Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

National's Coin Manipulation Issue

J

jax54

New Member
Pokemon, like other games, is a game of rules. The rules all fall under the umbrella of the basic tenent of "fair play." The tournament rules state that competitors are allowed to use "two types of randomizers during a Pokemon TCG match: coins or dice." Random means something that has the SAME probability of occurrence.

Since the coins and dice are meant to be used as randomizers, any coin, die or MANIPULATION of the coin or die that would cause less than a random result should be considered improper and in violation of both the spirit and intent of the rules requiring fair play during all matches. Further, under the TCG penalty guidelines at 7.6.4 examples of unsporting conduct:cheating are listed. Under that category, offenses such as "stacking your deck", "taking cards from your discard pile and adding them to your hand or deck" and "ATTEMPTING TO MANIPULATE A RANDOM RESULT" are listed, all with the penalty of disqualification.

My son was knocked out of the National Championships (senior division) in the top cut by an opponent whose father has admitted both verbally and in writing that he was taught how to manipulate a coin flip, conducted further research on manipulation of coin flips, and taught and practiced with his sons the techniques he had developed. There are many studies and articles on the internet that state that coin flips can be manipulated. The father fully admits that his son utilized these techniques at the National Championship in an attempt to gain favorable flips during his matches. This father has further stated that, once discovering this information was out there, "What parent wouldn't?" (make use of the information)

I wouldn't. I believe that most parents wouldn't.

As people have been discussing this situation, I have heard stories of other seniors teaching each other how to manipulate dice. Our young players need to know that random means random. To intentionally try to make a random outcome less than random is subject to disqualification under the penalty guidelines. It is bad enough that this has happened at a US National event...I certainly do not want to see our American players violating the rules at Worlds.

And yes, I am an American, and yes, I do want "want it to be fair", and I refuse to believe that I am the only one. When we go to Worlds, let's sweep, and let's do it in a way that we can all be proud of!
 
This is a valid discussion, but this is my opinion.

I do not care if someone manipulates the ability to flip a coin. To learn to practice a coin flip is something that can take years, if ever. Some people can say they mastered it, but no matter what, you can't prove they are doing it. I don't believe it should even be frowned upon. Your son lost on luck...it happens. The dad was just stating that his son has been practicing to flip coins, anyone who is anyone does it themself. I admitted, I have tried it...but I have failed.


Simply put, there's a difference between stacking a deck and learning to flip a coin. Stacking a deck is silly, always cut your opponents deck/shuffle.
To stop someones ability to flip a coin, simply require at tournaments a select dice/coin.
Posted with Mobile style...
 
I don't support people who take the time to practice coin flips but there is no way to stop it. There is no rule that says you can not flip a coin and if there is no rule for this then people will practice and you are going to have to deal with it. I'm sorry about being blunt but there is nothing P!P can do and you can not expect anything to be done. Maybe you should practice coin flips??? It looks like it worked.
 
I agree with OP on this one. It's unfortunate, but it happens with anything that's competitive in nature. Even if they changed the device to something else, someone would try and find a way to cheat with it.

I'm sad that your son was knocked out of top cut by someone who uses these practices, but there is a silver lining. He should be banned from events for a period of time, or maybe indefinitely. Hopefully this can serve as an example, but it wont deter everyone who does so from doing it.
 
I manipulate coin flips. In fact, I've gotten good enough to flip heads about 50% of the time!
 
If people wouldn't have been "dice vultures" they had the solution already.... A single transparent pink Dice that was used by both players at Nationals. I don't remember if it was 2007 or 2008.... Require it to be turned in with the match slips or something to avoid theft. Should solve this issue pretty easy...

Perfecting a coin flip..... just seems like a tough thing to accomplish. Rock-Paper-Scissors - that I'll give an edge to the people that practiced it more than their opponents. But unless the coin is jacked up, weighted funny, OR the kid just practically dropped the coin with less than a couple rotations, I still doubt you can make it dance your way consistantly. I think he got lucky when he needed to....
 
There are tournament rules on what is a valid coin flip.
If the flip doesn't meet those rules, it's not a valid flip.
If it does meet those rules, it's a valid flip, no matter how much practice the player says they have done.
 
