I played a local SCG IQ this weekend and a very avoidable penalty was issued to a friend of mine in the Top 8. He's a rather impatient fellow, with a tendency to tilt over small things, and while he won't admit it I've seen him miss a lot of triggers.

In game 3 of his Top 8 match his opponent said "Oh" at some point on his turn. My friend heard "go" and drew a card very quickly. It wasn't long before he received a game loss for drawing extra cards. This has been the penalty for doing so for some time and if there were a cleaner way to punish such an action I feel like they would have arrived at it by now.

At any rate, the point here is that the entire misunderstanding is easily avoidable with better communication- both talking AND listening.

If there's ever any uncertainty on whether your opponent is passing the turn, whether it be because you weren't sure what they said or there is reason to believe that they should have more actions, always double check that they're passing. It can be difficult to hear people in event halls or even card shops, so questions of clarification should be pretty commonplace.

Taking your time to go through the motions of the early stages of a turn also helps to avoid such penalties. Some people like to say the words "untap, upkeep, draw" out loud, which I think is a bit excessive, especially considering that nobody has priority during the untap step, but I will point to my deck and ask if I can draw if I have nothing to untap on my turn.

The other lesson from this story is simply to act like you've been there before. My friend had mulliganed to five in this game and was feeling tilted, as if he'd never mulligained in his life. It has happened before, it will happen again, and by not accepting this you mostly hurt yourself. Slow down, take deep breaths, break through the tilt, communicate clearly, and play well. You'll have better results.