I think it's rationalizing their lack of skill, too. If they stopped cheating they wouldn't be able to hang at those higher levels. "If I can't win without cheating that means everyone who beats me is a cheater!"
Agreed, I don't mind losing in an event to someone who just played better. But if someone cheated and cost me money, yeah let's wait for them in the parking lot 😂
If they stick to the type of cheating they talked about? Nah, probably not. The only way to prove a plausible mistake was intentional is if they keep doing it, and if they stop when it becomes clear you're noticing the "mistakes" then they will get away with it.
Regarding the copiums of cheating and excuses for not winning: It's gotta feel like shit when you're cheating and still lose. You've ensured you have an advantage by playing outside of the rules, and still lost. So you go to the next level of cope: If you cheated and lost, clearly you lost because they were also cheating and just cheated harder. Because the alternative would be absolutely crushing to the ego: you cheated, and they still outplayed you. And from some experience - cheaters have incredibly frail egos.
My brother and dad cheated at any and every game I've ever played with them. I didn't find out until after I was in my 30s from their own admission. And I still won 1/3rd of the time. To them, the game was how much they could get away with, but to me it meant play *better*. And I became better. The funniest thing is how they couldn't understand that their cheats weren't even better than correct play, and they couldn't grow past their bad lines and choices because they became trapped leaning on the cheats. Tldr: cheaters should put their effort into better play than better cheating.
@@asteria9963 You can't therapize psychopathy. Most cheaters are just low-grade psychopaths taking advantage of a high-trust environment with low-risk consequences for getting caught.
Not MtG related, but I play a lot of DbD and there is nothing more satisfying than beating a cheater in that game. They are fairly common, and always very bad at the game lol
When I saw the thumbnail, I thought it was about a marriage and infidelity subreddit. If you read "game" as a metaphor for relationships, it almost could be.
A person recently tried to tell me that when player's life hit zero if they have planeswalkers, you have to kill the planes walkers first because they count as extra life. This person was a super friends deck runner and had well into 50ish counters worth of planeswalkers on the board. He argued for it for like 2 or 3 solid minutes before I called over a judge.
Unrelated, this would be a cool alternate game mode. You as a player die but all your Planeswalkers stay. no more casting spells just activating and resolving planeswalker effects.
It's definitely an interesting idea for a format but when you're playing Commander or standard/ other 20 life formats especially, that can be a significant jump in life. And it just combos so well with life game planes Walker's decks
Definitely a really cool idea for a format, I'm going to sit down and Brew it with my friends to see what we can come up with but sounds fun! I welcomed the table for anyone to do so as well. Because hey why not? Clearly if he wants to cheat by doing that then why not make a format where that's not cheating? That's the beauty of magic. You can make other formats and play with the game pieces All the same.
This sounds like a player heard a reference from someone else and took it as gospel. I've heard "having planeswalkers is like having extra life, because they have to knock down the loyalty instead of your life total."
NEVER BE AFRAID to call a Judge. Is there an interaction you don't understand? Call a Judge. Did you forget to de-sideboard before game 1 of the match? Call a Judge. Did your opponent do something that doesn't feel right to you? Call a Judge. Hell, you know what I heard some Judges say the most common reason they get called over is? "Yeah, we're done our match... do you have a pen so we can fill out the match slip?" Judges are there to help sort out issues and help the game run smoothly for everyone involved, within the confines of the rules. They are someone who will give you an unbiased answer because they are not involved in the game at all. And to those Judges in the audience, I know you don't hear it enough, but from at least one person: Thank you.
Right any honest player will not be upset about you calling a judge, unless you are abusing it by calling them for every play. But in that situation the judges will know someone is abusing the call system.
We ask for a judge for silly clarifications that have nothing to do with the game like tastes great versus less filling. We want NLT do this to our friends when they aren’t engaged with real tourney business.
@@shocktohp7314 No idea what you're on about, but if you disagree with a ruling, you can always appeal to the Head Judge. Judges do make mistakes, they're not robots. NOT calling a Judge means anyone who might possibly be cheating gets away with it 100% of the time. Calling a Judge means you have to bank on the Judge making a mistake. If I was a cheater, guess what's better for me? Convincing the opponent not to call a Judge.
I'm not a judge, but I once did something that I'm going to claim is similar to it; I arranged a dnd club at school, which involved helping 8 or so completely new players make their first characters. They all did it on a long table, asking help from me and another veteran whenever they needed any help. Not making a character myself, I felt like an overseer of sorts, giving answers and hovering around on standby. And yes, I had pens to give for them too.
I always assume my opponent is cheating when I'm at a high level event. I always cut their deck and I'm always hyper aware of their moves to make sure they're legal since so many lands only fully get online with other prerequisites. To be clear I don't treat them like they're cheating, but I'm certainly paying close attention. All that being said, this manifesto reeks of attempted justification through projection. They've sold their soul for winning a match 13% more of the time.
Yeah this is the best way to approach high competition play. I also always talk with my opponent. I say every action I take and even though its not my responsibility to keep track if their triggers or abilities, i do and ask questions of their board state every time it changes drastically doing so has helped me a few times and recently at a freaking fnm were my opponent and I were playing the bottom table and they were "soft cheated" as vince said. I dont think it was malicious per say but it was the most recent occurrence
This is how you should approach any higher level event in any card game. Don't assume they're cheating. Always final cut and do your due diligence regardless of if you think they're cheating or not.
That they openly admit to exploiting the social awkwardness and conflict avoidance in some opponents makes me mad. That's asshole behavior. It's using something they can't really help to get unfair wins over them and steamroll all objections. That's not the behavior of an underdog, just trying to compete in a rigged system. That's a predator - a bully - preying on perceived weakness to score cheap wins. It's disgusting, and I very much hope most Magic players don't think that way.
I do agree with that point only. I do not cheat and never did. But I am personally inclined to "abusing" my opponent's awkwardness and conflict avoidance because I used to be the awkward conflict avoidant kid and everyone and my mother just steamrolled me for it and I'm sick of it and want to feel for once that feelgod of doing exactly that. I want my vengeance
@@minervadetauro7646 So you were mistreated and now you do the same to others. You are doing your abusers bidding. You are justifying their actions and you make sure that they were right in shitting on you. Please try to break the circle. Do better and make the world a better place.
@@minervadetauro7646 Hate to tell you this, but there's a word for deliberately being awful to someone who wasn't the person who hurt you, and it definitely isn't 'vengeance'.
@@minervadetauro7646 with all due respect, it would only be vengeance if it was towards the person who inflicted it upon YOU (whether or not that is healthy and/or justified is a different story). If you are taking out your frustrations at having been treated at that way on someone who hasn't done anything to you, then that is not vengeance, it is simply being a bully.
As someone who cheated HEAVILY in my youth, I think soft cheating needs to be docked, because its far too easy to be like "oh my bad", and if you mess up, intentionally or not, you need to be penalized, especially if its egregious. If you're in a tournament there is no excuse to be making mistakes in my opinion, You're playing a deck that you should already be extremely familiar with. Judges needs to start completely exiling cards and penalizing players who make these mistakes instead of allowing these cheats to slip through. I think some sort of additional rule for soft cheats should be banned from the tournament when it becomes clear they are cheating. Let me clarify, I do NOT cheat anymore, and haven't cheated for over a decade. I really like that you pointed out bringing over a judge to point out a minor mistakes, because you're right, good judges will see someone making these "mistakes" over and over and do something about it. Great video keep it up!
I always love this persona of "The other players are WEAK and BETAS unlike me, the SIGMA ALPHA PRO who plays a children's card game like a SIGMA ALPHA PRO by CHEATING EFFECTIVELY". Just ask them how many pullups they can do.
Kinda tracks with the american capitalist ethos. I've literally had people at work tell me that they don't care if rich people cheat the system with no consequences because 'everyone does it' and they'd be stupid not to.
Yeah one of the points of the manifesto was a decent one, that people in business cheat all the time. This should in no way reflect how any one else goes about thier business (general term) nor should it be happening at all in the first place. But it was kinda sobering to hear it.
@@jones94122 Except the super rich have real power and will cheat you a thousand times over, while regular wankers hold next to no power and actively decide to screw over regular people over what's essentially a bunch of peanuts. It's pathetic behavior from pathetic people, but they don't feel pathetic, because they think they're "winning", even when they don't.
Psychopaths tend to rise to the top of any hierarchical structure because they are willing to abuse the situation and break rules to get what they want. The take risks and have no qualms or pause with lying, cheating, stealing, and backstabbing. This is just low-grade abuse of high-trust environments. This is not surprising, and we have known this for decades. Some devastatingly large percentage of CEOs are psychopaths. Some devastatingly large percentage of anyone at the top of any structure are psychopaths. That's how they got there, and how they stay there. The poster is a psychopath, but he's not wrong. Everything he said is true, albeit misguided. IF you aren't cheating in MTG tournaments, then you aren't trying. And if you don't think others are, then you likely aren't clever or sharp enough to catch them.
"Nobody is a villain in their own story." This is clearly an example of someone knowing that what they are doing is wrong, and the guilt is driving them to craft an "Everybody else does it too" narrative so they don't become the bad guy.
@@LoneWolf-rc4go I'm gonna say the corny truth of it, ready for corny cringe!? Here it comes!....... When you cheat, you cheat yourself and those who depended on you.
This individual sounds like a textbook psychopath. They view the non-cheating players as not being real, and they're somehow special and more aware by cheating against these players. It's the classic 'I'm the predator who sees the world for how it really is' attitude. In reality, this person is just woefully underdeveloped when it comes to empathy and values and genuinely can't understand that others feel dfferently.
I hate to "yes, but" this, BUT *waves hands wildly to the world around us.* Sadly, we don't have to look very hard to see that cheating is in fact extremely rampant in many areas of the world, like finance, real estate, banking, business, etc. They are NOT wrong that cheating is common, and all ignoring that fact does is make it easier for them to continue to do it. Especially the type of so called "soft cheating" that can be hidden with an "oopsie, I made a mistake. Sowwy!" It's not a sign of a psychopath to recognize that there is indeed two "games" going on in life. Those who hold themselves to the rules, and those who get away with as much as they can. There are SO many areas in the world where it's a widely known "open secret" about how much cheating there is going on. People don't all have to cheat to compete, but they DO have to be extremely mindful of cheating and give absolutely no quarter in their efforts to stop it. Don't let people get away with "oopsie" type mistakes. You don't have to accuse them of cheating, but don't be SO quick to brush them off either, especially if they are making frequent "mistakes." Out in the "real world" it's kind of too late. Letting cheaters off has become institutional. It's essentially sanctioned in some industries with hand slap type fines when they get caught. If people don't want to see gaming tournaments become equally corrupt, there has to be serious safe guards in place to prevent it, because it CAN and does happen in other gaming/sports. I remember seeing a documentary on rampant cheating in sumo wrestling. There's been if not outright cheating in chess, then at least cheating adjacent meta gaming of tournament point systems. Take this guys "everyone cheats" claim seriously.
I mean, that's right. He's also weak because he's cheating, but people who are willing to sacrifice justice to avoid a confrontation are also weak. Moral weakness is a pandemic right now
Not only do i call out everything my opponent's do, but also anything that I do wrong. Call a judge on yourself. Nothing is more liberating. Call a judge on your neighbour in a game you aren't even part of when you hear them saying some bullshit. Had a dude that's a massive angle shooter, who I call out so often that I sort even bother to keep friendly with, that I heard tell a player I'd never seen before that he "gets to go first because he lost the roll last game" and I said to his opponent "pause the game. JUDGE!" because the angle shooter knew damn well that it didn't work like that and that his opponent was too fresh to call a judge for it.
0:19 in yugioh that is because we all just kinda trust that our opponents aren’t cheating because if we actually fact checked them games wouldn’t have the chance to finish
I remember 10 years ago I was playing in a PPTQ and my opponent went to counter my supreme verdict. I told him it’s uncounterable and was cool about it and told him he could take it back(too nice, I know). Then later when I fetched for a shock land I said “get it tapped…actually untapped and take 2” and he called a judge. Some people just want to win more than they want to be good.
I was in a store looking at cards when I heard they were missing a player for a tournament, they see that I was looking at Magic cards and told me about playing, it was the first time I played in a tournament, my deck was super basic. On the 4th turn, my opponent makes the combo and beats me, without understanding, I ask him how it worked, and he answers very vaguely, after I assumed my defeat, another player arrives and asks my opponent if he had won, to which he answers "yes", the other player asks him "but how did you do it? if you didn't have enough mana" to which he instantly does "🤫", and there I was, a boy who was like 6 years older than me, had cheated me, and he knew it was my first tournament😒
I 100% agree with the point about winning against players that are or are perceived to be much higher skill than yourself. My most memorable win was in a PPTQ against a guy I was so nervous to play against because of his previous GP placements. I was so nervous I just tried to put on a poker face and drew exceptionally well and handily won the match. After he went over to his friend that came to the event with him and said " I hope you have a really good deck cause that was fuckin brutal" I was so happy with that win, even if I didn't win the event it has always stuck with me as a definitive win and his reaction to my nerves induced social comatose was the icing on the cake. Don't cheat get better and don't be an asshole.
This, if an opponent consistently makes "small mistakes" I'll just call a judge and ask them to watch the rest of the game. That usually sorts things out real quick.
@fermitupoupon1754 no call judge on the first mistake waiting till they've made more then one, that is how people get away with this. there is a reason that if a player gets 3 warnings a tournament for the same type of infraction the 3rd is upgraded to the next penalty level warning-> game lose -> match lose-> DQ
You'll find this exact type of person at the top tables of pokemon events too. Pokemon is full of soft cheaters and is the term we have used for over a decade. It's the exact same mindset that they will just cheat against "bad" players who got lucky against them because they shouldn't have to lose an entire event because of luck and the person that they cheated against has "No chance" in their mind to do well.
We have a guy at our lgs that buys singles early just so they can put them in their seal decks hes been caught sevral times doing this, his defense for doing this is that others are also doing it, he is the only one i know of that does this at our lgs
I used to play tournaments in a card shop that had rampant cheating by about 1/3 of the players there, in order to learn how to cheat-proof my play. Shortly thereafter I ended up playing extensively with a very large group that had extremely high level players,some of whom were judges and many of whom were notable tournament winners. The only person in that group who may have cheated was kicked out literally the day before I got there,which I remember because he had egged the place overnight. Everyone else,win or lose,was doing their best in the spirit of the purity of the game. THAT is what you find in the highest levels of any game or sport.
