At a certain Pro Tour one player was disqualified because of cheating. Actually he wanted to do an illegal action and his opponent told him that it does not work that way (played mirror). His reply was 'I know' and thus he got a DQ as this clearly shows that he wanted to use this to his advantage. This is cheating. At high level this really is something that I would DQ for but what about casual play? What do you do or would do?
I encountered many people who tried to cheat when playing against me. I usually ignore that and just let it go. Some of those who were really persistent and doing it all the time I started telling them that this is cheating and they should stop doing that. They should keep the game state as it should be and follow the rules. I played against players who were playing additional land, drawing additional card, not tapping properly, looking at extra cards etc. There are people who tried to mislead me or do an illegal action so they would trick me. All this intentionally. Are such people eligible for tournament play? Most of these people aren't actually good players and by cheating they try to be better than others. I understand this even though they should learn to play the game well so they wouldn't need to cheat.
Really sometimes these players don't even know what deck they are playing and what cards are those they need. There were few people who asked me how they should stack their deck so they win all the time. When first player asked me this question I was speechless. I just couldn't say a word. When this happened for nth time I finally found my voice and told the person to do at least a little homework about a deck they net decked.
We also had a funny situation with few people. But I will note just one. There are many players that stack their deck in a certain way. Some just take land and add two spells, land, two spells etc. I had a game against one boy doing this. I knew that he was doing that and did not really care. After losing to me and stacking the cards yet once again he wanted to play against someone else. I told the player what the boy does with the deck. The player came to him, took his deck and divided it in three piles and then handing over a deck consisted of a land part and non-land cards. The boy had to mulligan several times, till he actually gave up and sad that this is unfair and we have no right doing so. We told him how it should be but still he did not listen. For next few days we had the chance to see him, he was still doing that. Shouldn't one lesson be enough? Some people are stubborn and not just little boys, I know that older player do this as well and many do this unnoticed and intentionally. But why? Just to boost their ego?
Anyway I haven't really had a problem with cheating during a Magic: The Gathering tournament and if there was it usually wasn't intentional. I had many people call a judge on me because they thought I don't have the right number of cards in my deck or that I did not have a valid deck and asked for a deck check. Most of these people got a warning right after my deck was checked and those are the times when I know that Magic has rules to follow and each player (and others) have their responsibilities. There are times I ignored mine as telling a judge that certain person plays an illegal card. But that's probably I was to shy and not really confident either to ask. Nowadays I know that I would call a judge right away.
This is something I always feared, at least when I was younger and I wanted to go to GP Prague (Onslaught). I never played a sealed deck before and I was afraid that there would be many things I would mess up and I would gather some penalties^_^. But now I know that all issues are addressed and solved and Judges are fair.
Also I would like to make a little digression. On certain forums people are asking if game store have problem with people who are either drunk or drugged. From my own experience there aren't usually problems with such people even though I don't like to play against someone who does not really seem to be himself.
Now back to cheating but in a different game.
I played Legend of the Five Rings for a while actively. I went to one of the big tournaments that are held at different locations in the world. At this tournament -Kotei- I noticed few things and one of those things was - players were cheating (in this game people call the most balanced, challenging and that the community is friendly).
In the first round I had a player who missed a trigger on each of his turn. Then in his Action phase he would remember and use the ability even though it says 'may' and the ability triggers only at the beginning of the turn. I told him that he should be taking care of that trigger if he wants to use it. I told him this several times and called a judge twice. The first Judge just told him to be more careful and the second one gave him a warning. But at that goddamn moment for me the trigger was a question of winning the game or not. I should have won the game. I felt betrayed. The match up was already the worst I could encounter.
When playing against another player I realized that he tries to do many chaotic things and then say what ability he uses. He was using certain abilities twice and sometimes he also was coming back to triggers that were long gone. I wasn't sure if this was intentional until another game where I saw him play against someone else. There I found out that this WAS intentional. I was telling the player what abilities he used and what he cannot do, but yeah I have to say that this distracted me and it was pretty tough for me to follow the actual game.
I also played against a player who was in top 8 and to my surprise he tried to 'outcheat' me as well. I was like WTH? I just couldn't believe it. People were trying to cheat on regular basis. Why? At those tournaments I played I noticed that many players don't really follow what the other player does (how he pays for the cards mostly or what were the abilities used or cards drawn). That's also a reason I did not want to play at tournaments because I was messing quite some things and I wanted the situations to be solved correctly (ie. when paying a gold cost of a card incorrectly, but the card is in play already or when an illegal action takes place and how to solve that) Also many people don't count opponent's honor which I also find weird. There are games in which I actually forget to gain honor even there is no other option and this for example is ignored and just taken as is...In Magic this wouldn't happen.
I was frustrated because of this many times. The rules might be complex, but there should be someone who would judge and say what the players should do or something where one could find out how to deal with such situations.
Is cheating more common in this game because it is more complex? Or because the inconsistency in the rules and absence of 'how to deal with situation x'? I don't know but this was a really frightening experience and I'm glad that such things don't happen at Magic tournaments (at least not often...).
EDIT: One more thing. Many players are rude and call people idiots and worse words. There are players that have no respect for other players be it their opponents, other participants of the tournament, judges, TOs or team mates. These people should be taught how to behave. This happens relatively often and is not just. But this usually gets overlooked and no one ever bothers to deal with this.
That's about it...just something I had to type as it stayed inside me for quite some time already.
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