Absolutely Terrible MTG Cheater 

I played Reid Duke in a fun match (not competitive) at GP and he did the same routine he does during a pro match. Watch him in a tournament and he looks fully away when shuffling, shuffles his opponents deck and looks completely the opposite direction and was very clearly conscious of any glancing or shuffling benefit he might get. It's awesome to know that he and many other pros perfectly show how to respect the game and act properly.

This is why you cut and shuffle a deck. If they don't present the deck to you for cuts you get a judge if they refuse to let you cut the deck

Shuffle cheating is as old as card games themselves, but this is the most blatant example I've seen. He's practically shuffling the deck face up.

Reminder that it's perfectly fine to call a judge and just ask if they can watch your opponent while they shuffle. This usually scares the cheating right out of them.

What is funny is that if the other player cuts their deck it would make all of that cheating worthless.

That is the most egregious cheating I have ever, ever witnessed. Who even shuffles face up and manipulates cards individually while doing so?

The fact that this person is an L2 judge and still did this is appalling.

Just so people have an idea of how many shuffles needed to sufficiently randomize a deck, the standard 52 card deck used for games like Poker needs 7 riffle shuffles to be considered sufficiently randomized (mashing is effectively the same for sleeved cards). For a 60 card Magic deck, you should do around 7-8, and a 100 card deck should be around 8-9. If done well, after these amounts of shuffles, there shouldn't be any clumping from the previous game. A couple more than these can technically make things more random, but it's not really noticeable.

Bro HOW does he look so bad at it. Like, if I ever wanted to cheat, I'd at least make damn sure that I'm good at it before doing it ON CAMERA.

"Randomized does not mean uniformly distributed."

That’s hilarious, this is my local lgs. I need to head in to talk to the guys about this.

At the last pre release I went to I remember having to tell someone they couldn't mana weave between games and they're responce was "why I don't want to draw to many lands or not enough" and while I understood why they did it still unfortunately not allowed.

I am a teacher and amateur magician, and I like to teach my students tricks. This guy looks like when one of my 8 year old students tries their first card control a minute after I showed them lmao

My best Spotify "randomizer" incident wasn't 2 songs by the same artist, but rather in a 1200+ song listing I got Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love followed immediately by Weird Al's Addicted to Spuds.

A lot of people put cards on top when they fetch and then pretend to shuffle while keeping the top unchanged. Very common cheat, and that's why you should always cut or even shuffle after someone fetches

Never trust someone who doesn’t cut your deck

most music shuffle algorithms aren't actually random, like if the same song comes up twice in a row humans don't think that's random so most shuffle algorithms are tuned to be what humans think is random rather than being truly random

The number of people who think Manaweaving isn't cheating is huge and confusing. In smaller cardgames I've played it's even been the people in charge of tournament rules. They're always baffled when confronted.

My goodness, he is just not caring about who sees what he is doing.

I always remember a little anecdote I heard one time (sadly can't remember exactly where): If your conventional shuffling after you pile shuffled or manawove is sufficient to randomise your deck, then said manaweaving accomplishes nothing except wasting time. & if you're not sufficiently randomising your deck afterwards then you're cheating. Though on the subject of shuffle cheating we did have a player at our fnm who many suspected of doing this. What we suspected was that they were moving cards around during sideboarding time to get as even of a distribution as possible of everything, & then shuffling in such a way as to minimally disrupt this distribution. This survived being cut, because whatever chunk of deck they started with was pretty much the same as any other chunk of deck. Unsurprisingly they usually enjoyed very smooth draws & a lot of victories. Now, no-one ever tried to go after them.... it's the lgs & nobody wants drama in the community. Plus, not the easiest thing to prove; and no-one who suspected it could actually prove it. So what some of us did was upgrade him from "cut at fnm" to "always shuffle". (Gotta admit; the vast majority of opponents at fnm... just cutting the deck is enough for that level of play (for me at least)) Anyway, his win % dropped precipitously after we started shuffling his deck on the regular. Funny that. Moral of the story: always cut your opponents deck. If you're playing anything higher than fnm (or you expect shenanigans) always shuffle it.