I've played against 2 different pro players (once at a spell slinging event once during a tournament) the pro during the tournament tried to "soft cheat" me 2 times (tapping wrong mana) I had to ask the judge to watch the rest of the match which got a huge eye roll and lots of sighs like a little baby. (I lost on time because the judge refused to give us a time extension even though I waited more than 5 minutes for the judge to show up)
judges are sadly awful for shit like that. A friend once had to straight up ignore his judge and appeal to head bc they wouldnt listen when he was claiming his OPP had marked sleeves. Head judge walked over, took 1 look at the suspect sleeve and threw the guy out
@@velphidrow I think it probably depends on the judge, but I've definitely encountered judges that really embraced the power the position gave them. At my first big event, a PTQ so more than twenty years ago I'd lost my first five games, and I realised someone had stolen my sideboard. I reported it to a judge between rounds and they said no one had handed it in. And then in round 6, at a straight 0-5, the same judge came over to do a 'random' deck check with the most evil smile on his face. I was 11. Many years later in a PPTQ in Dundee I was in the final and we each had a very complicated board state and the game was running on with very slow turns. The judge watching was clearly getting impatient and asked to see what my opponent had drawn, he showed her and she said "That doesn't change anything, so pass the turn." She then walked round the table and did the exact same thing to me, this repeated until the head judge wandered over and, to his credit, reprimanded her.
I will just never understand why people think cheating is part of the game, it just isn't, you just want an unfair advantage against people who wants to battle it out as it should be And now it's my responsibility to keep you in line just to play the game properly... Thing about the hollow victory point, what Ive heard from someone who knows many cheaters, its not about winning for them at all, its literally just about getting a payout from attending a big event so it was worth it... Thank you for calling out this f*** bs tho love it
The most compelling psychology explanation I've seen for serial cheaters is entitlement. They feel that due to their experience level, they are owed more victories than RNG allows, and therefore they feel morally justified in stacking their deck etc.
@@MunchKING The best version of this is the Dilbert Board Game has a card that tells all other players to leave the room and let's you cheat all you want until they return. But every cheat discovered by your opponents causes you to lose points, so you are encouraged to do it in subtle ways.
"The best way I’ve ever summed up .. is that one side, our side, sees a foul as being against the rules, and if you do it too many times you have to be removed. The other side, ..., sees fouls as things you’re allowed to get caught doing several times, and if you don’t, you aren’t trying hard enough.” Guess which side the cheater is on?
When I see how many people seem to genuinely believe there's something wrong with the Arena shuffler because they "always" get mana screwed on Arena (i.e. significantly more often than in paper), I'm pretty convinced that there's a non-trivial amount of people who - intentionally or unintentionally - consistently cheat in paper magic by never properly randomizing their deck.
Wasn't there a time on Arena where people were running deliberately low land count decks because the application was guaranteed to give you 1-2 land? Idk, I kind of understand where people are coming from with arena, large sample sizes show some weird matchmaking for example.
@@85inexact I have no idea if there's anything wrong with Arena's shuffler, it seems fine to me, but when you're pissed off that you're getting bad draws on Arena it's easier to blame the computer for screwing you than it is to blame yourself in paper when you shuffled your own deck.
The shuffle is fudged. In fact there was time period where players intentionally ran less lands in order for the shuffle to give them 2 lands every starting hand. Among matchmaking bullshit and hidden ELO. Arena is trash, play MTGO...
The only point the cheater mentions that is worth engaging with for real is the last one - I also think there will always be cheaters in competitive games. We need to stay vigilant and call people on their BS.
Also the way hidden information works in the game meant that 14 years ago there was a cheating epidemic thanks to an archetype focused around having an empty hand the infernity cards.
@@Spike-hl2mw An illegal action, believed to be unintentional, will either result in a warning or game loss. Repeating the same infraction can lead to the penalty being upgraded, so it's possible, for example, to forget (or "forget") to pay a cost just two times and get a game loss for it, and receive a match loss for a third.
"I lost that game... The opponent must have cheated. Yep, there is no other possible explanation." How can a person be so prideful that they could never consider that they lost because they were less skilled, or didn't build their deck as well as the opponent, or simply got unlucky with the Lands, and instead have to assume their opponent was a cheater? XD
the only cheating I do is in casual, and it's in my 60 card red deck. the lightning bolts are old, so the backs are a little faded. so they're technically marked. I just close my eyes when I'm shuffling to make sure I don't know where they actually are when I play. My friends are aware of it and don't mind. It's a 10$ deck, so I don't respect it enough to buy sleeves that cost more than the deck itself to hide the faded backs of 4 spells in the deck. But I'd never take it to an actual event assuming it would be okay.
I was a high level competitive player in another CCG back in the day (AEG's 'Warlord' - national champion once, European runner-up in 2v2, that kind of stuff) & nowadays I'm into running (getting top 3s for my age group & overall in smaller local races & the likes). My mind has always been that who you're really competing against is yourself. You're striving to get better than you were before, even if there are ups & there are downs, of course, along the way. Cheating really is antithetical to that.
The saddest thing is not the existence of cheaters, but the fact that a cheater such as the one who's examined in this video will take it as evidence of trying to hide in plain sight, and deepen their own justification. The goal of the game isn't just to beat your opponent, but also the player you were the last time you sat down to play. By cheating you rob yourself of the opportunity to develop mental muscles. Someone who says "all good players cheat" probably isn't the good player they think they are.
I had a fun one, a guy playing a bling out hardend scales deck tried to tell me that equipment didnt fall off man lands after they turn back into lands. He also just kinda sucked. He chose not to galvanic blast my kor spirt dancer while it was my only creature on field. Rationalizing that i probably didnt have an enchantment in my hand. He died to a massive kor spirit dancer because i was playing boggles so of course i had an enchatment.
Really? Do enchantments fall off as well? I was always under the impression that equipping or enchanting requires the card to be a creature, but once it's attatched, it stays there. Does that mean a card like imprisoned on the moon would knock other enchantments off?
@icedragon9097 Depends, equipment is equipped to a creature. So when the manland stops being a creature it stops being equipped. Same thing would happen for most auras, unless they said enchant permanent like the cycle from Kaldhiem
@icedragon9097yeah, the type of card the enchantment can target is important. If it says it can target lands, then it won’t fall off. Otherwise it will.
When Star Wars Destiny was running I played against a guy who was known for being grumpy when he lost. In this case he was particularly grumpy because I beat him with a mill deck. To report the game both players were expected to sign a piece of paper and then the winner had to take it to the event organisers. This was where the issue occurred - my opponent refused to sign in front of me and insisted he was going to take the slip. I had a feeling he was being a bit dodgy so followed up with the judges and said I had won the game but he didn't sign. Due to previous games that day he was picked up as having changed the result and tries to claim a cheat win. Disappointing.
Had a few of the same experiences with SWD. I played a Jabba, Renowned Gangster / Hondo, Respected Businessman deck that could deal out 13+ damage turn 1 and didn't use damage sides and I got some pretty bad salt at times. Also I'm sure the fact it's so dice-based didn't help, but you kinda gotta accept that if you're gonna play.
Point #9 gives the game away; if there are dorks who are so naive as to believe that no one cheats then they aren't doing it themselves. They're aware that people aren't actually cheating and it's a hit to their stolen pride. If you rank somewhere among players who play the game normally without cheating, then you would rank lower - as in - be worse at the game than the people you compete with. A cheater can't reconcile their factual lack of ability compared to the people around them with the self perception that they are special and a cut above the rest. It is why they purely care about winning when nearly all hobbyists, even competitive, are in it for the game itself.
reminds me of when i was younger. played against a guy who sat in front of me, and just casually starts mana weaving his lands in his deck. i guess he thought he could just get one over on me. his face was hilarious as he presented his deck and i proceeded to mana weave him back for his last cut. then i presented his deck and asked him if he wanted to mulligan and shuffle for 2 min or he would like me to call a judge? he didn't say a thing and just started shuffling.
You can "mana weave" all you want so long as the deck is shuffled min 3 times before it is played with. Maths show that no matter how you set up a deck it only takes a hand full of shuffles to undo any "cheating" you think your opponent was doing via "mana weaving". And at 7 shuffles any deck is completely randomized from any pre-arranged assortment the deck was in. If you see your opponent "mana weaving" just shuffle it a couple extra times and there's nothing to worry about after that.
oddly, mana-weaving became a house rule in my group. We got tired of games being decided by droughts or other tedious aspects of RNG. Personally, it was a better game for it, leaned the game more towards magic and less about who is luckier in the draw.
I mana weave all the time, just to make "sure" that my land isn't all in one clump. My mono green deck has this habit of actually playing every single land in the deck in a game. Nissa shaking dat arse is a hell of a thing. So I mana weave and then shuffle. But I've caught someone mana weaving and not actually shuffling. So I "unshuffled" their deck and just put all the land on top. Enjoy your mulligans. However mana weaving in and of itself is not cheating, provided you shuffle afterwards.
@fermitupoupon1754 "So I "unshuffled" their deck and just put all the land on top" this is cheating. just inform the player that they are breaking the rules and why, then shuffle their deck. mana weaving itself is at best a waste of time and at worst cheating. no reason to do it, just make sure you shuffle properly.
I remember a judge at my locals (yugioh) giving me this advice. Especially at higher level tournament play, if your opponent has made some minor “mistakes” forgetting triggers, misrepresenting info, taking extra long to think about actions, etc. make a note of it to a judge. Some players shrug it off, “annoying, but it happens”, but dont consider that they might not be the only ones being exploited. If other players also report that player for that same behaviour, it’ll raise a flag and could lead to them being penalised, preventing more people from being robbed of a win
@@mememaster9703 but it's digital... You can't stack a digital deck, or make an illegal play on Arena/MTGO Yes, I'm being sarcastic and am well aware that mods and hacking exists.
Man this dude needs to rent a 120 foot billboard out in an open field and open a drive-in theater, because he's just that good at projecting. There's two kinds of tourney grinders, and this guy is the latter: People who want to prove their skill at the game, beat the highest level players and maybe get their likeness on a MtG card someday; and people who want fat checks, cards they can sell for money, and prizes that are worth money - they're just in it because it's easier than having a job.
I used to play against people like this at an LGS as a teen. I knew what narcissism was but didn't fully grasp the idea yet. I always wondered why these dudes would rage so hard. They wouldn't just "soft cheat" as the guy in the video but blatant things like drawing extra cards, 2 cards in 1 sleeve, cards in the lap, etc. It was people of every age group too. After that place closed down every other LGS was a longer commute for a somehow worse playgroup so I only play with 2 people in person now.
Well, it's certainly possible - in 1 episode Dr. House claimed unironically that Lars Urlich was the best drummer in the world. The theory definitely adds up.
To be fair, that claim is so broad that can always be correct. But also rarely is useful. I mean, probably every person has lied at some point in their lives even for some minor reason. Ex. Telling your friend that you like their new haircut, that they seem to love, even if you find it horrendous, in order not to hurt their feelings, is still lying. Although, I am just being pedantic here. It's been a long time since I watched House but I think your assessment about him is correct.
I'd actually say he lies less than the average person. He mainly lies to get away with stuff, and somewhat to himself (mostly about emotional issues) But he's more about brutal honesty. As portrayed, couldn't he lie a lot more, and get away with it a lot more if he wanted to? I'd say this and the cheater are very different. Saying everyone cheats is obviously not true, but basically everyone does lie. "The only variable is about what." IIRC he wasn't using that line to justify his lying, like the cheater. He was making an actual observation to the best of his ability and trying to teach the students to watch out for patients lying that could put their health at risk (and he was speaking colloquially saying everyone instead of almost everyone)
Lmao I used to always carry around an Ashnod's coupon to drop when I suspected a cheater ^.0 Haven't played in a long while. Sounds like nothings changed lol
I played a Pro Tour once and it was honestly the most pleasant gaming experience I have ever had. The only 'cheating' I suspected was 2 French teammates talking about what was in my deck just before the game started, but that is basicaly just scouting, so not a huge deal. I don't doubt that many 'pro' players actively cheat in the ways suggested in the video, but it definitely isn't a majority or even that significant. When it comes to a fun card game, regardless of what is on the line, can't people just be like Goku and try to win a fair match in order to really test themselves? The only way to get better at anything is to really challenge yourself.
As someone who graduated high school in '99 but only started college in 2010, I was absolutely gobsmacked to learn just how much youths' attitudes around cheating had changed. I actually had a classmate in my physics class _admonish me_ after a test because I kept my Scantron covered. She even did this within earshot of the professor. Much later in life, I had an argument with a young coworker who _called me stubborn_ because I refused to accept his rationale for academic cheating being justified. It's straight-up bonkers to an older person like me.
Yeah. Part of it, in my experience as a younger person who graduated recently, is because alot of college professors just aren't very good. If the class is not engaging due to it being just a gen Ed requirement, the teacher doesn't write good exams, I could go on. The point is once a class has been reduced to only the grade being valued, why shouldn't you cheat it's not like you care about learning anything. Some people cheated alot more than me in college, but it never bothered me.
Hi, IT docent here. According to anecdotal evidence, you're slightly right. About 5 years ago, only 70% of the first semester's weekly hand ins where cheated, whereas now it's roughly 90%. Before, the hurdle was slightly higher, as you had to ask a friend and potentially risk them being mad at you, now you can just ask ChatGPT, which of course, we always catch. On a social science level, I strongly refuse to believe that young adults nowadays are more prone to cheat than generations before. They just have more tools at their disposure and failure is less of an option. If older generations were in the same situation, I'm sure they'd behave the exact same way.
Something to consider about saying you might know who this is: the person writing this is probably not dumb enough to risk giving away their identity, and I think it’s entirely possible they’re playing a long con where the end result is making it look like it’s someone else they know is going to be a problem opponent at a future competitive event. They did say they play at high-level events, so they could be about to frame a very skilled opponent to get them disqualified. Entirely speculation, of course, but this person is clearly a calculating sociopath, so it’s always helpful to try to think from that angle and consider what lengths that type of person might go to to reach their goal. Either way, I doubt their post history is entirely honest and probably exists to throw people off their scent.
I'm pretty sure @crunchatize_me_senpai is a false account or hacked account used by the pro cheater to try to make us believe that the cheater is trying to set a target on someone else's back!
Calculating sociopaths are not always as smart as they think, for the record. People widely paint them as geniuses, God, they're not. The amount of them that have been caught over very stupid shit is staggering.
@ Sure, but that doesn’t mean all of them are _dumb_ either. And you’d have to be especially dumb to give away your location for no reason and say that you play at high-level events. That’s possible, but unlikely.
The most common soft cheat I catch in commander is not taking damage from pain lands. If it's the only land of a color you need, then it's obvious, but when it's paying for the 2nd or 3rd pip, people often "forget" to pay.
@@Spirited_skiing i bought the yuma precon and my favourite cards to have in play are the chromatic lantern effect cards that make me not have to strain my brain thinking which lands to tap hahah
@@Greg-f8x6qi run chromatic in my 2 color decks too because I do often lack enough of 1 color. Plus I play enough ramp and rocks that latern is still a top choice in the deck.
One thing that could really help the frequency of self reporting is to take a page out of US aviation law; we have a system where if: 1. No harm was done due to the mistake And 2. You self-report the mistake before being caught or approached for sanctions Then: You become immune from punitive actions for that infraction So on your case because you self-reported the error you couldn't have been given the game loss, but if you got caught by a judge or your opponent you would have immediately been given the game loss. This switches the incentive to be to always self-report immediately upon catching an error and rectifying the game state voluntarily to avoid potential penalties from concealing your mistakes and getting called out for it. It also takes the pressure off of conflict avoidant people with reporting because they can always count on the fact that if they catch the error before their opponent and their opponent doesn't want to self-report the error to the judges then they are likely trying to hide a pattern of malfeasance. After all of you have to self-report the same error 6 times in one tournament then people will be aware of you making that mistake a lot and will pay more attention to that particular thing when playing against you since they know you screw it up a lot; encouraging you to also be more aware of it.
I like this solution a lot. However, WotC seems reluctant to add harsher rules that punish more casual players who might unintentionally miss a lot of gameplay elements (colors of mana, triggers, etc.). I started playing at a time when even drawing an extra card would constitute a game loss. That shaped me into a player who is never sloppy, keeps everything in order and communicates clearly. Newer players today shudder when I tell them of how strict used to be back then.
I was thinking something like this as a self report could easily be, correct the deck and you are assumed to have mulligan-ed the illegal hand. If drawn deeper into a game the card is removed and not replaced with anything.
@@bostycraiova This would be MORE forgiving of new players, not less. Instead of getting game losses and sanctions for their mistakes if they self report OR if they get caught they would be able to recognize their mistakes and self-report to avoid sanctions entirely. New player friendly events would also be much more understanding of this. Most people - and especially tournament staff - are at least reasonably aware of who is new and who is experienced in their local FNM scene and can respond to repeated mistakes accordingly. At the same time at pro-tour and GPX events where a higher level of experience is expected staff and fellow players will be aware of players who are self reporting a lot of novice mistakes - especially after being caught out - and identical repeated mistakes. It's also a good thing to have new players getting a bit more oversight from their opponents on the mistakes they're prone to making in local FNM events as those players can help them catch those mistakes and therefore improve their play quality and awareness.
I think only cheaters think everyone cheats, and non cheaters think most people are honest... most people think that everyone else has the same mindset as them. That's why job recruitment tests ask if most people steal.
I don't play competitive events, just pre-releases and the occasional LGS standard event and such. I've always been impressed by the other players' willingness to offer help, and remind me of triggers, clearly explain their actions, etc. Not huge money on the line, but I feel like that attitude is much more common than the "everybody cheats" attitude.
This is the same vibe as people who constantly accuse anyone behaving decently of “virtue signalling.” If everyone else is either behaving badly or only appearing to be decent out of selfish motives, I don’t have to examine my own conduct and come to grips with the possibility that maybe I’m being sort of a shit.
Virtue signaling accusations have always confused me so much tbh, especially because they are often directed after people stand up for social issues that you really don't get rewarded for doing
@@englishmuffinpizzas Yeah it's practically a worthless term atp, basically just used to attack progressives. A Company putting a gay flag on their twitter for pride is virtue signaling. An advocate for gay rights.. is just an advocate for gay rights. Having virtue and good opinions isn't the same as virtue signalling, otherwise, it'd be a purely Good thing lmao.
Tell me you didn't watch the video without telling me you didn't watch the video. (The cheater's manifesto explicitly states that playing online is the only way to prevent cheating.)
Well many of the bigger "modo pros" are also streamer and streamsniping is not uncommon. Plus there were some exploits where you could make your opponent lose by crashing their client.
Been waiting a long time for another cheater video. Whether it's watching cheaters get caught or talking about the nuances, it's just an interesting topic.
@@SnackCakeswith how many pro players that get caught cheating and then say all pro players cheat you can't just sit there and say that they are projecting when it's only other long term pro players that they respect. Even in Yugioh it is the same thing, all the pros know each other and respect each other yet somehow have flawless games against not pro players. The fact that it is a big deal when a non pro player wins a tournament in any TCG is a big glowing proof that all pros cheat and when someone somehow wins without doing so everyone is shocked.
To the cheater, and many that are criminally minded, the cheating is the game itself. They’re not there to play Magic and do some cheating to win. They’re there to cheat and Magic is the vehicle to do so. Cheaters get a thrill from the cheating. Doing immoral, unethical, and/or illegal things is a rush and certain personality types get addicted to the high of committing the act.
I don’t think cheating is all about the prizes of winning, I think it’s in the knowing that you got one up on everyone in the room. It’s a superiority thing.
For some for sure, i should have touched on that - there are quite a few reasons someone might cheat - its perhaps more nuanced of an action than I gave it credit here.
Depends. If a person cheats at casual games too, then I agree. But I have known people that have cheated at tournaments but never at casual games. And that's mostly greed.
I cheated once in my first pokemon tournament went undefeated and they gave the prize to another undedeated player cause he battled harder apponents karma is real
15:48 I am the same as I think it has to do with the number mistakes that I make that shock me and make me think "I really should have known that" only goes up over time.
I had a local player try to consign to memory a fetch in modern. They weren't a pro or anything but they were definitely someone in touch with the game enough that they should have known thw card didn't work like that. I even later in that same event saw them pause a match they were watching to get a judge involved because one of the players had inadvertently consigned a urzas saga construct token activation. I can't say for sure that they didn't just learn from the judge call when they tried to stifle my fetch, but it definitely raised some alarm bells in my head.
The issue I have is that there is very little recourse for you. Even if you are convinced that the other person is aware of how the proper interaction goes (such as you heard them talking to their friend before the tournament), you still can't realistically stop them from doing it from time to time. In their current form, Magic's rules are very lenient and judges often err on the side of forgiveness, which is exactly what this type of "soft cheater" exploits.
That seems like an honest mistake to me and them just trying to pass along the newfound knowledge. Most cards that counter triggered abilities also counter activated abilities, so I find it very plausible that it just doesn't register to some people that cards that counter only one of those kind of abilities exist.
@@Oneiromantisgr I have 2 thoughts about this. First of all, if Consign also countered activated abilities then it would simply be a better Stifle. Stifle is anyway a hot topic whether or not it should be printed in Modern, how could anyone think that a Stifle that also counters all colorless spells AND has replicate can be printed just like that? Secondly, this is exactly the thing that soft cheaters rely on. As you said, it seems like an honest mistake to make. Same with other examples presented here in various comments. This is exactly what someone who is not against resorting to these cheats will try to exploit. As a player, you can't realistically prove that they KNEW what they were doing was incorrect.
@@bostycraiova power level evaluation isn't really something that most players can do reliably. It is stated that this person wasn't that good of a player. So arguing that a non-pro player should know better does not convince me. If he was cheating I find it a bit stupid to interact with other players in a way that proves that he knows how the card works. He would have kept silent and hoped that the next opponent would not know. Correcting people signals to the whole LGS that you know how a card works. If he was a cheater, he was a bad one. 😛
@@Oneiromantisgr Agreed, I was not there and I fully trust your reasoning. All I was saying is that, in general, players showing too much leniency is exactly why soft cheaters get to thrive.
Man, that poster used so many words just to say "I'm garbage at card games so I have to cheat to hang with others and I'm convinced everyone else is just as garbage as me cause it makes me feel better at night."
Another reason some of these people cheat is that they actually are good magic players but they convince themselves that they're owed better results. Magic is a game with a lot of variance and in paper it can take a while to get a large enough sample size that yields results reflecting your skill, so good players with questionable morals lure themselves into cheating as a shortcut past some of the bad luck that comes with grinding tournaments. It may seem unintuitive that cheaters are often pretty good at the things they cheat at, but there is evidence of this in other corners of the gaming world, like in speedrunning.
While I admire your optimism, I do think that cheating, and "legal" scummyness is a part of the game that people should be watchful for, especially from people who do a lot of winning. I'll share an anecdote. When I moved to Virginia, I found a LGS for Legacy win-a-dual events, back when those were a thing. These events were typically judged by the store owner, because the L2 judge who usually judged standard and modern events at the store liked to play Legacy. This guy was known as the "Final boss" of the store. Very much recognized as the king of the Legacy scene there, which made me excited when I first started going to those events. At the time, I was pretty into Legacy, and I'd had some success at SCG events and Eternal Weekend, so I hoped to get some fun competition. This L2 Judge was the single most scummy person I have ever seen. The comment from this reddit post about having to tell him "you're too good at this game to be making these mistakes" absolutely holds true here, and magically after I let him know that his shit wouldn't fly against me, those "mistakes" stopped happening against me. But still happened against everybody else. Some examples include: - Claiming Wear//Tear counts as a 1, a 2, and a 3 all at once if revealed to Counterbalance. - "Forgetting" his own Chalice of the Void triggers on his spells. - Attempting to kill somebody at 20 life with Tendrils of Agony at 7 storm. - On numerous occasions, when the local 12-post player cast Emrakul, instantly untapping and starting their turn to try to make the player forget the extra turn trigger. Even when they'd explicitly declared it on cast. - Untapping his Tundra that he'd just used to cast Back To Basics. - Spinning Sensei's Top to put a 3 on top and Counterbalance his opponent's Krosan Grip. The list goes on and on. And remember, this was an L2 judge. When I talked to the store owner about it, he said he knew, but his hands were basically tied because there were no other judges willing to drive out to his store, and he couldn't judge everything himself. I'm not trying to say that everybody cheats, the same way that the Reddit poster does. I am, however, trying to say that people should be much more vigilant of it, even from friendly people that they trust, than they are.
There was one particular judge that I was never a fan of in NJ. Anytime he ruled something it was always wrong and it made no sense. I literally watched him put a mana leak back in a players hand when they tried to counter a Thrun during walletsculptor block. Like, it’s a literal legal target on the stack… He also happened to be a judge at a major event i went to and ruled incorrectly with another judge asking him why he ruled that way off the side. At the time I wasn’t as familiar with deferring to the head judge but to top it off I was playing vs another judge who was trying to rule shark.
While I totally agree with your general sentiment (and it's a real shame someone was using their expertise as a judge to both improve and shield their own cheating behavior =/), I did want to interject and say that: To be clear, cheating is - by definition - not part of the game; cheating is *explicitly* that which the game says is not part of it. Cheating absolutely *is* part of life, though, and something you shouldn't be blind to the reality of. But, I also think that the words we use and how we talk/think about things is important to our perception of them. This unhinged cheater is able to do these impressive mental gymnastic partially thanks to using this sort of double speak in their own thinking.
I understand that the store was reliant on this particular L2 judge, but as a player I would have taken the nuclear option and reported the whole thing. Sure, this might lead to the win-a-dual events being discontinued, but I would never compromise when scumminess is involved.
I remember playing at an FNM one evening. Was running a bunch of graveyard plays, bouncing things to and from the graveyard to trigger effects. At one point my opponent noticed that I missed loads of a specific trigger that would have pinged me for life. After bringing it up to me, and realizing that he was right, I immediately scooped the match in a forfeit. Dude told me not to worry about it, we can keep playing, but I could not in good conscience continue the match as I had mad an irreparable game state with the missed triggers and felt as though I cheated him out of a fair match. Was not a hard decision to make. My integrity is worth far more than an FNM win.
To me, winning only matters if I do it legit. You are the best if you had to cheat. You might be the best cheater, but that doesn't make you the best player.
The scary part is that what matters to us personally doesn't matter that much in the grand scheme of things. Even if we are moral and value proper competition, we are not spared from facing people like this in our games.
As an ex-pro tour player back in the day the biggest litmus test for who was a real pro and who was just a cheater-pro was when MTGO came out. There we're a TON of pros who had poor or mediocre ratings on MTGO despite being "pros" IRL. I personally got cheated IRL by some of them at actual sanctioned events(more than one of them got a 6 year ban later down the road though), and a few still haven't been caught today. The biggest red flag back then when MTGO came out was seeing some pro who the clans would make fun of, because their ratings sucked and they weren't actually good players online... where cheating was impossible. Back then some of them even got caught for bribery on MTGO and they used to be part of smaller clans known for such things(most got caught and banned.) One of the best examples of this happening on there was Mike Long.
Angle shooting feels different, because you arent breaking any actual rules. "Soft cheating" is cheating under the guise of being sloppy and making mistakes.
Angle shooting is like LSV winning with Storm and no Tendrils in his sideboard and relying on people conceding when he has enough storm and cast burning wish. Or like getting someone to make a play that they wouldn't have made, like Prosak baiting his opponent to surgical extraction him in order to get the storm count to cast a lethal tendrils. Would also be things like, "accidentally" dropping a wrath of god from your hand when you're stuck on 3 mana trying to get your opponent to delay committing to the board. Not directly gaining material advantage like tapping wrong colors or not marking damage taken but it's not within the rules of the game either.
I’m pretty pleased he’s posted it and you’ve drawn attention to it. There’s a worse scenario where these hypothetical cheaters like this keep it all to themselves. This helps create a culture where people are more vigilant and calling a judge for minor infractions is more normalised - creating a healthier space where cheating becomes harder.
I don't think everyone cheats but I do think cheating is part of the paper game. The solution isn't to cheat but to help the MTG community get better at catching cheaters.
My own personal anecdote: I stared getting into FnM and people at the store were talking about joining an RCQ as a store. I would come every weekend to hone my skills. I was forgetting a beginning of combat trigger, and no one ever told me. At the rcq, I was one of the couple of players that went (not as a team) and during the first match my opponent told me about the trigger. I kinda stopped going to FnM after that one.
My gf and I attended a Duskmourn prerelease, and her opponent reminded her as he sealed the final game that her trigger from... Osseous Sticktwister? Should have been providing her lifelink the whole match. I know it's a player's responsibility to track abilities, but it seemed in poor sport.
