CLEANING UP THE PT: STARTING AT THE TOP
By Christa Stenger

The Magic:The Gathering World Championships is the only tournament in 
the Class “A” category, and the rules are being enforced “as a Level 5 
judging event.”  Jeff Donais and fellow Level IV judge Dan Gray have been 
floater judges during the entire event and have frequently found themselves 
called in to mediate the more controversial rulings.  Charlie Catino, the only 
active DCI Level V judge, is the head judge of the World Championships.

The competitors have been surprised and impressed by both the strict 
enforcement of tournament rules as well as the new tournament rules that 
were announced right before the event began.  The most common warnings 
infractions resulted from:

Random Deck Checks

A new and amazing thing has happened to deck checks at Worlds: everyone 
got them.  Jeff Donais and Dan Gray went down the play tables one by one 
and checked every deck.  Their main focus was to find any decks that had all 
of the spells one way, and all of the lands the other way.  

Sleeve Rule

Up until Worlds, any competitor could request that his opponent de-sleeve 
before a match.  The new floor rule says that an opponent can not make this 
request and that sleeves are considered instead to be a part of the card.  The 
overwhelming majority of competitors approve of this new rule, which will 
be a part of the official 1998-99 Floor Rules, which take effect on September 
1.

Drawing Extra Cards
If a competitor who is going first draws a card, he receives an automatic 
game loss.  If any competitor draws extra cards during a game, they receive 
a warning and their opponent at that time must draw cards to equal the 
number of cards their opponent has.

Optional Mulligan
The Optional Mulligan rule (which becomes the permanent mulligan on 
September 1) is still in place, with any competitor choosing to keep his 
opening hand or to reshuffle and draw one fewer card in his next opening 
hand.  However, if for some reason a competitor mulligans, reshuffles, and 
draws the same amount of cards as they did before the mulligan, they 
receive a game loss and a warning.

THE RESULTS

Paul McCabe received a match loss in the first round for having all of his 
lands in one direction and all of his spells in another.  Most likely Paul was 
not disqualified due to his prior clean record.

Gabriele Pisicchio was found with all of his lands marked so that he could 
discern them from spells in the deck and was ejected from the tournament.   
Many of the competitors expressed their satisfaction with this ruling.  Scott 
Johns commented, “This is great.  The message is that any player who 
doesn’t play cleanly is outta here.”

There seemed to be a more concerted, well directed effort to conduct random 
deck checks throughout the competition.  At this tournament, however, 
competitors seem to welcome the deck checks (especially the first round 
check) rather than view it as a nuisance.

During a Type 2 match between French competitor Manuel Bevand and 
Dave Bachmann, Manuel called a judge when Bachmann played a second 
land during one of his turns.  His Pros/Bloom deck was counted, and 
Bachmann was give a game loss.  Bevand then received a deck check.  It 
was discovered that Manual Bevand had incorrectly recorded his deck, 
writing in 4 Black Knights instead of 4 White Knights in his mono-white 
deck checklist.  Bevand received a match loss while Bachmann cheered.  
Bevand had to play with Black Knights for the remainder of the day.  
Bevand agreed with the ruling against him, but it seemed ironic that the 
competitor who won the match 

Steven O’Mahoney-Schwartz received a match loss for having marked 
sleeves.  The Worlds judges approached the question of whether or not a 
deck was marked in a straightforward fashion: they would go through the 
deck, look at the cards or sleeves that had any markings, and then shuffle the 
deck.  If they could go through, pull out all the marked cards, and identify 
them without turning them over, the competitor would receive a match loss.  
Although Steve O’s deck contained several non-identical cards that were 
similarly marked, the markings were distinctive enough that he received a 
match loss.  Steve took the ruling in stride and said that he respected the 
stricter rules enforcement and thought it would help discourage cheating.

Kim Eikefet, one of the Norweigian team competitors, also received a 
warning for marked sleeves on Day 3 of the Worlds competition.  She and 
her opponent were 1 – 1 when a judge took her aside and had her re-sleeve 
her deck as many of the sleeves had wear-marks.  As the judges could not 
distinguish certain cards from others, she only received a warning.  Kim 
commented that she liked the fact that they are cracking down on cheating 
but it also means that players like Sean Fleishman can accuse her of cheating 
because her sleeves have wear marks.

Scott Johns was starting the third game of a Type 2 match when it was 
discovered that a card that his opponent had caused to removed from the 
game hadn’t been shuffled back into his deck.  He received a match loss for 
an illegal deck.  Scott thought that the ruling was fair.

In another Type 2 match, David Bocock began his first turn against Terry 
Tsang by drawing his 8th card.  He received a game loss and a warning for 
drawing too many cards.  Terry and David both thought the game loss ruling 
was fair, but both thought that the addition of the warning was a little harsh.

Brian Hacker hadn’t received any warnings, but one of his oppenents did 
receive a ruling for casting a Vampiric Tutor when he was at 0 life.  Brian 
commented that the stricter rulings would help clean up both sloppy play 
and cheating at Pro events.

This World Championships has seen probably the largest number of 
warnings and punitive rulings of any Pro event to date.  More surprising than 
the harsher penalties and strict adherence to basic rules, though, is the extent 
to which these changes have been met with respect and acceptance by the 
Worlds competitors.  Even the competitors who have received rulings 
against them have expressed their appreciation of what is widely seen as the 
‘cleaning up’ of the Pro Tournament scene.

Christa Stenger