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I'm not saying it's a defense for everything.  But the policies specifically state that intent is part of the equation.  Unsporting Conduct is the only class of penalties that do not assume the player committed the infraction unintentionally.  If the player does not know what they are doing is against the rules, apply a penalty and present it to the player in a manner that will help him/her learn from the experience.

I believe that anything outside of a special subset of penalties (Collusion, Stacking, etc), ignorance of the rules can help a player's case.

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the question is not if they intentionally break the rules but if they intentionally behave the way they do and break the rules with this behaviour. most of the penalties handed out day-by-day assume that the player was not only unintentionally violating rules but also unintentionally behaving the way he did.

the part of violating the policies is failure to know the ude tournament policies, for example :
6. Player Responsibilities
UDE players have the following responsibilities, whether they are currently involved in a tournament or not:
• Know and follow the most current and applicable TCG rules and UDE tournament policies.

so lack of knowledge or even ignorance of the rules might help the player not with the penalty, but with possible follow-up inquiries when deducting if he was actually trying to cheat or just behaving rather unclever.

if someone was using a card reference it would be a different case, but lets not forget the original scenario postet which talks about sideboarding strategies.

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1406076:

so lack of knowledge or even ignorance of the rules might help the player not with the penalty, but with possible follow-up inquiries when deducting if he was actually trying to cheat or just behaving rather unclever.

I'll whole heartedly go along with this statement. Lack of knowledge of what an infraction is does not relieve the player for responsability or repurcussions of the action. Players indeed have the responsability to know what is expected of them from the policy documents and penalty guidelines.

We wouldn't for instance, not give a player a disqualification for bribery even if we determined they did not know that bribery was illegal. As suggested this could and should be noted in the disqualification statement by the HJ and the investigation by UDE may or may not consider this before issuing a suspension.

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Yu-Gi-Oh! RK3
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Just to throw in my 2 cents on the subject...

This situation has nothing at all to do with game state (I assume this is between games while the player is side boarding, since that's what the notes are about.)

This situation has everything to do with providing outside assistance though.  This is, in effect, no different than if the player's friend was behind him telling him what to side in and out.  It creates an advantage to the player that brought the notes since players aren't allowed to do that and it should be a DQ - Cheating which is exactly what we would do if his friend was telling him what to do or play.

366390:

1406076:

so lack of knowledge or even ignorance of the rules might help the player not with the penalty, but with possible follow-up inquiries when deducting if he was actually trying to cheat or just behaving rather unclever.

I'll whole heartedly go along with this statement. Lack of knowledge of what an infraction is does not relieve the player for responsability or repurcussions of the action. Players indeed have the responsability to know what is expected of them from the policy documents and penalty guidelines.

We wouldn't for instance, not give a player a disqualification for bribery even if we determined they did not know that bribery was illegal. As suggested this could and should be noted in the disqualification statement by the HJ and the investigation by UDE may or may not consider this before issuing a suspension.

The examples you guys bring up are all serious infractions that all players should be familiar with, hopefully.  I was thinking more in the direction of smaller infractions (forgetting pen and paper, as Chris mentioned earlier, for example).

However, upon thinking about it, without aggravating circumstances (the player harassing the staff to get paper and/or a pen, for example), I can't think of a situation where knowledge of the rule makes a difference.  It was more of a general idea that I hadn't thought all the way down to a specific example.

So, Surturiel's statement seems to cover it pretty well.

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Lvl 3 Yugioh Rules Knowledge
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There are some 'rules' in the policy documents that require us to use a bit of common sense. Using the example of not having a pen or paper I think is just as extreme as using bribery as an example.

Not having a paper and pen we usually don't even bother with an official warning because it has natural consequences if they fail to follow that 'rule'. If they have a life point/health dispute then we are most likely going to believe the person that was writing it down vs one that wasn't.

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I just want to emphasise this:

1512777:

Tournament policy is broken every time a player sits down to a match and does not bring pen, paper or some method to track life points but we do not DQ them.  We usually retrieve paper and pen and inform them that this is a player's responsibility to provide these items and they need to do so for their next match.  As well as upholding the integrity of the event, we must also keep in mind good customer service. 