Great Video just one thing, as Judges we do not call it Pile 'Shuffle' we call it Pile Counting, because as you mentioned this is not truly randomizing.

Vince didn't even need to say anything, holy shit that was some blatant stacking there.

When I was a new player, I remember guys at my shop telling me mana weaving was legal and fair. Imagine having to cheat to beat a new player to feel good about yourself

Cheaters can be such goobers. I remember watching a match at a FNM during Zendikar standard between Mono Black and UW Control. This was back when everyone was playing Baneslayer in their deck as a finisher. The Mono B player gets stomped G 1 and me and a few others watch him badly sneak a card from outside the game to his hand for G2. G2 rolls around, the UW player taps out for a Baneslayer and the guy brings in his big smoking gun that he cheated into his hand, Halo Hunter. A 2BBB Demon that ETBs Destroy target angel. He windmill slams it down to only realize that Baneslayer has Prot from Demons, rendering his cheat completely pointless. The look on the guys face when he realized this was priceless. He loses G2 and proceeds to never come back to the LGS for FNM.

The Logical Rule of Mana Weaving : If Mana Weaving is making your draws better, you're not shuffling properly or enough. *Nobody* should see the contents of any deck in the process of shuffling. Preferably, always shuffle the opponent's deck. At minimum, cut the deck. Anyone that gets upset at you for it shouldn't be trusted. If they randomized properly, it should affect nothing. I believe it is minimum 7 shuffles to properly randomize a deck. Accept no less. As an aside : If you need to prove a point to someone mana weaving, 3 pile count their deck. Anyone doing 2 spells, 1 land weaving will get 2 neat piles of spells and 1 pile of land stacked like a sandwich. They are guaranteed to get 7 spells or 7 lands. I've gotten more than one person to quit weaving doing this.

I once talked to a guy who said it should be okay to mana weave and then shuffle afterwards so that he wouldn't be cheating. I explained to him that shuffling afterwards so as to not count as cheating would randomize the deck and undo his attempt to avoid mana flood or mana drought. But that dude just couldn't get it.

First time I've heard that pile shuffling without looking at your cards is cheating. Pretty much everyone against whom I have played has done this for at least a couple decades.

I like shuffling all the cards from the previous game first, then do the mix with the rest of the deck. Mentally, it lets me believe the lands won't all be stuck together for next time. Minimum time to get around the hangup. I also can't get over how much those sleeved cards being pile 'shuffled' look like cheese slices.

Can we just mention the playmat on the right? He's just casually reminding every opponent at all times that they can just concede and get it over with. That's such a chad move.

I just pile shuffle because I'm bad at mashing, so I do a quick pile first. But I also only play commander, where the 100 card double sleeved deck is a pain in the ass to manipulate.

This was at my LGS and Im hearing about it from this video. Shows how much I pay attention to non commander things lol.

That’s why I mash shuffle, pile shuffle in a weird and random order and NOT in equal piles, then mash shuffle THOSE piles into each other and finally a full mash shuffle of the entire deck. I find that this method, though time consuming, works the best. Idk if I’d do it at a tournament unless the rounds over and I’m prepping for the next round but I digress

I remember one GP I was at I was watching the feature match area. one of the players was a previous opponent of mine, so was checking the game out. it was after sideboarding and I noticed that the player was accidently not changing his bottom card while shuffling. I'm pretty sure it was accidental because he was never looking down and talking to the opponent and the deck faced away from him, but one of the judges watching noticed too. I saw the judge stare watching his shuffling until he moved the bottom card in the last few shuffles. pretty sure he nearly got called for that.

The thumbnail expression is exactly the same as mine watching this... "shuffle"

Quick question: what is the best way to quickly shuffle up the cards you played last game into your deck for next game? Often after shuffling I will end up in a patch of my deck that is near identical to the cards I had in play last game. Obviously this means I'm not shuffling well enough, so what can I do differently to make sure my cards are truly randomized? Usually, I will mash-shuffle 5-10 times. I have been avoiding riffling for draft because I know it can damage cards if done improperly, but it's a non-option for commander games, so there has to be a better way.

