mrdct

Anyone got some good photos from the medal ceremony?

There are a couple of brief periods where the video feed fell over and BBO had to restart at board 25, but generally OK.

Per the Supp Regs:

It's interesting that it took a couple of days for the organisers to realise they had 150+ teams in the field. Also, the level of entry wasn't really that abnormally large compared to 2007 (146 teams) and 2005 (134 teams). I suspect that the fact that several of the "big name" teams were quite a distance off qualifying at the half-way point may have had something to do with it. In Australia we call this practice "moving the goal posts after the game has started".

Started with the onsite commentary due to problems the BBO commentators were having at the start and then switched to the BBO commentators when the onsite audio started to get a bit jumpy. Went for the larger video on this one too. Enjoy!

I wouldn't make that assumption. People fail to alert alertable bids with surprising regularity. So if we are to assume 2♦ was alerted, my next question is did South ask what it meant?

I fail to see how you could possibly make a ruling on such limited facts. As minimum you need to find out: was 2♦ alerted and, if so, how was it described? what is the North-South partnership agreement for 3♦ over artificial and natural 2♦ openings respectively? why did North pass 3♦? was there any reaction, mannerism or other UI from South when his 3♦ bid was described as majors?

These are quite interesting additional facts which the TD needs to way-up in determining whether or not South had noticed the alert. At the end of the day, however, if South says he didn't see the alert it's pretty hard for the TD to find otherwise. If alerting using the more common style of pointing at the alertable bid (which is what I always do I have to admit) one thing that I do to protect myself is make eye contact with my screenmate as I'm doing it. When you are alerting your own bid rather than partner's, another common technique is to wave your bid around in your screenmate's face before placing it on the tray.

You had the "w" and "r" switched.

It looks like we are talking about board 8 from round 7. Whilst the OP correctly states that the manner in which West alerted his 1♣ bid was not proper procedure (as per WBF GCC 25.3), it needs to be understood that pointing at alertable bids is overwhelmingly the custom and practice these days. In the many hours that I've watched the video coverage of this year's Bermuda Bowl, I can't recall ever seeing a player touch the ALERT card, let alone place it on the tray waiting for his screenmate to return it as required by the "proper procedure". Notwithstanding that, I fully agree with Lamford that it is the alerting player's sole responsibility to ensure that his screenmate has noticed the alert and if South didn't see the alert that can only mean that West was not overt enough with his finger pointing. The fact the West did not use the correct alerting procedure leaves him no leg to stand on so I'm going to let South undo his double (which I don't believe is anywhere near a SEWoG) and rule 4SW+2 -480 for both sides. Another interesting twist on this hand is that South failed to alert 1NT (under the misahrehension that it was natural and strong) which appears to have contributed to East-West missing a cold slam which was bid by about half the field; but I think West wouldn't be able to run much of an argument as firstly "nobody" plays a natural 1NT overcall against a strong club and secondly, it was his own laxidazical approach to alerting that lead to 1NT not being alerted.

This is pretty much the same as Diana's capture except I muted the onsite commentary so you can only hear the BBO voice commentators:

Sorry this a bit late getting posted - my computer crashed while it was rendering the video file after I went to bed so I had to restart that process this morning. Also, the audio from the onsite commentators is very jumpy due to the video feed breaking up quite frequently. I switched over to the BBO voice commentators once the closed room (where I was commentating) finished and I realised the problem; but that has the downside of the annoying "no audio" icon in the middle of the picture.

