Forum:Illegal side decking

My question is more of a tournament penalty question than a rulings question, so I put it here. I would appreciate only active Konami certified judges answer this question, as only they would have the proper knowledge to answer this question.

Before I ask the actual question, I need to set up the situation a little bit. I know that according to the official Konami tournament penalty rules, a player gets a game loss if they unintentionally leave side deck cards in their main deck and the error is not caught until after the start of the match and that players deck has already been presented to their opponent for randomization. During a local tournament, my opponents during the semifinals admitted at the end of the match, after he had beat me 2-0, that he had sided in a few cards against me since he knew I was playing removal. Since I had not seen him touch his side deck (I know he hadn't because I had not either and as soon as game 1 was done we immediately started game 2), I asked him when he had sided the cards in as I had not seen him do it. He said that he had done so before the start of the round. Th tournament organizer gave my opponent a game loss and had us play a third game to determine the winner of the match. I obviously do not agree with this decision. I think my opponent should have been given a match loss, given that he intentionally sided in against me before the start of the match and that this fact was not discovered until after the supposed end of the match.

My question is this; what is the appropriate minimum penalty if a player purposefully sides in against their opponents deck prior to the start of the round, both during swiss rounds and top single elimination rounds?Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

Macroman2011 (talk • contribs) 15:06, March 20, 2011 (UTC)