Alex Bertoncini Alleged Kira Cheat at San Jose SCG with Sound

[KristalSkittles]

I missed it obviously but what was the cheat

[Slagomancer]

What a fucking disgrace.

[sclaperz]

Live Magic/Yugioh/Pokemon is terrifying for this reason alone.

[cobracop1]

I don't do that even without competiting. what a bitchtroll

[felipe28g]

I cant believe he is dumb enough to cheat in front of camera..

[PkingProjectSSFS]

He may be a cheater but hes pretty good at it considering he did it against me in chicago and didnt realize till some1 explained after

[VILEseason]

LOL wow, at 5:10 the fuckin' kid tries to do it again...

[7Spleens]

@VILEseason Good eye. Yeah that's definitely the work of a seasoned cheater. If Vidi had looked up a second later I'm sure Alex would have kept it in his hand.

[7Spleens]

@7Spleens Or maybe Alex realized that playing a fourth in his deck that has only two Kira was too risky :/

[nfinn42]

Facing down a Jace TMS and a Cursed Scroll, with a garbage hand where the only reason he was alive was a topdecked second Kira, AND HE STILL CHEATED ANYWAY. Lost anyway, too. This is a guy who will simply take any opportunity to cheat, even if it stands almost no chance of turning defeat into victory. Compulsive? When you're locked under Jace + Scroll, is it really worth risking your pro career to rebuy a legendary wind drake ON CAMERA?? O_o

just sad. I would call banning him an act of mercy.

[confucianjoe]

Why only ban for 18 months--this guy should be banned for life or stripped of his prizes and cash based on tort and fraud principles. If you get caught cheating anywhere else in life where significant prizes are at stake, you minimally get stripped of the prizes...?

[wrath1dragon]

@5:07: Is that another Kira? He only has two, right?

The announcer was even confused.

[dannyboy15157]

Wow that guy is a real piece of shit.

[ShogunCharlie]

Quite a liberal use of the word 'alleged' there.

[DarkTenka]

lol he was even about to put it in his hand again @ 5:11 .. then decides not to push his luck

[starscarjenova]

@funkyflorist

too true! :(( I'm going to go throw up for the billionth time over this...

[FlameofVengance]

Anyone else notice that he tried to do the bounce back to his hand twice? That's just fucked up.

[xxEmblemxx]

Downgrade THAT to a caution, you fucking loser

[starscarjenova]

Don't worry, guys! He loses! Thankfully...

Watching this pisses me off so intensely. PermaBan!!

After he casts Kira the third time even the commentator Gavin busts with, "is that another Kira? Doesn't he only have two?"

I'm going to go vomit now, later...

[Funkyflorist]

@starscarjenova

He lost this match, but he went on to win $10k and the power nine...

[nbombadil]

did the judges see it ? wtf dude and did he win ?



[Funkyflorist]

@nbombadil

Yea, he won $10,000 and a set of the Power Nine...

All of his cheating came out after the fact so he was banned from all tournaments and events for 18 months...

Practically a slap on the wrist considering the prizes he got...

[hanksingle]

Wow. That's messed up.

[lorendorky]

This is one reason why it can be nice to play Magic Online. No cheating twats, no obsessive compulsive shuffling and no body odor (other than my own :P)

[gugs51]

he cheating and win the price, this is fraud.

he must return the all the money win cheating, to be a justice, and BAN.

[Dmuthaninja]

i love how he not only cheated, but cheated and lost

[gugs51]

DCI ban. cheater

[sk1zz0t]

lmao at his face at 5:09

"can't believe i'm THIS scummy. what am i doing with my life?"

[sarroth]

Maybe, MAYBE he accidentally brought the Kira to his hand instead of his graveyard, which seems a really dumb thing to do for a pro player. A casual player such as myself doing that, sure, but a pro? How do you forget the basic rule of where dead creatures go? But maybe it was a mistake, and the almost-one at 5:12 was another. Even so, I can't believe he would have not remembered that he didn't have 3 Kira's in the deck when he CAST the thing. "Huh, I don't remember having this in my hand..."

[greenTechguy1]

@sarroth Yeah there's no reason why he didn't play kira. It may have been an accident, though now I'm pretty sure it wasn't. There's just no reason not play that kira. With that being said he is a cheater cheater pumpkin eater.

[reus3d]

I love how at 5:12 he tries to put it back in his hand again. I guess people might be a little suspicious of a 4th Kira Alex!

[naruto642]

i love between 40 and like 1:00 were they talk about Vidi making a game error for a game lose

[greenTechguy1]

I'm still not 100% he is cheating, and I sometimes will play pretty loose when I've been playing matches all day. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. I think it's still possible that he had thought he had bounced his guy, it's just so hard to believe that he would do this while he was on camera though, in the spotlight, but I could see him misplaying like that. I think what he should've done is played a lot slower so that he didn't make mistakes, if in fact he wasn't cheating.

[jvdthwip]

@greenTechguy1 at the same time, he could also have accidentally put it into his hand and then, the convicted cheater that he is, instead of revealing it and putting into his graveyard, instead left it in his hand knowing he could just get the warning and restore the game state by putting it back into his graveyard or something

[nfinn42]

@jvdthwip at competetive REL, knowingly concealing information that would reveal a previous violation of game rules in your favor is cheating as well. It is your responsibility that, if you realize you made a misplay in your favor a turn earlier that no one realized, you are to speak up and own up. Not doing so means you're still a cheater, just a passive one. But I refuse to believe Alex's slick hand movement was anything but a practiced bit of sleight of hand.

