Play Home Illusion Cheats
Eden Alvardo
Over the next few years, I got to know Alex. I stayed at his house, he stayed at mine, we drove with each other to tournaments, shared rooms, worked on decks, discussed tech, and talked about life. For a time, I considered him my best friend.
This is no public hanging. Only the DCI bans people, and only judges disqualify players. As a player and neither an official of the DCI nor a high-level judge, I have more information than a judge or official but am less able to do anything with it. Having collected it meticulously for months, I have realized that the best thing to do is to turn it over to the community. Only officials ban people and only judges disqualify players, but who calls the judges over? Who spots a cheater in the act? Once someone does spot a cheater, what moral and communal obligation do they have?
The Sower Cheat
My side of this story starts in June 2010. I was driving to visit my girlfriend for the next month, while Alex was making his way into St. Louis to play Mono-Blue Merfolk. We talked on the phone, I wished him good luck, and hung up. I read the coverage, texted him my condolences at his second-place finish, and worked on my deck for Grand Prix: Columbus.
Andy Hanson, who had opted to run Reanimator before it lost Mystical Tutor to a recent banning, opened on Thoughtseize and forced Alex to discard Daze. A second-turn Silvergill Adept for Alex drew him a card but it was Sower of Temptation, not a counterspell of some type for a potential second turn combo out of his opponent.
Even setting all of that aside, we come to the moral/ethical dilemma of what happened when Alex picked up his sideboard and saw his Kiras staring back at him. Call a judge and have himself game-lossed for the game that he just stole? Sure, maybe.
But Chapin keeps rolling, and Gavin falls back into conversation with him about what sorts of runner-runner outs Alex has to the situation at hand. Confusion forgotten, Vidi crushes him anyway, and Vidi wins the game a few turns later anyway.
Now what? I saw this video and went a little nuts. I started asking everyone I knew if they had any stories about Alex cheating. I found several and collected them, planning on writing an article excoriating Alex for his dastardly ways. I went on a podcast and told every story I could remember of how big of a cheat Alex had been in the last year.
So I slowed down. I questioned myself, my motives, my assumptions, my data, my friends, and everything else that I could question. I held off on the article. I talked to every smart person I could find at Grand Prix: Pittsburgh, asking their advice about what I should do. My survey of intelligent human beings came back with three strong pieces of advice:
The DCI runs at the speed of the British Civil Service when it comes to actually doing something about cheats (ie: super super slow) because they are always too willing to give the benefit of the doubt in case they lose a valuable customer.
Tournament Organisers can stop people from playing for any reason they want. He was caught cheating, we all saw it on camera, first not putting cards back from a brainstorm and secondly drawing 4 cards off another brainstorm.
Its an issue of mark cards, as the foils will be slightly different thickness to normal cards and warp slightly, so when a foil is on top you will see a slight bend then when a non-foil is on the top it will have no bend. Which if all your land and aether vials are non-foil and the rest are foil and the top card isnt warped you can tell its either a land or aether vial.
I was not convinced of anything other than him being a sloppy player. Then I saw the brainstorm video and was convinced 100%. Its easy to draw 4 off brainstorm if youre playing sloppy, but there is no way to not notice you drew 4 instead of 3 when looking through your hand and deciding what to get rid of.
He should be forced to give back the winnings and the power 9 of all things, stripped of his title as well as be banned by both SCG and the DCI for this, i cannot stand seeing the photo of him holding the most prestigous cards in the game of magic having won via cheating, that title should be in the hands of Adam Prosak who played a fair and clean year of magic, not this chump of a cheater.
this is ignorant. if a pro is playing a control deck and plays phenomenally but draws bad, and their scrub opponent playing aggro gets a bad draw the pro will lose. Alex is a good player cheating or no.
NO AGGRO PLAYERS EVER WIN TOP SLOT THEY COULD NEVER POSSIBLY COMPETE WITH THE LARGE GENITALS OF A TRUE MAGIC PLAYER A REAL GENTLEMAN MAGIC PLAYER ALWAYS PLAYS CONTROL DECKS AND ONLY CASTS FORCE OF WILL AFTER HE CASTS DAZE WHILE BRAINSTORMING WITH THE GREATEST POSSIBLE EFFICIENCY BETWEEN END STEPS.
