I think it's worth considering "irrational thought" processes here.

Cheating, in front of a camera, is a highly irrational decision. Most irrational decisions are made when a person is under high levels of stress (you'll have heard of the phrase 'a moment of madness'), and here we have a player, apparently doing fairly well now at the top table and on a stream.

This is the point where Parker makes an irrational decision: in his mind he faces public ridicule if he bumps the HWK - he looks like a noob, inexperienced and foolish. Under mental pressure he makes a crazy choice (look an idiot with a poor move, or cheat) and changes his dial.

This doesn't condone his choice, but goes some way to explaining it from a psychological point of view. We simply make bad choices when under pressure.

9 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

I'm comfortable with a game loss decision. I'm comfortable with the fact he made day two, because if he could take a game loss ruling and still make cut then he made the cut.

Do you understand what happened? The cheater made it to day 2 b/c he cheated and won the game. He didn't receive a loss for day 1, he received a loss for day 2. So he illegitimately made it to day 2. He wouldn't have made it to day 2 without the win. Got it?

1 minute ago, Cailais said:

This doesn't condone his choice, but goes some way to explaining it from a psychological point of view. We simply make bad choices when under pressure.

And people who make those choices should be disqualified. Its that simple.

The other possible explanation would be that he is a regular cheat and just didn't think about being on camera. How could you know?

5 hours ago, pflrocha said:

I disagree.
Letting him continue in the tournament is a even worst punishment.
Imagine that, from that moment on, everyone on that room was talking about it. Every player he faced during the event, after that moment, knew he cheated and was caught.
Everywhere he goes, on that event, there will be people commenting no the cheat.
I say, keep him in play. Let him face the fully extent of the humiliation of everyone around him knowing that he cheated and was caught on camera doing it.

And you really think that is a good thing? Would you really like to face this player in a high stake (at least as high stake as playing plastic space ships gets) environment? I don't think that I would enjoy the experience...

9 minutes ago, Cailais said:

I think it's worth considering "irrational thought" processes here.

Cheating, in front of a camera, is a highly irrational decision. Most irrational decisions are made when a person is under high levels of stress (you'll have heard of the phrase 'a moment of madness'), and here we have a player, apparently doing fairly well now at the top table and on a stream.

This is the point where Parker makes an irrational decision: in his mind he faces public ridicule if he bumps the HWK - he looks like a noob, inexperienced and foolish. Under mental pressure he makes a crazy choice (look an idiot with a poor move, or cheat) and changes his dial.

This doesn't condone his choice, but goes some way to explaining it from a psychological point of view. We simply make bad choices when under pressure.

You don't even have to go that far to justify it, it could have happened unconciously. I remember a game where that happened to me and I caught myself when putting the dial back like "hold on, somethings not right here, is it?". I immediatly tossed the dial to my opponent and told him to dial in something else because I had screwed up being absent-minded. Parker may have been in the very same situation here, only that he didn't catch himself, as I almost wouldn't have myself.

Which of course still doesn't make this not cheating, it very clearly is, even with a massive impact on the games outcome, but I get how this could not be with malicious intent.

Furthermore, I believe that Michael should be compensated by FFG.

15 minutes ago, Taloncor said:

The other possible explanation would be that he is a regular cheat and just didn't think about being on camera. How could you know?

I think this is more likely. He knew what was up and how to do it.

Watching it again, he appears to notice the bad spacing between his jump masters, and then turns the second one to the left to avoid the bump, fails, and then adjusted palobs dial to guaruntee getting the focus

1 hour ago, Stay On The Leader said:

However I'm going to flip the next part on its head. Right now the guy who cheated is also a victim of FFG bungling the ruling. This could be done and dusted it FFG had handled it correctly and instead his name is going to be dragged on and on through the mud countless times. He cheated, he got punished, but now he's lined up for a lot of vitriol he shouldn't have to deal with.

Oh no, quite the contrary.

Cheater is grown up man, he should be held accountable for his actions.
He cheated blatantly and everything that is coming at him now is well deserved, and deserved by his own choice.

I just sent them the following email.

i encourage everyone to do something similar.

"I just want to preface this by saying I love this game and the organized play environment that has been cultivated.

1 hour ago, Stay On The Leader said:

I think this is more likely. He knew what was up and how to do it.

He doesn't seem especially practised though, and was ultimately caught - a consistent infraction player would likely be more subtle.

His actions - tapping the dial, constantly checking it etc suggest panic, alarm and uncertainty.

1 minute ago, Cailais said:

He doesn't seem especially practised though, and was ultimately caught - a consistent infraction player would likely be more subtle.