I like to pile shuffle to break up clumps then do a normal shuffle afterwards. do you feel this is not sufficient randmization. I dont pay attention ot whats in the piles i just pick an odd number of stacks 5 or 7 usually. a normal shuffle (mash) afterwards should be sufficent to randomize. The main reason for this is my deck will often stack compunding cards together for clarity and sleeves tend to stick together. What are your thoughts?

I have to ask, if I separate the cards into lands/spells on the board after a game and shuffle those, then shuffle both that and the deck, is that in the same vein as mana weaving, or is that enough separation from just clumping up(which isn't random depending on the organization of your board state)? In general, I'm trying to be a better shuffler, I'm only playing Commander casually at present and yet still end up seeing very familiar cards despite shuffling 4-7 times.

I totally get why people don’t do this, but I bridge shuffle my cards. It means my cards are always face down and out of my sight and it is a very good way to properly randomize my cards, and if you do it correctly you don’t damage your cards either. Naturally, when I cut my opponent’s deck I don’t bridge shuffle theirs because I know some people hate that, but I do a good two or three mash shuffles and call it good. Fun story I like to tell, I played in a somewhat casual legacy event in New Jersey. I had a deck that I had spent WAY too much money on that was just a pet deck for me, UB Landstill. I had judge promo FoWs, foil worldwake Jace the Mjnd Sculptors, foil Onslaught Polluted Deltas signed by Rob Alexander, the works. At the time (2018) the deck was probably $16,000. No one at the store I played at really knew me because I wasn’t a regular, so when I started bridge shuffling the deck, I had people all over the store just cringing like it was causing them physical pain. It was great.

I make a point for people who mana weave against me when they present cuts i simply just undo it. they learn to stop that real quick. ive had people call judges over to get themselves dqued after complaining bout the way i cut edit: it is also pretty common at prereleases so look out

So what about this scenario, we had a long match I had 15 out of 23 lands lands out by the time the game ended. I scoop the lands and toss some in the front, some in the middle and some on top. I then proceed to power shuffle. Is that considered mana weaving?

Mana weaving: Recent new players only learned MTG from Commander teaches bad habits, like this. My LGS had to crack down on it. Issuing game warnings and etc.

A pile shuffle at the beginning of a match to verify deck size, riffled at least five times before presenting for cut. End of game, cards that were drawn are loosely arranged to evenly space lands/nonlands. This is solely to appease minor OCD, and is gently mashed into the remaining deck before sideboarding. After sideboarding, count sideboard to verify deck size, then back to the 5x+ riffling as the cycle begins anew.

When i was a child i was playing in a super low stakes game at my lgs. My oponent started to mana weave the shit out of his deck, like 1 Land - 2 Cards - 1 Land - repeat. Than he didnt shuffle if but gave it to me for cutting. So i looked him in the eyes and cut his deck 1 Card on this pile - 2 Cards on this pile - 1 card on this pile. He didnt draw any lands this game and was fuming, didnt even feel bad about it.

Idk when this started but i think one day when we were tapping or cutting in our casual table (we cut or tap just because its fun and usually someone does something silly we all trust each other) i deceided to cut only the top 3 cards of their deck and jokingly said "ay lets see how good those were" so we revealed the cards and had a giggle , and now thats a staple cut for us is to take only the top couple look at them and put em on bottom. Really added a lot to our groups in terms of getting everyone in a fun mood

Hey Kenobi! Great content as always. I recon it would be good for you to explain for new people WHY weaving isn't innocuous so people don't see it as a nitpick, when its actually about fair play. I think new people see weaving as not an advantage but a way to have a smoother experience without appreciating that weaving is advantageous to some archetypes more than others and it effects deck building criteria and the power of cards. If a certain count of land were assumed in every opening and draw there after, every meta in every format would be very different. The new unbanning with preordain and inclusion of the LOTR land cyclers is a great example of what happens to a deck and meta when your opening land count and land draws there after is effected. Thanks again for the content.