It could never be a valid flip if there was an attempt to manipulate that flip, whether by placing a coin in your hand face up or down, or manipulating the amount of strength used to flip. The penalty guidelines address the ATTEMPT to manipulate as the violation...not how the manipulation occurred or whether it was successful...just that a player attempted to manipulate it, which admittedly would be hard to detect, except in cases where the player flat out admits they are doing it! I don't see how you can get around the fact that a player who admits to intentionally trying to manipulate the outcome of a flip has not violated the rule against attempting to manipulate a random result.

Practicing is not relevant to this determination. You don't have to practice to attempt to manipulate the outcome of a flip.
 
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"Fooled by Randomness" is a concept of small number randomness, and is a problem with some over engineered financial hedging tools that lead to some of our financial melt down. I played a deck that had 4 Energy Removals and 4 Pokemon Reversals, and I had initially thought maybe there was something to coin flipping, but more I diligently "practiced", and recorded results, I understood I was being fooled by randomness.

I investigated it and just don't buy that any Pokemon "coin" is signficantly BIASED to anything other than maybe 51/49. And to test for that with any significance you have to randomly drop the coin 500 times!

What I could believe might be possible is to have a person to train to "Legally" flip a "unbiased" coin and have a higher than 50/50, and it would shock me to be anything more than 55/45. By defining legally to be flip from table level to above the chin/eye level, 3 times or whatever. I doubt I could do it, but I don't doubt that some people could do it if they work at it. (But it would be as incredible as those cirque du soleil arcrobats)

Anyone that wins a big events, you are going to have a BIAS observations, because they WILL HAVE HIT THEIR FLIPS. If you were unlucky on your flips in this format, you would not be at the top table.

Witnessing streaks and good runs is by definition RANDOM. If everyone flips 2 out 4 heads every 4 flips, that would fail randomness testing.
Here are 4 strings of random "excel" flips.
1 TTTTHHHTHHHTTHTTHHHTHHTTHTHHH
2 HHHTTTTHTHHHHHHHTHHHHTHHHHHHT
3 THHHTTHTTHHHHHTTTHTHTHHHHHTTT
4 HHTTHTHTHTTTHHTTTTTTTTHHHTTHT

Lot's of streaks, which is RANDOM, if you are observing these streaks, and think they aren't random, you could have been FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS.
 
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jax54 said:
Pokemon, like other games, is a game of rules. The rules all fall under the umbrella of the basic tenent of "fair play." The tournament rules state that competitors are allowed to use "two types of randomizers during a Pokemon TCG match: coins or dice." Random means something that has the SAME probability of occurrence.

Since the coins and dice are meant to be used as randomizers, any coin, die or MANIPULATION of the coin or die that would cause less than a random result should be considered improper and in violation of both the spirit and intent of the rules requiring fair play during all matches. Further, under the TCG penalty guidelines at 7.6.4 examples of unsporting conduct:cheating are listed. Under that category, offenses such as "stacking your deck", "taking cards from your discard pile and adding them to your hand or deck" and "ATTEMPTING TO MANIPULATE A RANDOM RESULT" are listed, all with the penalty of disqualification.

My son was knocked out of the National Championships (senior division) in the top cut by an opponent whose father has admitted both verbally and in writing that he was taught how to manipulate a coin flip, conducted further research on manipulation of coin flips, and taught and practiced with his sons the techniques he had developed. There are many studies and articles on the internet that state that coin flips can be manipulated. The father fully admits that his son utilized these techniques at the National Championship in an attempt to gain favorable flips during his matches. This father has further stated that, once discovering this information was out there, "What parent wouldn't?" (make use of the information)

I wouldn't. I believe that most parents wouldn't.

As people have been discussing this situation, I have heard stories of other seniors teaching each other how to manipulate dice. Our young players need to know that random means random. To intentionally try to make a random outcome less than random is subject to disqualification under the penalty guidelines. It is bad enough that this has happened at a US National event...I certainly do not want to see our American players violating the rules at Worlds.

And yes, I am an American, and yes, I do want "want it to be fair", and I refuse to believe that I am the only one. When we go to Worlds, let's sweep, and let's do it in a way that we can all be proud of!
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This is why you should think before you speak. The parent, and yes, you should mention his first and last name, honestly did not believe this information would come back and hurt him? I sincerely hope he does not work for the department of defense.

