[GP:Florence] Saito DQed without prize.

[MatsT]

Firstly, it was not a single complicated combat phase that caused the ruling, it was observation of multiple indidents of the same type. It's important to note that the observation was NOT "He's thinking too long here". The observation was that in very similiar situations, he thought for very different amounts of time depending on what the current standing and the round clock was at. If the slow plays had been randomly distributed with regards to the standing/clock, he wouldn't have been DQ'ed.

Secondly, anyone could see this coming from miles away. He's definitely smart enough to fix a problem like this if it is indeed an honest mistake, before he gets banned for it.

[RyanFisher]

Originally Posted by MatsT

Firstly, it was not a single complicated combat phase that caused the ruling

This is the reason he had slowed down considerably within the last 3 minutes.

It was observation of multiple incidents of the same type.

No, it wasn't. It was stated that his play slowed considerably within the last 3 minutes of the match. No where have they mentioned that is was the observation of multiple incidents.

Secondly, anyone could see this coming from miles away.

How do you figure this?

[Blad01]

Originally Posted by ShogunCharlie

This is also why I feel 18 mounths is so excessive. They can't even prove that he actually intended to cheat, it's just the perception of some judge.

I agree with that. 1 year and half is huge in life, especially for a (relatively) young player like Saitou. This will probably make him quit...

I would have been happy if he was sanctionned for 6 months or so, because I hate when pros make their little tricks on non-pros players (Wafo-Tapa once did one against me, which ultimately led to a draw at one turn away from my win. But that was more of a little tip than actual cheating).

[gerbil]

Has it occurred to anyone that Saito actively cultivated an aura of 'slow methodical player' to make it abusable at the right time?*

Certainly if I wanted to be a pro player, I'd be looking to bend every possible rule to gain advantage, whether its clock abuse, shuffling abuse, intimidation etc.

The number of pros who do that crap with the cards in hand (cycling through them) while 'thinking' is huge. They use it to distract, but from my experience also think it somehow makes them look like they are doing something when they aren't, so often get suprised when judges call them on slow play. Annoys the hell out of me.

Anyway, the rules state that you must play at a reasonable pace. This is an area wide open for discussion and interpretation, but it boils down to 'There's a clock. Your own rate of play must not be detrimental to your opponent playing his own game.'

As an example of the problems that face us, as judges, here's an example to make you think about where our job starts to stop stalling, but could affect the game result:

Player A is playing mono blue with lots of counterspells. He has a bit of a bad run of luck and now has 4 lands in hand.
Player B wishes to play something, and wary of counterspells, always checks with his opponent to see if something resolves.
Now, every time B casts something, A looks at his hand and thinks. He doesn't want to give away the fact he's counterless, but he's clearly wasting time.

What does the judge do?

* Not that I'm saying he has done this, but its certainly worthy of thought.

[pathern]

If I owned a card shoppe and was earning almost 50k per year playing magic I would and in this situation, I would just work at my card shoppe and try to expand it and then get back after my suspension was done. There's plenty of things he could do, I can see how a year and a half is a little bit more than I expected but that is just my opinion. Am I glad he is banned? Yes. Am I surprised? Not necessarily. Will I be upset once he comes back? No. I believe people deserved chances for their own mistakes as long as they don't continue to make that same mistake over and over without punishment of some sort. He got his punishment and he will be serving for it for the next year and a half which in the MTG world is HUGE! He pretty much got himself out of $60k just from playing magic in the next year and a half.

Originally Posted by gerbil

Has it occurred to anyone that Saito actively cultivated an aura of 'slow methodical player' to make it abusable at the right time?*

Certainly if I wanted to be a pro player, I'd be looking to bend every possible rule to gain advantage, whether its clock abuse, shuffling abuse, intimidation etc.

The number of pros who do that crap with the cards in hand (cycling through them) while 'thinking' is huge. They use it to distract, but from my experience also think it somehow makes them look like they are doing something when they aren't, so often get suprised when judges call them on slow play. Annoys the hell out of me.

Anyway, the rules state that you must play at a reasonable pace. This is an area wide open for discussion and interpretation, but it boils down to 'There's a clock. Your own rate of play must not be detrimental to your opponent playing his own game.'