His actions - tapping the dial, constantly checking it etc suggest panic, alarm and uncertainty.

If not stream - it was done flawlessly, in normal gameplay you would never notice it, well its not poker, after all he was doing something illegal.

I've just watched the game again not just the clip.

Had he not changed that dial he wouldn't have been able to fire the torp.

That to me is clearly very malicious

I really don't like wielding a pitchfork but that to me is a DQ and Mike (I don't know him) should have been given bye.

The hate towards ffg is a tad over the top. Even if you do that agree with a TO decision you do not disrespect them.

1 hour ago, Taloncor said:

The other possible explanation would be that he is a regular cheat and just didn't think about being on camera. How could you know?

He played against a friend in the top 4 of one of the Kansas City Store Championships last year and had several questionable moments, including not removing the correct number of shield tokens after taking damage and "accidentally" not realizing his ships had accrued enough damage cards to be removed. I would say this isn't an unlikely assumption.

Lol no wonder Nova Squad deleted all those posts about the cheaters/judges/ffg

I'll give you one guess where some of those judges were from.

I'm so glad I have the internet police to lynch people who cheat in tournaments that I'll likely never participate in.

6 minutes ago, Nastrado said:

Lol no wonder Nova Squad deleted all those posts about the cheaters/judges/ffg

I'll give you one guess where some of those judges were from.

Not nova. I'm assuming you are referring to Jeremy with a vest on, that was a joke.

I am not even surprised someone cheated. I have come to expect it at high level events.

But the way FFG handled this situation was really bad. The cheated party was punished and another random party was gifted a win. How can you even come up with such a ruling? FFG really need to fix this for future events and needs to compensate the cheated party now. Anything else will result in a loss of trust in their capepability to run high level events.

I really hope that whoever reaches the final, they both decide to change a dial without trying to hide it when the other is moving. I mean, they would only get a warning and lose the next game . Preferably both at the same turn for extra mockery.

This is really disappointing. Shady play has no place in any game.

While I'm thankful that our local community would never let this slide, and has proven such in the past. I'd expect FFG to care enough about the health of the game to harshly punish players caught cheating to signal that this game is about fun, not about watching your opponent like a hawk because of a "only you can prevent shady behaviour" from them.

I take my 7yo son to tournaments because I want him to learn about fair play, winning and losing with grace. If it turned into a cheatfest because FFG doesn't care enough to strongly signal that this will not fly, we'd just stop playing. He saw the clip and even he, a 7 year old boy who wants to win, thinks it's unacceptable.

This is not the enforcement we were looking for

The only logical explanation for giving Parker the loss in the subsequent game (and a random guy a full win) is that they didn't want to bother/couldn't change the results in their software. And they try to justify it by claiming it wasn't malicious!?! That single action turns into 3 focus, which also turn into TLs after. That's a huge deal.

This guy will be watched like a hawk today.

15 hours ago, SabineKey said:

I suppose if that dial was really lose, I could see just getting a warning. But if not, that sounds like a poor ruling.

I recently have a lot of issues with loose dials. Last tourney I had at least 5 cases when the revealed dial did not match what I set it too, though I always notice when this happens as you feel the movement on the fingers. Sounds odd in this case even if the dial was lose.
Though I can imagine that I am not the only one with that issue, a few other players on the same tourney had the same issues. Might be time to order some high quality third-party dials.

1 hour ago, Xerandar said:

I'm so glad I have the internet police to lynch people who cheat in tournaments that I'll likely never participate in.

I understand the sentiment. All too often, the keyboard commandos of the internet take partial facts and run with it. I don't think this is what's happening here.

While some have gone overboard with calls of violence or saying he should be perma-banned, most of the posts I see here are just calling for something to be done that didn't screw over one party and give a random party a boost. The cheater should be disqualified since it was done at a premier event. This wasn't a maybe accident at your local shop from a rookie player still learning. This was at worlds. If he offends again at a future high level event, then ban him.

3 hours ago, Rexler Brath said:

Do you understand what happened? The cheater made it to day 2 b/c he cheated and won the game. He didn't receive a loss for day 1, he received a loss for day 2. So he illegitimately made it to day 2. He wouldn't have made it to day 2 without the win. Got it?

I think you don't understand what happened. He got a loss in round 4 after cheating round 3, so the loss still came on day one.

4 hours ago, Taloncor said:

The other possible explanation would be that he is a regular cheat and just didn't think about being on camera. How could you know?

Exactly probably cheated in other matches as well. Disqualification should have been the only response to this behaviour ... simple!!