McBruce

My program links to a rather old freeware double dummy solver which uses the public domain GIB engine. Takes 10-25 minutes to do the analysis, so I need to have the hands entered before the game is 75% over to get them in.

ACBL sanction fees take about a quarter. Directors are paid and at our club at least we make $60-$90 most sessions, depending on how many tables show up. So that's probably a buck or two. Rental of the premises is a huge item and can range from virtually nothing (rent space in a church basement by making a deductible religious donation!) to more than you would believe. Rental for the club I work at was ridiculously high, and I say 'was' because that was three difficult lease-negotiations ago. At a guess I would say that is a huge chunk of your entry fee, at this club anyhow. In every game there are fill-in players and club staff members who don't pay entry fees, meaning that a little more of the paying customers' money goes to the expenses the club incurs to run the game. The club also needs to pay for electricity, water, telephone, internet, computer equipment and supplies, bridge playing equipment and supplies, upkeep on the premises, janitorial services and supplies, business licenses, and it seems no game can survive unless there is a food table somewhere. Sometimes I think we must be responsible for the survival of at least a small village in Columbia for our coffee consumption and probably are helping to keep a dishwasher liquid company afloat, with two or three dishwasher loads a day. By now there is probably very little left of your entry fee, and we haven't even discussed the owner's cut (if there is one). Adding hand records (and a $1,000 laser printer to print them, plus $200 for a new toner every two months) probably wasn't even a major expense in the big picture.

This looks like McBruce-bait. :rolleyes: JB, you know exactly where to go and when in order to get hand records. In most of the club and Unit games I direct, I use a program I wrote to enter the player-dealt hands into a computer and another program to render the hands in printable XHTML. The first program combines the ACBLScore output to get this onto our webpage, and the second program produces hand records that look like this. During the idle time in a normal session (even in a shorter mid-week 20-21 board session we run on Wednesday night for only $7) there is, it turns out, ample time to temporarily remove the boards not currently in play, take them back to the desk, input the West, South, and East hands (leaving the North hand and traveler undisturbed), and get them back to the players before they even miss it. It is even a better solution than using computer-dealt hands and having players pre-duplicate. I used to do this but I got tired of the complaints about computer hands and the allegations (no, really, there were allegations) that I had deliberately written the program to deal weird hands. But JB -- you knew all this? Why haven't I seen you in a while? :)

1. When I am on my game I can do 32 or so in an hour. That's probably as fast as it gets unless you are actually DEALING the pre-sorted cards. (My time is from an unsorted deck.) Even then, I would still guess that half an hour would be a bit low. A related problem is that players cannot be relied upon to suit and sort accurately -- they accidentally put cards in the slots AKQJT97865423 quite often, and some have been known to place the cards face up in the slots with the deuces up, but after removing, sorting and dealing you find that that is ALL that they've done and you're back at square one. 2. Might work, but it would look pretty bad. I have a hard enough time reading scores from pickups at most of the games I direct. Reading hand records written by these anticalligraphists would be torture... :rolleyes: However, Cascade, you have hit upon the key point when you mention "the idle time during one session of directing..." Read on...

In my opinion: yes to both, and a failing grade to a TD who gives away the psyche by the manner in which he deals with the situation. You're allowed to depart from your agreements; you're allowed to take the most advantageous option when you have options; all of this is authorized information to partner and opponents, so nobody has an advantage. It's AI to everyone that you have restricted options and that because of this, your choice may not quite conform to system. However, if the psyche/semi-psyche qualifies as "assistance gained from the infraction" and gets you a better score, the TD will apply Law 27D and adjust the score. Also, if you consistently choose the same type of option in similar situations and have an understanding, like "we may make a bid that promises a stopper without one when restricted by Law 27" this is an agreement that the opponents are entitled to.