---------- Post added 07/15/2011 at 12:14 AM ----------
SLOW DECK said:
Anyone that wins a big events, you are going to have a BIAS observations, because they WILL HAVE HIT THEIR FLIPS. If you were unlucky on your flips in this format, you would not be at the top table.
Click to expand...

I completely agree.
 
The parent, and yes, you should mention his first and last name, honestly did not believe this information would come back and hurt him?
Click to expand...



Well, it hasn't hurt him since is son is the current National Champion with the title and all of the prizes that go along with it. He was able to use his "pet" coin until the final match, and according to his father, after hitting 6 flips in a row in a deck that contained 4 reversals and 4 junk arms, the judges finally gave his son a substitute coin. The father says his son was not used to the flipping the weight of the new coin as it was different than the coin he had practiced with, and the son proceeded to get tails the rest of the game, but still won the Championship. I don't know how far into this second game they were when the coin change was made. Keep in mind that several players had been knocked out of the National Championship who had also complained about the coin use.

This is what is so upsetting. I hate the message this sends to both the Juniors and Seniors that play in this program.

There have always been ways to game systems. I myself may have to learn to flip a coin now...
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Please don't do that. It is exactly what I was hoping would not happen, young people now feeling they have to learn to manipulate randomizers in order to win. It is wrong. Give the Pokemon officials a chance to straighten out this situation.
 
This family and any other person that attempts to manipulate coin flips(whether they can truly do it or not) do not belong in Pokemon. For as long as I have been involved with Pokemon I have been under the impression that it is a game of skill, strategy and yes some luck. Pokemon preaches the spirit of the game and that it's supposed to be fun. How does attempting to cheat fall into any of that? Why would Pokemon create cards that are based upon a coin flip if they intended to let people alter that randomness? It just doesn't make sense. If you are truly a good player and playing in the spirit of the game, you understand that the randomizer sometimes goes your way and other times doesn't.
I was really sad when I heard that one of the kids from our league showed up last night with a pile of Chancey coins(as stated by the Father of the kid we are referring to...Chancey is the coin he practiced, played and was best at getting his flips with) and started flipping them. How many other kids are out there practicing this right now? Wow, now that's a great lesson for our kids!
If some of these top kids are interviewed by local papers(because we know Pokemon likes publicity) and say "I lost because the other kid knew how to flip a coin and Pokemon is ok with this", do you think parents out there are going to say that Pokemon looks like a great game for kids to play and run out and sign them up? I don't think so!
Good for anyone that practices learning to flip the coin to your favor but I don't think you belong in Pokemon. Go try out for America's Got Talent!
 
If you disagree with coin flipping, then at the start of the game ask your opponent first to choose for heads or tails, then roll a dice.
There are rules about which dice you are allowed to use or not when rolling a dice instead of flipping a coin.
 
Slowdeck is certainly correct, but I'd like to add something. Unless this player said that they were actively manipulating the coin flips, we must be cautious. My brother does something where he taps the table with the die before doing a legal flip. He swears that it helps his flips get better, but a very basic knowledge of physics would tell us that tapping the table changes absolutely nothing when flipping the coin. Even so, he'll swear that it actually helps win coin flips. The problem is that it is nearly impossible to do an experiment for this with concent and with a large enough sample size to be worthwhile. If the player is truly cheating, he would never agree to do an experiment. If you are able to Statistically compare the proportion of flips that resulted in a favorable result (heads on reversals for example) to the expected result (50%), you should be able to check if this method is more than a luck method. Sadly, as I said before, this is nigh on impossible. Even if we did do this experiment, we could not be sure that the kid was cheating. He could just be really lucky. Even so, as we do more coin flips, the probability of achieving that a very good streak decreases.

ALSO, as Slowdeck said, the players at the top tables are obviously going to have high flips. It could be that we are simply making a false cause for a very actual effect (winning). It is very possible to hit 80/80 coin flips as heads. Is it likely? Most certainly not, but it is still possible.

