mrdct

I agree with this ruling. East hasn't made a pass on Board 2 if she simply hadn't picked up her pass card from Board 1, so this is a simple case of South opening out of turn and West accpeting it and everything proceeds normally from there. With that ruling there is quite an interesting AI/UI situation as East knows that West can't scrounge-up a 3rd seat opening at favourable vul which could help East quite a bit if defending or having to judge in the auction whether or not to invite game/slam and as this information relates to an infraction (paying insufficient attention to the game) it's probably UI. Similarly, South knows that North doesn't have a 4th seat red vs green opening (rule of 15 and all that sort of stuff) which again is extra information that South wouldn't have gained if he's not opened out of turn. As blackshoe said, this group can easily turn a simple ruling into a complex one!

That's $90 per hour - not bad coin for a task that an unskilled person can be taught in a few minutes. Although I guess if it's all rolled up with the capital costs of the boards, cards, cases and dealing machine and they print your hand records and schlep everything around it's not too unreasonable. We are lucky at my local club (a not-for-profit, two-session per week, unpaid playing director, set-up and pack-up operation at the senior citizens centre) in that we own our dealing machine and apart from some minor maintenance the only cost is the guy who deals gets his table fees waived.

Everywhere you go there will be good things and bad things about the way tournaments and club games are run. I think there are some great things about the way American tournaments are run which I wish would be implemented in my country, but there are a few sub-optimal things also. We can all learn from each other, but economics will generally rule and if the demand for pre-dealt boards isn't sufficient to justify the additional cost then organisers and club owners are probably quite right to avoid it. I'm not actually aware of any, but I assume that a few of them must exist somewhere (Australia is quite a big place) but I could be wrong. If a club here was in a competitive environment (e.g. in one of the major capital cities) I think they would really struggle with numbers if they didn't provide hand records. That isn't entirely true. To recover the additional costs the club would either need to charge higher table fees (and hope that the players aren't overly price-sensitive and reduce the amount that they play) or increase their attendance. It's really no different to any decisions a club owner makes about a wide a range of equipment and facility options: cheap chairs or comfortable chairs, better lighting, rigid tables, coffee machine, new bidding boxes, new playing cards, new boards, more cleaning, expert talks, website, timely detailed scores, etc. It all comes down to a cost/benefit analysis. Obviously we don't have the same volume of major tournament that America has, but our major events such the Gold Coast Congress are up around 8000 tables these days. Board duplication for major tournaments here is usually contracted out to people/organisations that do it in fairly high volumes and in cases where physical boards are being recycled during an event, a relatively low-paid person is brought in to do that. There's definately a cost, but the directors aren't usually involved unless it's a really small event and the director is doing the lot (caddying, scoring, directing and dealing) which is often the case for weekend congresses with 20-30 tables in play each day. I think you are being a bit harsh. I never said anything critical about American bridge and merely outlined the way things are in my country. I'm not saying having pre-dealt board ubiquitously is necessarily superior, it's just that once a country has gone down that path the players rapidly develop an expectation that they will get always get pre-dealt boards and most people here do find it a better bridge experience to walk away from any session with a hand record whether it's a local club duplicate or a national event.

There are a few problems with that: 1. The BBO software doesn't have the capability to broadcast on delay so the only way of doing this would be to manually record the play and then do a virtual broadcast after the stipulated time delay. This would basically double the labour cost for the operators which I don't think would fly with the convenors. 2. With boards shared around 6 tables, there will be on table that won't play boards 1 and 2 until the very end of the session, so if the delay is to be completely effective it will need to be a 2 hour delay which just won't work. 3. Like any sport, vugraph is best watched live to get everything in tempo and not be tempted to jump online to see the live score. It's largely for that reason that I never watch Friday night football (which is on delay in Australia) as I just can't stop myself from checking the live score.

Weighted rulings are extremely rare, particularly in club duplicates, so I think the benefits of using a scoring program that everyone is happy with far outweigh the odd minor inaccuracy when a weighted ruling crops-up once in a blue moon. At my local club we find that the seemless integration between scorebridge, bridgepads, bridgewebs and the ABF masterpoint centre just make everything a breeze. It rarely takes any more than 30 seconds at the end of the session to attach the hand record file, upload the webpage and email everyone in the session - probably less than 10 clicks - and then at month end the masterpoints get sent off just as easily and whenever we have a visitor we have a current version of the ABF player database in the system to pick up their ABF number and masterpoint status. My only peeve with scorebridge is the lack of Deep Finese analysis on the travellers.

