If cheaters never win, then why do they cheat?

[Rando]

Are you a cheater?
Do you know someone who is?
Have you ever caught your opponent cheating?

At the first game of the last tourney I went two, I played this young man, about my age. I cut his deck and gave it back to him, then started digging around in my pocket to get a coin to toss. When I looked back up to ask him if he wanted to call it, he was thumbing through my deck, looking at each card!
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" I asked.
"Nothin'" he said, handing me my deck back.
"the f***" said I, and called the judge who was at the table.
The other guy got up and walked out before the judge came over, and I got an automatic win. (yippy)

So, got any cheater stories?
And, since we are all more or less anonomys here, you can tell us if you've cheated before. We won't think any less of you...
well, unless it's something really horrid, like the guy playing the blind lady, telling her about the 3 lightning dragons he had out. sad sad sad...

 

[Rando]

I thought it was suppossed to censor the naughty words.
I had to go back and do it my self.

 

[Spiderman]

You're a bad bear, Rando... using naughty words...

I haven't cheated and honestly, I can't remember playing any "strangers" that have. But the last tourney I played was in '95 so it was a while ago... but I'm pretty sure none of my opponents cheated.

Sorry I'm so boring

 

[nodnarb24]

Tag Guard

I used to know this beginner that always cheated in casual games. He ended up not being a very good cheater because he would still lose. What he would do is search his deck for land when the opponent wasn't looking and slip it into his hand. Then after he got enough land out he would "surprisingly" pop out with the best creature in his deck(which was actually my crappy blue deck).

 

[Hetemti]

One guy used Ultra Pro clear sleves so that he could mark lands by putting the hologram on the back instead of the front.

After making him resleave, he started to simply look at the top five cards when ever he felt like it. (Jeez...use Soothsaying like your supposed to.)

 

[Zadok001]

There's one guy at my school who is known to have commonly stacked his deck for the 'Ritual, Ritual, Sengir' draw. He claims not to do it anymore, but he's occassionally caught in the process... But in general, we don't cheat. We're boring that way...

 

[NeuroDeus]

Ohh well the best one about cheating was...

A guy I was playing, thinking I was distracted took exactly 3 cards making his hand about to 7. I noticed it must have been a real good 3 cards since a smiles crossed his face. Deciding not to be a bad guy and say he cheated I played a spell (cannot remeber which) with which I made him discard about 3 cards and another 2 spells to see his hand are remove 1 card (his hand went down to 2). The last two where two very bigs creature he could not play some turns after... Yeah..I won...

 

[Hawaiian mage]

I'm not sure if this counts as cheating but...


I found a Loophole in the rules sytem that let me use gold bordered cards. I would glue a common to the back of agold bordered Masticore. After all, the rules only say "Any card, except from portal, starter, and Unlgeud, with the regular card back can be played.

I also went to the extent of printing uot card pictures from yavapia open and putting them on other cards.

I think I'm the only person in the world to own 16 Black Lotuses(4 for each deck.)

Does that count as cheating? Becuase it's perfectly legal according to the rules.

 

[nodnarb24]

Tag Guard

I've done that before Mage, but it wasn't ina tourney, just casual play.

I once saw a couple of guys that got a spoiler to exodus before it came out, and they wrote the text of the cards on swamps. The owner of the store, which was running the tourney allowed it but it was a free tourney so no one cared.

 

[Duel]

Well, I only cheat when playing against my brother or myself. and Besides the aforementioned "Ritual Ritual Sengir" guy, nobody at my school seriously cheats.

I do remember Slick's counterspell, though. two green and a fog, and he countered a spell. Don't count it, though, he never thought it would work...

 

[Dune Echo]

I knew a guy when we first got into the game that would play Chain Lightning as an instant and played that he could fork it for R. We didn't know all the card texts then and didn't think he'd lie. We all got kinda sick of that card after a while and asked to see it and he wouldn't let us. Then I stole it while it was in his graveyard. Then we saw the RR. Then we read the damned thing and were damned pissed. He didn't use that card anymore.

 

[Darsh]

I used to play with this friend of mine who would look at the top cards in his deck and stack them like he wanted.

I think the reason people cheat is to see if they can get away with it I think it gives them this feeling of superiorty "They didn't notice I was cheating well they shoudn't even be playing if they didn't notice that."

 

[krichaiushii]

I once played against a guy who would stack his X-spell burn deck with sets of Urza's lands. He would shuffle everything, then go through and place a set of three in four evenly-spaced places in his deck. What's more is that a group of us sat down to play, started shuffling, then he tried that in front of all of us! After calling bulls*** on him and shuffling his deck for him, we let him play.

