Cheating from Worlds Contestants

[Otaku]

I'm thoroughly in favor of a machine that shuffles peoples decks for them, much like they had in the Yu-Gi-Oh anime. There were no complaints at deck-stacking and the likes then. If one drew a god-hand it was blamed on the Heart of The Cards.

You're buying my cards then. And paying for the machines and donating it to OP. :lol:

Besides the machines being expensive, such devices usually cause more wear and tear on the card than shuffling by hand.

 

[raw19]

You're buying my cards then. And paying for the machines and donating it to OP. :lol:

Besides the machines being expensive, such devices usually cause more wear and tear on the card than shuffling by hand.

I would say the fault lies with the cards then. In the Yu-Gi-Oh anime i've seen those cards used to break hand-cuffs. We need cards like that. :thumb:

Edit: They could always charge us to enter these tournaments. I believe a lot of others were already suggesting such if it would improve prize support.

 

[Vablakes]

I think a simple fix would be to allow your opponent to deal your 7 cards after they cut. There are other forms of cheating, like palming a card. I can do that. It is where you have a card hidden in your hand so that your opponent can't see it. I could show you the front and back of the hand that a card was palmed in and you wouldn't even know it was there. I can also force a cut, which is where I can make you cut to any card in the deck. Thus, I also think riffle shuffling instead of cutting is better. I think this would be fair:

Both people hand their decks to the opp.
They shuffle eachother's decks.
They hand it back to it's owner for the owner to cut.
The owner hands it back to the opponent, who cuts and then deals the 7 card hand.

It would eliminate a lot of methods of cheating, IMO.

 

[z-man]

I think a simple fix would be to allow your opponent to deal your 7 cards after they cut. There are other forms of cheating, like palming a card. I can do that. It is where you have a card hidden in your hand so that your opponent can't see it. I could show you the front and back of the hand that a card was palmed in and you wouldn't even know it was there. I can also force a cut, which is where I can make you cut to any card in the deck. Thus, I also think riffle shuffling instead of cutting is better. I think this would be fair:

Both people hand their decks to the opp.
They shuffle eachother's decks.
They hand it back to it's owner for the owner to cut.
The owner hands it back to the opponent, who cuts and then deals the 7 card hand.

It would eliminate a lot of methods of cheating, IMO.

THat doesn't actually solve the problem. It merely shifts the goal from stacking a good hand to the top to stacking a bad hand to the top. palming cards often involves a distractor, such as the opponent placing damage. Simply palming a hand is too difficult to do without getting caught... Especially in a face-to-face situation.

 

[Sandslash7]

Or players could just perform a sufficient shuffle every time the order of the deck is revealed to them...

But what is a sufficient shuffle?

Completely randomized? Or only Standardly Distributed?

My method is completely random with no room for cheating, as long as the judge who orders the deck based on the RNG readout does not make any modifications.

 

[Muddy68]

Now, believe it or not, I was in Top 64 at Nationals this year, and I was playing this guy and we were in the 2nd game and very VERY close to time. I was ahead on a game, so had the advantage. After we had 6-piled, I took his deck and thoroughly shuffled it just because the situation was a breeding ground for potentially cheating. He got really mad about it saying that it was a big sign of disrespect to shuffle his deck... ?

 

[King Piplup]

Now, believe it or not, I was in Top 64 at Nationals this year, and I was playing this guy and we were in the 2nd game and very VERY close to time. I was ahead on a game, so had the advantage. After we had 6-piled, I took his deck and thoroughly shuffled it just because the situation was a breeding ground for potentially cheating. He got really mad about it saying that it was a big sign of disrespect to shuffle his deck... ?

Somebody is clearly either cheating and upset to be thwarted, or just being way over sensitive.

 

[Vablakes]

THat doesn't actually solve the problem. It merely shifts the goal from stacking a good hand to the top to stacking a bad hand to the top. palming cards often involves a distractor, such as the opponent placing damage. Simply palming a hand is too difficult to do without getting caught... Especially in a face-to-face situation.

Um, I am going to have to disagree. If your deck is completely randomized before the opponent shuffles, they can't stack it in any way, and you cutting it makes it all that much more random. And palming a card isn't hard to do, and even I could do it in a manner in which you would never know that I was palming a card.

 

[z-man]

Um, I am going to have to disagree. If your deck is completely randomized before the opponent shuffles, they can't stack it in any way, and you cutting it makes it all that much more random. And palming a card isn't hard to do, and even I could do it in a manner in which you would never know that I was palming a card.

Its fairly simple honestly. If you shuffle a few bad cards (or a bunch of juniper to the bottom), and then put them in the middle and force a cut to the top, you're giving your opponent a bad hand. This is a fairly common technique. With the exception of pre-stacking, almost no cheating techniques would be hindered by your solution.

Again, palming is not the main concern here. I'm sure people do palm cards, but that is not the most common form of cheating. Moreover, getting caught is fairly embarrassing. And again, you would either need a distractor or a suspicious movement to make a palm successful. Eventually, people are going to start getting suspicious and watching more closely.

 

[Otaku]

Now, believe it or not, I was in Top 64 at Nationals this year, and I was playing this guy and we were in the 2nd game and very VERY close to time. I was ahead on a game, so had the advantage. After we had 6-piled, I took his deck and thoroughly shuffled it just because the situation was a breeding ground for potentially cheating. He got really mad about it saying that it was a big sign of disrespect to shuffle his deck... ?