I'd be surprised if it ever makes much difference to the result if you calculate a weighted result strictly according to the rules compared to coming with a approximation being a "real" bridge score that you can enter into your scoring program. I think I had my earlier datum calculation wrong as the results on the board were: +100, -140, -50, -50, -50, -50, -110. Excluding the top and bottom, gives an average of 60 which by convention would round to -60. On each of the potential outcomes going into the weighted ruling, the datum is unchanged as the substituted score (+100, +110 or -50) will always be an outlier. So the only result affected is the table in question which gets 25% of 4 imps, 50% of 5 imps and 25% of 0 imps for a net of +3.5 imps compared to +4 imps for the table result and +4 imps if scored up as +70. So in reality it makes very little difference; particularly if the half-imp gets rounded-up which is probably what your other scoring program did. I use scorebridge in my local bridge club and whenever we have a weighted ruling I just come up with a real bridge result as close as possible to that ruling and run with that, but I guess I better check with my National Authority now to see if that's kosher as we may be rendering our sessions ineligible for masterpoints or some other calamitous outcome by not doing it strictly by the book. I think far from being a "complete waste of everyone's time", this thread has highlighted a serious practical problem with issuing weighted rulings in club duplicates where scoring programs simply can't cope with it.

That is precisely how "weak" is defined in section 171.1 of the EBU White Book.

I would've thought that you simply replace 3♠E-1 (+100) with 1♦N= (+70) and scorebridge will calculate a new datum and re-imp the board. Assuming the datum calculations drop the outliers, the datum won't actually change in this case (NS -50 if the top and bottom scores are excluded) so the only change is you score 3 imps on the board instead of 4 imps which doesn't actually affect the finishing position of either of the pairs involved. Although if you run with my suggested procedural penalty, say 3 imps, that will drop you down to =8th. Nick, the path to redemption begins with admitting one's wrong-doing. The consensus is quite clear that the explanation of "weak" was an infraction and the sooner you come to terms with that the easier it will be for you to reconnect with your inner being and move on with the important task of developing a more sensible raise structure in competitive auctions by a passed-hand.

Delays wouldn't work as the event runs on a very tight schedule with the swiss draw being completed just a few minutes after the last bridgemate results are in. The matches are 14-boards with each set of 14-boards shared between 6 tables so each table starts with a different board.

Most people I know play mandatory courtesy raises with 3-card support after a non-forcing change of suit and in this case with AQx support, a void, undisclosed extra length in ♦ and green vs red, I couldn't imagine any remotely sensible bridge player not raising to 3♥ or 4♥.

The Victor Champion Cup, one of Australia's premier teams events that earns playoff qualifying points towards national selection, is being played in a couple of weeks time in Melbourne. It is a 10-round swiss teams event and when the music stops the winner is declared. As is the practice with all events in Australia, pre-duplicated boards are used with the same hands being played across the field which has several advantages such as everyone gets the same volatility in the boards each round, people can discuss the hands with each other over dinner and datum results are produced so individual pairs can get some assessment of their performance without the millstone of teammates dragging them down. For several years there has been BBO coverage of the leading table for the last six rounds which has proven quite popular and I'd like to think has had a part in the fairly significant growth in attendance over recent years. Last year there was a complaint from a fairly high-profile bridge columnist that with the proliferation of iPhones the related security risks interfere with the integrity of the event. Like most jurisdictions, Australian tournament regulations require electronic devices to be switched-off in the playing area but it's hard to police the guy who might slip off to the toilet half-way through the match, look at a few boards and come back to the table and get everything right. What the ABF has decided to do is the match being played on BBO is going to use a different set of boards and in the final two-rounds the different set will be used by the top-four matches and the players in those matches will have a further restriction that they have to lodge their electronic devices with the convenor; I guess using a simlar process to what occurs at NABCs. It seems like a fairly sensible approach to the problem, but I'm interested in what other people might think.