Regardless, I would not advise that anyone follow this kid's example (if it is actually true). Manipulating flips is against the rules and SotG (unless you are doing "lucky things" like my brother). One should never manipulate the game to gain an unfair advantage. Please don't do this... keep the game fair. I hope that the kid and his father get a stern talking-to without much action being taken place. I personally know both of them, and they are very nice people, so I hope that nothing severe has to take place.
 
z-man: The Father openly admitted that the kids practiced manipulating the coin. There is no we think he did, its out in the open he did.

My point of view is this, it's wrong! Yes, learning to manipulate the coin is difficult, and technically a skill. But so is counting cards in Black Jack at a Casino. You can learn it through practice, but its still wrong, and if your caught, your in trouble. Coin flips are meant to be random, and if 1 player is able to have a little more control over the outcome then the other, that's unfair, its wrong, and honestly, border line cheating.

Personally I am more of a judge, and no kids but at my league we have lots, LOTS of younger players, Seniors and Juniors. I constantly push for Spirit of the Game, and in turn playing fairly. Now we are going to have the argument "Well So and So is doing it, why can't I?" Well So and So is wrong. (I'm 24 and I sound like a parent, see what this has done to me!)

For Pokemon to ignore this would be shameful, and makes me question the integrity of what this game once had. I have played/judged many games, and if anyone ever asked "What is the best group of players?" Without a second thought, Pokemon. Great players, great judges, and I have made tons of great friends with this game. To let this go unchecked and unpunished, and to let the United States have representation at Worlds, our Senior National Champion, be a unpunished cheater, well words can't describe.

I have heard the argument that Japan players do this trick. Well then that needs to be taken care of too. They are in the wrong. Apparently it has been known by a few what they do for a few years now, and my suspicion is there are players who know this technique, or other coin manipulation techniques, and has kept quite. Well the cat is out of the bag now, and although I don't have the answer to fix this, its not my place, its Pokemon's. They need to, as sad as it is, make an example of this kid, so other players know they are serious about this.
 
Zarmakuizz said:
If you disagree with coin flipping, then at the start of the game ask your opponent first to choose for heads or tails, then roll a dice.
There are rules about which dice you are allowed to use or not when rolling a dice instead of flipping a coin.
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But the first rule is that you can flip a coin so your opponent simply says no I prefer my lucky coin. Randomized events are HUGE in the current format - Pokemon Reversals, baby Pokemon, SSU, Dual Ball, even some stalling attacks. Yes, there is luck and there are streaks but sometimes they will go your way and sometimes they won't at least in theory. This case is different in that this player worked to alter that outcome. Not said a little prayer or kissed the coin but literally practiced to make this a skill that his opponents did not know was part of the competition and therefore rewarded.

I do not agree that any parent would do this. It is not in the Spirit of the Game. I have a personal example from Nationals with a different outcome. I'm a mother and a League Leader. On the night before Nationals, I received a phone call telling me that some of my players had just learned a technique that greatly improved die rolls. Parents were sitting in the Convention Center hallway testing it and agreed that they were getting far more that 50% results. I did not say 'if you cannot beat them then join them.' I said, 'No, that is wrong and there are rules.' I went back to my hotel and the wi-fi and proceeded to text every parent I knew at Nats from league with the specific rules and asked them to tell their children the correct methods and to call a judge if their opponent was not within the rules. I then let a Nationals judge know that this technique was gaining steam especially in Seniors in the hope that the judges could watch for it and possibly the rule be read during the player meeting.

Someone above asked how it can be proved and it cannot except when confessed. I think the judges did their job wonderfully and within the rules and guidelines at least until the confession. Then the originator of this thread is correct and the penalty guideline for attempting to manipulate a randomizer is DQ.

Obviously, this player is a great player with a to notch deck and knew it well. He never would have made it that far on flips alone. But, would he have made it that far if he had played within the Spirit of the Game?
 
Nothing has to be proven in this instance, as it has been admitted that the player attempted to manipulate his flips throughout the tournament.

As I stated before, there are many articles on the internet which show you how to manipulate a coin, and studies have been done, which can also be found on the internet, that have proved that coin flips can be manipulated.

All of which doesn't really matter, because you don't have to be successful in your attempt to manipulate the flip in order to violate the TCG rule that says it is unsportsmanlike:cheating for

"ATTEMPTING to manipulate a random result." Look at 7.6.4 of the TCG penalty guidelines.
 
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