McBruce

[hv=d=e&v=n&n=st4hqj65daj92cqt5&w=sq972h9dq8654ck42&e=sa83h73dkt7caj976&s=skj65hakt842d3c83]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] Dealer East opened 1♣. South overcalled 1♥. West made a negative double. North made a support-showing 2♣ cuebid. East made a lead-directing double and South bid 4♥. West began with a club to the ten and jack. East returned a club to the king and West returned a club to the queen and ace, ruffed by South. South now led a small spade from hand, seeing a singleton ten in dummy, the 4♠ hidden behind the Q♥. One of the defenders, probably West, won the trick and returned a trump, but South began crossruffing spades and diamonds. By the time the missing card appeared with four tricks left, South had revoke-ruffed three spades in dummy and could actually ruff the T♠ in hand, losing only two clubs and a spade. How do you rule (without 12C1c)? All four players are fairly experienced and this is a Flight A IMP League match between two teams who probably won't win the league but will compete reasonably well.

We locally (ACBL northern california) are stricter than your -1 IMP/board for this. If teams sit the wrong way in a swiss or round robin match scored by VP then the VP score is 0 to 0 and neither team gets any VP. This happened in a bracketed round robin sectional tournament recently where two of the best teams in the top bracket played the same direction in the first match which lead to a much tighter final result. "we sat the same way at both tables so we will both get 0vp for this match" "let's report it as a dead tie"

I run a Swiss Pairs at the ACBL club I direct about once every two months. a short 2.5 hour mid-week evening game where we normally play 20-21 boards. This allows a five-round Swiss Pairs with four-board rounds, and without a dealing machine I spend about three hours pre-duplicaing 5 sets, which is enough for about 10-12 tables, our usual turnout. ACBLScore awards the same overalls as for a club game for this event, plus reasonable match awards. Usually 95+% of the pairs win some points, and with the match awards added there are usually more points paid out in total. You do need to use software dedicated to Swiss Pairs and transfer only the final results to ACBLScore. The key is in instructing players at the start. They need to know that: --basic scoring is in matchpoints, so pairs strategies apply --everyone is playing the same boards at once, with multiple copies of the same board around the room (so no loud comments) --it's vital to pass boards down one table immediately once you have completed them and scored the result --your matchpoint score in each round is converted to VPs in such a way that you need about 66% in a round to score a 20-0 blitz --after round one, pairs are given new opponents based on their position in the standings Players do enjoy the format, especially the feedback they get in later rounds by moving to a lower numbered table after a win. Even players who insist on a North-South or a stationary table at teams seem to enjoy the variety and excitement of vying for the right to play at "table 1." Of course, after the first round, once play begins, you announce that even if you don't place in the overall awards, the winning pair in each match gets a match award. As for the weaknesses of Swiss events in general, I think players tend to overestimate the difference between leaders and challengers. If you have the lead in a Swiss Teams event and play the 2nd place team, you're probably 3-8 VPs ahead of the 3rd vs 4th match. Your expectation in VPs, compared to the next few teams down the line, is probably negative. but your average expected VP result is probably 12-8 while 3rd vs 4th is maybe about 13-7: a difference of only one VP.

In team games here, captains fill out a slip showing team numbers and IMP margins, get it signed by the opposing captain, and hand it into the desk. If there is an error on the slip resulting in a wrong matching, we correct and re-match if possible, but if the next round has started we cannot correct the matching, but we do correct the scores -- and we instruct the players to be more careful in filling in the slips (or checking that the winners have done so correctly). With a good Bridgemate program, you would play your boards and enter them as played, with N-S entering and E-W confirming. At the end of the set, the console would display results and how many boards were entered at the other table, and perhaps show IMP differences for boards completed. Once everything was done, you could go back to the home table and compare in the usual way and check the results against the console. Eventually all results would be in (or time would expire and unplayed boards would be scored as pushes) and the console would then display which table to go to for the next round. The pairs who ran out of time would have little or no time to re-confirm the scores, a just penalty for slow play... :unsure: Round in arrears has always seemed suboptimal to me: don't we want the current leaders to play? The penultimate round leaders might never meet!