For not the first time I've seen during this event, the operators had difficulty during the QF2 segment to redeal to a new board midway through the match I was commentating on and it seems there were problems with other tables having to restart also at or about the same time. Eventually the BBO staff onsite got it back up and running but the play data for the earlier boards seemed to have been lost. I'm certainly not trying assign blame or anything, but I'm keen to know what caused the problem so that I, and other BBO operators/supervisors, will be in a better position to avoid similar problems with our presentations. My preliminary suspect is a corrupt hand data (.dup) file which was fine for boards 17-23 but had some unexpected, incomplete or incompatible data in the row for board 24 which stopped BBO from being able to redeal to it. I'm not sure if it's part of the procedures being used in Veldhoven, but something I always do after I've loaded the hand data file and entered the match details, but before I login to BBO and start the presentation, is quickly click through the hands to make sure they coincide with the expected number of boards and all load properly which takes no more than 10 seconds for a 16-board set. Even better, if I have a cooperative director, is to check the first and last hand against the hand-record. If and when the vugraph operating functionality moves to the flash version, it would be useful if there were some in-built data integrity checks.

The live streaming video fell-over a few times and was of intermitant quality, perhaps straining under the heavy demand being placed on the service. Hopefully the wkbridge people can get some extra capacity for the video feed for the knockout stages. I've also uploaded an mp4 version to filesonic for those who want to download a permanent copy.

The video feed fell over just a few seconds before I started the recording, but I got the audio back fairly soon and had the video back within a couple of minutes and it all went OK for the rest of match. The next match I do will be Round 20 Australia vs China (go Aussies!) For filesonic users, I'm a little bit restrained with my monthly data limits which is taking a bit of a hammering at the moment. I will definately get any Australia matches up on filesonic, but at this stage I ask that people who want to download a permanent copy of any matches to google for one of the many free appications which can save mp4 files from youtube (personally I use jdownloader). For anyone interested in having a go at doing a recording themselves, I am using a 30 day trial version of Camtasia Studio which is the same software that Gavin Wolpert uses for his videos on bridgewinners.com. Enjoy!

The "facts" in the OP were heavily disclaimed as being merely a transcript from the BBO vugraph records and did not purport to be based on any official report.

Another way to look at this situation: a. Pretend screens are in use, in which case East would have been told 2♣ was natural and on the face of it could only treat 3♥ as natural and pretty strong on the assumption that partner has received the same explanation on the other side of the screen. b. Pretend that West did ask about 2♣ before bidding 3♥ which, again, would reinfornce that 3♥ is natural and strong. In both of these scenarios, East would proceed on the basis that partner has ♥ and no doubt bid 4♥ if he has 4-card support. If West neglects to enquire about the 2♣ bid, on the given fact that "everyone" in the ACBL plays Michaels, East clearly has UI that suggests an action other than raising ♥ as it now appears that 3♥ may merely be stopper-showing. I run into a similar situation quite often with my regular partner where we play Rubens Advances and might have an auction like (1♦):1♠:(2♣):2♦ where "everyone" in the ABF plays 2♦ as a cue raise of ♠ but we play it as 5+♥. In Australia bids of suits called or shown by your opponents are not alerted. Invariably the 1♦ opener doesn't ask about 2♦ and might pull out a 2♥ bid which with no enquiry looks natural but if he'd been told beforehand that 2♦ showed 5+♥ it's more likely a cue raise of ♣. I'm yet to have found myself in a situation where I was damaged in this scenario, but I think there could be hands where I would argue that the 2♣ bidder would be ethically obliged to bid on the basis that 2♥ showed ♣ support which might see them get to a stupid contract.

There were a few minor problems with the capture with a couple of operator freezes and then at about board 24 the onsite commentators switched their commentary to the closed room so I picked up the BBO voice commentary from that point but there is still a bit of noise coming from the onsite video as if you turn their volume all the way down you an annoying "no audio" icon in the middle of the picture. The video feed also fell over a couple of times but generally it was OK. I've left a minute or so of the scorecard at the end. Enjoy.

1. Yes, partner's questions and non-question are clearly extraneous information which is unauthorised as partner is the source. 2. No, unless it could be demonstrated that partner asked the question solely for my benefit (e.g. partner knew that 2♣ was natural but was worried that I didn't so asks just to be sure we are all on the same page) - but I'm yet to see anyone pinged for doing this in practice.