It seems so. I'm not aware of any place on earth where the expression "weak" when describing a passed-hand encompasses an 11-count with primary support for partner's suit and a sound stopper in the opponents' suit. You might have got away with it if you'd described it as "weaker than a 2♦ raise"; but you can't just say "weak" and expect your opponents to contemplate South having such a good hand. There is nothing wrong with the 3♦ call, it's just the dodgey explanation that need to be spanked. Reconsidering my ruling, I guess some weight might need to be given to East still bidding 3♠ even when given the correct explanation of 3♦ as whilst being alerted to the possibility that South might have a good hand might reduce East's inclination to bid, it won't eliminate it. Something like 25% table result, 50% 3♦= and 25% 3♦-1 which would turn NS' +100 into +70. I think I'll slap a procedural penalty on North for inadequate disclosure now too, particularly given his lack of remorse for the infraction.

That's an interesting attitude which certainly seems to be the prevailing point-of-view in ACBL-land and no doubt saves the tournament convenors quite a bit of money in dealing costs and volume of boards required to run an event. I haven't played bridge in Europe for several years, but I can certainly say that in Australia there would be virtually no congresses, national events or state events that don't use pre-dealt boards and I'd say the vast majority of bridge clubs these days either have a dealing machine or get their boards dealt by a third-party such that the overwhelming majority of club duplicates played in this country are with pre-dealt boards. I'd suggest that if someone put on a tournament here and asked the players to shuffle and deal there would be people asking for their money back and a lot less people turning up for the next event run by the same convenor. Whilst you might consider "stupid small events" unworthy of pre-dealt boards, if anything it's those events which provide good opportunities for lower-flight players to improve through going through the hand records and discussing them with their partners and more experienced players. Quite a lot of clubs in Australia, particularly the privately-run clubs, do formal talks after the duplicate to quickly whiz through a few interesting hands which is a bit of a selling point. I think it costs about $15-$20 to get a set of boards dealt, so you only need one extra table showing up because they like hand-records to make it profitable to do it. If I was running a private bridge club, I'd hand-duplicate the boards if necessary until I could afford to buy a dealing machine. As it happens, I was playing in a little country event a couple of weeks ago with my daughter and because of an odd number of teams they needed to have a triangle which brought boards 33-40 into play which came to the table flushed* so we had to shuffle and deal. This was the first time since 1993 that I'd played bridge with hand-dealt cards. *As an aside this was quite funny situation as the cards in the flushed boards were face down so we initially all took our hands out and sorted them (I had the ♣ suit) and we all had poker faces except for the clown sitting east who decided to call the director and spoil everyone's fun (especially his partner's who held the ♠ suit). I went a little bit Secretary Bird on him suggesting that it was inappropriate for him to call the director and give UI to his partner that he is holding an extraordinary hand and that what he should've done is shut-up and bid and play the hand and then when we get to the next board call the director and say "I think I recognise this hand".

Well there is a school of thought along the lines of "eight ever nine never" so it's not beyond the realms of possibilities and it needs to be given some weighting when determining the adjusted score. The problem is that we will never know, so judgement needs to be applied as to what the range of likely outcomes would be. On the board in question (board 27 from the Crowborough Bridge Club Monday night duplicate) it was only played in ♦ two times and both times in 4♦ so it's hard to draw any conclusions about how it might have been played in 3♦ at your table.

Well that changes everything in my mind. Your alert and explanation of "weak" was manifestly inadequate and misleading and this is now clearly a case of misinformation so I adjust to 3♦ with a weighted mix of making/non-making. The way you have subsequently described your agreement seems more like a "mixed raise"; although the fact that it could be "very weak" adds a bit of a twist. The bottom line, however, is that you didn't adequately disclose your agreements to East-West and they were damaged. Also, nothing to do with the ruling but I don't really understand why South wouldn't want to show herself as a maximum passed hand with ♦ support and ♠ stopper - unless it was a cunning trap to induce East-West to compete to 3♠ over the seemingly weak 3♦ bid with a plan then double 3♠ for penalties. A legitimate strategy provided you don't have partnership experience/agreement to employ that technique.

The director needs establish whether or not this is a misbid/psyche or misexplanation. The first thing I'd do is ask South why she bid 3♦ but I'd also ask North if this sort of hand conforms to their partnership agreement for a 3♦ raise in competition by a passed hand. Do North-South have a convention card? The facts as outlined in the OP state that NS play "inverted minors (in and out of competition)" and that NS have been "playing this way for years" seem fairly compelling, so unless North or South say something self-incriminating I'd be inclined to treat this as a misbid and let the table result stand. If, on the other hand, the facts point towards North-South having an understanding that this sort of hand does conform to their partnership agreement, I'd adjust to North-South playing in 3♦ with some weighting between making, one down and two down - probably 60%, 35% and 5% for NS +40.