What are ACBL-style team games? In the UK we use Bridgemates for Swiss teams, multiple teams and knockouts. Is there some format in the US that is not conducive to the use of Bridgemates? The Swiss principle is the same, but here we don't normally number the tables from 1 to however many teams there are; often there are four or more pairs of lettered tables involved, and we pair teams as they become matchable instead of waiting until all the results are in. A winning team in a large one session Swiss may play their four matches at table A5/B5, G8/H8, C12/D12, and C7/D7. There is a huge scrum around the assignments table as teams wait for their next match assignment. With Bridgemates this could be averted completely. Once results were entered at a table, players could check their scores, then return to their home table already knowing the result. At this point, players could remain there and see everything currently posted on the Bridgemate screen: standings, next assignments, until the beginning of the next round.

One of our local directors, who directs five or more games a week at different places, has taken the plunge and bought a set. They seem to work fine but the extra space on the table, is a bit of a pain. Four bid-boxes, a BridgeMate, and convention cards and pencils and a table mat leaves very little space to actually play. Hopefully the version 2 models are a bit smaller, or maybe made so that a standard bid-box fits comfortably atop them. It would be great if they could be adapted for ACBL-style team games; currently they are only used for pair games as far as I have seen. In a Swiss Teams you could enter the results and when all boards were done you would see your result immediately, or (if you were the first table finished), you could see where you stood and watch for contracts, results, and updated scores as results were entered at the other table. The unit could also display how much time was left in a round, to encourage players to speed up if necessary. At the end of a match, once all results were in, the BridgeMates would be able to tell players where to go for the next round. It would keep people in their seats and reduce the time between rounds quite a bit. In a knockout team event, you could reduce all that time spent waiting for the opponents to figure out how to score it up by using BridgeMates.

The argument against this being legal seems to be that the inserted deals are not random; in other words, that deals constructed for the purpose of teaching a specific point have probably not originated with a random process. That's fair comment, I suppose, and it seems that we all agree that even if it is against Laws or possibly ACBL regulations to do what I plan to do, it's an easily provided service that does very little harm and far more good. In fact, it's not like I dreamed up the idea myself; I remember a game I played in in my early days that did exactly this. I do feel I have several responsibilities though: --the deals should be spread throughout the range of boards so that nobody is likely to miss more than one --the deals should not look "obviously constructed" as many do, with spot cards forming straight flushes regularly --deals should be used that feature key decisions for all players, and when this cannot be obtained the key decisions should be equally distributed among compass positions. The invitational club where I plan to do this is almost all non-Life Masters and they play eight three-board rounds almost every session, after which about half stay for lunch. The quality of play is painful to behold: recently I saw a player declare 5♣ with a trump suit of QJ8752 opposite a singleton ten. Low to the ten fetched the king from LHO...and the ace from RHO! I saw this happen and figured trumps were 5-1 and declarer had another loser. I was right, but it was RHO who had the long trumps! * ^_^ * and no conceivable reason to overtake...

I realize that: -- bid-box actions are more out in the open than selecting a card from one's hand, ...and also that... -- some players cannot be cured of the bad habit of "thinking while hovering" or touching every reasonable option to see which one "feels right" ...but if we have a Law against looking at a player's cards to determine which part of his hand a card came from, shouldn't we have a corresponding bid-box regulation discouraging players from watching others pull bid-box cards? Those who telegraph their options should be warned or penalized if they continue to do so. But nobody should be watching closely enough to pick up a 0.1 second hesitation once a card is touched, or to gauge a mid-reach trajectory change. (Not at all am I claiming that the original poster was out of line in any way.)

Law 6D2 allows for the possibility of a tournament based on deals from the past. Is it legal to insert just a few lesson hands into a game and have the rest shuffled or preduplicated? My plan is to insert a handful of lesson deals into one of the games that I run and give the players a sheet containing short write-ups of those hands only. (They want a short lesson and discussion session afterwards.) Even if the players don't get to the right contract or make the expected number of tricks, I still want to score the results obtained normally. My initial plan is to put out two boards in each group when I arrive and then, from the third board in each set, make 3-4 lesson hands, and shuffle the other ones, so that players will not know which ones are the lesson hands, if that is a concern.

Opener's 2NT call is passed by LHO and partner responds 2♥. Away from the table, offender says she confused two strong bids and thought partner had opened 2♣! 2♥ was meant to show a hand lacking an ace or king pver 2♣. Back at the table, TD says the first option for opener's RHO is to accept 2♥; if not accepted, the 2♥ will be canceled and replaced with a legal call; whatever that call is, opener must pass throughout. Opener's RHO does not accept. The 2♥ call disappears and offender now passes. RHO now realizes she would be better off to accept, holding ♥KQJxxx, and double for a lead, but I assume nobody is going to let her change her mind at this point, right? RHO finally decides to bid 3♥, which goes for the matchpoints kiss of death, 200. Has the offending side gained via the insufficient bid? Any reason to adjust?

Perhaps I have misled posters here with the title of the topic. South, a fairly good player, claimed that he did not assume a mistake, but judged not to compete to 3♥ -- it was only the West player who made that claim. I think that ruling that someone has a CPU is a pretty serious step to take, and if there is any reason to assume otherwise, we should. Here I felt South had several reasons not to compete to 3♥, most of which he pointed out to me when I asked why he passed: --absolute minimum values for the 15-17 1NT opener including probable wasted values in hearts, and three losers in a suit bid by one opponent but rejected by the other (so partner is unlikely to be short) --opponents up a level to prefer first suit, which often spells trouble --trump tricks in the opponent's suit (why risk the three level at IMPs if you have a good chance to go plus anyhow?) As I've said before, if partner has 3=5=2=3 and four jacks, a poor hand for this action but possible, 3♥ could go for as much as 300. You can certainly disagree with the judgment, but you can't legislate good judgment!

Where does Law 40 say that a first-time partnership must disclose that system forgets may occur? We're not in the business of inventing UI when nobody cites any, so you'll just have to believe me when I say that South had no UI from North after giving the explanation. The idea that South made a strange judgment not to continue to 3♥ so therefore there must have been UI is like the cop planting the evidence when the search reveals nothing. Trust me, the players were firing arguments around willy-nilly as I tried to assimilate the auction and nothing once was said about South having any idea that North had made a mistake.

Two things I have learned: 1) When you get less than two tables away from the one where the Director call is, look towards the table and stand on the opposite side of the player who seems the most agitated. Players do want to show you their cards quite often, and if your approach vector allows a player to flash their cards in front of your eyes without flashing them to anyone else, they will. You don't want to see them. 2) Whenever there is a reason to take a player away from the table, I don't say "come away from the table with me" -- I say (after a short pause to ensure everyone at the table is listening) "put your hand face down on the table please...(and wait until this is done)...now, come away from the table with me."

Which partnership understanding has been undisclosed? South doesn't know for sure that North has made an error; passing 3♣ may get him a bad result if they have a partscore in hearts or a decent save. 3♥ could easily go for 200 or more against nothing if partner has four jacks and 3=5=2=3 distribution.

Hard to believe it was a quarter-century ago, but a partner of mine with a non-contagious throat problem once used a conductor's baton to designate cards from dummy at the first Regional I ever played in. Worked like a charm.

[hv=d=e&v=n&n=sjt87h5da9632cq63&w=sakq96h982dqcj974&e=s5haj74djt754ct52&s=s432hkqt63dk8cak8]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] Club level Swiss Teams. South opens 1NT in second seat and West overcalls 2♣, promising clubs and a higher suit. North bids 2♦ which is alerted and explained as a transfer when East asks. East passes and South bids 2♥. West continues with 2♠ and East corrects to 3♣ which goes three down. During the play of the hand it is discovered that North does not have a transfer and South has rather good support for hearts. North-South are a first time partnership, but their card clearly states that systems are on over double and over 2♣ after a 1NT opener. 1) West claims that his decision to introduce his second suit was based on the expectation of finding partner with short hearts and therefore more likely to fit one of the black suits. Do you adjust? 2) West also claims that South has no right to secretly assume that North has misbid and should compete to 3♥ with five-card support. There is no mention of any UI to indicate that North has made an error. Do you adjust based on this? 3) A question for offline directors. When you arrive at the table, the hand is over and the cards are in the slots. The players want to give you the whole auction with the various alerts and explanations before giving you the slightest hint what sort of problem this is. Once they've recited the three-minute auction in ten seconds, they then proceed with the arguments as you are still trying to get the auction straight in your mind. This is a sure way to lead to difficulties and in this case the difficulty was that I left the table with the board and a misunderstanding: I thought that it was a mistaken explanation and not a mistaken bid. As a result, my initial ruling was not the same as my eventual ruling when my mistake came to light. Is there a good way to avoid this problem?

