The talk of someone getting penalized for intentionally letting their opponent break the game state reminds me of a match I had at Nationals this year.
I was playing Reshiboar with RDL against a Magneboar with RDL. For some reason I had to attack early with RDL and my opponent got the return KO with Magnezone. Something like 3 turns later I glanced at his prizes and realized he had only three prizes left (and I was at 3 myself at this point). Searched my discard to see what was there; asked him how many prizes he had left to confirm; double-checked the discard again. Only Pokemon there was the RDL, and no recovery cards so I couldn't possibly have miscounted. Called over a judge and my opponent didn't argue that that's what happened (indeed, he said he thought you took 3 prizes for knocking out RDL, which... well, yes, of course, if he'd done so with his RDL and not Magnezone, but as he was playing it himself he should have known better). So the game state is repaired as much as possible by him placing a random card from hand as a prize, and I'm allowed to take a prize for the penalty.
Now, this was only my second tournament, having just started 3 months prior. I had read up on SotG and as much as I could about tournament rules etc. but hadn't thought too much about what I'd do if I were in a situation like this because it just hadn't came up, and I mostly thought that unless it was some kind of blatant cheating I would try to mute the effect of the penalty on the match because I don't want that to be the way I win.
I ended up mulling it over for a moment and taking the prize, mostly because my opponent had been playing RDL himself and should've known how its Poke-Body works.
After doing that and getting to my next turn though (now at 2 prizes left), I realized that I already had all the pieces I needed to lay down another RDL and power it up even before taking that prize for the penalty. Thus, my opponent being penalized at that moment gave me the win next turn.
I wasn't aiming for that intentionally of course, it just happened that that was the moment I looked at his prizes and realized that something was wrong. But surely the judge who watched the rest of the match could've thought I'd done it on purpose considering that once I realized I had the win in hand, I went ahead and took it.
So I'm kind of curious over how closely the line is looked at here intent-wise, because I can see how to an outside observer my choices could've appeared to be going against SotG if I were intentionally setting up my opponent to lose on a penalty, even though I hadn't realized that was going to happen.
And as for your opponent's understanding of the cards, the policy I've taken if someone asks me what a card does is to either have them read it, or read it to them verbatim. If they don't ask and there's some kind of option for them that they miss, that's their own fault. It was mostly relevant for me at Nats when I was running Cheerleader's Cheerl if my opponent asked I would read the card text but if they didn't take a card and didn't say anything I wasn't going to be reminding them.
I was playing Reshiboar with RDL against a Magneboar with RDL. For some reason I had to attack early with RDL and my opponent got the return KO with Magnezone. Something like 3 turns later I glanced at his prizes and realized he had only three prizes left (and I was at 3 myself at this point). Searched my discard to see what was there; asked him how many prizes he had left to confirm; double-checked the discard again. Only Pokemon there was the RDL, and no recovery cards so I couldn't possibly have miscounted. Called over a judge and my opponent didn't argue that that's what happened (indeed, he said he thought you took 3 prizes for knocking out RDL, which... well, yes, of course, if he'd done so with his RDL and not Magnezone, but as he was playing it himself he should have known better). So the game state is repaired as much as possible by him placing a random card from hand as a prize, and I'm allowed to take a prize for the penalty.
Now, this was only my second tournament, having just started 3 months prior. I had read up on SotG and as much as I could about tournament rules etc. but hadn't thought too much about what I'd do if I were in a situation like this because it just hadn't came up, and I mostly thought that unless it was some kind of blatant cheating I would try to mute the effect of the penalty on the match because I don't want that to be the way I win.
I ended up mulling it over for a moment and taking the prize, mostly because my opponent had been playing RDL himself and should've known how its Poke-Body works.
After doing that and getting to my next turn though (now at 2 prizes left), I realized that I already had all the pieces I needed to lay down another RDL and power it up even before taking that prize for the penalty. Thus, my opponent being penalized at that moment gave me the win next turn.
I wasn't aiming for that intentionally of course, it just happened that that was the moment I looked at his prizes and realized that something was wrong. But surely the judge who watched the rest of the match could've thought I'd done it on purpose considering that once I realized I had the win in hand, I went ahead and took it.
So I'm kind of curious over how closely the line is looked at here intent-wise, because I can see how to an outside observer my choices could've appeared to be going against SotG if I were intentionally setting up my opponent to lose on a penalty, even though I hadn't realized that was going to happen.
And as for your opponent's understanding of the cards, the policy I've taken if someone asks me what a card does is to either have them read it, or read it to them verbatim. If they don't ask and there's some kind of option for them that they miss, that's their own fault. It was mostly relevant for me at Nats when I was running Cheerleader's Cheerl if my opponent asked I would read the card text but if they didn't take a card and didn't say anything I wasn't going to be reminding them.
:nonono: