"Infinitely prevent the opponent from drawing Exodia" is some anime tier bullshittery.

the spirit of dawnstar is with us

"I'm not trapped in here with you. YOU'RE TRAPPED IN HERE WITH ME"

Situations like this are so specific that you could probably make it a requirement to have a judge evaluate the situation before declaring a stalemate draw

We’ve been reading a lot of tournament policy documents this week

An important piece of context from the unreadably fastforwarded duel chat is that the Cook player was offered a draw and refused because he does not run a side deck.

and this is why those cards in a deck that randomly have piercing damage are important

Shortest answer to the whole situation: Shoot both players, ban their decks.

I’d argue both duelists are playing to their best ability. Artmage is playing in the optimal way to not lose. And so is the exodia player. The only difference is artmage is doing something to not lose, while exodia is making the choice not to play anything else. Both players are equally responsible the choice of inaction is still a choice, the same way activating theorealise is

We have genuinely assembled Lantern Control in Yugioh

The reason why his opponent can't play upstart or any card draw cards is because crooked cook is only unaffected if it's the only card on your field, playing a spell will let the opp pop cc in response to it

Coder is very brave to ask Yugioh players to imagine a hypothetical scenario

Theoretically there are a world where, due to either muscle memory or fatigue, the artmage player would make a misplay. The crooked cook is less likely to misplay as all he has to do is sit there ending turns.

in Magic the Gathering this would be considered a non-deterministic loop.  Under tournament rules, if at any point you reach a previous gamestate "or one identical in all relevant ways", you have to do something else -- which in this case would mean letting the other player draw their exodia.  Basically, a no infinite stalling rule.  However, if you have a loop involving both players' actions, they can agree that neither of them is going to deviate from this loop, and then the game is a draw.  Also the players can agree to a draw at any time.

EDIT: to clarify this isn't resolved by the normal Comprehensive Rules but it is resolved by the Tournament Rules

I actually disagree with the chosen chess analogy. I think the game is a really good analogy for this, but chess’s automatic stalemate rules are actually very specific – the one that people are likely thinking about requires the exact same game state to occur three times, and there are infinite games that demonstrate that you can arbitrarily change the game state without advancing in order to avoid that stalemate condition. Many organizations include a second stalemate rules about the game not progressing in a meaningful way for 50+ turns, but that almost never happens because it would require the players to play out a very long game like we saw here anyway.

The part of chess that is more applicable, in my opinion is what Coder originally vouched for which is just allow allowing players to offer a draw to their opponent. All platforms and organizations that I’m aware of have reasonable rules for how you can offer a draw and how frequently that resolve this problem. In this instance, it’s in neither players best interest to surrender, but it’s in both players. Best interest to accept the draw and move on.

I mean the policy document is pretty clear that you can sideboard after a drawn game. It states “Side Deck cards may be exchanged for cards in the Main Deck or the Extra Deck between Duels in a Match.” So if you draw a game, then you are in between that game and the next and can sideboard. It doesn’t say that that only applies to games where a player loses.

Something very subtle, but was a huge help to the Artmage player, is that Skull Archfiend put the cards in the bottom of the deck, and doesn't shuffle the deck.

You can't win the game and your opponent can't lose the game

Good shit coder, love all of the content man

Tbf, i think it should be, player A says I want a draw, player B says I want a draw, a judge sees the boardstate and agrees a draw would make sense, and the draw is given.

Draws would therefore require some sticky situation a judge agrees a draw makes sense within, if its an empty boardstate and both players just want to side deck the match-up the judge can say no.