I kinda know what you feel like when you decided to set out and do what you felt had to be done. It sucks. I had friends too who were notorious cheaters, but then I never thought much of it too and always assumed the best, until one day i got cheated.
Seriously that would be my biggest concern. It takes away from the game when you have to ask to see how many cards they have before they draw and then ask to see how many they have after they draw. Having to ask a judge to check their sideboard game one. Keep track of what turn your actually on to and note any turns where no lands were played or where an extra card was played. It seems like a giant problem. Also why would anyone want to play at an event where you know one of the people likely to win cheated to get there. Its almost like saying there is only 7 top spots at the opens cause 1 guy is guaranteed a spot if he comes. And it would be one thing if this was all speculation but there is video evidence.
(Before I recap the situation, I must preface. David Bauer is a friend and testing partner from the glory days of Vs. System. If he had not carried the Miami flavor to the top tables of the Invitational, I would have not been paying attention and I probably would not be so outraged.)
In the deciding game of a match with Gerry Thompson, Bauer got jobbed by an illegal play that was caught immediately and broadcast loudly on Twitter by the audience. The announcers on SCGlive ignored it. We know they were paying attention, because they mentioned another tweet at the same time.
The thing that scares me the most is the presiding. How does a player determine when an opponent did so? Some cards are obvious, like specific hate cards like Perish, but something like Sower is much less obvious.
I agree with Mike. If only cheaters knew how to cheat, they would rarely be caught. Many, maybe all, cheats require an informational imbalance to be successful. The knowledge of how to cheat empowers the honest.
It might not be from a HD source (like the ones SCG would use to investigate it), but that definitely looks too big of a card for the shadow to be a bend in the sleeve, and looks much more like two cards clumped together.
it was round 4(not 6) and i was a table down at the open in memphis(not nashville) when the vial, attack incident occurred. i did not directly witness the act but did witness alex talk his way out of the warning and then berate drew afterwards for calling the judge saying how he would never call a judge on a play like that.
The fact of the matter, is that regardless of whether Alex cheated or not, all parties are at fault here. This whole debauchery is playing out like a sex scandal gone wrong, and now we have dozens of women all accusing Arnold of sexual harassment.
If Drew had been compiling data for months as he said in his post, the first logical step after confronting Alex would be to take it to SCG and then finally up the DCI for review, never should he have called for this witch hunt against Alex.
b. How he speaks to the inquisitor, as any tournament player knows from experience, is characteristic of how one might respond to an onlooker or judge who notices something superficially unusual but who doesn't grasp some subtlety on the board.
Still, the author "would almost believe" Bertoncini is just "a sloppy player" except for the fact that only favorable alleged errors have been recorded. Isn't the simple fact that only favorable errors tend to come out of the woodwork because they're the only ones that are possibly cheats? Unfavorable errors fade from consciousness quickly, and don't motivate research or gossip. If any of the examples given in the article happened in reverse, you'd never know about them.
Similarly, his good rapport with opponents and nice character outside the game, while rightly argued as irrelevant relevant to the question of his guilt or innocence, should not then be smuggled into the argument as implying his slickness.
These expressive, distorted representations are propped up by argumentum ad populum, hearsay, and a false "nice guy" image. On questioning your motivations, you relate the sound advice you received to "avoid the public square," and then when Wizards doesn't react in time, you disregard the advice. So be it, but the nice guy narrative is still included as if it amounted to anything.
The reason I bother with such a long, tedious response is that witch hunting is a special danger of Magic, with its rules complexities and ambiguities of intention, and its relatively high constitution of stunted, misanthropic, misfits. In the Internet era momentum and spite can easily be created on the basis of shallow reasoning and hearsay. If the player is innocent, this is a terrible result. I don't know whether or not Alex Bertoncini is a cheater but regardless this article, because of the model of argumentation it uses and perpetuates, is a detriment to the community.
We all can give AB the benefit of doubt time and time again. This article, cruxifying AB for not, is a eye opener. And after this reading this, I not only know who AB is, I also plan to check every single play if I were to play him.
Lastly comment refers to the Vidi video, it shows AB faking Kira into the graveyard and drawing and playing a third Kira. This is not a mere sloppy play. This act is blantantly cheating. The percentage of winning after another Kira is played is not relevant. The point is that he cheated to give himself a better chance of pulling an upset.
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