Technically, lifelink isn't a trigger and as such you have to remind your opponent about it if it's missed. If the Sticktwister dealt damage, the life must be gained and you can't let your opponent forget it. That said, many players think that lifelink is the controller's sole responsibility so I wouldn't say that the opponent was cheating necessarily
yeah since lifelink isn't an optional trigger, noticing that your opponent is forgetting it and then winning by deliberately not telling them is 100% cheating. Even if he only noticed at that moment, the proper thing to do would be to call a judge to resolve it, or at least give her the option to do so rather than taking the win and *then* smugly telling her about the mistake. Absolute dick move and frankly reeks of the "no girls allowed"-type bs that's still way too prevalent in these spaces
I know a guy who soft cheats all the time. He had a deck based on abusing emerge to cheat out eldrazi creatures, but he'd constantly fudge the amount of mana he actually had available, would skip counting commander tax, and try to cover it all up by casting stuff so fast that he thought no one would try to track his casts. First time I caught him cheating, the pod stopped and tried to gently explain that he's making mistakes. We hoped he was just being careless, but knew that he likely wasn't. The very next time I played against him, two of us were watching and called him out on it. Dude spent the rest of the afternoon playing control against my decks regardless of if it was the right move. I no longer play against that dude, and if any of the rest of the people I regularly play with (who have also caught him cheating multiple times) end up across the table from him in a commander game, they either move into a different pod or aim him down. Dude burnt up all of the trust and good will he had so that he could win a game of commander with absolutely nothing on the line.
I played against someone who basically admitted to me he looks at people decks and he shuffles and looks for foils. He basically does a quick inspection from the side. So if someone opens a foil rare he can make sure they never see it. I had some foils and he showed me and I called a judge lmao. People cheat in small ways like this all the time. Don’t let people shuffle your deck. Just cut.
Tbh I would call a judge on anyone that doesn't allow for a shuffle. Mana weaving is waaaay to common. By the rules it's not your decision if they cut or shuffle and for a good reason.
Silly question, but this would be justification for a judge-provided proxy, no? At least in a Limited environment. The card is effectively “damaged” (easily marked in the deck), and this happened in the course of the event if it’s a Sealed/Draft, and thus you could request to use a proxy in its place to avoid providing the opponent (or yourself) an advantage?
@@scaredycat3146You can "mana weave" all you want so long as the deck is shuffled min 3 times before it is played with. Maths show that no matter how you set up a deck it only takes a hand full of shuffles to undo any "cheating" you think your opponent was doing via "mana weaving". And at 7 shuffles any deck is completely randomized from any pre-arranged assortment the deck was in. If you see your opponent "mana weaving" just shuffle it a couple extra times and there's nothing to worry about after that.
“Everyone cheats.” (1) >How could you possibly substantiate that? “Well, everyone who doesn’t cheat isn’t a real player, so they don’t count” (9) > What about people who catch your mistakes “They have to be cheating too, cause they caught me cheating.” (7 and 8) It’s really easy to declare everyone a cheater if you’re allowed to redefine “vigilance” to mean cheating and redefine “real players” to only include cheaters and vigilant players.
I have not cheated in competitive play, but i have cheated in casual commander, if my opponent is having a bad game and bad time because of it, ill stack cards that help them catch back up
I figure if it's casual commander and the pod allows it, it's less cheating and more rule 0. the furthest I usually go is throwing-- like if I'm in a pod with an artifacts deck and have vandalblast in my opening hand or first couple draws, I'll usually pitch it first chance I get so they've a fair shot at me. (if I draw it late game, though, you bet their board is going kaboom.)
There are 2 takeaways that I've got from playing games with other people: 1. Everyone who cheats justifies what they're doing by saying 'everyone does it'. 2. Everyone who cheats is likely to be policing you more than you're policing them, because it looks more altruistic. So I think my takeaway here is, don't trust the people who are aggressively policing the things you get wrong in play, and watch them carefully. I forgot how scummy magic players can be. One thing I want to ask these people is "how do you think it works that people who are good at MTGO are also good at live MTG?"
People like this is why I’d get disqualified. There’s probably rules about sitting down at a table with a hammer next to you and warning your opponent that if you catch them cheating you’ll hit them with it. I’m one of those people that they wouldn’t try to cheat. But that doesn’t make me feel good about the people they would take advantage of.
Shout outs to the only time I've had someone caught cheating in a tournament: it was 2HG and they were a "pair the spares" team. My friend and I were busy strategising when one of our opponents just groaned and called judge. We got anxious about what we'd done, before he goes "sorry man, I can't let you do that. Judge, I just spotted my teammate switching cards in their opening hand with their deck". They got a DQ, we ended up placing. Sucks because the guy that cheated was a regular at our board game night, but it really fucked the vibe any time he showed up after that. Honestly, would've been happier getting to know the guy who called him out.
I think there were an interesting number of points brought up during this and I don't doubt that there are people that adopt this manifesto or approach, certainly the incrimental value of making favourable mistakes is objectively going to result in better outcomes over the long run. The point on the social dynamic is an interesting one too because again as much as I believe there are individuals that want to give the benefit of the doubt or avoid conflict resolution - I can't relate to being one of them... If I'm playing against a combo deck where my opponent is essentially just goldfishing, instead of just sitting back and waiting to be told I'm beat, I lean in and make sure they resolve every single trigger, declare the order on the stack, update mana totals etc. There is an almost zero % chance I am letting someone play through any of these interactions fast. A) Because I realise its the time when I'm most likely to miss something B) Because a staggering amount of time they over-commit mana, mis-tap, or resolve triggers erroneously or their combo entirely whiffs (I've actually encountered a player at GP Birmingham and GP Paris who didn't understand how their combo worked and were just used to showing people the combo pieces and seeing them scoop) and C) They chose to play a complicated game of solitaire as opposed to Magic that im expected to sit through for twenty minutes. I agree with Kenobi's ethos on playing in these big events. I'm there to pit myself against the field and there's no glory or satisfaction in gaming the system to achieve that, to the point I'll also point out my opponents triggers that are detrimental to me, why? Because it's the right thing to do.
I caught a cheater at a pre-release one time and it was one of the weirdest experiences I've had playing Magic. I was playing a guy who looked like he was 16 or 17 years old and he was there with a group of 3 other guys who all looked like teenagers as well. This guy countered 4 of my spells, and when he cast his 4th counter I noticed that he kept the card in his off hand rather than putting it in his graveyard. I asked to see his graveyard and instead of handing it to me he asked why I want to see it. At that point he put the counter on top of his graveyard but then put his hand on top, as if to prevent me from picking it up. I called over the staff and explained what was going on. The staff asked to see his graveyard, but rather than giving up the con he just conceded and scooped. Later on, probably 30 minutes after this happened, his friends came up to me while I was in another game and started talking shit. They called me a loser because I, an adult man, called out their friend, a teenager, for cheating. One line that's burned into my brain is "You got a mustache and shit and you're crying about a game." When I asked what age has to do with cheating they started hurling slurs like we were on a 4chan thread. The staff asked them to leave, at which point one of them started crying and pleading to not be banned from the store even though no one had said anything about banning them. Very weird. They saw no problem with cheating but took issue with being caught. I hope those goobers grew up.
On your point of making mistakes, I went to my first Pokemon League Challenge at my local LGS last year, first event I'd ever gone to besides a Pre-Release. Accidentally used Greninja's ability with my own Path to the Peak active. Judge came over, gave me a warning and we rolled everything back. I was embarrassed until my opponent and the players on either side of me told me they've done the same thing a million times and to just be more careful. I really appreciated that everyone was so supportive of owning your mistakes
The thing said in many of my casual card store games "if your life is so bad that you feel the need to cheat so you can win a casual game, then I'm here for you for this game"
The position that a cheater can only be spotted by another cheater and countered by cheating is some of the greatest self-justification I've ever seen.
A similar thing happened to me with a high ranking SCG tournament player back in the day where I feel like they attempted to wordsmith our interaction to his benefit, because I was not a known personality. He tried to say I passed through combat without attacking, even though I had pushed my Dragonlord Ojutai forward at him after saying "combat?". I also had an Always Watching on the battlefield which gave it vigilance. There was no reason in the world I wouldn't have attacked (he had no flyers) but he was on the backfoot. He lost this game and I feel he only did this sort of 'maneuver' because he was losing.
The sad part about this is that it is far closer to the truth than it should be. In general, in any system where people have some altruistic notion, like giving others the benefit of the doubt, there will be assholes abusing it. This is true for Magic, true for other games and sports, and true for life in general. You have the choice to follow suit and play the illegal sub games for a benefit, or you can not do that and life with the knowledge that people are gaining unfair benefits. In the end, it's sort of a theatrical good vs. evil choice. For me personally, it's clear that we should choose the good side and be ever vigilant for the people who stray from the light fir their personal benefit.
Last Monday doing local modern event, round 4, game 3, I have mountain, island, steam vents, getting fucked on dredge, scared of flood moon, I accidently cast prized amalgam, resolves, next turn, cast 2nd prized amalgam, my opponent bounces the first one to my hand, next turn I go to fetch, and in my head I'm like okay so grab blood crypt to get black mana online, the moment I saw blood crypt while searching it all clicked, I paused, I looked at my opponent and said "hey, you got it" they were confused and asked if I just wasn't feeling it anymore, they were like "you haven't lost man, you got the 2 amalgams" I just like spread my lands out and say "yeah, how did I cast them?" They were super understanding and were like "oh that's definitely a final round mistake, everything's good man, I'm willing to continue playing from the current board state if you are" i told them I will happily play it out but they assured them they got the dub regardless. Totally just zoned out on what I had until I actually looked at the land in my deck.
This video is gonna get a lot of comments. Happy to add mine too for promoting the channel. My dad plays golf and can talk for hours about the massive number of people hes played with that either dont know the rules of golf, care to follow them, or willfully break them often. He's unable to accept cheaters and cheating and he loses sleep over other peoples actions (whereas I would normally just choose not to play if I encounted this). Strong agree on the chat around 10mins. Thanks for the discussion PK.
If everyone is cheating then cheating does not get you a leg up it just levels the playing field. His statements conflict with themselves if you think about it.
One of my first games I accidentally played a sorcery at instant speed. My opp, whom was much more experienced than I, noticed it. I felt like a dirty cheater and vehemently apologized. Much in the way I do I just openly said “listen I’m not cheating I’m just new” before every game. Sometimes I caught a hint that some people thought I was full of shit as they tried to search my soul via my pupils for an inkling of corruption.
#1 is projection. Cheaters try to justify their actions by saying everybody else does it too.
Right? I'd say MAYBE 1 in 100 players cheat
It’s not bad if everyone’s doing it!
-basically every deplorable person in history.
It's a thing bad people in general do to justify their behaviors in all sorts of areas.
cope
I think it's rationalizing their lack of skill, too.
If they stopped cheating they wouldn't be able to hang at those higher levels.
"If I can't win without cheating that means everyone who beats me is a cheater!"
If cheating is part of the game then so is getting jumped in the parking lot.
Everyone does it/s
Agreed, I don't mind losing in an event to someone who just played better. But if someone cheated and cost me money, yeah let's wait for them in the parking lot 😂
If cheating is a part of the game it isn't cheating anymore
what's the plan, buster? hope that the guy who came there to take your prize money by cheating isn't packing any parking lot surprises?
@@ЮлианМацкевичthe plan is stop cheaters via hospital trip
"I've never been caught cheating" - some idiot two events away from being caught and banned
PVVDR cheated against Andrew Cuneo. Even the "cleanest" pros cheat
Given the comment was made over a year ago, it's possibly happened already.
Two explores you say?
If they stick to the type of cheating they talked about? Nah, probably not. The only way to prove a plausible mistake was intentional is if they keep doing it, and if they stop when it becomes clear you're noticing the "mistakes" then they will get away with it.
@@ae4164 Unless people form a pattern throughout multiple rounds...
Regarding the copiums of cheating and excuses for not winning: It's gotta feel like shit when you're cheating and still lose. You've ensured you have an advantage by playing outside of the rules, and still lost.
So you go to the next level of cope: If you cheated and lost, clearly you lost because they were also cheating and just cheated harder. Because the alternative would be absolutely crushing to the ego: you cheated, and they still outplayed you.
And from some experience - cheaters have incredibly frail egos.
My brother and dad cheated at any and every game I've ever played with them. I didn't find out until after I was in my 30s from their own admission. And I still won 1/3rd of the time. To them, the game was how much they could get away with, but to me it meant play *better*. And I became better. The funniest thing is how they couldn't understand that their cheats weren't even better than correct play, and they couldn't grow past their bad lines and choices because they became trapped leaning on the cheats.
Tldr: cheaters should put their effort into better play than better cheating.
Great points!
That is correct. Cheaters need therapy, not trophies.
@@asteria9963 You can't therapize psychopathy. Most cheaters are just low-grade psychopaths taking advantage of a high-trust environment with low-risk consequences for getting caught.
Not MtG related, but I play a lot of DbD and there is nothing more satisfying than beating a cheater in that game. They are fairly common, and always very bad at the game lol
I would not want to be that persons significant other…
I don't like playing the same game as that person.
Bold assumption that they have one...
@@basoon87 Narcissists are creepily good at tricking people into liking them.
When I saw the thumbnail, I thought it was about a marriage and infidelity subreddit. If you read "game" as a metaphor for relationships, it almost could be.
The only "other" that is significant to them is their reflection in the mirror.
A person recently tried to tell me that when player's life hit zero if they have planeswalkers, you have to kill the planes walkers first because they count as extra life. This person was a super friends deck runner and had well into 50ish counters worth of planeswalkers on the board. He argued for it for like 2 or 3 solid minutes before I called over a judge.
Unrelated, this would be a cool alternate game mode. You as a player die but all your Planeswalkers stay. no more casting spells just activating and resolving planeswalker effects.
It's definitely an interesting idea for a format but when you're playing Commander or standard/ other 20 life formats especially, that can be a significant jump in life. And it just combos so well with life game planes Walker's decks
Definitely a really cool idea for a format, I'm going to sit down and Brew it with my friends to see what we can come up with but sounds fun! I welcomed the table for anyone to do so as well. Because hey why not? Clearly if he wants to cheat by doing that then why not make a format where that's not cheating? That's the beauty of magic. You can make other formats and play with the game pieces All the same.
That's some very strange behaviour.
This sounds like a player heard a reference from someone else and took it as gospel. I've heard "having planeswalkers is like having extra life, because they have to knock down the loyalty instead of your life total."
