mrdct

A while back BBO disabled the Mobile viewer which used to be accessible from www.bridgebase.com/mobile but that url now directs users to either use the desktop flash version or download the iPhone or Android app on their portable device. The non-android/iphone mobile version had a very similar look to the myhands viewer and was particularly efficient on a smartphone for watching vugraph or kibitzing an interesting table. I realise that I can do these things with the smartphone/tablet apps, however, my HTPC has a Linux-based OS and a web browser that cannot do flash and cannot install Android apps . To be specific, my HTPC is a Raspberry Pi running RaspBMC. Even on a desktop computer, I found the mobile viewer the most efficient way of watching multiple tables at once. Perhaps to avoid confusion with the iPhone/Android apps, it would be better named "miniviewer" or similar. My life enjoyment factor would be greatly enhanced if BBO reactivated this feature.

I'm not sure which thread you are reading, but I haven't seen anything in this thread which is supportive of the perpetrators; just a bunch of quite sensible posts supportive of procedural fairness and natural justice. Trials in absentia are inherently distasteful and when they're tainted by completely avoidable perceived conflicts of interest and the apparent exclusion of statements and evidence in support of the accused, it is only fair to cry foul. I have little doubt that the "perpetrators" are guilty, and indeed a***holes, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be given a proper opportunity to defend themselves.

There seems to be quite a material discrepancy between the final WBF report and the statements made by DVB as to whether or not Elinescu-Wladow denied the allegations. One can only presume that the DVB statements of 13/3 and 20/3 never made it into the hands of the tribunal which is worrying from a procedural fairness point of view. In matters of justice, perceived conflicts of interest are probably even more important than actual conflicts of interest. It was highly sub-optimal to hold the hearing in the USA and a poor decision to have anyone from Zone 1 or 2 on the panel. The panel should've been chaired and comprised of people completely free of any suggestion of bias and the hearing should've been held at a time and place convenient for all parties. I will bravely predict that the inevitable appeal will not have any Americans on the adjudicating panel.

Version 3.70 is unusable on an iPhone 4. One can't even see the vul on the board you are playing with robots because there is an ad covering it! Is there any way to roll back to the previous version?

In my structure, which includes a short club opening with transfers, when I'm in the mini position (1st/2nd fav or 1st nil) with 11-14 balanced I open 1♣ and accept the transfer, rebid 1NT with 15-17 balanced and in the event that it goes 1♣:1♠ (no major) I use 2♦ as an artificial 15-17 balanced and have a structure to sort it out from there.

I've been playing a mini-NT for almost 3 years years and find it very effective. My range is 8-10 (which is quite high frequency) and I only play it 1st/2nd fav and 1st nil. You wind up with opponents missing game quite often because they usually lower the values for a penalty double and often just can't quite work out where they need to be due to the one-level being taken away. It's extremely rare to be caught for a penalty and more often than not when the opps decide to defend, it turns out to be a good save or no great disaster (-300 vs a making partscore I can cope with every once in a while). Do check your local regs though as the 8-10 range may not be legal in all places, but it's fine in Australia and in WBF events.

Bridge i Norge has a different theory "Duboin was so dissatisfied with his partner that he was en route to have threatened to go home".

I'm not sure where you are getting "artificial" from. The datums used were derived from taking some sort of average, rounded to the nearest 10 and excluding an appropriate number of outliers, taken from actual results from around a dozen tables of open national teams in a multi-zonal tournament. There's nothing artificial about it. In terms of how they were used, normal IMP scoring against the datum. Mechanically, at the end of each match the players were handed a piece of paper with the datums and they scored up. This is pretty much how all of my home games are organised where I always keep a few sets of boards on hand from old events that I didn't play in or read about and have the datums in an envelope to score up after play.

We only had four pairs enter, but we do have other similar event in Australia where a field of 10 pairs reduces to one winner (straight on to the team) and places 2 to 5 fight it out for the remaining two spots on the team. It actually got to a point with just two pairs left as first and second were so far ahead of third with a round to go that the TD allowed them to not play the last last roudn and go home early (the draw had been organised to have 1v2 and 3v4 in the last round).

I'm not 100% sure where the datums came from, but I believe they were from a multi-zone open event from the mid-80s (I think WBF Zones 5 & 6) and they certainly weren't from an "imaginary external field". I'm guessing that there would've been 10-15 or so teams involved in such an event with some variability in standard smoothed out by excluding some outlier results. This particular event was a youth selection event and whilst it was disappointing that only 4 pairs entered, this was for selection of a state team, not a national team, and in recent years there have been three or less pairs entering so we are heading in the right direction. I think external datums are ideal for this sort of situation but an option may have been to use the same boards as the 6-table seniors event being played in the room next door and score-up against their datums or an 8-table datum including the 2 youth tables. Problematic though as the quality of the youth field was certainly quite a bit stronger than the seniors and we had slightly different session times. My main query though is not the use of butler scoring, but which VP scale should be used or should it just be on IMPs with some cut-off (which is how NSW and the national selection event do it).

There were only 4 pairs in the field, so if an internally produced datum was used you would be hugely at the mercy of what happened at the other table. It's very common in Australia to use externally sourced datums for field sizes of 6 or less pairs.

The format was a double round robin of 4 pairs playing 10-board matches for a total of 6 rounds. Each 10-board match was IMPed against predetermined datums (the hands were sourced from a zonal final somewhere in the 80s) and converted to VPs using the new WBF scale for 8-board matched.

It is quite common in butler-scored IMP-pairs events in Australia to use a VP scale based on less boards than the actual match length. The CTD running a recent event I was covering on BBO rationalised this approach on the basis that a butler is not the same as a head-to-head teams encounter because in teams two real bridge scores are obtained and IMPed against each other, whereas in a butler there is one real score compared against a 'flattened' average of a number of tables. Any thoughts on the merits or otherwise of this approach? It had a profound impact on the outcome the event in question with just 0.01 VPs (new WBF scale) separating 3rd and 4th in an event where the top three pairs form a team to contest a week-long event interstate with airfares, accommodation, entry fees, etc. Using the 10-board scale (new or old) would've reversed the order of 3rd & 4th.

The ACBL (uniquely in the world as far as I'm aware) have included within their screen regulations: After the final pass, players remove their bidding cards. At this point, the declaring side may exchange information about their own explanations. I note, however, that this is a "may" requirement; so not doing it would not be an infraction under general principles.

[hv=pc=n&s=s854hj53dt65caq43&w=st962haq762dc9852&n=sa3hkt4d987432cjt&e=skqj7h98dakqjck76&d=n&v=n&b=5&a=p1dp1hp2np3d(%21)p3nppp&p=s5s2sasjd8dkd6h2h9h5hqhkd4dad5c2h8hjh6h4dtc5d2djdqc3c8]399|300|9 tricks claimed[/hv] Board 21 of Segment 2. West: Helgemo; North: Auken; East: Helness; South: Welland BBO Vugraph Operator Comments: End of Trick 1: "Auken asking questions about the auction - whether 2♦(assume intended to type 3♦) would often have 4 spades, I think and I think that Helness says that it wouldn't, he'd bid something else with both Majors, but not sure" After the Trick 7 Claim: "Helgemo & Helness discussing the auction" "And now Welland has called the director" "Sorry - Welland spoke VERY softly to the director, so I still don't know exactly what was said about 3♦ or what Helgemo & Helness are still discussing. I assume that Welland was told that they didn't have a spade fit" As the auction on the next board was starting: "I really don't know what they did or did not know - everything has been said in too low a voice to hear, or else in a language I don't know :)"

Breaking news: The appeals committee came up with a ruling resulting in one extra imp for NS (the result in the other room was 3SE= -140). Now clarified as a weighted ruling of 50% of 2♦N= +180 and 50% of the table result (3♥Nx-2 -300). So Jacobs held on to win by 4.5 imps and will now (if I understand the regulations correctly) get the double chance in the open team play-off next year.