[SuperSimmel]

Talking to Kibler about getting a win because your opponent didn't play tight... pretty ironic, because Kibler wouldn't have won the Pro Tour if he had played tight, if he wasn't cheating, but we'll never know.

[elementalkirby]

dat creepy

[Rowsol84]

It's clear that he used jace, and then tapped the scroll.

[hammerhiem75]

@Rowsol84 I agree but I think he scrolled Alex not the Kira because Alex scribles straight away afterwards.

[zegm1]

I look up the cards and looked at the tape and hear what i see is his kira gets targeted by jace the first time and yes he should not have put it ..... I see that if does not play it again then curse is just going to ping him until he is dead and he is just forcing vidi to use jace -1 instead of fate seal good one .. but cheating yes

[reddemunn]

Allegedly? No that seemed pretty obvious to me. Shame on you Alex.

[saucylad]

@reddemunn watch when the illegally played Kira has to leave the battlefield at 5:15 or so, he just about sticks it back in his hand again. Man.

[reddemunn]

@saucylad Yeah, he knows the interaction the first time, returns it to his hand the second time and thinks about doing it again. I love the grin he gives. The worst part is the SCG commentators, whether it be Chapin, rashaad, gavin or others, they never seem to catch things while they're talking then return to talk about the game and start speculating on what they just missed.

[rushmore111]

pause at 5:09 for cheatyface

[PAMuffinMan]

His constant hand movements and flicking of his cards is a dead giveaway that he's cheating. He's doing it so you can never pin down if, for example, you saw 5 or 6 cards in his hand, so when he suddenly has 7, you can't say for sure that he drew 2 or 1 on his draw phase. By keeping his hand and known cards moving, the opponent is either distracted and doesn't play straight (which is not cheating, it's the players job to focus on their game), or won't notice when Alex cheats.

[nfinn42]

@PAMuffinMan Actually, no. I do that myself and it has nothing to do with cheating. It's because Pro level players don't need to watch the board any more, so they watch the opponent. One of the things they watch is: where did you put the card you drew into your hand? Did you then put it down as land for the turn? Then you drew blank. If not, then you may have drawn gas. It's just one more tiny way to get percentage: shuffle the hand to deny info to the opponent. Every percentage helps.

[none02910]

@nfinn42 doesn't matter how many times you "play" with the cards in your hand.In the gambling world it is called a "tell" meaning you drew shit and can really do nothing about it..................

[nfinn42]

@none02910 one way to conceal your tells is to turn all your actions into the tell.  If you know that when you draw a good card, you shuffle your hand excitedly, you can either stop doing so (hard; requires breaking an old habit) OR you can start doing that *whenever you draw a card* (much easier: requires extending an existing habit). One way or the other, the opponent will get no information. (Obv., face is an even bigger tell... but that's a different department of control.)

[none02910]

@PAMuffinMan Alex thinks it is a "new trick" this same shit is pulled by guys with a cardbaord box playing three card monty,they usually employ a distraction.In this case there were other people around and this was used to Alex's advantage.Too bad this wasn't Las Vegas in the early 70's,Alex's hand would have been turned into hamburger with a hammer..............

[nfinn42]

Dear StarCityGames: you had your chance to set a higher standard for your players and earn massive player cred by banning him first yourselves. Now you just look like you're trying to protect this guy, and people will naturally wonder whether the rest of your players club are of the same ilk. Good job, YFI.

[keeyaaw]

So, what's happening here is that the bounce from Jace is countered at first b/c it's the first ability, and then the cursed scroll is supposed to kill the Kira, right? But he just ignored the effect and returns it to his hand. And the other Kira is on top of his graveyard so the opponent assumed that was the second one.

[nfinn42]

@keeyaaw worse than that. It wasn't just a momentary "hey, can I get away with this?" lapse in scruples. In game 1 he fanned his yard. In game 2 he stacked it *specifically* so he could run this cheat. (The fan in game 1 is so the opponent is used to thinking "I know what's in that yard, no need to keep checking it.") Then he even slides the Kira towards the yard, and returns it smoothly to hand while the oppo is focused on revealing for Scroll.

Very slick. What a douche.

[nfinn42]

@keeyaaw In fact, the only real question on my mind is: Did Bertoncini get a solid read that the oppo had a 2nd Jace in hand? Because the excitement of "LOL I sui my Jace and scroll reveals the other one, you're screwed" is a guaranteed lapse of focus on the oppo's part. If he got the read on Jace #2, and if he was a good judge of character (which he clearly is), then he would probably decide that that was the optimal moment to run the cheat.

But if he did it cold with no read, just... wow.

[SamyueruHikage]

@keeyaaw Exactly correct, yes.

[revam1ssp1ss]

Thank god for this video. Un-skippable videos at the original upload.

But wow. This guy is just... he knows what he's doing. How is anyone defending this?!

[TsavMemorai]

I don't always play 2 explores and 1 kira, but when I do I play 3 lands and 2 kiras

[Shadmed2]

@TsavMemorai Your numbers are kinda off.

[JJNess]

And the commentators were even discussing getting wins on game rules violations... talk about unintentional foreshadowing!

[NinjaLeekspin]

@JJNess Yeah, I noticed that too, about the commentators, saying how wouldn't it be ironic if Wijaya did a game violation, (obviously letting it be known that they know Bertoncini is known to cheat)

[azurarutlan]

Woo, first. Love the shortened vid of the cheat.