My name is David Elden. If you recognize the name, it’s probably because last weekend, my brother became embroiled in a cheating scandal that set the twitterverse aflame. A lot of the comments made about the incident seem to focus on how despicable of a person Jon is or how long he should be banned for, but I feel that people are missing a lot of significant details about the incident that paint a completely different picture. I realize that being his brother introduces a certain amount of bias into my perception of the events. However, my long history with Jon, as well as my being the only member of his regular playgroup who was in attendance at Detroit put me in a unique position to comment on Jon’s play style, skill, and character.

For example, a lot of people assume that because this incident was caught on tape, Jon must be a habitual cheater. A search of his DCI number reveals a different story. The last big event he attended was GP: Indy a few months ago. Before that, it was States – in 2009. Jon has very little experience with big tournaments of any type and had never top eighted or won any prize in a big tournament before Detroit. If he is a habitual cheater, he clearly isn’t doing it for personal profit. Even his FNM record (a combined 8-4-2 for the last four events) is far from impressive.

Given his inexperience with big events, it seems reasonable for him to be nervous and play sloppily as a result, especially in his first match under the cameras, and especially when he was fighting for a spot in the top eight. In addition, Jon was trying to play this second game fast, since there were only about 15 minutes left in the match at the time. Every action in the supposed cheat has a completely reasonable, non-sinister alternative explanation. Individual cards sometimes stick to tables when decks are picked up. People forget to untap permanents all the time. Seeing a stray card an inch away from the rest of his hand, it was easy to assume that it had merely been brushed aside. If poker players can muck winning hands and chess grandmasters can commit game-losing blunders, why wouldn’t we believe that Jon could fail to recognize the extra Batterskull in his hand?

A couple years ago, I read a post on a discussion board for Super Smash Brothers Melee, a fighting game that I used to play competitively. Someone had written a frame-by-frame analysis of his favorite player’s latest game, explaining that the player was playing masterfully, executing each move at the game-theoretically perfect time. Everyone was singing the praises of this player until he showed up and posted that he hadn’t done any of those things on purpose, and if he had been playing perfectly, it was by coincidence. A similar thing happened to Jon. A lot of small, but perfectly reasonable mishaps and accidents combined to create the illusion of a skillfully-executed cheat.

A lot of people concede that Jon putting the Batterskull into his hand could have legitimately been a mistake, but that he cheated by not calling a judge when he noticed this. These people generally propose that anyone would have immediately noticed the extra Batterskull in his or her hand, especially given that Jon’s list had only one. However, when you look at this version of events with scrutiny, something doesn’t add up. Imagine you were in that feature match. If you noticed an extra card in your hand, what would you do? Your only choices are to call a judge, or try to get away with it. What Jon does is completely different. He immediately plays the Batterskull. As soon as he untaps from Sword of Feast and Famine, he plays it, exposing his error to the table judge, the commentators, and thousands of online viewers. He doesn’t wait to draw a few cards or shuffle his library. He plays it as soon as he can.

If Jon was trying to get away with moving the Batterskull into his hand, he would have hidden it, and hoped to win without it. He was in a good position in the game, having a Stoneforge equipped with a Sword of Feast and Famine facing down an opponent with an empty board and only a Flusterstorm (known from his Vendillion Clique that turn) in hand. In all likelihood, he didn’t need that Batterskull to win.

Even if Jon did need the Batterskull, he could have played the Stoneforge Mystic in his hand to get it legitimately. Instead, detractors ask us to believe, Jon boldly perpetrated a complicated cheat in front of his opponent, a table judge, a video crew and two commentators, a knot of spectators, and thousands of online viewers. All to get a card he probably didn’t need, and could have legitimately gotten. To me, this is the strongest evidence that Jon didn’t cheat. If we are to believe that Jon had the sleight of hand skills and guts necessary to pull this off, shouldn’t we also assume that he has the common sense necessary to recognize that he would be running perhaps the stupidest cheat in Magic history?

I have known Jon all his life. I’ve been playing Magic with him since Kamigawa. In all that time, Jon has never been accused of cheating. Because I live in the same house as him, I saw all the preparations he did for SCG:Detroit. He spent hours playtesting, reading articles, spreading his deck out to optimize his configuration of the build. I have never seen him practice sleight of hand or put in any of the “thousands of hours” of practice cheating that he has been accused of. Jon isn’t normally a very emotional person, but seeing him over the last two days would be all the proof any one of you would need to conclude that he did not intentionally cheat. I’ve never seen him so miserable.

Jon Elden is a good player and a good person. His sloppy play in that game resulted in a series of events that looked like a well-practiced cheat. However, while his actions are suspicious, the circumstances are not. Jon didn’t need to cheat, and he doesn’t have what it takes to execute it, either psychologically, to defraud his opponent, a judge, and Magic players around the world, or physically, to execute the sleight of hand required.