WARNING: At the time of posting, the appeal is still to heard, so if you are in the potential pool for appeals commitees at the Victorian Bridge Association, do not read this thread. CONFLICT OF INTEREST: I am related to one of the players contesting the final, but who wasn't at the table where the issue arose. DISCLAIMER: The "facts" reported here are as they were told to me by a member of one of the appealing teams and, accordingly, may not represent exactly what is presented to the appeals committee. [hv=pc=n&s=sh3dqj642cqj98732&w=skjt4haq76d987ck5&n=sq7653hkjt98da53c&e=sa982h542dktcat64&d=w&v=0&b=8&a=1d(Precision%20%5B2+%21D%2011-15%2C%20no%205M%20or%206%21C%20suit%5D)2d(5-5%20Ms%20good/bad)d(E-%3EN%3A%20%22Values%22.%20W-%3ES%3A%20%22Penalty%22)3c]399|300|Only first round of bidding and final contract is known for sure.[/hv] The table result was 3♥x-2 for -300. It transpires that E-W have no agreement as to the meaning of the double; indeed East was playing as a substitute due an illness of West's regular partner. E-W do, however, have some partnership experience together. N-S represent that they have an agreement that after 2♦ is doubled, pass indicates a willingness to play in 2♦x and redouble asks partner to bid their better Major. South represents that having been told that his RHO has a penalty double of 2♦, North must be 5512 or 5503 which will make 3♣ the best spot for N-S. South also argues that had he been given the same explanation as was given on the other side of the screen, 2♦ becomes a viable option and he would therefore pass and let North sit the double if he has something in ♦. The TD adjusted the result to 2♥x-1 for -100, but I've not been told what the rationale for that ruling was. Both sides have appealed the ruling. N-S seeking an adjustment to 2♦x= and E-W seeking a reinstatement of the table result. I have no other information about the hand.

We still don't have comparative results when watching vugraph or a teams match. I thought this was coming in the next update.

A much more uptodate website which includes the player roster for the pairs is at: http://www.cavendishmonaco.com/index.php?lang=en

As many would know, the Cavendish Invitational will take place in Monaco from 15-19 October 2012 but it doesn't seem to have made the BBO vugraph schedule as yet and nor can I find details of the field anywhere. The official website seems to be http://cavendish.bridgewinners.com/news/212-2012-cavendish-in-monaco-.

That's an over-simplification of my argument. Let me bullet point it to make it easier to follow: Weighted scores are a "may" requirement under the laws so are at the discretion of the TD; A TD would take a number of factors into account in deciding whether or not to issue a weighted score (the existance of a number of potential results for which probabilities can be reasonably estimated would obviously be the first one of those factors; but the orderly running of his event would also be taken into account); Weighted scores are not compatible with most of the real-time or near-real-time scoring systems used in high profile events (I'd be happy to see some examples if that's not the case); and Weighted scores are rarely, if ever, used at WBF events (I'd be happy to see some examples if they exist). What bluejak seems to be doing is rewriting Law 16C1c which reads: to read:

Perhaps a new thread on the topic of "weighted adjusted scores" needs to be opened, but for goodness sake - enter the real world. At the last WBF event I attended, the CTD told me that they were generally getting about 3-5 rulings per session that required consultation amongst the other TDs and/or polling; and this was with about 50 tables in play. As far as I know, none of the eventual rulings were weighted scores. Can anyone give me an example of a TD ruling at a WBF event of a weighted score? There are just handful (or perhaps as many as a dozen or so) of scoring systems in use today worldwide that provide real-time bridge scores to internet audiences, calculate all match results within seconds of the end of a sessions and determine draws, datums and line-up entry seemlessly. The authors of these programs are far from "incompetent scorers" and provide a brilliant service to bridge fans and players alike. I love the way "should" has strayed back into your definition of when weighted rulings apply when the laws clearly define it as a "may" option for TDs. I am aware that the scoring software by Jeff Smith used in some EBU tournaments handles weighted scores quite well, but can anyone provide me a link to web results from a serious or semi-serious event using that software where a weighted score was used and the results have been reported in some meanful way? Or you could make it even harder and present a KO matches where averaging of both a split and weighted ruling came into play. Weighted scores may well be fine for laws theorists in a home game, local competition or club duplicate; but I don't think they work in any serious event for a range of practical reason of which "incompetent scorers" is not one of them.

Who's to say what the spirit of the laws are? All we know is the laws of bridge make quite a big deal about the subtle differences between may, should, shall and must and the lawmakers intentionally chose "may" for the option to issue a weighted score. To my mind it is entirely at the TD's discretion and it's quite reasonable to take into account limitations of the scoring system, the completeness and accuracy of published results and the smooth running of an event in deciding whether or to issue a weighted score. If the lawmakers had used "should" I would probably be agreeing with you, but "may" imparts "failure to do it is not wrong".

The issuing of weighted scores (in jurisdictions that allow it) is a "may" requirement, not a "should", "shall" or "must". There is no obligation on TDs to issue weighted rulings and many (if not most) choose not to as they are a major hassle for scorers.

The SEWoG provisions come into play after an "irregularity" not an "infraction". Reaching for the bidding box and not pulling something out of it is an irregularity. I'm still calling SEWoG on the redouble which imho is a ridiculous call virtually certain to push the opponents into a cheap 6♥ save.