Priority?

[Cownose]

Im looking for a judge to clear something up for me: Exactly what constitutes passing priority? Let me give you the situation:

My opponant is playing mono black and he has yawgmoth's bargain in play. He casts Promise of Power, pauses, and looks at me. I take this as him passing priority and tell him I am not going to counter his spell. After that he tries to respond to his spell by drawing cards with bargain (so that he will get a bigger demon). I tell him that once i pass priority that the promise resolves and he does not have a chance to draw cards before the demon comes into play, and he calls the judge. The judge rules that he can indeed draw the cards because looking at me does not constitute passing priority and I gave up the information that i was not going to counter the spell of my own volition, which i felt was unfair:

The way i understand it is that after he plays a spell, then he can respond to that spell before passing priority to me. After he casts a spell and passes priority to me, if I choose to pass it back then 2 players have passed in a row and the stack begins to resolve with no other room for responses. If my opponant did indeed wish to respond to his own spell, then he would have stated that he was responding to said spell as he cast it, not after he knew I did not have a counterspell. I thought that by pausing and looking at me, he was asking me if i was going to counter it (which im pretty sure he was) and by letting him take it back and draw the cards, which he would not have drawn if i had countered the spell,  he was at an unfair advantage. What exactly constitutes passing priority if looking up at your opponant does not? I do not know anyone who actually says "I am passing priority to you now"--So how is one to define it? I would like to know if my understanding of the stack is correct and how you would have ruled in the situation.

Thanks!

[DEA]

not a judge, sorry

but let's see if this helps
technically speaking, the judge is about right, because both of you didn't play it out correctly
however, since both of you are guilty of sloppy play (him not not asking if you wanted to counter, you for not asking him if he was going to draw cards),I would have asked the two of you to back up to the point where he announced the spell and the step where he passed priority

it's really hard to decide if the opponent is trying to cheese you, because he may just be a bad player
always assume that people have not passed priority and ask, especially during tournaments, if you are playing blue

once again, not a judge, my 2 cents, take with plenty of salt
hth

ps i phrase my "priority questions" [any responses to that?]
if he has no response to his own spell on the stack then it's freaking obvious he passes priority [/i]

[Jebus]

It's really hard to judge on situations like this without being there, so all I can provide is advice to prevent this from occurring in the future.

Technically, you should always be able to clearly indicate when you are passing priority.  However, this becomes tedious and shortcuts do occur.

I would recommend that in the future you make sure your opponent is passing, simply by asking them.

Then, there can be no question as to whether or not they passed priority.

Indeed, if he did pass and you also passed, the spell resolves before he can do anything else.

However, I really can't speak on the specific situation without having been there and hearing both sides.  I could very easiliy either uphold the Judges descision or do the opposite.

[Jaapmans]

Jebus reply is realy good. Make sure that you ask if you're not sure.

But what if you don't want to give him any ideas? Well, that's your problem. Both players are *always* responsible for having a clear, unquestioned and correct state of the game.

I'll write this down a bit stronger once more:
If you think the state is shaky and you want to try and take advantage from it, you're actually cheating, as you're trying to abuse purposly an unclear / erroneous state. Under the rules of the game, if you see something erroneous you are *obliged* to call over a judge so he/she can fix it. If you are unclear about a situation, ask. If you don't, you cannot make *any* claims and whatever happened is your own fault.


About the described situation, if I would have been on the spot, and I would have seen the behaviour exactly as you described, I would have ruled that priority had passed. Players staring at each other is a 'normal' way of indicating that priority has passed. If I would be the judge, I would have asked the passing player: "did you stare at your opponent?".

Independent of the answer, I'm able to make the player realize what he did and make sure that he will never try to abuse the 'staring-down-tactic' again if this is what he did.

Jaap