This is why I shuffle with the cardbacks up and always ask for my deck to be cut even in casual commander so it hopefully settles worries people might have. Cheating in magic (and in general) just feels ass to do and do to people. Terrible draws make for stories just as much as "Oh yeah I had the perfect hand bro" which you know isn't cool because you cheated for it so its not cool.

was wondering if i could get advice. if i pile shuffle after a round then normal shuffle so all the land and cards i just played arent clumped together, is that cheating? i usually pile shuffle, normal shuffle then have a friend shuffle or double cut because my right thumb cant grip well. but of course sometimes for the sake of time they wont cut. would my shuffles be cheating?

IIRC the MTG rules allow pile shuffling once per game before the start of the game for the purpose of counting. This was changed a few years ago from it not being allowed at all previously, but I have not played in paper in a long while so it may have been changed again.

Interesting take on pile shuffling. I always thought of it as basically a more rote version of mash shuffling. It does break up clumps, but if you're doing that along with packet shuffling then it should be fine if you do it enough. If you scoop, there will be usually huge clumps of lands/creatures, and packet shuffling leaves the clumps in, which isn't random either. You need both (or just doing either of them a bunch of times).

I have a guy that shuffle cheats at our locals in casual commander games. Me and my friend usually see this and the dude opens the same few combo pieces every single time he plays with us. We don't directly call him out on it because It's funny that he stacks his deck and still somehow ends up last every single time.

Which is why as the opponent you should ALWAYS shuffle/cut your opponent's deck, even when playing for fun or casual games to keep people from taking advantage and manipulating their deck every game.

I'm an edh player. I used to pile shuffle after deck construction or having particularly bad mulligans, and always followed with at least some method of rifle shuffling. Currently what I do is split the deck into thrids and alterate pairs for each rifle shuffle a few times, then rifle shuffle once or twice the whole deck. I don't play much anymore to have practice shuffling the big deck fully sleeved, so I find this way faster and easier without having to be as concerned with damaging sleeves. I don't know how exactly it mathematically compares to other methods of shuffle for randomization, which I recall finding an actual study whre they determined that ~6-10 rifle shuffles were necessary to achieve depending on deck size.

How do you feel about "weaving" aka equally distributing lands from match one BEFORE shuffling it up normally? Sometimes I do that out of superstition that the "same" chunks get mash shuffled around in a big blob.

I always knew it as "Seeding". Pretty much only did it after assembling a deck, or possibly pre-tourney. Always blind shuffled and presented for cut during the match. Would that still be considered not okay?

The only time I've ever pile shuffled is when I finish building my deck during a limited event to count and make sure I have 40 cards. In constructed I play Yorion (in Pioneer) and after making sure the deck list is 80 cards before heading to an event, after side boarding to make sure I have to 80 cards I just count my sideboard cards to make sure I have the 14 in the sideboard + Yorion in the companion zone. I don't really get why people count main decks in constructed when as long as you had 60 (or 80 in my case) cards when you started the event then you should just be able to count your sideboard to know that you made the equal number of changes or added extra cards and then having a smaller sideboard.

I’ve got a friend who manaweaves before shuffling every time. I try and explain to him that it doesn’t matter if he’s shuffling afterwards and letting his opponent ahuffle and cut but he doesn’t care. I mean, I don’t care about it because I get to shuffle it and I know it’s not stacked but it still grinds my gears that he won’t accept that he doesn’t need to manaweave.

One time at GP, OP called judge on me cheating. I random pile shuffle (placing cards in random piles instead of just clockwise or whatever), and count quietly 1-6 10 times to make sure I have 60 card deck. OP thought it was fishy and called judge … “he’s cheating I don’t know how but he’s shuffling weird” =_______= the kicker, his shuffle on my deck was extremely long and suspicious but couldn’t find any problem, but I always cut the deck of of precaution. Later, happened to see him at top table nearby. His OP Minds Desire for 10+ and bricked, and standing behind I can clearly see he is cheating. Quietly called judge to walk over and observe, G3 his OP Mind’s Desired for 5 and bricked, but had enough off the free spell to get mana to play a second MD for 9 and bricked again. Judge walked over and DQ’d Villain. Great feeling! Guy must’ve spent hours practicing to perform it to a point where I was looking for it and couldn’t spot it when sitting opposite him.