I'm not saying that all errors at a world championship level ought to be classified as "serious errors", I'm merely suggesting that the test for determining whether or not an error is a "serious error" is different in a Bermuda Bowl compared to a club duplicate. I don't have a particularly firm view on this particular hand, but I was a bit uneasy about South getting off scott free after producing a pretty ordinary defence to 4♠. I note that across all tables in the Bermuda Bowl, Venice Cup and Seniors Bowl, the hand was played in ♠ 33 times and only made 10 tricks once in one of the ladies matches.

Thanks for the encouragement. I will try to do a few more over the rest of the Bermuda Bowl (particularly if Australia gets another match in the "studio") but I'm limited to only being awake for the first two matches/segment each day and I can only do one per day as it takes my clunky computer about 3 hours to compile the video and a similar amount of time to upload the finished product to youtube. I'm planning to record USA1 vs Italy tonight. I've since uploaded the file to filesonic for anyone that prefers to download it rather than watch it on youtube.

I had my first ever attempt at making a video of a vugraph presentation last night which I've posted to youtube: I tried something a bit different and arranged the panes on my desktop to include the streaming video feed from the playing room and I used the audio from the onsite commentators rather than the BBO commentators (sorry Roland) as it was coming through a bit more clearly and also had a nice tie-in with the video feed for things like reading out explanations from written notes, audience applause, etc.

That was for the APBF Congress. As far as I know the venue and dates for the 2012 World Youth Teams Championships are still to be determined and I've heard rumours of several potential countries, including China, since Cuba fell through. I believe there will an official announcement from the WBF during the course of the Bermuda Bowl.

At the time I felt (and commented) that passing 3NT isn't really a logical alternative for East given that partner couldn't make a penalty double of 3♣ which strongly suggests that ♣ are not double-stopped so 3NT will only make if ♠ are running in which case 4♠ will be just as likely to make and may well be superior on a lot of hands. However, I am persuaded by the poll taken by the director in which 5/6 players (presumably of comparable standard to East) passed given the hesitation. This seems to be irrefutable evidence that Law 16B1(b) is satisfied: "A logical alternative action is one that, among the class of players in question and using the methods of the partnership, would be given serious consideration by a significant proportion of such players, of whom it is judged some might select it". There is a danger,of course, that polled players may have a tendancy to give the ultra-ethical response to these sorts of hesitation problems, but the decision to wind the contract back to 3NT appears to be soundly based so I don't think Egypt would have much chance getting the decision reversed on appeal. Notwithstanding the ruling in relation to the hesitation, I would have thought South's defence to 4♠ ought to be brought into question in the context of Law 12C1(b): "If, subsequent to the irregularity, the non-offending side has contributed to its own damage by a serious error (unrelated to the infraction) or by wild or gambling action it does not receive relief in the adjustment for such part of the damage as is self-inflicted. The offending side should be awarded the score that it would have been allotted as the consequence of its infraction only". South has seen his partner run from 2♥X which must strongly indicate (if not promise) a singleton or void ♥ but failed to lead ♥A and another to beat 4♠ immediately and then at trick 5 when North switched to the ♥6 he had a second chance to play North for a ♥ shortage which he failed to seize. Now at the local club duplicate or even some more serious regional or national events this defence probably wouldn't be classed as a "serious error" but we are talking about a Bermuda Bowl round-robin match here where the expected standard of play is somewhat higher. The official scoresheet has an IMP result in Israel's favour of 35-27 which would ordinarily translate to a 17-13 VP result, however the official VP score is 16.34 - 12.67 (total of 29.01) but this unusual VP score seems to be as a result of a 1 VP slow penalty being 2/3 attributed to Israel. My inclination is to have Israel keep the table result of 4♠E= and have Egypt wear the adjusted score of 3NTW-1. This would result in Egypt losing 27-35 (13 VPs) and Israel losing 31-35 (14 VPs) which, after the slow play penalties would have a final VP score of Israel 13.34 and Egypt 12.67