Imagine the person sitting opposite is an irregular partner of low to moderate club duplicate standard who has never heard of the concept of 2/1 GF. One can assume that 3♠ is stronger than a non-forcing 2♠ and one can also eliminate some hand-types that would bid 3NT over 2♦ but beyond that you have little or no conventional agreements with partner and pretty much play seat-of-the-pants natural bidding.

2♠ is 100% non-forcing. 3♠ is something like 6♠ and 16-18hcp or so, but the East-West pair in question are a pair of little-old-ladies without much science to their system.

[hv=pc=n&w=s2hkj62dkqj7652ck&d=n&v=n&b=5&a=p1sp2dp3sp]133|200|EW playing 5-card Majors. 2♦ is 10+ hcp natural. 2♠ would've been non-forcing. IMP-pairs. Weak field.[/hv]

The director did, in fact, adjust the score to 4♠E-1 which was a favourable outcome for North-South with the datum on the board being -510 with only small number of pairs getting to slam in this fairly weak field. The basis of the director's ruling that was that in the absence of the UI, West must assume that East has extra strength and a self-sustaining ♠ suit; so 4♠ is the most likely makeable game from West's perspective, particularly with an aceless hand. The other issue here is that East is also holding UI from West's attempt to correct the misexplanation before the auction was over and if West had kept her poker face when bidding 5♦, East may well bid 5♠ if she still believes 2♦ was a ♠ raise. It's probably an interesting poll question to toss around with the West hand in isolation on the given auction without any alerts and extraneous comments. I'll pose the poll question in a different sub-forum and see what I get.

The Bendigo swiss pairs was played today with a healthy 60-pair field (the venue's capacity) marking the return of the Bendigo congress after a 20+ year hiatus. The field was typical for a country congress with mostly mediocre non-metropolitan pairs with a handful of decent, but not top-shelf, pairs from Melbourne in the field. I was South partnering my 14-year-old son and we were probably (in my biased opinion) one of the best two or three pairs in the field. I'd never come across East-West before, but they were a couple of little-old-ladies and seemed to be an irregular and/or recent partnership. [hv=pc=n&s=skq85ht87d4cqt765&w=s2hkj62dkqj7652ck&n=s64h54dt98caj9432&e=sajt973haq93da3c8&d=n&v=n&b=5&a=p1sp2dp3sp5dppp]399|300[/hv] North-South were playing a short-club system with transfers, transfer advances, variable NT and a few other gadgets and in the previous few boards had had several auctions with multiple artifical bids, all of which had been alerted using the correct procedure of drawing a circle around partner's bid and saying "alert". It was apparent that East-West were not overly conversant with correct alerting procedures and the greater than usual frequency of alerting going on which may have left them feeling an obligation to make sure they alert anything remotely artificial. They probably play mostly in club duplicates with everyone playing plain vanila standard and nothing alertable ever cropping-up. After North's second pass, East belatedly drew a circle around 2♦ and said "I'm not sure if I'm meant to alert this". South said "if it's artificial you should alert it". East said "it shows ♠ support but not necessarily a ♦ suit but ♦ will be her best suit outside of ♠". South said, "yeah that should be alerted - we should get the director as North might be able to get his bid back". North said, "I'm still passing" so the director wasn't called and auction proceeded. When the bidding came back to West, she was clearly flustered and asked the table "do I call the director when there has been a misexplanation" and South said, "just finish the auction and if your side becomes the declaring side that's the time to clarify any misexplanations". West then bid 5♦ and North and East swifty passed and before South had time to act, the director was at the table to report on a ruling from an earlier hand. South said to the director, "I'm going to pass, but could you have a look at this board too?" and proceeded to outline the facts noted above with East-West agreeing to what transpired. 5♦ made an overtrick. At the end of the hand, the director was called back to the table (as requested when he was there a few minuted prior) and asked West why she bid 5♦. Somewhat self-incriminatingly, West said that after the misexplanation of 2♦ she felt she needed to jump straight to 5♦ as anything else could be misunderstood by her partner who thinks she has ♠ support. The director took it away and returned after the next hand (last of the match) to report his ruling. How would you rule?

