The rulingTwo years away from every official table
The suspension covers all sanctioned tournaments, regardless of Organized Play Level: Regional Qualifiers, Regional Championships, the Showdown Series and Worlds, but also the officially branded evenings your local store runs. Koko Lopez cannot sit down at any of them until January 1, 2029, and Riot has warned that another breach would bring further penalties.
The decision went up on Riot’s Competitive Operations site, the archive of disciplinary rulings across its games. For now it is the only Riftbound case listed there.
What happenedWhat the judges saw in Los Angeles
Riot’s timeline starts in round 2. A floor judge noticed that Koko Lopez was pile shuffling his rune deck without a real shuffle after it, and that his runes came out in the same order game after game. After the round, judges watched him arrange the rune deck into a specific order before putting it back in his deck box.
In round 3, judges were assigned to watch him. He did not shuffle his rune deck and did not present it for a cut. They stepped in, inspected it and found the same sequence as before. He was disqualified on the spot; the case was escalated, and Riot opened formal proceedings and invited him to reply in writing.
Rune deck
Every player’s second deck: twelve cards held in reserve. Two come into play each turn and supply the energy and colours you need. Knowing their order means knowing exactly when you will have the right colour.
Pile shuffling
Dealing the cards into piles and stacking them back together. It counts a deck, it does not randomise it: the final order stays predictable. The tournament rules say so at 703.7.b.
| Rule | What it says, in plain words |
|---|---|
| 703.7 | Insufficient randomization: the deck was not properly shuffled. If you think your opponent skipped it, call a judge. |
| 703.7.b | Pile shuffling is not a valid randomization method: it is only a counting method. |
| 704.8 | Cheating is not tolerated at any level of play. |
| 704.8.b | Lying to a tournament official is cheating in itself. |
| 705.3.c | Cheating is prohibited, and so is helping anyone else do it. |
The yardstickWhy 2029 and not a shorter ban
Riot says it weighed three things: whether the act was intentional, whether it was planned in advance or merely sloppy, and how much advantage it created. On the first point the ruling is blunt: the nine Chaos runes and three Order runes were laid out in a repeating three-to-one pattern. Preparing the deck and then neither shuffling it nor offering a cut, Riot writes, showed planning and intent.
His admission and public apology were given mitigating weight, but they were not enough: a shorter sanction would not have matched the seriousness of the conduct. The affair had already cost him his roster spot — on October 7 ChallengerTCG removed him after clips surfaced. In August he finished second at the Barcelona RQ with Kennen.
Why this matters to us. In two and a half weeks the European Regional Championship takes place in Stuttgart (November 6-8), with several Italian players qualified. The ruling tells them two things. First, shuffling really is policed, and the report came from a floor judge in the hall, not from a clip on the internet. Second, the habit worth keeping even at a Thursday night event: shuffle your opponent’s deck and rune deck yourself, and call a judge the moment something looks off. Cutting is not enough: if the runes sit at regular intervals, a cut only moves the starting point.
The short version
- Riot has suspended Koko Lopez from all sanctioned Riftbound events until January 1, 2029, at every Organized Play Level.
- The reason: at the Los Angeles RQ on September 26 he deliberately stacked his rune deck, nine Chaos and three Order runes in a repeating pattern.
- Judges spotted it in round 2 and caught him in round 3, when he neither shuffled the deck nor offered it for a cut.
- His admission and public apology counted as mitigating factors, but the ruling is final and cannot be appealed.
Source: Riot Games – Competitive Operations, Koko Lopez ruling. Images: Riot Games.
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