Yeah, people who get offended at this, especially this far into an event, have to understand that it is just common sense, if not proper etiquette: everyone needs to do this so no one has reason to be offended.

 

[Abudoggie]

Pile-shuffle-stack is much more prevalent in YuGiOh with their deck size conducive to the math. Had an interesting discussion with the head judge of worlds for yugioh a couple years back and the cheating tales he could share.

For anyone not clearly following what Jason is alerting:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFenzLHxRTc

(cut to 2:40 when you get bored of watching the pile shuffle repeat)

This thread really has focused on shuffling/stacking/declumping, there are other cheating scenarios to caution players against and be alert for. Sadly, cheating in Juniors at Worlds this year was blatant and has soured me a bit to the experience even though we were thankfully not directly affected.

 

[Mekkah]

I would say the fault lies with the cards then. In the Yu-Gi-Oh anime i've seen those cards used to break hand-cuffs. We need cards like that. :thumb:

Edit: They could always charge us to enter these tournaments. I believe a lot of others were already suggesting such if it would improve prize support.

Charging for tournaments is not a quick fix for anything: not prize support, and not cheaters. Where I'm from (Europe) all events including BRs are 5 euros to participate, and our prize support is worse if anything.

 

[DragonairMaster8]

How hard is it to just shuffle cards? I don't understand people these days. Just shuffle cards. I keep seeing more and more people doing shady stuff in this game. Get that crud out of Pokemon.

Stop Declumping.

Stop deliberately putting cards next to others.

Start shuffling.

Play Pokemon.

 

[Jaeger]

Now, believe it or not, I was in Top 64 at Nationals this year, and I was playing this guy and we were in the 2nd game and very VERY close to time. I was ahead on a game, so had the advantage. After we had 6-piled, I took his deck and thoroughly shuffled it just because the situation was a breeding ground for potentially cheating. He got really mad about it saying that it was a big sign of disrespect to shuffle his deck... ?

Your opponent was probably pissed that you were trying to stall him so close to time...I would be just as pissed if my opponent was up a game and we were close to time and than my opponent decides to sit there and shuffle my deck for a while. Honestly I probably would have called a judge on you to monitor how much time you spent shuffling my deck.

 

[luxray626]

Here is a great example of a player stacking his deck and then intentionally stacking his deck. This video makes it clear that Irimain was stacking the Etched Champion to the top of his deck. Whenever a person shuffles like this, you should always shuffle their deck, like Kuo did, because they could easily be cheating. You can see it at 8:39.
http://www.twitch.tv/tommartell/b/329228047

 

[Otaku]

Now, believe it or not, I was in Top 64 at Nationals this year, and I was playing this guy and we were in the 2nd game and very VERY close to time. I was ahead on a game, so had the advantage. After we had 6-piled, I took his deck and thoroughly shuffled it just because the situation was a breeding ground for potentially cheating. He got really mad about it saying that it was a big sign of disrespect to shuffle his deck... ?

Your opponent was probably pissed that you were trying to stall him so close to time...I would be just as pissed if my opponent was up a game and we were close to time and than my opponent decides to sit there and shuffle my deck for a while. Honestly I probably would have called a judge on you to monitor how much time you spent shuffling my deck.

Emphasis added by me.

I am prefacing this by pointing out that I don't know Muddy68, so I am neither insinuating he is untrustworthy nor implying that he is... I don't even know if "he" is a "he". I am just trying to make clear the foundations of the discussion; someone who doubts what Muddy68 is saying needs to preface his or her statement with that.

Jaeger, both players apparently took time to six pile shuffle. Now if Muddy68 started six-pile shuffling and his opponent figured "Might as well use the time myself!" and that is the only reason said opponent decided to six-pile shuffle, what follows isn't applicable.

Otherwise, the player with the most incentive to do a quick-but-thorough shuffle (the player down a game) instead chose to do the slower, six-pile shuffle. Maybe there was some "clumping" or something else that made the person feel insufficient shuffling cost him his first game. Still, I know it seems a bit suspicious to me, especially after reading your response (e.g. you reminded me how big an issue time is and why taking that long to shuffle is so unlikely).

So don't such circumstances warrant finishing things off with a thorough but timely shuffle? Again, we are kind of lacking some information; if Muddy68 just saw his opponent finish the six-pile shuffle with a few quick riffle shuffles, I can see it being overkill. I also wish Muddy68 had given at least a rough figure for how long he himself shuffled. Like I keep saying, if something he didn't mention was clearly important, it what I say doesn't apply.

Unless Muddy68 is fibbing about why his opponent was mad, the opponent wasn't dwelling on time (or for some reason was lying about it): remember, the opponent expressly said it was "disrespectful". Unless for some reason the opponent didn't want to accuse Muddy68 of stalling, that doesn't sound like someone mad because his opponent is trying to burn the clock.

tl;dr: There are too many unknowns in the situation. If we take Muddy68 at his word, then responding as Jaeger suggested sounds like just an even bigger waste of time, and that is if you are as polite as possible about it. If I am judging, you take time to six pile shuffle when you're down a game and then you call me over because your opponent is doing a thorough-but-timely-and-legal shuffle afterwards, my eyes are going to be on you.

Granted that isn't an issue since I haven't had a chance to judge in years. :thumb: