mrdct

Why is this a good idea at all? It seems like this takes a long time (adding to logistic costs and making everyone more tired) with no compelling positive reasons to me, other than making some people happy who think they are so unlucky that they are constantly not good enough to get on the best teams. The original poster was from Belarus and I suspect the vast majority of its top bridge players live in or near it main city, Minsk, so I thought the Victorian example would be of interest. I haven't fully analysed it, but my general observation is that the self-formed Pennant team wins the open team play-off about 80-90% of the time and generally performs much better than Butler teams in the target event. Also, the years in which a "surprise" team has won the Pennant generally coincides with the years in which the Butler team wins the play-off so it is a good safety measure.

I'd like to talk about the way in which the Victorian open team is selected which, imho, is a really good method. Victoria is one of eight states and territories in Australia which contests the annual Australian National Championships which is one of the oldest bridge events in the world which has been played every year since 1933 except for a break during World War II. Victoria has about 7,000 registered bridge players of which 95% of the potential representative players reside in the capital city, Melbourne. Generally, there are two streams that lead to an eventual head-to-head play-off between the Butler Team and the Pennant Team. The Pennant Team comes from the State Teams Championship ("the Pennant") which has swiss qualifying played over seven Wednesday nights (7 x 28-board matches with field of about 30 teams) from which the top six play a further round-robin on Saturday and then the top two contest a 64-board final on Sunday. A couple of months later the Butler Trials are held, with Stage 1 being open to all-comers (although in a practical sense it is limited to residents of Melbourne) and played in a swiss-pairs format over four Wednesday nights (8 x 14-board matches) to reduce the initial field of about 60 pairs to 14 pairs to which 2 pairs from outside of Melbourne are added to form a field of 16 pairs to contest Stage 2. Stage 2 is played over two weekends as a complete round-robin after which the top 3 pairs become the Butler Team. Members of the Pennant Team are not allowed to play in Stage 2. There is a further complication in years in which Victoria won the preceding ANC which allows that team, if it remains intact, to participate in a three-way play-off with the Pennant Team and the Butler Team. There is also provision that if a winning team at the ANC plays intact in the Pennant and wins it, they get a right to force an extra 32 boards if they are trailing the Butler Team after 64 boards of the play-off. The good feature of this selection method is that you have a good safety measure to deal with either a weak team fluking a win in the Pennant or the Butler Trials throwing up a weak team. It is also a good money-spinner for the Victoria Bridge Association filling up 11 nights of the calendar.

I think there is a strong presumption that declarer will most definately play the hand in an inferior and careless manner, so unless he gets a ♥ lead I'm going to assume no ♥ finesse and probably an inferior line in ♦ also. It seems to me that he's going to have to come to 2♣, 1♦, 1♥ and 2♠ so 3 down and a hefty procedural penalty for being a dick. I'd also make sure the incident gets reported to the recorder and the national authority. My alternative ruling is that the "claim statement" constitutes evidence of an intended line to take as few tricks as is possible even with irrational play. In that case declarer can probably be held to 3 tricks (2♣ and 1♥) if he underruffs the 3rd and 4th round of ♥ and leads low ♦ out of hand twice. We've all seen careless underuffs before so it's not completley beyond the realms of possibility.

It would be at least 20 years since I last saw a swiss teams event with hand shuffled boards.

Over the last 10 years or so imp-scored swiss pairs has become the overwhelmingly most popular form of two-session pairs event in Australia with many, if not most, congresses (two day red-point bridge event typically with pairs on Saturday and teams on Sunday) ditching the traditional matchpoints pairs event for imp-scored swiss pairs. This format, where you are still matchpointing across the field, I haven't seen before; but it might appeal to players who still want to risk their contracts for overtricks and play in anti-percentage NT contracts.

That's a really good idea. A possible exception I would allow is if another player at the table has taken no action for more than 60 seconds.

An issue germane to this discussion is the merits of cross-imping as compared to scoring-up against an average (with or without the exclusion of outliers). I'm still yet to hear a convincing argument as to why cross-imping is superior. Interestingly, I was informed by the scorer of Australia's Youth Butler Trials (which changed from scoring-up against an average to cross-imping a few years ago) that after rescoring the event using both methods, the final ranking was exactly the same for the three years that he recomputed everything; so I expect there isn't much difference. Youth Butler Trials might not be a great example as it's quite a small field (5 or 6 tables) with fairly significant variation in the standard of the players, so I'd be keen to hear of any similar analysis that might have been done in events such as the Cavendish. Of course there are hundreds of thousands of hands that have been played 16 times in the MBC of BBO that could be similarly analysed. As I stated previously, my gut feel is that there probably isn't much in it so I prefer to score-up against an average but exclude some outliers to reduce the volatility. Scoring-up against an average, I think 12 results (16 scores less 4 outliers) is quite sufficient and has the advantage on BBO that the scoring is very timely.

I don't think I've played in the Main Bridge Club since this was implemented, but with the frequency with which opponents generally turn-over I'm pretty sure I'm going to find this quite annoying. Perhaps a better idea would be for there to be a system-generated redeal request that needs to be agreed-to by a player from each pair such that a bit of human judgement can be used as to whether or not play can continue. If a new player has arrived at trick 2 or 3, it's usually possible to brief the new player on what's happened for the first few tricks, and if it's a few tricks further on most of the time declarer can claim.

I think 16 boards is more than enough results to compile a datum, but a few outliers should definately be excluded; probably top 2 and bottom 2 and then calculate the average against the average of the middle 12 results rounded to the nearest 10. I don't have a proper mathematical argument for it, but I prefer imping against a fixed datum rather than cross-imping.

The concept of "held" is an interesting one complicated in this case by the fact that the bidding box was on the table only a couple of inches away from where the bids were being placed and the fact that the player in question is quite a fidgety sort of player so nothing is really stationary until he lets go of it. At the end of the day it pretty much came down to the table director's interpretation of the recreation of North's actions and when it came to the appeals committee, the chair of the appeals committee opined that in such circumstances the appeals committee will always be very much inclined to rely on the table director's interpretation of the facts. Accordingly, the appeals committee dismissed the appeal. It then became a question of whether or not to issue an Appeal Without Merit fine, for which the relevant Australian regulations are: An Appeals Advisor (nominated by the directing staff) was consulted prior to appealing, who was in fact the author of the bidding box regulations, and that Appeals Advisor gave somewhat ambiguous advice that he felt that an appeals committee would probably side with the table director, but the bidding box regulations have never be tested and East-West might get lucky. Importantly, the Appeals Advisor most certainly did not advise against appealing; but it's debatable whether or not by inference that can be taken as an indication that the appeal has "a reasonable chance of success". Possibly also relevant to the issue of whether or not the appeal was frivolous was the material number of IMPs and VPs involved. As the slam was missed in the other room, a 26 IMP swing was at stake which translates to 5 VPs which turned to be the exact number of VPs the East-West team missed out on qualifying for the finals by.

I think this is quite a good idea, but should be a non-default setting for the table host to select only when they want to replicate playing with screens. The main benefit I see is that players so inclined can get the experience of playing with screens (which to me is the most enjoyable mode of play) even if they are never likely to play with screens in real life. If this is going to be implemented, however, I think it should be done as close to reality as possible, including: A diagonal line across the table indicating that screens are in use. During the auction and until the opening lead is made, players cannot chat to the table (they can only chat to their screenmate). Screenmates alert and describe the bids of both themsleves and their partner (this will probably be a significant software development challenge as alert bids will need to have two explanations captured - N->E and S->W). Differing explanations will only be automatically revealed at the end of the hand, although the declaring side will still be obliged to alert the defence to any misinformation as soon as it becomes apparent. North and South will have an additional button to click to "pass the bidding tray". Players see their screemates' bids in real time, but only see the bids from the other side of the screen two at a time when the virtual bidding tray is passed under the screen. Probably something easier to implement which would reduce tempo-related UI, would be to simply have bids revealed to each player as if screens were in place, but leave everything else as it is now (principally each player self-alerts). If we go down this path, I thing a more robust connection status indicator is needed.

90 degrees is probably about right as he was just about to lay the wad of bidding cards on top of the existing 1♣ bidding card and was holding them more-or-less facing West. I don't think there is any question about him still thinking about the bid as he pulled the bidding cards out of his box as he freely admitted that he fully intended to bid 4♠ but just caught himself before he laid the bidding cards on the table. It was quite a unique situation due to the use of a left-handed bidding box that was on the table and him placing his bids right next to his bidding box as he made each bid. To further complicate matters, North was a bit fidgety and fumbly with all of his bids during the match but to his ethical credit he gave a fair demonstration of his action to the director and was completely cool about the director call and the appeal.

In some jurisdictions their may be a Recorder to whom you can report the matter also.

[hv=d=n&v=b&n=sk8762h7dakcaj543&w=sqj5hkqjt653d7cqt&e=sa943h942dq6543c9&s=stha8djt982ck8762]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] North-South are playing a strong club system and have the following auction up to the point when the director is called: 1♣(1):pass:2♠(2):3♥ 4♠(3) (1): 15+ any. (2): Both minors 6-10hcp at least 5+/5+ but alerted late and simultanteously to an attempt to withdraw the 4♠ bid. (3): Later described by both North and South as unequivocally to play (i.e. South would certainly have passed it). A few other important facts: North was using a left-handed bidding box which he had sitting on the North-West corner of the table and he uses his left hand to extract bidding cards which he places quite close (around 5cm or 2 inches) from his bidding box as he makes his bids. The 4♠ bid was held about 1cm or 2cm (less than an inch) above the exisitng 1♣ bid in a position where West could see the face of the bidding cards, but neither East nor South could see anything other than a reasonably thick wad of bidding cards. When questioned by the director, West expressed uncertainty about whether he saw 3♠ or 4♠ due to the way that North was holding the bidding cards. North freely admitted that when he pulled the 4♠ bid out of the box he intended to bid 4♠ but then suddenly remembered the correct conventional meaning of 2♠ and belatedly alerted and put his bidding cards back in his box. The director was called at this point and ascertained that South had not seen what North had bid and after a few minutes of deliberation and consulation with other directors returned to the table with a copy of the recently amended Australian bidding box regulations in use for the very first time in this event: The Director first allowed West the option of changing his 3♥ call due to the late alert (which West declined to do) and then allowed North to substitute the 4♠ bid with his desired call (after which North-South motored into a cold 6♣ contract). Adding insult to injury, the director was kind enough to inform East-West that had the previous regulations still been in place (which essentially deemed any call "made with intent" to be irrevokable) he would've ruled the other way with a result of 4♠-2. East-West appealed arguing that 4♠ was a call that ought to have been "considered made" and was not able to be changed without penalty as the bid was made intentionally. How do think the appeals committee should rule?

Jurisdiction could be important here as in some places there are separate bidding box regulations that could come into play in situations like this where the issue of whether or not he grabbed the card "with intent" could actually require him to make the call that he's now seeking to substitute.

Do we have any information as to the jurisdiction? Are they cueing 1st or 2nd controls or just 1st round controls? If East has shown a limit raise with 1st round control in ♦, I think it would be illogical for West not to make a further move towards slam.

What is the best way to play AK4 - 108653 for 4 tricks assuming unlimited entries? If you are really keen, why?

Irrespective of the result, Ponting was stupid to bat first.

Did you not read the post directly above this one? It states what is pretty obvious, that dummy did not know until the end of the trick that her LHO would be on lead to the next trick. So what? There are other rules to do with major penalty cards. What penalty card? There is an exposed card on the table but it's not a penalty card until the real director says so.

Explain to me what possible suggestion regarding the play of the hand is contained in "good luck, partner". As opposed to your other two examples, which clearly do convey suggestions about how to play the hand. You are basically saying that any utterance other than one of the Fifteen Words is extraneous, and therefor illegal. Extraneous I agree with. Illegal, no. I have not said that saying "good luck partner" would convey any suggestion as to how to play the hand. I said that such a statement is not authorised under the Laws of Bridge. In the second part of my post which you didn't quote, I made my position on goodwill sentiments fairly clear in that in my opinion they would not be in breach of Law 43A1c. Law 73A1 states "communication between partners during the auction and play shall be effected only by means of calls and plays". Accordingly, a goodwill sentiment such as "good luck partner" would be a breach of that Law. Of course nobody in their right mind would try to argue as such at the table.

All I can say is Wisconsin Tourism Foundation.

That is exactly what the facts reported by blackshoe suggest as by his own admission between his "oops" and dummy's comment he did not have time to explain declarer's rights so obviously the period of time it took for the last two cards of the trick to be played was extremely short. It is ludicrous to suggest that dummy was lying in wait for the opportune moment to interject to gain some advantage for his side. Perhaps dummy was waiting for someone else to pipe-up, but when nobody did took the appropriate action to prevent the irregularity of the director not being called to the table. We don't have any details of the hand or how many tricks there were to go, so I guess it is also plausible that dummy might have felt if her side won the trick the hand would be over and the penalty card would be irrelevant so was initially comfortable to let the ball go through to the keeper, but once it was known that lead penalties could come into play, she quite reasonable sought to prevent the infraction of no director being called.

The Laws on dummy's rights and dummy's limitations do not confer any rights on dummy to convey sentiments of good luck so strictly speaking saying "good luck partner" would be an infraction in exactly same way that "take your time", "remember to be careful about bad breaks" or "don't forget to draw trumps" would be. Personally, I wouldn't even dream of calling the director on a dummy saying "good luck partner" but there is grey line somewhere where gratuitous comments by dummy cease to be goodwill sentiments and become participation in the play which is prohibited under Law 43A1©.

Rubbish. What if dummy hadn't said a word and then declarer said "wait a minute I fear that we may have breached the Law requiring the director to be called after an irregularity so we better call him now to prevent that irregularity". When you turn up at the table are you going to say, "sorry once an irregularity has been perpetrated it is too late to prevent it"? The timeframe specified in the Laws is "the Director should be summoned at once when attention is drawn to an irregularity". Blackshoe has already indicated that the timeframe between the "oops" and dummy's comment was so short that it did not afford him sufficient time to explain declarer's rights. Obviously "at once" can't mean instantly as humans need to time to cogitate what's going on and then come to the realisation that a director is required.

Is there any chance of going back to the old version of the mobile viewer to be able to kibitz teams matches and MBC tables from the iPhone?