As an example of the problems that face us, as judges, here's an example to make you think about where our job starts to stop stalling, but could affect the game result:

Player A is playing mono blue with lots of counterspells. He has a bit of a bad run of luck and now has 4 lands in hand.
Player B wishes to play something, and wary of counterspells, always checks with his opponent to see if something resolves.
Now, every time B casts something, A looks at his hand and thinks. He doesn't want to give away the fact he's counterless, but he's clearly wasting time.

What does the judge do?

* Not that I'm saying he has done this, but its certainly worthy of thought.

A lot of players do that per se, you want to give your opponent the idea that you have a counter in your hand though, I truly think that you should not take more than a considerate amount of time to pass priority and let the spell resolve though. If I was the blue player I would want to give my opponent a reason to think "Should I play this now or later? Will this be countered or not?

Magic is a strategy game and you want to have your strategy beat your opponents no matter how big the win percentage or loss percentage is against either deck.

[jeffbcrandall]

Originally Posted by ShogunCharlie

This. Having read his blog (not just his articles) in Japanese as well as sporadic conversations online I am almost completely convinced that he is the victim of his own slowish methodical play rather than an intent to cheat. I'm absolutely not ruling out the posibility that he have done it on purpose, but the number of people that will not acknowledge the chance that he might actually be telling the truth makes me quite sad. I think the number would shrink considerably if they could just read his own words on his blog.

This is also why I feel 18 mounths is so excessive. They can't even prove that he actually intended to cheat, it's just the perception of some judge.

Perception of a few judges, a number of which were high-level judges, so no, not just the perception of "some judge". Besides, the suspension was decided by the group responsible for such things in the DCI. This one judge or group of judges at the event did not suspend the guy, the DCI did that.

According to what you are saying, there would be NO POSSIBLE WAY to be able to call someone on stalling, since none of us are psychic. It was noted that he was specifically adjusting his play speed when he got information about how much time was left, and was shown to do this multiple times during the event where he was DQd from. He has been warned a lot of times in the past for slow play, and the previous example of another large past event where he did the reading of jace, and graveyard stuff he did, if thats not obvious stalling, then I dont know what is. Hes just lucky the judges didnt catch that at the time, because that would have gotten him DQd there as well.

If you cheat at a game, you deserve to get punished, its as simple as that. In this case he was a pro player, he got DQd at an event, and the DCI did an investigation as they likely do when anyone is caught cheating. The circumstances were taken into consideration, as well as past warnings (of which from the sounds of it were quite numerous), and came to the conclusion that they did, that he deserved a lengthy suspention for his current and past actions.

EDIT: As for the previous poster that says it was only from one observed incident that he got DQd .... sorry, but you should have read the report before you commented:

"Head Judge, Level-4 Nick Sephton, explained why the disqualification occurred:

"We disqualified this player for Stalling, after it was observed that his play speed seemed to change based on his observation of the clock. It was observed by a high-level judge that twice in the round he appeared to change his play speed based on considerations that were outside the game. Consulting among the senior judges we decided that, on the basis of what we had observed, we had no choice but to disqualify the player."

Nick continued with advice for players wanting to avoid falling foul of this rule themselves:

"Players should be able to play at a reasonable pace throughout a round. Judges recognise that a player's speed of play can change during a game - Magic is a complicated game and produces difficult situations for players - but it's important that players are still able to play at a speed that allows games to be completed. It's a valid play skill to be able to make difficult decisions quickly.""

[RyanFisher]

Why do people keep saying Saito was banned? It's only a 18 month suspension. You only wish he was banned. I cannot wait til he comes back and takes the scene by storm!

[jeffbcrandall]

Originally Posted by RyanFisher

Why do people keep saying Saito was banned? It's only a 18 month suspension. You only wish he was banned. I cannot wait til he comes back and takes the scene by storm!

No, I dont wish he was banned, I simply mistyped was all. If youll notice I did say in the majority of my post suspended, I just missed one apparently in the early part. Please dont make stupid comments like "You only wish he was banned." Unless you are somehow psychic and know what we are thinking, making such an assumption is foolish at best. I am editing my post to adjust for the mistype, and thank you for pointing it out, even if you didnt do so in the best way.