12:00 about the pile shuffling, according to tournament rules; it is acceptable as the first and only the first shuffle for a game and it is allowed precisley to count the deck.

Is it ok to mana weave if you then pile shuffle and do a few actual shuffles afterwords? I used to do that, didn’t realize it was an issue!

The first playgroup I ran with taught me how to play. I played for probably a year before realizing weaving wasn't legal. In fact the players I played with disturbed all 60 cards in a predetermined order and then lightly shuffled. Kinda like their own rule 0. I realized in the middle of a match with a stranger at my local gamestore that they were playing by different rules and felt pretty gross about it. (Not that they minded, it was all casual). It could have been worse though, as I did get into competitive shortly after. Interesting though, is the meta and match ups playing thia way were actually really thoughtful and fun, but the games are more repetitive and match ups are more quickly "solved".

One small detail I find interesting at the start is how he sideboards. He appears to have laid out the cards he wants to sideboard in, then laid out each card he is sideboarding out next to them, so that he and presumably his opponent and any judges or other observers can easily see that he is removing and adding the same number of cards, ensuring that he still has a 60 card deck.

Anything above a friendly game with no stakes, I am absolutely cutting my opponent's deck at minimum. For bigger tournaments, I'm shuffling their deck. Just a good habit. It's not rude, it's part of the rules, don't feel bad about doing it.

When I was perhaps twelve or thirteen I pile shuffled between games at an FNM. I didn't know any better. My opponent, seeing exactly how I pile shuffled and that I didn't do any other sort of shuffling, proceeded to "cut" my deck by re-pile shuffling my deck, essentially reverting it to the exact order my deck was in after the end of the previous game. Needless to say I mulliganed. Over ten years later, I'm a level 1 judge, and I know now that my opponent wasn't allowed to do that either, but I will tell you this- I never pile shuffled again.

If someone shuffles face up I call a judge

I used to play Yugioh with a guy who would sort his cards into several piles. then pick up the piles and cut the deck in half a few times. Then tell me that "This is what they do at regionals" so when I asked if I could shuffle his deck, he spent the entire match going "Why isn't my deck working"

If you pile shuffle, then mass shuffle would that be ok?

Love the thoralf vs andrea veedeos lol! Always cool to see the pros square off

If you're pile shuffling and you've finished putting them in to piles, just mash the piles together instead of picking up each pile.

When I first watched this I though he was just fidgeting around with his deck and I kept wondering what the cheat was and waiting for the shuffle. It finally dawned on me that this WAS his shuffle, which was so monumentally stupid I never would have guessed it was the cheat before he set it down and started drawing up. Remember, if your opponent isn't riffling or mashing with the cards facedown, then they aren't randomizing the deck. You must shuffle it for them and if they don't offer/allow it, don't play the hand.

The fact that this was a Judge of any kind is disgusting. I'd say he should be ashamed, but clearly he wasn't above cheating at FNM, so I doubt he would.

In nearly all circumstances, mana weaving should be avoided. The only time I would say it's acceptable is in a casual setting where you discuss it with your playgroup and everyone has agreed that mana weaving is allowed at that specific table. That of course applies to any rule, but I can see it being a house rule people want to adopt for fun, and I do think there's room for that in the game, just not in official rulesets.