NEVER BE AFRAID to call a Judge. Is there an interaction you don't understand? Call a Judge. Did you forget to de-sideboard before game 1 of the match? Call a Judge. Did your opponent do something that doesn't feel right to you? Call a Judge. Hell, you know what I heard some Judges say the most common reason they get called over is? "Yeah, we're done our match... do you have a pen so we can fill out the match slip?" Judges are there to help sort out issues and help the game run smoothly for everyone involved, within the confines of the rules. They are someone who will give you an unbiased answer because they are not involved in the game at all.
And to those Judges in the audience, I know you don't hear it enough, but from at least one person: Thank you.
Right any honest player will not be upset about you calling a judge, unless you are abusing it by calling them for every play. But in that situation the judges will know someone is abusing the call system.
We ask for a judge for silly clarifications that have nothing to do with the game like tastes great versus less filling. We want NLT do this to our friends when they aren’t engaged with real tourney business.
Yeah call a judge. So they can make stupid calls like what just happened at GP Atlanta that let the cheater win.
@@shocktohp7314 No idea what you're on about, but if you disagree with a ruling, you can always appeal to the Head Judge. Judges do make mistakes, they're not robots. NOT calling a Judge means anyone who might possibly be cheating gets away with it 100% of the time. Calling a Judge means you have to bank on the Judge making a mistake. If I was a cheater, guess what's better for me? Convincing the opponent not to call a Judge.
I'm not a judge, but I once did something that I'm going to claim is similar to it;
I arranged a dnd club at school, which involved helping 8 or so completely new players make their first characters. They all did it on a long table, asking help from me and another veteran whenever they needed any help.
Not making a character myself, I felt like an overseer of sorts, giving answers and hovering around on standby. And yes, I had pens to give for them too.
I always assume my opponent is cheating when I'm at a high level event. I always cut their deck and I'm always hyper aware of their moves to make sure they're legal since so many lands only fully get online with other prerequisites.
To be clear I don't treat them like they're cheating, but I'm certainly paying close attention.
All that being said, this manifesto reeks of attempted justification through projection. They've sold their soul for winning a match 13% more of the time.
Trust but verify as it were.
@@snowconesyrupThat's a great line
Yeah this is the best way to approach high competition play. I also always talk with my opponent. I say every action I take and even though its not my responsibility to keep track if their triggers or abilities, i do and ask questions of their board state every time it changes drastically doing so has helped me a few times and recently at a freaking fnm were my opponent and I were playing the bottom table and they were "soft cheated" as vince said. I dont think it was malicious per say but it was the most recent occurrence
@dominicsevilla1189 Hanlon's razor definitely crosses my mind when soft cheating happens. There's some personality types though that are just seedy
This is how you should approach any higher level event in any card game. Don't assume they're cheating. Always final cut and do your due diligence regardless of if you think they're cheating or not.
That they openly admit to exploiting the social awkwardness and conflict avoidance in some opponents makes me mad. That's asshole behavior. It's using something they can't really help to get unfair wins over them and steamroll all objections.
That's not the behavior of an underdog, just trying to compete in a rigged system. That's a predator - a bully - preying on perceived weakness to score cheap wins. It's disgusting, and I very much hope most Magic players don't think that way.
I do agree with that point only. I do not cheat and never did. But I am personally inclined to "abusing" my opponent's awkwardness and conflict avoidance because I used to be the awkward conflict avoidant kid and everyone and my mother just steamrolled me for it and I'm sick of it and want to feel for once that feelgod of doing exactly that. I want my vengeance
@@minervadetauro7646 So you were mistreated and now you do the same to others. You are doing your abusers bidding. You are justifying their actions and you make sure that they were right in shitting on you.
Please try to break the circle. Do better and make the world a better place.
@@minervadetauro7646 Hate to tell you this, but there's a word for deliberately being awful to someone who wasn't the person who hurt you, and it definitely isn't 'vengeance'.
@@minervadetauro7646 So instead of awkward you became an asshole. Good for you...
@@minervadetauro7646 with all due respect, it would only be vengeance if it was towards the person who inflicted it upon YOU (whether or not that is healthy and/or justified is a different story). If you are taking out your frustrations at having been treated at that way on someone who hasn't done anything to you, then that is not vengeance, it is simply being a bully.
As someone who cheated HEAVILY in my youth, I think soft cheating needs to be docked, because its far too easy to be like "oh my bad", and if you mess up, intentionally or not, you need to be penalized, especially if its egregious. If you're in a tournament there is no excuse to be making mistakes in my opinion, You're playing a deck that you should already be extremely familiar with. Judges needs to start completely exiling cards and penalizing players who make these mistakes instead of allowing these cheats to slip through. I think some sort of additional rule for soft cheats should be banned from the tournament when it becomes clear they are cheating. Let me clarify, I do NOT cheat anymore, and haven't cheated for over a decade. I really like that you pointed out bringing over a judge to point out a minor mistakes, because you're right, good judges will see someone making these "mistakes" over and over and do something about it. Great video keep it up!
wouldn't say that that they should be penalized at the first occurrence, but if it happens to frequent/mostly to there advantage
I always love this persona of "The other players are WEAK and BETAS unlike me, the SIGMA ALPHA PRO who plays a children's card game like a SIGMA ALPHA PRO by CHEATING EFFECTIVELY". Just ask them how many pullups they can do.
Kinda tracks with the american capitalist ethos. I've literally had people at work tell me that they don't care if rich people cheat the system with no consequences because 'everyone does it' and they'd be stupid not to.
Yeah one of the points of the manifesto was a decent one, that people in business cheat all the time.
This should in no way reflect how any one else goes about thier business (general term) nor should it be happening at all in the first place. But it was kinda sobering to hear it.
@@jones94122 Except the super rich have real power and will cheat you a thousand times over, while regular wankers hold next to no power and actively decide to screw over regular people over what's essentially a bunch of peanuts. It's pathetic behavior from pathetic people, but they don't feel pathetic, because they think they're "winning", even when they don't.
Psychopaths tend to rise to the top of any hierarchical structure because they are willing to abuse the situation and break rules to get what they want. The take risks and have no qualms or pause with lying, cheating, stealing, and backstabbing. This is just low-grade abuse of high-trust environments.
This is not surprising, and we have known this for decades. Some devastatingly large percentage of CEOs are psychopaths.
Some devastatingly large percentage of anyone at the top of any structure are psychopaths. That's how they got there, and how they stay there.
The poster is a psychopath, but he's not wrong. Everything he said is true, albeit misguided. IF you aren't cheating in MTG tournaments, then you aren't trying. And if you don't think others are, then you likely aren't clever or sharp enough to catch them.
Well, pulling up the prize boosters from your hand, however many there are
"Nobody is a villain in their own story." This is clearly an example of someone knowing that what they are doing is wrong, and the guilt is driving them to craft an "Everybody else does it too" narrative so they don't become the bad guy.
"Everyone cheats" but also "You can get away with cheating because people are naive and don't expect you to actually cheat". So which one is it?
"All REAL players cheat, while you (the main character) can fool the NPCs by cheating"!
It's a sociopath.
Given them the running around go around.
It's tactic of wits.
The rate of intelligence is where it goes after.
It's the usual 'some people are cheats, therefore I will be cheat, anybody who doesn't cheap is just naïve'.
@@LoneWolf-rc4go I'm gonna say the corny truth of it, ready for corny cringe!? Here it comes!.......
When you cheat, you cheat yourself and those who depended on you.
Could be both.
Everyone "cheats" because everyone makes mistakes. The 'naive fools' are the ones that don't make "mistakes" on purpose.
This individual sounds like a textbook psychopath. They view the non-cheating players as not being real, and they're somehow special and more aware by cheating against these players. It's the classic 'I'm the predator who sees the world for how it really is' attitude.
In reality, this person is just woefully underdeveloped when it comes to empathy and values and genuinely can't understand that others feel dfferently.
Bingo
I hate to "yes, but" this, BUT *waves hands wildly to the world around us.* Sadly, we don't have to look very hard to see that cheating is in fact extremely rampant in many areas of the world, like finance, real estate, banking, business, etc. They are NOT wrong that cheating is common, and all ignoring that fact does is make it easier for them to continue to do it. Especially the type of so called "soft cheating" that can be hidden with an "oopsie, I made a mistake. Sowwy!" It's not a sign of a psychopath to recognize that there is indeed two "games" going on in life. Those who hold themselves to the rules, and those who get away with as much as they can. There are SO many areas in the world where it's a widely known "open secret" about how much cheating there is going on.
People don't all have to cheat to compete, but they DO have to be extremely mindful of cheating and give absolutely no quarter in their efforts to stop it. Don't let people get away with "oopsie" type mistakes. You don't have to accuse them of cheating, but don't be SO quick to brush them off either, especially if they are making frequent "mistakes." Out in the "real world" it's kind of too late. Letting cheaters off has become institutional. It's essentially sanctioned in some industries with hand slap type fines when they get caught. If people don't want to see gaming tournaments become equally corrupt, there has to be serious safe guards in place to prevent it, because it CAN and does happen in other gaming/sports. I remember seeing a documentary on rampant cheating in sumo wrestling. There's been if not outright cheating in chess, then at least cheating adjacent meta gaming of tournament point systems. Take this guys "everyone cheats" claim seriously.
Says people who are conflict averse are weak.
Uses a throwaway to avoid being identified...
🤔
If you think these are the same thing then you're about as smart as that person is
@@sarahwallace1103Found the guy using a throwaway to defend cheating.
@@sarahwallace1103 r/wooooooosh
@@sarahwallace1103 The parallel is pretty obvious.
I mean, that's right. He's also weak because he's cheating, but people who are willing to sacrifice justice to avoid a confrontation are also weak.
Moral weakness is a pandemic right now
Not only do i call out everything my opponent's do, but also anything that I do wrong. Call a judge on yourself. Nothing is more liberating. Call a judge on your neighbour in a game you aren't even part of when you hear them saying some bullshit. Had a dude that's a massive angle shooter, who I call out so often that I sort even bother to keep friendly with, that I heard tell a player I'd never seen before that he "gets to go first because he lost the roll last game" and I said to his opponent "pause the game. JUDGE!" because the angle shooter knew damn well that it didn't work like that and that his opponent was too fresh to call a judge for it.
0:19 in yugioh that is because we all just kinda trust that our opponents aren’t cheating because if we actually fact checked them games wouldn’t have the chance to finish
I imagine it's especially hard to remember how every single card interacts with each other, so sometimes you just gotta hope the yapping is correct
@ again we just trust that neither player is cheating if they aren’t playing meta/staples
I remember 10 years ago I was playing in a PPTQ and my opponent went to counter my supreme verdict. I told him it’s uncounterable and was cool about it and told him he could take it back(too nice, I know). Then later when I fetched for a shock land I said “get it tapped…actually untapped and take 2” and he called a judge. Some people just want to win more than they want to be good.
I was in a store looking at cards when I heard they were missing a player for a tournament, they see that I was looking at Magic cards and told me about playing, it was the first time I played in a tournament, my deck was super basic.
On the 4th turn, my opponent makes the combo and beats me, without understanding, I ask him how it worked, and he answers very vaguely, after I assumed my defeat, another player arrives and asks my opponent if he had won, to which he answers "yes", the other player asks him "but how did you do it? if you didn't have enough mana" to which he instantly does "🤫", and there I was, a boy who was like 6 years older than me, had cheated me, and he knew it was my first tournament😒
Pathetic
I 100% agree with the point about winning against players that are or are perceived to be much higher skill than yourself.
My most memorable win was in a PPTQ against a guy I was so nervous to play against because of his previous GP placements. I was so nervous I just tried to put on a poker face and drew exceptionally well and handily won the match. After he went over to his friend that came to the event with him and said " I hope you have a really good deck cause that was fuckin brutal"
I was so happy with that win, even if I didn't win the event it has always stuck with me as a definitive win and his reaction to my nerves induced social comatose was the icing on the cake.
Don't cheat get better and don't be an asshole.
6:15 At a Comp level event call the judge every time. they might not be cheating but if someone constantly make small "mistakes" it adds up
This, if an opponent consistently makes "small mistakes" I'll just call a judge and ask them to watch the rest of the game. That usually sorts things out real quick.
@fermitupoupon1754 no call judge on the first mistake waiting till they've made more then one, that is how people get away with this. there is a reason that if a player gets 3 warnings a tournament for the same type of infraction the 3rd is upgraded to the next penalty level warning-> game lose -> match lose-> DQ
You'll find this exact type of person at the top tables of pokemon events too.
Pokemon is full of soft cheaters and is the term we have used for over a decade. It's the exact same mindset that they will just cheat against "bad" players who got lucky against them because they shouldn't have to lose an entire event because of luck and the person that they cheated against has "No chance" in their mind to do well.
We have a guy at our lgs that buys singles early just so they can put them in their seal decks hes been caught sevral times doing this, his defense for doing this is that others are also doing it, he is the only one i know of that does this at our lgs
WTF? Ban him.
I’ve seen this as well. They play on Friday, bring them to Saturday.
@@micah3030 I feel for the small game stores that want to ban players like that, but have to consider the loss of singles sales in doing so.
@@Watsabeholder lmao
@@Watsabeholder They’re gonna hate what happens when they don’t ban problem players even more.
I used to play tournaments in a card shop that had rampant cheating by about 1/3 of the players there, in order to learn how to cheat-proof my play. Shortly thereafter I ended up playing extensively with a very large group that had extremely high level players,some of whom were judges and many of whom were notable tournament winners. The only person in that group who may have cheated was kicked out literally the day before I got there,which I remember because he had egged the place overnight. Everyone else,win or lose,was doing their best in the spirit of the purity of the game. THAT is what you find in the highest levels of any game or sport.
Instructions unclear: in trying to become a top basketball player I have egged the LA Lakers and am now being chased by 7 foot men help
@@meepilee7991 You have a problem,and it looks like no one else can help. If you can find them,maybe you can hire the Globetrotters.
It absolutely ia not, and you have not been in professional sports if you think it is.
@@egoalter1276 pick a better sport
@ Your only chane is to pick one with no career competitive scene.
This is a perfect example of the fallacy of normalcy: If I do X, so does everyone else!