Attempting to use outside note, especially in a manner described (opponent can clearly see them), is a violation of the tournament rules. Both P-30 and P-31 have language in them that applies here ("...appropriate for...violations of tournament rules."). With that in mind, the only other question to answer is if it's a minor or a major violation. In my opinion, reading a piece of paper before side-decking (that the opponent can clearly see) is a minor violation, because it's very easy to detect and prevent (and thus will likely have minimal impact on the event before it's caught). Based on that I would give the player an Unsporting Conduct - Minor penalty for a minor tournament rules violation and instruct them not to use the notes throughout the tournament.

 

 

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Alex Charsky
Judge Manager
Upper Deck

I recently came across an interesting variant of this issue.  The players side deck, on the face of the sleeves along either side had some markings (made with a sharpie) dots, vertical bars and dashes   . | -

when we asked about them, he proudly stated it was  his method of doing 2 things

1. When needing to unside his deck - it made sure he removed all of his side deck cards from the main deck.

2. Based  on the symbol and or the pattern he could tell what to side in against 3-6 specific deck types he had created  the side deck to deal with.

We warned him that point 2 was not allowed and required  him to change out the sleeves.

My question is, if a player puts a small black dot in the upper corner of the face of his side deck cards forthe  sole purpose of fast unsiding, would that be ok or considered "outside notes"

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It isn't outside notes.  The player can keep a copy of the decklist on them in order to know what to pull out between rounds.  You're only restricted in the notes you can look at during your match.  Between rounds, it is ok to refer to outside notes.

However, the sleeves are marked, which means a Marked Cards penalty should be applied.

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Lvl 3 Yugioh Rules Knowledge
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768006:

However, the sleeves are marked, which means a Marked Cards penalty should be applied.

If all the marked cards are side deck cards, the pattern is pretty obvious as well making it a Marked Cards Major (Match Loss) penalty.

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Yu-Gi-Oh! RK3
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366390:

768006:

However, the sleeves are marked, which means a Marked Cards penalty should be applied.

If all the marked cards are side deck cards, the pattern is pretty obvious as well making it a Marked Cards Major (Match Loss) penalty.

But only if you can actually find the marked cards by looking at the back of the sleeves (the face that's up when the deck is normally in play). Otherwise, it's no different then someone "signing" their side deck cards, which wouldn't be a marked cards major.

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Alex Charsky
Judge Manager
Upper Deck

It was on the face of the card sleeve, not visible when face down.

So, I still have  the question, would a small dot on the face of the sleeve to faciliate unsiding be acceptable, so long as all of the marks/dots were the same size and shape and in the same location on each card?

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Did it noticibly alter thickness of the sleeve?

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No, just take a black sharpie pen (or laundry ink pen) and put a small dot on the top right/left  corner of the face of the card sleeve (upper diagonal from the frame where the name is - some ultra-pro sleeves have a silver dot in one of the corners - then do on the opposite upper corner, or blacken in the ultra-pro dot) - it is even less potentially noticable than having someone sign a card with a ballpoint pen that might cause a pattern on the back of a card.

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731819:

366390:

768006:

However, the sleeves are marked, which means a Marked Cards penalty should be applied.

If all the marked cards are side deck cards, the pattern is pretty obvious as well making it a Marked Cards Major (Match Loss) penalty.

But only if you can actually find the marked cards by looking at the back of the sleeves (the face that's up when the deck is normally in play). Otherwise, it's no different then someone "signing" their side deck cards, which wouldn't be a marked cards major.

When the post mentioned "Small black dots" I was thinking of a couple of players I've seen that use dots / stars with adhesive. They had put these on the face in the corner. The problem is that by thumbing the deck you could feel the dot / star under the card. I've also seen players slip a small piece of paper in under the sleeve face to mark their side deck cards. While this may seem reasonably harmless it can also at times be detected by pressing down on the card.

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