEmcee, yes they are clear about the consequences of a violation, but not about what you have to do to violate the rules.
edit to edit: I maintain that the rules are not fine, although once again it is only a problem for newer players.
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This seems like a situation where the people in the tournaments just needs to use common sense. You don't say "bomb" when on an airplane even jokingly. So don't say anything that can even possibly construed as collusion in a MTG tournament.
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EPT