I've played against 2 different pro players (once at a spell slinging event once during a tournament) the pro during the tournament tried to "soft cheat" me 2 times (tapping wrong mana) I had to ask the judge to watch the rest of the match which got a huge eye roll and lots of sighs like a little baby. (I lost on time because the judge refused to give us a time extension even though I waited more than 5 minutes for the judge to show up)
judges are sadly awful for shit like that. A friend once had to straight up ignore his judge and appeal to head bc they wouldnt listen when he was claiming his OPP had marked sleeves. Head judge walked over, took 1 look at the suspect sleeve and threw the guy out
@@velphidrow I think it probably depends on the judge, but I've definitely encountered judges that really embraced the power the position gave them. At my first big event, a PTQ so more than twenty years ago I'd lost my first five games, and I realised someone had stolen my sideboard. I reported it to a judge between rounds and they said no one had handed it in. And then in round 6, at a straight 0-5, the same judge came over to do a 'random' deck check with the most evil smile on his face. I was 11.
Many years later in a PPTQ in Dundee I was in the final and we each had a very complicated board state and the game was running on with very slow turns. The judge watching was clearly getting impatient and asked to see what my opponent had drawn, he showed her and she said "That doesn't change anything, so pass the turn." She then walked round the table and did the exact same thing to me, this repeated until the head judge wandered over and, to his credit, reprimanded her.
I will just never understand why people think cheating is part of the game, it just isn't, you just want an unfair advantage against people who wants to battle it out as it should be
And now it's my responsibility to keep you in line just to play the game properly...
Thing about the hollow victory point, what Ive heard from someone who knows many cheaters, its not about winning for them at all, its literally just about getting a payout from attending a big event so it was worth it...
Thank you for calling out this f*** bs tho love it
If cheating was part of the game, it'd be in the rules.
@diestormlie can u imagine? "You are allowed to attempt stacking ur library favourably, but get caught and you will lose your game"
@@storeblaa Didn't Monopoly make a version where you were allowed to cheat? Creatively named "Cheater's Edition"?
The most compelling psychology explanation I've seen for serial cheaters is entitlement. They feel that due to their experience level, they are owed more victories than RNG allows, and therefore they feel morally justified in stacking their deck etc.
@@MunchKING The best version of this is the Dilbert Board Game has a card that tells all other players to leave the room and let's you cheat all you want until they return. But every cheat discovered by your opponents causes you to lose points, so you are encouraged to do it in subtle ways.
"The best way I’ve ever summed up .. is that one side, our side, sees a foul as being against the rules, and if you do it too many times you have to be removed. The other side, ..., sees fouls as things you’re allowed to get caught doing several times, and if you don’t, you aren’t trying hard enough.”
Guess which side the cheater is on?
When I see how many people seem to genuinely believe there's something wrong with the Arena shuffler because they "always" get mana screwed on Arena (i.e. significantly more often than in paper), I'm pretty convinced that there's a non-trivial amount of people who - intentionally or unintentionally - consistently cheat in paper magic by never properly randomizing their deck.
Wasn't there a time on Arena where people were running deliberately low land count decks because the application was guaranteed to give you 1-2 land? Idk, I kind of understand where people are coming from with arena, large sample sizes show some weird matchmaking for example.
This is definitely a thing happening! (which is even funnier given the mana optimization algorithm for BO1 games)
I play a ton of arena and if anything I'd argue the shuffling algorithm is far kinder than paper magic is to me! 😅
@@85inexact I have no idea if there's anything wrong with Arena's shuffler, it seems fine to me, but when you're pissed off that you're getting bad draws on Arena it's easier to blame the computer for screwing you than it is to blame yourself in paper when you shuffled your own deck.
The shuffle is fudged. In fact there was time period where players intentionally ran less lands in order for the shuffle to give them 2 lands every starting hand.
Among matchmaking bullshit and hidden ELO.
Arena is trash, play MTGO...
The only point the cheater mentions that is worth engaging with for real is the last one - I also think there will always be cheaters in competitive games. We need to stay vigilant and call people on their BS.
This is why yugioh rules are harsher on these kinds of mistakes. It's how players get caught.
Also the way hidden information works in the game meant that 14 years ago there was a cheating epidemic thanks to an archetype focused around having an empty hand the infernity cards.
What are the Yu-Gi-Oh rules for dealing with cheating?
@@U1TR4F0RCE explain?
@@Spike-hl2mw An illegal action, believed to be unintentional, will either result in a warning or game loss. Repeating the same infraction can lead to the penalty being upgraded, so it's possible, for example, to forget (or "forget") to pay a cost just two times and get a game loss for it, and receive a match loss for a third.
@@U1TR4F0RCE oh yeah! good ol' set 5, pass, mst, concede
"I lost that game... The opponent must have cheated. Yep, there is no other possible explanation."
How can a person be so prideful that they could never consider that they lost because they were less skilled, or didn't build their deck as well as the opponent, or simply got unlucky with the Lands, and instead have to assume their opponent was a cheater? XD
the only cheating I do is in casual, and it's in my 60 card red deck. the lightning bolts are old, so the backs are a little faded. so they're technically marked.
I just close my eyes when I'm shuffling to make sure I don't know where they actually are when I play. My friends are aware of it and don't mind.
It's a 10$ deck, so I don't respect it enough to buy sleeves that cost more than the deck itself to hide the faded backs of 4 spells in the deck.
But I'd never take it to an actual event assuming it would be okay.
I was a high level competitive player in another CCG back in the day (AEG's 'Warlord' - national champion once, European runner-up in 2v2, that kind of stuff) & nowadays I'm into running (getting top 3s for my age group & overall in smaller local races & the likes). My mind has always been that who you're really competing against is yourself. You're striving to get better than you were before, even if there are ups & there are downs, of course, along the way. Cheating really is antithetical to that.
The saddest thing is not the existence of cheaters, but the fact that a cheater such as the one who's examined in this video will take it as evidence of trying to hide in plain sight, and deepen their own justification. The goal of the game isn't just to beat your opponent, but also the player you were the last time you sat down to play. By cheating you rob yourself of the opportunity to develop mental muscles. Someone who says "all good players cheat" probably isn't the good player they think they are.
I had a fun one, a guy playing a bling out hardend scales deck tried to tell me that equipment didnt fall off man lands after they turn back into lands.
He also just kinda sucked. He chose not to galvanic blast my kor spirt dancer while it was my only creature on field. Rationalizing that i probably didnt have an enchantment in my hand.
He died to a massive kor spirit dancer because i was playing boggles so of course i had an enchatment.
Really? Do enchantments fall off as well? I was always under the impression that equipping or enchanting requires the card to be a creature, but once it's attatched, it stays there. Does that mean a card like imprisoned on the moon would knock other enchantments off?
@icedragon9097 Depends, equipment is equipped to a creature. So when the manland stops being a creature it stops being equipped. Same thing would happen for most auras, unless they said enchant permanent like the cycle from Kaldhiem
@@illboi42069 ah okay, i guess i was overthinking it 🤷♀️ just checked and you're right
@icedragon9097yeah, the type of card the enchantment can target is important. If it says it can target lands, then it won’t fall off. Otherwise it will.
When Star Wars Destiny was running I played against a guy who was known for being grumpy when he lost.
In this case he was particularly grumpy because I beat him with a mill deck.
To report the game both players were expected to sign a piece of paper and then the winner had to take it to the event organisers. This was where the issue occurred - my opponent refused to sign in front of me and insisted he was going to take the slip. I had a feeling he was being a bit dodgy so followed up with the judges and said I had won the game but he didn't sign.
Due to previous games that day he was picked up as having changed the result and tries to claim a cheat win. Disappointing.
Had a few of the same experiences with SWD. I played a Jabba, Renowned Gangster / Hondo, Respected Businessman deck that could deal out 13+ damage turn 1 and didn't use damage sides and I got some pretty bad salt at times. Also I'm sure the fact it's so dice-based didn't help, but you kinda gotta accept that if you're gonna play.
Point #9 gives the game away; if there are dorks who are so naive as to believe that no one cheats then they aren't doing it themselves.
They're aware that people aren't actually cheating and it's a hit to their stolen pride.
If you rank somewhere among players who play the game normally without cheating, then you would rank lower - as in - be worse at the game than the people you compete with. A cheater can't reconcile their factual lack of ability compared to the people around them with the self perception that they are special and a cut above the rest. It is why they purely care about winning when nearly all hobbyists, even competitive, are in it for the game itself.
reminds me of when i was younger.
played against a guy who sat in front of me, and just casually starts mana weaving his lands in his deck.
i guess he thought he could just get one over on me.
his face was hilarious as he presented his deck and i proceeded to mana weave him back for his last cut.
then i presented his deck and asked him if he wanted to mulligan and shuffle for 2 min or he would like me to call a judge?
he didn't say a thing and just started shuffling.
You should definitely have called a judge
You can "mana weave" all you want so long as the deck is shuffled min 3 times before it is played with. Maths show that no matter how you set up a deck it only takes a hand full of shuffles to undo any "cheating" you think your opponent was doing via "mana weaving". And at 7 shuffles any deck is completely randomized from any pre-arranged assortment the deck was in. If you see your opponent "mana weaving" just shuffle it a couple extra times and there's nothing to worry about after that.
oddly, mana-weaving became a house rule in my group. We got tired of games being decided by droughts or other tedious aspects of RNG. Personally, it was a better game for it, leaned the game more towards magic and less about who is luckier in the draw.
I mana weave all the time, just to make "sure" that my land isn't all in one clump. My mono green deck has this habit of actually playing every single land in the deck in a game. Nissa shaking dat arse is a hell of a thing.
So I mana weave and then shuffle.
But I've caught someone mana weaving and not actually shuffling. So I "unshuffled" their deck and just put all the land on top. Enjoy your mulligans.
However mana weaving in and of itself is not cheating, provided you shuffle afterwards.
@fermitupoupon1754 "So I "unshuffled" their deck and just put all the land on top" this is cheating. just inform the player that they are breaking the rules and why, then shuffle their deck.
mana weaving itself is at best a waste of time and at worst cheating. no reason to do it, just make sure you shuffle properly.
I remember a judge at my locals (yugioh) giving me this advice. Especially at higher level tournament play, if your opponent has made some minor “mistakes” forgetting triggers, misrepresenting info, taking extra long to think about actions, etc. make a note of it to a judge. Some players shrug it off, “annoying, but it happens”, but dont consider that they might not be the only ones being exploited. If other players also report that player for that same behaviour, it’ll raise a flag and could lead to them being penalised, preventing more people from being robbed of a win
Online clients solve this but it's vastly inferior to playing paper from an enjoyment standpoint.
not really, theres a shit ton of people cheating on arena
@@mememaster9703 but it's digital... You can't stack a digital deck, or make an illegal play on Arena/MTGO
Yes, I'm being sarcastic and am well aware that mods and hacking exists.
@mememaster9703 you can host local. Lan events and lock the systems down. Make it as hard to cheat as possible
@@mememaster9703 How do people cheat on arena?
@@mememaster9703 lol please explain
Man this dude needs to rent a 120 foot billboard out in an open field and open a drive-in theater, because he's just that good at projecting.
There's two kinds of tourney grinders, and this guy is the latter: People who want to prove their skill at the game, beat the highest level players and maybe get their likeness on a MtG card someday; and people who want fat checks, cards they can sell for money, and prizes that are worth money - they're just in it because it's easier than having a job.
I used to play against people like this at an LGS as a teen. I knew what narcissism was but didn't fully grasp the idea yet. I always wondered why these dudes would rage so hard. They wouldn't just "soft cheat" as the guy in the video but blatant things like drawing extra cards, 2 cards in 1 sleeve, cards in the lap, etc. It was people of every age group too. After that place closed down every other LGS was a longer commute for a somehow worse playgroup so I only play with 2 people in person now.
It's like Dr. House when he says that "Everybody Lies" because he is lying to himself the entire time...
Well, it's certainly possible - in 1 episode Dr. House claimed unironically that Lars Urlich was the best drummer in the world. The theory definitely adds up.
To be fair, that claim is so broad that can always be correct. But also rarely is useful. I mean, probably every person has lied at some point in their lives even for some minor reason. Ex. Telling your friend that you like their new haircut, that they seem to love, even if you find it horrendous, in order not to hurt their feelings, is still lying.
Although, I am just being pedantic here. It's been a long time since I watched House but I think your assessment about him is correct.
I'd actually say he lies less than the average person. He mainly lies to get away with stuff, and somewhat to himself (mostly about emotional issues)
But he's more about brutal honesty. As portrayed, couldn't he lie a lot more, and get away with it a lot more if he wanted to? I'd say this and the cheater are very different.
Saying everyone cheats is obviously not true, but basically everyone does lie. "The only variable is about what."
IIRC he wasn't using that line to justify his lying, like the cheater. He was making an actual observation to the best of his ability and trying to teach the students to watch out for patients lying that could put their health at risk (and he was speaking colloquially saying everyone instead of almost everyone)
"If someone is hesitant to call you out on your cheating, they are weak and not real players, they deserve to lose"
Gulag, thousand year gulag.
Lmao
I used to always carry around an Ashnod's coupon to drop when I suspected a cheater ^.0
Haven't played in a long while.
Sounds like nothings changed lol
I played a Pro Tour once and it was honestly the most pleasant gaming experience I have ever had.
The only 'cheating' I suspected was 2 French teammates talking about what was in my deck just before the game started, but that is basicaly just scouting, so not a huge deal.
I don't doubt that many 'pro' players actively cheat in the ways suggested in the video, but it definitely isn't a majority or even that significant.
When it comes to a fun card game, regardless of what is on the line, can't people just be like Goku and try to win a fair match in order to really test themselves? The only way to get better at anything is to really challenge yourself.
As someone who graduated high school in '99 but only started college in 2010, I was absolutely gobsmacked to learn just how much youths' attitudes around cheating had changed. I actually had a classmate in my physics class _admonish me_ after a test because I kept my Scantron covered. She even did this within earshot of the professor. Much later in life, I had an argument with a young coworker who _called me stubborn_ because I refused to accept his rationale for academic cheating being justified. It's straight-up bonkers to an older person like me.
Tbf, im in college rn and it blows my mind as well. People just uses AI, cheat during tests or plagiarize like it is nothing...
Yeah. Part of it, in my experience as a younger person who graduated recently, is because alot of college professors just aren't very good. If the class is not engaging due to it being just a gen Ed requirement, the teacher doesn't write good exams, I could go on. The point is once a class has been reduced to only the grade being valued, why shouldn't you cheat it's not like you care about learning anything. Some people cheated alot more than me in college, but it never bothered me.
