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I was playing at my local gaming shop yesterday and the guy I was playing started to use a mechanic he called "Chaining".  According to him, Chaining allows him to play a spell, after I have enacted one of my own, and his become pre-emptive, thus circumnavigating my cards that were being played. 

I've been looking through the rules, and hunting for sometime on threads and websites, and have not come across this mechanic.  Will someone please tell me what "Chaining" is, it's legality, etc.  It just seems to be a cheaters way to undo their inability to anticipate their opponents moves.

sounds like you've been BS'ed

however, it's legal to respond to spells or abilities

Cancel for example is cast in response to a spell to counter it

if you cast Giant growth at your creature, an opponent can cast Murder at it in response effectively wasting your Giant Growth and your creature 

It's not called chaining. It's called "responding" or "using the stack."

Players can respond to each others' spells or abiltiies. When this happens, the most recently casted spell or ability resolves first, the next most recently cast spell/ability resolves next, and so on.

I think there's a section on it in the basic rulebook.

Dec 13, 2012 -- 11:57AM, Darthoblivious wrote:

I was playing at my local gaming shop yesterday and the guy I was playing started to use a mechanic he called "Chaining".  According to him, Chaining allows him to play a spell, after I have enacted one of my own, and his become pre-emptive, thus circumnavigating my cards that were being played. 

I've been looking through the rules, and hunting for sometime on threads and websites, and have not come across this mechanic.  Will someone please tell me what "Chaining" is, it's legality, etc.  It just seems to be a cheaters way to undo their inability to anticipate their opponents moves.

This deals with three main things here:
First of all it deals with the zone known as the stack, which is where spells go when they are cast.
How spells may be placed into the stack and how they resolve out of the stack can be described with LIFO and APNAP
Last
In
First
Out

Active 
Player
Not
Active
Player

If someone reacts to you putting a spell or ability on the stack, it happens first since the last one in the stack is the first one out.

A person who's turn it isn't can't do anything except in response to something the active player has done (other than the yielded priority during the changing of phases which is initiated by the active player) which means that person's effect will almost certainly happen before the person who's turn it is.

Dec 13, 2012 -- 11:57AM, Darthoblivious wrote:

According to him, Chaining allows him to play a spell, after I have enacted one of my own, and his become pre-emptive, thus circumnavigating my cards that were being played.

What cards were being played? What happened?
This might be perfectly legal play; Magic is a complex game.

Perhaps only the vocabulary is wrong...
«Chaining», «enacted», «pre-emptive» & «circumnavigating» are not listed in Magic's Glossary.

"Chaining" is actually a term from Yuu-Gi-Ou.

YGO Chains are similar to MTG's stack, with the exception that once all players stop adding to the Chain, no one can add anything new until the entire Chain has resolved.

His terminology is non-standard, or on one case, just plain wrong - saying "circumnavigate" (do one complete circuit around) when he obviously meant "circumvent" (negate). But this sounds like nothing worse than a rather awkward attempt to describe responding to things. It's pretty fundamental to Magic and well-described in several of the above posts.

However, there is a common point of confusion here you should be aware of, and that he might have been trying to exploit (it's hard to tell from your rather vague description). Suppose I tap my Prodigal Pyromancer to deal a point of damage to one of your creatures, which will kill it, and in response you Murder the Pyromancer. This is perfectly legal, and the Murder will resolve first. However, this does not prevent the damage from happening - your creature will still die. Removing the source of an ability that's already on the stack does not counter or otherwise mess with that ability.