I think I would need considerable evidence to decide that declarer was going to play to drop the jack here after finessing the nine. It sounds to me as though this is not a faulty claim, but simply a poorly-stated claim. However, declarer would certainly get a warning about claiming on an assumed finesse. If the defenders have not shown their cards, you take declarer away from the table and ask him how he will play the hearts. When he says "running the ten from the board" you tell him that LHO has king-jack doubleton and he is down one and watch his reaction. If he agrees down one, he gets to make his contract. If he tries to change his line, down one! :)

David, my recollection is that the 110-140 rescoring scenario occurred because the event was using Butler scoring: a better score resulted in a higher average score, dropping them an IMP in a cash prize game. Artificial averages were not involved. However, a related point is that the Law that states that avg+ at IMP play is +3 is intended for teams, and in an IMP Pairs event, +3 against the whole field is a considerable advantage. I have seen it reduced to 2 IMPs by regulation.

In scenario 1, I gave avg+ to EW and avg to NS as most have suggested, but I wonder about this. Doesn't this give an advantage to the last pair to buy an entry--if there is a situation where an extra player is needed and cannot arrive in time they will get several avg+ scores. Perhaps there should be a limit of one avg+ per pair (by club reg) to offset this. In the second case, I considered my likely response had I known what was happening. I would probably have asked them to play the third board late and when neither wished to do so I would have given both pairs avg, since both were partly at fault. Mrs P clearly was unaware that she had missed a board, starting the round as late as they did. I gave both pairs an admonishment not to do this again, which could be considered a PP-warning. BridgeMates are a considerable expense for a club and the view here (where one busy TD who directs a lot has opened the wallet) is that they reduce further the dwindling table space which is now taken up by bid-boxes, convention cards, duplicate boards, table markers, coffee cups, snacks, and dummy hands. We get scores out fast enough using ACBLScore, even as a playing TD.

Since it has long been the custom in this forum to smite anyone who decides to use ACBLScore's 'NP' (not played) option, which simply gives each pair their percentage score on the rest of the session's boards, keeping their percentage score unchanged -- here are a few more scenarios to consider. Remember, NP is not an option unless you want the wrath of the forum experts! Scenario 1: With a half-table at gametime, you (TD) call a bunch of people and halfway through round one somebody agrees to come down and suffer through a game with you. Nobody wants a late play at the end of the evening and by the time the person arrives three boards in round one have not been played and there is only time for two of the three in the second round. You have a NS seat so you can stay near the scoring computer. What does the NS pair get for the missed boards? What does the EW pair get? Scenario 2: In this one we have a NS pair with a player whose eyesight is fading; consequently this pair gets behind quite often. In round eight they are playing a pair who are constantly looking for ways to prove the other is at fault. They play two of three boards before the round is called and then Mrs. Personality gets up and goes to the washroom and returns at the next table, apparently thinking they had played all the boards they would play. Three rounds pass and the TD is not notified of this incident. Finally, as travelers are being picked up during the last round, the North player mentions that they didn't play the board, and that Mr. Personality thought they should both be given average minus. Mr. Personality (whose rulings when directing are so consistently off the wall that I try to get his opinion whenever possible, to find out what not to do...), when asked what happened on the board, first says "Nothing!" then says "both sides are complicit." Mrs. Personality still doesn't understand the problem. Nobody wants to stay long enough to play the board late. What do you give these two pairs? Careful, read 12C2a carefully first. Is it even possible for both sides to be 'directly' at fault?

Surely when you ask the dealing program to produce a set of deals it will either respond "DONE" or send you some error message. If the former, you take the file to the machine and start the dealing of the actual cards; if the latter, you regenerate a new set of hands, don't you? "Computer-dealt hands at a club" and "the computer dealt the same hand twice" can mean several similar but different things. I'm assuming from David's post that the hand records for the set included the two consecutive deals with all four hands the same but rotated. I think in that case these are two different deals (albeit remarkably similar) but agree that the coincidence strongly suggests that the software needs to be looked at. But it could also mean that the computer dealt the same hand twice and there was an error by the person who took the cards from the dealing machine and put them in the slots. Once you add the human factor there is no limit to what can happen. I was called to the table in a Swiss Teams (player-dealt hands) recently to find a player debating with himself whether AJJ97 was a biddable spade suit. :(

The notion that one will see the previous bid when one looks at the next call partner makes is one only afforded by bid-boxes. Without them no player was allowed to wake up unless he thought to ask for a review. Is information about the auction that you had earlier mistaken (revealed only because bid-boxes are being used) UI? If so--and why should you gain an advantage over a table where for some reason they are not in use?--to avoid taking advantage you must ignore both the mistaken explanation AND the pass card you thought was a 1C opener.

What makes fielding an "I forgot" 20-21 2NT opener illegal?

I didn't say it was a good option. :(

A+ / A- was never a consideration.