If we ran some simulations, I'm quite sure that 4♠ would come out on top as the winning option in the majority of cases where my vulnerable opponents have 22-27 hcp, a major fit, bid a game with apparent intent to make and I'm looking at a pretty certain minimum of 7 tricks for a -500 save. However, that isn't the test here. The question is does North's BIT suggest that 4♠ would be better than other logical alternative (e.g. pass)? Pass is going to win whenever 4♠x is going for 800 or when we can beat 4♥ and there will surely be a reasonably portion of hands where that is case; but this BIT by North undoubtedly tips the scales towards 4♠ being the superior choice.

North's BIT means that he was thinking about doing something other than pass. This could only be double or 4♠. We probably need to know a little bit more about North's bidding style. Would North routinely raise 1♠ with 3-card support and a 3 or 4 count? It's kind of hard to think of too many hands that North could hold which would be thinking about penalising 4♥ but couldn't find a bid over 1♠. On that basis, I think the BIT likely suggests a really weak hand with 3-card or perhaps ♠10x which certainly makes 4♠ attractive by South. I think pass is a logical alternative for South at matchpoints as there are decent chances of beating 4♥ if partner just has one of the ♦K or ♣A. I don't allow 4♠. South perhaps dug his own grave by not bidding 4♠ the previosu round.

There was some some brief consideration by the AC of giving a weighted ruling, but it was thought that if South did double 4♥, East would be off the hook to run to 5♦ which, when doubled, yields the same result as 4♥ undoubled. The AC also had some time constraints as the decision was holding-up the prize giving, most people had a 1-2 hour drive to get home and the venue's staff wanted to clear the room for another function.

This appeal comes from an imp-scored teams event without screens. All four players are of reasonable club-standard but lack experience in higher-level competition. [hv=pc=n&s=sa765hj986dakca42&w=skj3ht2dqj8ct9875&n=sqt2hk743d7ckqj63&e=s984haq5dt965432c&d=e&v=n&b=2&a=2dp2hppp]399|300[/hv] 2♦ was alerted by West and, upon enquiry prior to South's initial pass, described as "24-25hcp". 2♥ was alerted by East, but no explanation was sought until after East's pass with the description given of "negative less than 7hcp no interest in slam". The table result was 2♥W-4 for NS +200. East-West had two hand-written ABF Simple System Cards (the shorter version that doesn't include responses to first round openings) at the table, both of which had "24-25 points" recorded against 2♦. East-West also play weak twos in the majors and represented to the TD that the auction 2♥:2♠ is by agreement non-forcing in their methods. The TD applied Law 21B1(b) as he was not persuaded by the System Card and representations by East-West as to their agreements and therefore decided to treat the case as a misexplanation rather than a misbid. The TD went on to apply Law 21B3 and issued an adjusted score of 4♥S= for NS +620 taking the view that the defence available to defeat the contract was most unlikely to be found in practice at the table. East-West appealled on the basis that they believe they would've defeated 4♥ and the awarding of a vulnerable game to North-South in an auction clouded by an innocent misbid, not misexplantion, was unfair and unreasonable. East-West further maintained that their completed ABF Simple System Card was more than ample evidence that 2♦ was a mistaken call not a misexplanation. The Appeals Committee agreed that this was not a misexplanation, but believed that East had unlawfully taken advantage of the UI from West's alert and explanation of 2♦ in passing 2♥ with 3♥ being a clear logical alternative holding a void and AQx support for partner's apparently natural and non-forcing 2♥ call. The Appeals Committee also considered whether or not South's pass of 2♥ in the balancing position was a SEWoG under Law 12C1(b). South maintained that he felt that with West and North holding yarboroughs it was still plausible for East to have the strong hand. The AC felt that when 2♥ came back to South it was obvious that East did not hold 24-25hcp and it was borderline "wild or gambling" to pass knowing LHO is <7hcp and RHO is a weak two in ♦; however having regard to South's relative inexperience and the confusion caused by the mistaken call, the AC decided that the damage ought not be attributed to a SEWoG. The Appeals Committee considered whether or not there had been a breach of ABF System Regulation 9.6 which prohibits the psyching of a conventional bid which is unequivocally forcing and systematically indicative of the strongest possible opening hand. The AC was satisfied that East did not open 2♦ with the intent to deceive her opponents and the call could therefore not be considered psychic. The Appeals Committee concluded that had East called 3♥, East-West would have finished in 4♥ undoubled and awarded an adjusted score of NS+300. In addition, the AC fined the offending team 1VP for flagrant use of UI. Do you think the Appeals Committee got this right?