Another I encountered religiously played his one dual land in all his decks. The problem was that it had an obvious crease right down the center...

Some people...

As for myself, if its a casual game at a crowded table, I will tell you once to pull your hand back out of my sight. After that, its considered free game. As most others at the table do the same renders it okay.

Its odd how questionable behavior becomes acceptable when everyone does it.

 

[Duel]

Well,I buy marked cards, so long as they aren't, say, painted over.... so marked cards don't bother me unless they show a tendency to, say, keep appearing in the original hand...

 

[theorgg]

Well, somtimes, when I'm loosing horribly, I'll say to the person I'm playing(ALWAYS a GOOD friend, like nanokill) "OK, You've just won, because I'm about to cheat!" and then do somthing in plane view that'll keep me from dying.

Usually they enjoy the game afterwards, despite whether I "win' or not--though I admit I've actually lost.

the most memorable time was when I drew two cards and got that renouce and Balance...

The game was boring, anyway, So I balanced and then renouced just so I'd see how his deck would goldfish after twenty turns...

but for some reason, I neglected the fact that I had three lands and no creatures...

I then drew a seargent followed by a land and conceded..
that woul've been just too...
longish.

 

[Apollo]

Well, I knew someone that would play with crummy sleeves at lunch, and always had a grilled cheese sandwich, and his sleeves ended up sticking. Noticing this, he put all his Urza's lands together and put a heavy book on them. He'd always draw them right in a row.

I also knew someone that played in a tournament and made an "anti-Eric deck" (I'm Eric). I played him in the first round, and he was creaming me. Then I noticed that he had drawn in the neighborhood of 15 more cards than me. I got a game win (just one game... thought it was weird). In the 2nd game, I watched him carefully and ended up creaming the deck designed to beat me.

The next week, playing the same kid (not in the tournament, in a casual game). I was getting creamed in a fair game, and he was bragging and gloating and generally being a jerk. Pissed off, I slipped a Fireball to the top and toasted him. It may have been the wrong thing to do, but did it ever feel good.

Apollo

 

[magicman_moe]

hey dont feel bad man i did that to this one punk who kept givin me crap about how he was gonna beat me and stuff so when he wasnt lookin i found my channel/fireball combo and set it up on top hehe needless to say i won
and besides that he would never shuffle in front of me he would say that i did it a minute ago man and hed always have his dragons thran weaponry crap like that but still kicked his ass

 

[Spiderman]

Hawaiian Mage: I can't find any DIRECT statement contradicting your "loophole". I did find this:

Participants may not use cards from any special-edition sets or supplements, such as Collector's Edition, International Collector's Edition, Pro Tour Collector Set, World Championship decks, or Unglued™ cards

So do gold-bordered cards count as supplements or special-edition?

At any rate, pasting cards on sounds like proxy type cards.

For tourney play, of course; for casual I guess it doesn't matter if your friends don't mind

 

[Almindhra]

I hate Mike Long...And I hate the idea of people cheating...Well, I was at a little local tourny...And this kid there, whos been to some high tournament stuff, was telling this guy about how you can stack your deck...He took out 10 cards and put them on top of his deck...Then he did a bunch of pile shuffling...It didn't turn out that those 10 cards were on the top, but he probably did that because I was looking at him and watching what he was doing...That disgusts me!...People who actually spend time on shuffling and stacking cheating...That hurts...Why can't people just be honest?

BTW, you can shuffle your oppt's deck when they give it to you to split...And all they can do afterward is cut it...Now if you're not that ambitious, split their deck not in the middle, but split it with little cards on the bottom, so that the middle is on the bottom...

 

[Killer Joe]

I know these two brothers who I used to play magic with, until I moved away, anyhow, I wasn't there at the time of this story but it's still funny since the other brother STILL doesn;t know about it
This was about 2 years ago: It was just the two of them, Frank and Thom, they rarely ever got together to play magic because Frank has a family of three and Thom does alot of traveling. Anyway, one night, they were about to start playing and Frank said, "I'll be right back, I think I hear one the kids crying." Now Frank has been on a wicked winning streak the last couple of times these two got together (which wasn't often; about once every other month), Thom went through his brothers deck and put all but one land on the bottom of Frank's deck so that when Frank would draw, he would at least have one land (and Frank was playing a green weenie deck-so one land is usually good enough0 and Thom was playing land destruction and Frank didn't have any cards that would allow him to shuffle his deck.
I goota go, but you get the picture, Frank has a mean temper and Thom watched his brother boil and to him, that was funny.