Ruling More questions

[cheetor586]

Now that I'm a Pokemon Professor I should probably know these, but it's better to get the viewpoints of others

I ran across a couple of issues in a Redshark game today and I was wondering what the ruling would be on them if they had happened in a tournament.) He also forgot to put a card at the bottom of the deck after the POV, I had to remind him to do it right before he attacked

1) The Player played a Professor Oak's Visit before drawing a card at the beginning of his turn (already had the cards drawn before I had a chance to point this out to him.

2) The player was told to put 2 cards at the bottom of his deck, and he instead shuffled them into the deck. I said it would be a prize penalty, but he said it wasn't because it was "correctable" But in order to totally correct it, you would have to replace the deck in the exact order it was when the cards would have been placed on the bottom, wouldn't you?

3) The player announced an action and then immediately backed out. Even though I said he couldn't. I'm assuming in an actual tournament that would have been a prize penalty as well, correct?

Just a couple thoughts, new to the whole judging thing. Any help would be appreciated, thanks again!

 

[PimpRaichuKing]

Yes, your opponent should have been penalized on the last 4, as it is not correctable without looking at your deck. :O And once you let go or your card, or announce something, it MUST go into action.

And the POV, in the rulebook, it states you must first DRAW a card before anything else, well, besides condition flips.

 

[Chairman Kaga]

The first thing to remember when head judging is that the same incorrect action will call for different penalties in different situations. When considering penalties higher than a Warning, you have to evaluate the entire game and determine what, if any, advantage may have been gained. Things that may result in a Game Loss at the Masters level might get off with a Warning in the Juniors. The penalty part of judging is very fluid, not rigid -- it's the hardest part of judging, by far.

For me, initially, Situation 1 starts as a Caution, the lowest possible penalty action. They missed a mandatory game action (drawing to start their turn) and for their first turn action played a card that says to draw 3 more. Since they can place any card from their resulting hand onto the bottom of their deck, there is no need to try to validate which cards they drew, so this is a very minor error. Just have them draw the 4th card which they would have drawn anyway, put one on the bottom, and move on. Now, if they continue to fail to draw to start their turn, I would then start moving up the penalty ladder.

Now, I assume Situation 2 emanates from a misguided attempt to try to put back the drawn cards from Situation 1. Hopefully that wouldn't happen, but let's say it did. Now here things get more interesting, and this is where you have to take the whole game situation into account.

The general philosophy from the PCL judges in Japan is that a random deck is a random deck. Changing the order of a random deck is not considered significant. So on its own, shuffling the deck is not a huge issue (although it's listed as Game Play Error: Major in the penalty guidelines, it's certainly the least major of all the items listed there). That alone is a Warning or a Prize Card at most.

But now we look at the rest of the game situation. Is he playing Claydol? If he's used Cosmic Power at least once, then he knows what is on the bottom of his deck. The shuffling of the entire deck without a game action now shifts those cards somewhere else and potentially creates an advantage. Maybe he has a Dusk Ball which he is in a better position to use now that he's shifted all those junk cards he dumped off the bottom. These are the types of things that have to be taken into account and turn minor penalties like Warnings and Prize penalties into major ones like Game Losses.

Optimally, though, you should have vigilant judges that are keeping close eyes on everything. Most major errors come from the snowball effect -- a minor error, and another, and another, and before too long you have a mess of a game state that is uncorrectable. Judges should catch and correct the minor issues immediately before they turn into major ones.

Situation 3 you'll have to clarify. What exactly did he declare that he tried to back out of?