[RyanFisher]

Originally Posted by jeffbcrandall

No, I dont wish he was banned, I simply mistyped was all. If youll notice I did say in the majority of my post suspended, I just missed one apparently in the early part. Please dont make stupid comments like "You only wish he was banned." Unless you are somehow psychic and know what we are thinking, making such an assumption is foolish at best. I am editing my post to adjust for the mistype, and thank you for pointing it out, even if you didnt do so in the best way.

Was not refering to you. It's just ALOT of people in this thread insinuate that Tomoharu is a bonafide cheater and they're glad he got banned, except for the fact that he was only suspended.

[jeffbcrandall]

Originally Posted by RyanFisher

Was not refering to you. It's just ALOT of people in this thread insinuate that Tomoharu is a bonafide cheater and they're glad he got banned, except for the fact that he was only suspended.

Ah, okay then, my bad . And yeah, though you have to admit that being suspended for 18 months is effectively the same as a temporary ban for 18 months. A lot of online communities and games use the term ban in general terms to account for suspensions and stuff as well. Not to be of course confused with a perm ban, but regardless I think its more just different people using different terms to describe the situation.

[FoxBat]

They are completely the same. "Bans" are implemented by the DCI as lifetime or ridiculously long suspensions. A "temp ban" is the same as a not ridiculously long suspension.

[Cornelius]

What debate is there to have about Mr. Saito, exactly? If he intentionally played that slowly, he cheated. If he didn't intentionally play that slowly, maybe he should take up go.

[lukewarm]

so it looks like getting people to understand the difference's between slow play and stalling is like kicking water up hill ...just isn't gonna happen.

the severity of punishment for "cheating" or not "cheating" or even whether or not there was actual "cheating" going on is not Germane to the discussion.

saito was playing a game at a not unfamiliar pace to him and was deemed to be in violation of a dci rule. whether or not he was or wasn't "cheating" doesn't frikkin matter. prison is full of people that didn't do what they were accused and found guilty of.

at the end of the day judges and the dci committee found him to be in violation of a rule and decided what a fair punishment should be.

look at it this way judges = cops and dci committee = jury of our peers

whether or not he was intentionally "cheating" can only be speculation and in regards to my previous water up hill comment slow play is not illegal only saito can answer with 100% certainty what his intentions were.

if he was intentionally stalling; good he got caught. if he wasn't; sucks to be him.

and another thing i take issue with is the "its a bad mark on the community" line of horse crap. its not a bad mark that a person was found in violation of a rule and penalized for it,,, its a positive one. it shows "were a no bs group and were not gonna stand for any". let me ask you this was it a "bad mark on the community" when Francisco J. Corbi added a card to his deck ? no! he "cheated" ..or he "effed up side-boarding" or "whatever" and got his ass suspended


(for the record i dont even know who francisco is or the details of his suspension he's just the 5th name below saitos on the banned list - sorry for the flame francisco )

[potassiumnitrate]

Just because he cheats doesn't mean he doesn't have good ideas. Just take away the good from his articles and don't cheat yourself.

[porpoise921]

Originally Posted by lukewarm

whether or not he was or wasn't "cheating" doesn't frikkin matter. prison is full of people that didn't do what they were accused and found guilty of.

whether or not he was intentionally "cheating" can only be speculation and in regards to my previous water up hill comment slow play is not illegal only saito can answer with 100% certainty what his intentions were.

if he was intentionally stalling; good he got caught. if he wasn't; sucks to be him.

Actually, seems like you're the one who doesn't get the difference between slow play and stalling. You're implying that you can intentionally slow play, which is not the case. If the judge thinks that you're intentionally slow playing because it will help you win the match, it becomes Cheating - Stalling.

The question of whether or not he was actually cheating is the most important one. It "frikkin matters". The judges decided that he knew what he was doing, and he was doing it for a purpose. That means he's cheating. Of course you can't read people's minds, but we make decisions about people's motives all the time. We humans are pretty good at that.

As a side note, my personal opinion is that I think Saito should have been infracted many more times before this. When we let people get away with slow play all the time, of course people are going to test the limits. If Saito has been doing this forever, how come he hasn't been called on it before? We need to be more proactive about handing out smaller infractions for these things so that they don't turn into a big deal like this particular case.