Completely agree with the sentiment, but as a newbie player who is often playing casually and a few times in a row, I generally find myself doing a similar move: out of habit, scooping up all my lands on the board into a pile, scooping up the cards on the battlefield and chucking my hand on top, then cards go on land, and back onto the deck. Then I tend to deal a random number of piles, shuffle random pairs of piles together until I can begin mashing two stacks. Shuffle a few times, offer a cut and then proceed. On the one hand I’m intentionally breaking up a lump of cards, but I suppose the main difference between that and the spoken example of pile counting is probably that im trying to lose the signal of my previous hand and board state rather than trying to even things out or create a new signal. Anyway, interesting video as always!

i usually pile shuffle once, after building the deck, to make sure I have 60/99. after that, mash it like a pile of potatoes! and i like to mix up my cuts, not that i think anyone at my local game shop is cheating. but the fact that so many people take about the top half and pop it on the bottom makes it pretty tempting to put the good stuff right in the middle and a bit down, so even if the opener isn't perfect, you'll probably have a good early game. so mash their potatoes too!

I mash the cards I used in a game before next with the unseen cards from the game, face down, before then shuffling, and pile shuffle before a match of Bo3 starts. I have had people pull a deck out of a box, and present it to me, at an SCG Invitational without shuffling and that was just weird.

Drawing 7 before your opponent is even done shuffling is absolutely unhinged behavior.

I’ve played magic for many years, and I’ve never had anyone complain, but I don’t go to big events. How I generally shuffle is 2-3 non lands (depending on the deck), one land, then repeat, then I riffle or mash (not looking at the front of the cards or stacking, obviously) about 7-8 times. Have I been cheating this whole time? It seems like if I don’t do that the entire deck is just going to be huge clumps of the cards from the last game, right? That also doesn’t seem random.

This is why I shuffle myagic cards like my poker cards. That and it makes everyone cringe. For some reason they think I'm gonna sell my cards? I'm more likely to chew on them than sell them

I have been playing since 1995 and this was common back then. There was one person at our school that cheated so often that we would just cut the top eight card off the top of his deck when we cut before the game.

Decades ago I played with someone that would intentionally and surreptitiously gleek on their opponent's cards. This would cause them to be ever so slightly wet in spots and make them stick together. One of the reasons I developed a habit of pile shuffling in addition to mashing/riffling was because cards that are stuck together with his spit are generally going to stick together more through riffles/mashing. Since mostly my lands are going to be what got wet, this would cause excessive land clumps and a lot of bad draws.

In competitive play, I always shuffle the opponents deck or cut before playing. Especially when I notice an abnormal shuffle and drawing out single cards during shuffling. That was awkward af and that would have sent my red flag up instantly. Randomly "oh, this one card goes to the top as I kind of see where it is, then keep doing through. Also constantly looking through the deck as you shuffle? please, keep shuffling bro. I would call him out so hard. and call the judge to come shuffle the deck if he refuses my cut/shuffle.

I thought the Yu-Gi-Oh stream cheater was bad. But this was way too casual. Almost like he was just begging to get caught.

So I totally understand the argument and it is reasonable, I personally do a mix of pile and light mash shuffling because I've had cases where my card sleeves get destroyed from too much mash shuffling so if I have a small amount of time I got pretty quick at doing a few pile shuffles one after the other to randomize the stacks varying how I place cards in the piles to not make them even numbers in some cases. If you're at a tournament or something like that Id say mash shuffling is the fairest way to go but casually ill do a few piles because I'm trying to save money on sleeves not redistribute my cards. But casually we also practice splitting as well since its quick and easy.

Anytime I have extra cards in play like last weekend with Karn or after sideboarding I pile shuffle into 3 piles after mashing quickly twice and going ahead if that first pile has an extra card, it's like a 20 second thing and then mash shuffle like 7 or 8 times after while consciously being obvious about moving the entire bottom stack of cards to the top multiple times in between with the cards facing away from me so I can only see the sleeves. Also do it after deckbuilding to make sure I've got the right number of cards, if none of those things happen though then I'll just mash shuffle sufficiently, there are legitimate reasons to be worried about the number of cards in your deck but beyond that pile shuffling doesn't do anything, provided you don't know the location of any of the cards beforehand it's just a less efficient way to shuffle and the only benefit is the counting. If you are aware of the location of cards in your deck when you start and are attempting to manipulate clumps then that's stacking.