@@robertmorrow3511 Yeah, it has nothing to do with "professors not being very good", it's because you're a spineless cheater lol
Hi, IT docent here. According to anecdotal evidence, you're slightly right. About 5 years ago, only 70% of the first semester's weekly hand ins where cheated, whereas now it's roughly 90%. Before, the hurdle was slightly higher, as you had to ask a friend and potentially risk them being mad at you, now you can just ask ChatGPT, which of course, we always catch.
On a social science level, I strongly refuse to believe that young adults nowadays are more prone to cheat than generations before. They just have more tools at their disposure and failure is less of an option. If older generations were in the same situation, I'm sure they'd behave the exact same way.
if its in a class they have to take but don't care about i get that at least
Something to consider about saying you might know who this is: the person writing this is probably not dumb enough to risk giving away their identity, and I think it’s entirely possible they’re playing a long con where the end result is making it look like it’s someone else they know is going to be a problem opponent at a future competitive event. They did say they play at high-level events, so they could be about to frame a very skilled opponent to get them disqualified.
Entirely speculation, of course, but this person is clearly a calculating sociopath, so it’s always helpful to try to think from that angle and consider what lengths that type of person might go to to reach their goal. Either way, I doubt their post history is entirely honest and probably exists to throw people off their scent.
I'm pretty sure @crunchatize_me_senpai is a false account or hacked account used by the pro cheater to try to make us believe that the cheater is trying to set a target on someone else's back!
Calculating sociopaths are not always as smart as they think, for the record. People widely paint them as geniuses, God, they're not. The amount of them that have been caught over very stupid shit is staggering.
@ Sure, but that doesn’t mean all of them are _dumb_ either. And you’d have to be especially dumb to give away your location for no reason and say that you play at high-level events. That’s possible, but unlikely.
The most common soft cheat I catch in commander is not taking damage from pain lands. If it's the only land of a color you need, then it's obvious, but when it's paying for the 2nd or 3rd pip, people often "forget" to pay.
In commander, it’s so easy to accidentally cheat, even with the best intention because board states are so hard.
@@Spirited_skiing i bought the yuma precon and my favourite cards to have in play are the chromatic lantern effect cards that make me not have to strain my brain thinking which lands to tap hahah
@@Suppaichu U can just play 2 or mono colored decks and u wont have to ever strain ur brain and u dont need to run a mid 3 cost rock.
@@Greg-f8x6qi run chromatic in my 2 color decks too because I do often lack enough of 1 color. Plus I play enough ramp and rocks that latern is still a top choice in the deck.
This is why I like MTGO. No shuffling, no math, no cheating, no forgotten triggers.
Only thoughtseize bug lmao.
@bqing87 true lmao
My preferred way to play Magic since 02'.
What bug?@@bqing87
you can cheat on MTGO just not in a match tbf
One thing that could really help the frequency of self reporting is to take a page out of US aviation law; we have a system where if:
1. No harm was done due to the mistake
And
2. You self-report the mistake before being caught or approached for sanctions
Then:
You become immune from punitive actions for that infraction
So on your case because you self-reported the error you couldn't have been given the game loss, but if you got caught by a judge or your opponent you would have immediately been given the game loss. This switches the incentive to be to always self-report immediately upon catching an error and rectifying the game state voluntarily to avoid potential penalties from concealing your mistakes and getting called out for it.
It also takes the pressure off of conflict avoidant people with reporting because they can always count on the fact that if they catch the error before their opponent and their opponent doesn't want to self-report the error to the judges then they are likely trying to hide a pattern of malfeasance. After all of you have to self-report the same error 6 times in one tournament then people will be aware of you making that mistake a lot and will pay more attention to that particular thing when playing against you since they know you screw it up a lot; encouraging you to also be more aware of it.
I like this solution a lot. However, WotC seems reluctant to add harsher rules that punish more casual players who might unintentionally miss a lot of gameplay elements (colors of mana, triggers, etc.). I started playing at a time when even drawing an extra card would constitute a game loss. That shaped me into a player who is never sloppy, keeps everything in order and communicates clearly. Newer players today shudder when I tell them of how strict used to be back then.
I was thinking something like this as a self report could easily be, correct the deck and you are assumed to have mulligan-ed the illegal hand. If drawn deeper into a game the card is removed and not replaced with anything.
@@bostycraiova This would be MORE forgiving of new players, not less.
Instead of getting game losses and sanctions for their mistakes if they self report OR if they get caught they would be able to recognize their mistakes and self-report to avoid sanctions entirely.
New player friendly events would also be much more understanding of this. Most people - and especially tournament staff - are at least reasonably aware of who is new and who is experienced in their local FNM scene and can respond to repeated mistakes accordingly. At the same time at pro-tour and GPX events where a higher level of experience is expected staff and fellow players will be aware of players who are self reporting a lot of novice mistakes - especially after being caught out - and identical repeated mistakes.
It's also a good thing to have new players getting a bit more oversight from their opponents on the mistakes they're prone to making in local FNM events as those players can help them catch those mistakes and therefore improve their play quality and awareness.
@@leumasecallaw6313 The problem is that you can't identify the extra card they drew with certainty.
I think only cheaters think everyone cheats, and non cheaters think most people are honest... most people think that everyone else has the same mindset as them. That's why job recruitment tests ask if most people steal.
I don't play competitive events, just pre-releases and the occasional LGS standard event and such. I've always been impressed by the other players' willingness to offer help, and remind me of triggers, clearly explain their actions, etc. Not huge money on the line, but I feel like that attitude is much more common than the "everybody cheats" attitude.
I've always found pre-releases pretty bad for encountering soft cheating, its easy for people to make "mistakes" wtih new mechanics.
This is the same vibe as people who constantly accuse anyone behaving decently of “virtue signalling.” If everyone else is either behaving badly or only appearing to be decent out of selfish motives, I don’t have to examine my own conduct and come to grips with the possibility that maybe I’m being sort of a shit.
Virtue signaling accusations have always confused me so much tbh, especially because they are often directed after people stand up for social issues that you really don't get rewarded for doing
@@englishmuffinpizzas
Yeah it's practically a worthless term atp, basically just used to attack progressives. A Company putting a gay flag on their twitter for pride is virtue signaling. An advocate for gay rights.. is just an advocate for gay rights. Having virtue and good opinions isn't the same as virtue signalling, otherwise, it'd be a purely Good thing lmao.
For one, this only applies to paper magic...
How does he think Modo pros "cheat"
There are theoretically ways to "cheat" vintage cube I can think of but not normal constructed on mtgo
Tell me you didn't watch the video without telling me you didn't watch the video.
(The cheater's manifesto explicitly states that playing online is the only way to prevent cheating.)
Well many of the bigger "modo pros" are also streamer and streamsniping is not uncommon. Plus there were some exploits where you could make your opponent lose by crashing their client.
you can rig tournaments fairly easily. Used to be a big problem with EU events they had less players and most americans where asleep
Been waiting a long time for another cheater video. Whether it's watching cheaters get caught or talking about the nuances, it's just an interesting topic.
This is some high level copium
Military grade
@@SnackCakeswith how many pro players that get caught cheating and then say all pro players cheat you can't just sit there and say that they are projecting when it's only other long term pro players that they respect. Even in Yugioh it is the same thing, all the pros know each other and respect each other yet somehow have flawless games against not pro players. The fact that it is a big deal when a non pro player wins a tournament in any TCG is a big glowing proof that all pros cheat and when someone somehow wins without doing so everyone is shocked.
To the cheater, and many that are criminally minded, the cheating is the game itself. They’re not there to play Magic and do some cheating to win. They’re there to cheat and Magic is the vehicle to do so. Cheaters get a thrill from the cheating. Doing immoral, unethical, and/or illegal things is a rush and certain personality types get addicted to the high of committing the act.
I don’t think cheating is all about the prizes of winning, I think it’s in the knowing that you got one up on everyone in the room. It’s a superiority thing.
For some for sure, i should have touched on that - there are quite a few reasons someone might cheat - its perhaps more nuanced of an action than I gave it credit here.
Depends. If a person cheats at casual games too, then I agree. But I have known people that have cheated at tournaments but never at casual games. And that's mostly greed.
I cheated once in my first pokemon tournament went undefeated and they gave the prize to another undedeated player cause he battled harder apponents karma is real
Cheats are just weak and small people
15:48 I am the same as I think it has to do with the number mistakes that I make that shock me and make me think "I really should have known that" only goes up over time.
I had a local player try to consign to memory a fetch in modern. They weren't a pro or anything but they were definitely someone in touch with the game enough that they should have known thw card didn't work like that. I even later in that same event saw them pause a match they were watching to get a judge involved because one of the players had inadvertently consigned a urzas saga construct token activation. I can't say for sure that they didn't just learn from the judge call when they tried to stifle my fetch, but it definitely raised some alarm bells in my head.
The issue I have is that there is very little recourse for you. Even if you are convinced that the other person is aware of how the proper interaction goes (such as you heard them talking to their friend before the tournament), you still can't realistically stop them from doing it from time to time. In their current form, Magic's rules are very lenient and judges often err on the side of forgiveness, which is exactly what this type of "soft cheater" exploits.
That seems like an honest mistake to me and them just trying to pass along the newfound knowledge. Most cards that counter triggered abilities also counter activated abilities, so I find it very plausible that it just doesn't register to some people that cards that counter only one of those kind of abilities exist.
@@Oneiromantisgr I have 2 thoughts about this.
First of all, if Consign also countered activated abilities then it would simply be a better Stifle. Stifle is anyway a hot topic whether or not it should be printed in Modern, how could anyone think that a Stifle that also counters all colorless spells AND has replicate can be printed just like that?
Secondly, this is exactly the thing that soft cheaters rely on. As you said, it seems like an honest mistake to make. Same with other examples presented here in various comments. This is exactly what someone who is not against resorting to these cheats will try to exploit. As a player, you can't realistically prove that they KNEW what they were doing was incorrect.
@@bostycraiova power level evaluation isn't really something that most players can do reliably. It is stated that this person wasn't that good of a player. So arguing that a non-pro player should know better does not convince me.
If he was cheating I find it a bit stupid to interact with other players in a way that proves that he knows how the card works. He would have kept silent and hoped that the next opponent would not know. Correcting people signals to the whole LGS that you know how a card works.
If he was a cheater, he was a bad one. 😛
@@Oneiromantisgr Agreed, I was not there and I fully trust your reasoning. All I was saying is that, in general, players showing too much leniency is exactly why soft cheaters get to thrive.
Man, that poster used so many words just to say "I'm garbage at card games so I have to cheat to hang with others and I'm convinced everyone else is just as garbage as me cause it makes me feel better at night."
Another reason some of these people cheat is that they actually are good magic players but they convince themselves that they're owed better results. Magic is a game with a lot of variance and in paper it can take a while to get a large enough sample size that yields results reflecting your skill, so good players with questionable morals lure themselves into cheating as a shortcut past some of the bad luck that comes with grinding tournaments. It may seem unintuitive that cheaters are often pretty good at the things they cheat at, but there is evidence of this in other corners of the gaming world, like in speedrunning.
If you win by cheating then you didn't actually win, there's no exception. Events should have a judge at every table watching like a hawk.
While I admire your optimism, I do think that cheating, and "legal" scummyness is a part of the game that people should be watchful for, especially from people who do a lot of winning. I'll share an anecdote.
When I moved to Virginia, I found a LGS for Legacy win-a-dual events, back when those were a thing. These events were typically judged by the store owner, because the L2 judge who usually judged standard and modern events at the store liked to play Legacy. This guy was known as the "Final boss" of the store. Very much recognized as the king of the Legacy scene there, which made me excited when I first started going to those events. At the time, I was pretty into Legacy, and I'd had some success at SCG events and Eternal Weekend, so I hoped to get some fun competition.
This L2 Judge was the single most scummy person I have ever seen. The comment from this reddit post about having to tell him "you're too good at this game to be making these mistakes" absolutely holds true here, and magically after I let him know that his shit wouldn't fly against me, those "mistakes" stopped happening against me. But still happened against everybody else.
Some examples include:
- Claiming Wear//Tear counts as a 1, a 2, and a 3 all at once if revealed to Counterbalance.
- "Forgetting" his own Chalice of the Void triggers on his spells.
- Attempting to kill somebody at 20 life with Tendrils of Agony at 7 storm.
- On numerous occasions, when the local 12-post player cast Emrakul, instantly untapping and starting their turn to try to make the player forget the extra turn trigger. Even when they'd explicitly declared it on cast.
- Untapping his Tundra that he'd just used to cast Back To Basics.
- Spinning Sensei's Top to put a 3 on top and Counterbalance his opponent's Krosan Grip.
The list goes on and on. And remember, this was an L2 judge. When I talked to the store owner about it, he said he knew, but his hands were basically tied because there were no other judges willing to drive out to his store, and he couldn't judge everything himself.
I'm not trying to say that everybody cheats, the same way that the Reddit poster does. I am, however, trying to say that people should be much more vigilant of it, even from friendly people that they trust, than they are.
There was one particular judge that I was never a fan of in NJ. Anytime he ruled something it was always wrong and it made no sense. I literally watched him put a mana leak back in a players hand when they tried to counter a Thrun during walletsculptor block. Like, it’s a literal legal target on the stack… He also happened to be a judge at a major event i went to and ruled incorrectly with another judge asking him why he ruled that way off the side. At the time I wasn’t as familiar with deferring to the head judge but to top it off I was playing vs another judge who was trying to rule shark.
While I totally agree with your general sentiment (and it's a real shame someone was using their expertise as a judge to both improve and shield their own cheating behavior =/), I did want to interject and say that: To be clear, cheating is - by definition - not part of the game; cheating is *explicitly* that which the game says is not part of it. Cheating absolutely *is* part of life, though, and something you shouldn't be blind to the reality of. But, I also think that the words we use and how we talk/think about things is important to our perception of them. This unhinged cheater is able to do these impressive mental gymnastic partially thanks to using this sort of double speak in their own thinking.
I understand that the store was reliant on this particular L2 judge, but as a player I would have taken the nuclear option and reported the whole thing. Sure, this might lead to the win-a-dual events being discontinued, but I would never compromise when scumminess is involved.
I remember playing at an FNM one evening. Was running a bunch of graveyard plays, bouncing things to and from the graveyard to trigger effects. At one point my opponent noticed that I missed loads of a specific trigger that would have pinged me for life. After bringing it up to me, and realizing that he was right, I immediately scooped the match in a forfeit. Dude told me not to worry about it, we can keep playing, but I could not in good conscience continue the match as I had mad an irreparable game state with the missed triggers and felt as though I cheated him out of a fair match. Was not a hard decision to make. My integrity is worth far more than an FNM win.
