Yuuya Watanabe's Statement regarding the Disqualification (translation included)

Frankly, I think the whole discussion on Reddit has been a little bit too overzealous in just assuming he is guilty and crucifying him. Especially since to my knowledge, this is the first incident of his in over a decade.

What we do know is that the sleeves are sufficiently marked that Ricardo has no choice but to disqualify him from the event and that Yuuya acknowledges that they are clearly marked. There is a difference between disqualifying to ensure the integrity of the tournament versus a disqualification because they are cheating.

I am not up to date on the current penalty guidelines, but there is a very real possibility that judges shadowed Yuuya in his following matches and found nothing but had to DQ him anyway.

It's probably safe to say that whether Yuuya will be further penalized beyond the DQ is going to come down to whether Ricardo's report is going to say he thinks he cheated or not based on the results of their investigation.

/r/magicTCG Thread Parent