I feel like pile shuffling is good because it doesn't truly separate the clumps of spells but it does help people like me who aren't the best a mash shuffling to do a large burst of reorganization and then mash a few times.

I usually will do one pile shuffle, but that's only in a game of commander, and that's usually with cards that I can't mash together well due to the sleeves having bad corners.

Lets say I finish a game and then randomly put the lands I used from that game one by one into my pile of cards so I don't have a block of lands in the deck before shuffling, would that be considered mana weaving/cheating?

A few years ago I learned the truth behind mana weaving and before then didn't see the harm but quickly learned how it was not fair play. To which I've not played paper magic in a few years now, so seeing that dude blatantly cheating while "shuffling" is why in any organized play I've always did a cut and only would "tap" the opponents if I was playing casual games when my opponent would be interacting with me during the shuffle so I knew they weren't cheating. But seeing this video helped me learn the basis of pile shuffling as a huge no no when I've never really thought about it in the sense that truly randomizing the deck is crucial to getting a true game. And anyone who was a judge and thinks they'd suddenly be trusted, those are the players I trust the least when their time as a judge only helps them know the subtle cheats to give them an edge.

i understand the issues of pile shuffling, but would there be an issue with 'mushing' as is done in casino poker? basically you just take a pile of cards, swill it around in a giant mess, then stack it back together, followed by appropriate riffle and mash shuffling.

Julian's shuffling is some of the smoothest I've ever seen

I do a pile shuffle after each game to make sure my count is right as Vince said. Then do seven to ten mashes to randomize. I'm not good at riffling though, need more practice. It's hard with sleeves.

This looks more like a comedy skit than actual tournament footage. How is anyone this obvious with cheating unless they're actively trying to get banned?

This is the worst cheating effort ever

Is it fine to put sideboard cards throughout the deck then shuffle or is that cheating

I typically play kitchen table magic at a good friend's house. This guy has been playing pretty much since Magic started and I caught him mana weaving the other day. I explained why that is cheating and no matter how many reasons I gave him, he wouldn't believe me and he said that's how everyone at home shuffles. Now I know why I always get the worst draws and they all seem to have perfect hands- I'm the only honest player amongst a group of cheaters 😐

if i scoop my game 1 board shuffle the pile then shuffle that pile back into the deck and shuffle a bunch more is that really mana weaving?. I'm okay with natural mana floods or droughts but they need to be natural im not sticking an 8+ land block in my deck intentionally that's not random either.

after a match/game concludes, if you insert your lands into random spots in your deck, then do the same to creatures, then graveyard, etc.... and then you shuffle - is that also considered to be cheating? cause I found it helps you draw a mix of cards, something random, instead of re-drawing the same pile of lands for example. (otherwise I'd have to shuffle 3x longer or I'd end up never drawing lands, and sitting still while drawing and discarding while everyone else plays is no fun)

Holy shit thats bad. That why I always shuffle others libraries. It makes it so much worse that it was at a casual event and that the player was a level 2 judge. Also thank you for talking about mana weaving!!! Too many people still do that shit and it is cheating!

I pileshuffel to unclumb my deck. But not often and immidiately after i do a very chaotic fast shuffle and insist my opponant cuts the deck. Chaotic as in multiple shuffles techniques in no particular order. I have no clue where stuff in my deck is at that point and if my opponant doesnt believe me they can cut as wild as they feel like.

At the start of each event I will split my deck between lands and everything else into 2piles I then alternate stacking them until one pule runs out throw the rest on top then do a few riffles. When round1 starts I 8 pile shuffle pluse riffle while looking the opposite direction. Then after each side board I just look away and riffle. I'm superstitious at this point where I start every event by splitting my deck in half this way

One of the better ones I saw was they put what they wanted on the bottom of the deck, and on the last shuffle they brought it to the top. so it was clearly not 'top stacking' and they made it look like 4 cuts so they were clearly putting the top on the bottom and such so it looked like it was 'pre cut'