To me, winning only matters if I do it legit. You are the best if you had to cheat. You might be the best cheater, but that doesn't make you the best player.
The scary part is that what matters to us personally doesn't matter that much in the grand scheme of things. Even if we are moral and value proper competition, we are not spared from facing people like this in our games.
As an ex-pro tour player back in the day the biggest litmus test for who was a real pro and who was just a cheater-pro was when MTGO came out. There we're a TON of pros who had poor or mediocre ratings on MTGO despite being "pros" IRL. I personally got cheated IRL by some of them at actual sanctioned events(more than one of them got a 6 year ban later down the road though), and a few still haven't been caught today. The biggest red flag back then when MTGO came out was seeing some pro who the clans would make fun of, because their ratings sucked and they weren't actually good players online... where cheating was impossible. Back then some of them even got caught for bribery on MTGO and they used to be part of smaller clans known for such things(most got caught and banned.) One of the best examples of this happening on there was Mike Long.
"soft cheating" in poker terms would be called "angleshooting" and is just as frowned upon as actual cheating
Angle shooting feels different, because you arent breaking any actual rules.
"Soft cheating" is cheating under the guise of being sloppy and making mistakes.
Angle shooting is like LSV winning with Storm and no Tendrils in his sideboard and relying on people conceding when he has enough storm and cast burning wish.
Or like getting someone to make a play that they wouldn't have made, like Prosak baiting his opponent to surgical extraction him in order to get the storm count to cast a lethal tendrils.
Would also be things like, "accidentally" dropping a wrath of god from your hand when you're stuck on 3 mana trying to get your opponent to delay committing to the board. Not directly gaining material advantage like tapping wrong colors or not marking damage taken but it's not within the rules of the game either.
I’m pretty pleased he’s posted it and you’ve drawn attention to it. There’s a worse scenario where these hypothetical cheaters like this keep it all to themselves. This helps create a culture where people are more vigilant and calling a judge for minor infractions is more normalised - creating a healthier space where cheating becomes harder.
I don't think everyone cheats but I do think cheating is part of the paper game. The solution isn't to cheat but to help the MTG community get better at catching cheaters.
My own personal anecdote: I stared getting into FnM and people at the store were talking about joining an RCQ as a store. I would come every weekend to hone my skills. I was forgetting a beginning of combat trigger, and no one ever told me. At the rcq, I was one of the couple of players that went (not as a team) and during the first match my opponent told me about the trigger. I kinda stopped going to FnM after that one.
My gf and I attended a Duskmourn prerelease, and her opponent reminded her as he sealed the final game that her trigger from... Osseous Sticktwister? Should have been providing her lifelink the whole match.
I know it's a player's responsibility to track abilities, but it seemed in poor sport.
If it was competitive then suck it. If it was all just for shits n giggles then he could've mentioned it right away.
@@exilenlIt was for free packs, lol. Not exactly competitive.
Technically, lifelink isn't a trigger and as such you have to remind your opponent about it if it's missed. If the Sticktwister dealt damage, the life must be gained and you can't let your opponent forget it. That said, many players think that lifelink is the controller's sole responsibility so I wouldn't say that the opponent was cheating necessarily
@@radnor7812 that's good to know! Thank you.
yeah since lifelink isn't an optional trigger, noticing that your opponent is forgetting it and then winning by deliberately not telling them is 100% cheating. Even if he only noticed at that moment, the proper thing to do would be to call a judge to resolve it, or at least give her the option to do so rather than taking the win and *then* smugly telling her about the mistake. Absolute dick move and frankly reeks of the "no girls allowed"-type bs that's still way too prevalent in these spaces
I know a guy who soft cheats all the time. He had a deck based on abusing emerge to cheat out eldrazi creatures, but he'd constantly fudge the amount of mana he actually had available, would skip counting commander tax, and try to cover it all up by casting stuff so fast that he thought no one would try to track his casts. First time I caught him cheating, the pod stopped and tried to gently explain that he's making mistakes. We hoped he was just being careless, but knew that he likely wasn't. The very next time I played against him, two of us were watching and called him out on it. Dude spent the rest of the afternoon playing control against my decks regardless of if it was the right move. I no longer play against that dude, and if any of the rest of the people I regularly play with (who have also caught him cheating multiple times) end up across the table from him in a commander game, they either move into a different pod or aim him down. Dude burnt up all of the trust and good will he had so that he could win a game of commander with absolutely nothing on the line.
I played against someone who basically admitted to me he looks at people decks and he shuffles and looks for foils. He basically does a quick inspection from the side. So if someone opens a foil rare he can make sure they never see it. I had some foils and he showed me and I called a judge lmao. People cheat in small ways like this all the time. Don’t let people shuffle your deck. Just cut.
Tbh I would call a judge on anyone that doesn't allow for a shuffle. Mana weaving is waaaay to common.
By the rules it's not your decision if they cut or shuffle and for a good reason.
Silly question, but this would be justification for a judge-provided proxy, no? At least in a Limited environment. The card is effectively “damaged” (easily marked in the deck), and this happened in the course of the event if it’s a Sealed/Draft, and thus you could request to use a proxy in its place to avoid providing the opponent (or yourself) an advantage?
Hmm you have to let your opponent shuffle your deck
@@scaredycat3146You can "mana weave" all you want so long as the deck is shuffled min 3 times before it is played with. Maths show that no matter how you set up a deck it only takes a hand full of shuffles to undo any "cheating" you think your opponent was doing via "mana weaving". And at 7 shuffles any deck is completely randomized from any pre-arranged assortment the deck was in. If you see your opponent "mana weaving" just shuffle it a couple extra times and there's nothing to worry about after that.
Now Im just paranoid someone will think Im cheating when I misplay
Do ALL pros cheat? Definitely not. Do more than most people are comfortable admitting? Absolutely.
“Everyone cheats.” (1)
>How could you possibly substantiate that?
“Well, everyone who doesn’t cheat isn’t a real player, so they don’t count” (9)
> What about people who catch your mistakes
“They have to be cheating too, cause they caught me cheating.” (7 and 8)
It’s really easy to declare everyone a cheater if you’re allowed to redefine “vigilance” to mean cheating and redefine “real players” to only include cheaters and vigilant players.
I have not cheated in competitive play, but i have cheated in casual commander, if my opponent is having a bad game and bad time because of it, ill stack cards that help them catch back up
I dont do it everytime but have done it before
Still shitty
I figure if it's casual commander and the pod allows it, it's less cheating and more rule 0. the furthest I usually go is throwing-- like if I'm in a pod with an artifacts deck and have vandalblast in my opening hand or first couple draws, I'll usually pitch it first chance I get so they've a fair shot at me. (if I draw it late game, though, you bet their board is going kaboom.)
There are 2 takeaways that I've got from playing games with other people:
1. Everyone who cheats justifies what they're doing by saying 'everyone does it'.
2. Everyone who cheats is likely to be policing you more than you're policing them, because it looks more altruistic.
So I think my takeaway here is, don't trust the people who are aggressively policing the things you get wrong in play, and watch them carefully. I forgot how scummy magic players can be.
One thing I want to ask these people is "how do you think it works that people who are good at MTGO are also good at live MTG?"
"The liar's punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else." --George Bernard Shaw
People like this is why I’d get disqualified. There’s probably rules about sitting down at a table with a hammer next to you and warning your opponent that if you catch them cheating you’ll hit them with it.
I’m one of those people that they wouldn’t try to cheat. But that doesn’t make me feel good about the people they would take advantage of.
Everyone may accidentally cheat.
Losers deliberately cheat.
Cheating always implied intent. There is no such thing as accidentally cheating, then it's just called making a mistake.
@bostycraiova no shit Sherlock. I'm using the language that the anonymous cheater does
@@games-wz7sz Right, my bad. It's all clear now. I was reading the other comments before yours and many were saying this unironically.
Shout outs to the only time I've had someone caught cheating in a tournament: it was 2HG and they were a "pair the spares" team. My friend and I were busy strategising when one of our opponents just groaned and called judge. We got anxious about what we'd done, before he goes "sorry man, I can't let you do that. Judge, I just spotted my teammate switching cards in their opening hand with their deck".
They got a DQ, we ended up placing. Sucks because the guy that cheated was a regular at our board game night, but it really fucked the vibe any time he showed up after that. Honestly, would've been happier getting to know the guy who called him out.
This (post) is the kind of attitude that has scared me away from high level mtg play for a decade
I think there were an interesting number of points brought up during this and I don't doubt that there are people that adopt this manifesto or approach, certainly the incrimental value of making favourable mistakes is objectively going to result in better outcomes over the long run. The point on the social dynamic is an interesting one too because again as much as I believe there are individuals that want to give the benefit of the doubt or avoid conflict resolution - I can't relate to being one of them...
If I'm playing against a combo deck where my opponent is essentially just goldfishing, instead of just sitting back and waiting to be told I'm beat, I lean in and make sure they resolve every single trigger, declare the order on the stack, update mana totals etc. There is an almost zero % chance I am letting someone play through any of these interactions fast. A) Because I realise its the time when I'm most likely to miss something B) Because a staggering amount of time they over-commit mana, mis-tap, or resolve triggers erroneously or their combo entirely whiffs (I've actually encountered a player at GP Birmingham and GP Paris who didn't understand how their combo worked and were just used to showing people the combo pieces and seeing them scoop) and C) They chose to play a complicated game of solitaire as opposed to Magic that im expected to sit through for twenty minutes.
I agree with Kenobi's ethos on playing in these big events. I'm there to pit myself against the field and there's no glory or satisfaction in gaming the system to achieve that, to the point I'll also point out my opponents triggers that are detrimental to me, why? Because it's the right thing to do.
I caught a cheater at a pre-release one time and it was one of the weirdest experiences I've had playing Magic. I was playing a guy who looked like he was 16 or 17 years old and he was there with a group of 3 other guys who all looked like teenagers as well. This guy countered 4 of my spells, and when he cast his 4th counter I noticed that he kept the card in his off hand rather than putting it in his graveyard. I asked to see his graveyard and instead of handing it to me he asked why I want to see it. At that point he put the counter on top of his graveyard but then put his hand on top, as if to prevent me from picking it up. I called over the staff and explained what was going on. The staff asked to see his graveyard, but rather than giving up the con he just conceded and scooped. Later on, probably 30 minutes after this happened, his friends came up to me while I was in another game and started talking shit. They called me a loser because I, an adult man, called out their friend, a teenager, for cheating. One line that's burned into my brain is "You got a mustache and shit and you're crying about a game." When I asked what age has to do with cheating they started hurling slurs like we were on a 4chan thread. The staff asked them to leave, at which point one of them started crying and pleading to not be banned from the store even though no one had said anything about banning them.
Very weird. They saw no problem with cheating but took issue with being caught. I hope those goobers grew up.
On your point of making mistakes, I went to my first Pokemon League Challenge at my local LGS last year, first event I'd ever gone to besides a Pre-Release. Accidentally used Greninja's ability with my own Path to the Peak active. Judge came over, gave me a warning and we rolled everything back. I was embarrassed until my opponent and the players on either side of me told me they've done the same thing a million times and to just be more careful. I really appreciated that everyone was so supportive of owning your mistakes
Never thought I'd kick off the evening with a video disecting the mtg equivalent of a Scrubquotes post, but here we are.
The thing said in many of my casual card store games "if your life is so bad that you feel the need to cheat so you can win a casual game, then I'm here for you for this game"
The position that a cheater can only be spotted by another cheater and countered by cheating is some of the greatest self-justification I've ever seen.
A similar thing happened to me with a high ranking SCG tournament player back in the day where I feel like they attempted to wordsmith our interaction to his benefit, because I was not a known personality. He tried to say I passed through combat without attacking, even though I had pushed my Dragonlord Ojutai forward at him after saying "combat?". I also had an Always Watching on the battlefield which gave it vigilance. There was no reason in the world I wouldn't have attacked (he had no flyers) but he was on the backfoot. He lost this game and I feel he only did this sort of 'maneuver' because he was losing.
The sad part about this is that it is far closer to the truth than it should be.
In general, in any system where people have some altruistic notion, like giving others the benefit of the doubt, there will be assholes abusing it.
This is true for Magic, true for other games and sports, and true for life in general.
You have the choice to follow suit and play the illegal sub games for a benefit, or you can not do that and life with the knowledge that people are gaining unfair benefits.
In the end, it's sort of a theatrical good vs. evil choice.
For me personally, it's clear that we should choose the good side and be ever vigilant for the people who stray from the light fir their personal benefit.
Last Monday doing local modern event, round 4, game 3, I have mountain, island, steam vents, getting fucked on dredge, scared of flood moon, I accidently cast prized amalgam, resolves, next turn, cast 2nd prized amalgam, my opponent bounces the first one to my hand, next turn I go to fetch, and in my head I'm like okay so grab blood crypt to get black mana online, the moment I saw blood crypt while searching it all clicked, I paused, I looked at my opponent and said "hey, you got it" they were confused and asked if I just wasn't feeling it anymore, they were like "you haven't lost man, you got the 2 amalgams" I just like spread my lands out and say "yeah, how did I cast them?" They were super understanding and were like "oh that's definitely a final round mistake, everything's good man, I'm willing to continue playing from the current board state if you are" i told them I will happily play it out but they assured them they got the dub regardless. Totally just zoned out on what I had until I actually looked at the land in my deck.
It happens, and I'm glad yall had such a mature and reasonable understanding about what happened. You caught yourself, and that's what matters.
It goes back to the old phrase “if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t racing”.
This video is gonna get a lot of comments. Happy to add mine too for promoting the channel. My dad plays golf and can talk for hours about the massive number of people hes played with that either dont know the rules of golf, care to follow them, or willfully break them often. He's unable to accept cheaters and cheating and he loses sleep over other peoples actions (whereas I would normally just choose not to play if I encounted this). Strong agree on the chat around 10mins. Thanks for the discussion PK.
Bro went full game theory, never go full game theory
If everyone is cheating then cheating does not get you a leg up it just levels the playing field. His statements conflict with themselves if you think about it.
One of my first games I accidentally played a sorcery at instant speed. My opp, whom was much more experienced than I, noticed it. I felt like a dirty cheater and vehemently apologized. Much in the way I do I just openly said “listen I’m not cheating I’m just new” before every game. Sometimes I caught a hint that some people thought I was full of shit as they tried to search my soul via my pupils for an inkling of corruption.