As I have written at least once before, there are many areas in the ACBL (and perhaps elsewhere) where many players believe that a "mechanical error" can always be corrected without penalty (at least before the next player calls), and they are surprised at the actual time limit (before partner calls) and especially by the additional requirements of Law 25A. My own location is one of them. I tell people that "mechanical error" is not a phrase used anywhere in the Laws -- although I think it was used in ACBL guidelines in the period when tournaments and many clubs switched from spoken bidding to using bid-boxes. One would think that in VANCOUVER we would be well aware of Law 25A, but 1999 is a long time ago... :)

As most of the popular bridge programs allow, in these robot tournaments the rule should be that when North declares the robot goes for coffee and South plays the cards. Other than that small potential improvement, they are excellent additions to BBO. Uday: if you decide to adopt this, it's best to just leave the cards as they are--don't actually move the human player to the North chair temporarily to declare the hand, just let the South player play cards for North and South while remaining in the South chair. Bridge Baron used to do (perhaps still does) this and I was always finessing the wrong way, remembering that LHO passed RHO's opener so RHO rates to have all the missing high cards --but forgetting that LHO and RHO were swapped when I took partner's chair to declare. Jack has this right, leaving the hands where they were and letting the South player play cards from both hands.

Bravo Runewell! I seem to recall that about 15 years ago, playing in the Epson or perhaps one of the other instant matchpoint games, I began against a pair that had arrived late or something and scored a universal zero on Board 1 (a score right off the instant matchpoint charts!). We had to move for round two after that, since we got the late start, but in the late play we made it an average round with a universal top and we ended up 25th in the ACBL! :)

Thanks for that, Fred. I have some serious doubts about whether this should be going to a Recorder, although the guidelines for the National Recorder may be different from the Unit Recorder position I am familiar with, having known several local Unit Recorders and approved and suggested people for the position when I was a member of the local Unit Board. It was always my understanding that the Recorder option was an option given when the situation required a confidential investigation of a matter that might indicate a breach of ethics, but might also be an innocent misunderstanding of the rules. Filling out a Recorder form allows a discreet investigation without any publicity, and also--in very, very rare cases--allows a hearing for ethics or conduct violations to be made aware of the nature volume, and relevance of Recorder complaints against a player. This incident, I suspect, is not the type of incident that the Recorder process was made for. We can't have a situation where both sides think the other is blatantly abusing the Laws -- and not get a resolution, especially in the middle of a major event. Surely at an NABC there is an Ethics Committee or a Laws Committee or some body that can be convened to make a decision, at least for the duration of the event, and review it all later if necessary. If I were in Fred's chair (I'd be a much better player than I'll ever be, but never mind that...) I'd have to wonder whether the pair had any other surprises in store, and whether any of them were going to cost IMPs. I would expect the TD to make some decision on whether the non-disclosure was illegal or not at the time, even if uncertain (Law 85B), and refer the matter to the appropriate Committee ASAP (Law 81C7). It doesn't sound like this was what happened at all. Instead, the Recorder option was offered. I think that's inappropriate.

Just how far off topic are we going to get on this thread? The original issue here is a pair that deliberately withheld an agreement in a major event. I'm interested to see what, if anything, has been done by the officials. I'm not particularly interested in developing a justification for the pair's actions. I don't see a way that anything that Fred and Brad might have done in the past can justify the deliberate concealment of an agreement. There are ways to deal with partnership understandings concerning psyches -- especially at major events where hands are recorded -- you collect evidence and you make a case. So far on this thread we have seen one hand, and the evidence is questionable, but because of this, a pair decided to take it upon themselves to conceal an agreement in order to combat a potential psyche that seldom actually occurs. As I said in my original post on this, it would be wrong if nothing was done because of Fred's behavior following the incident (he originally mentioned that he nearly got a Zero Tolerance warning). It would also be wrong if nothing was done because officials suspected that Fred and Brad were gaining an illegal advantage with their occasional notrump psyches. Somewhere here, serious prinicples of our game's rules have been deliberately broken. If nothing is done, the ACBL is saying that: --anyone who gets burned by a psyche is free to use underhanded methods to combat them --a player who reacts with natural shock and disbelief when a rule is deliberately broken against him in a targeted and personal way can be ignored because his behavior was not perfect during the incident --players who have psyched in the past will not receive the same treatment as pairs who don't psyche I'd like to hear more about what's being done about this incident and less about why Full Disclosure might in some cases be optional.

We're all learning... :)

N-S did call the TD at the correct time -- it would probably be even more intimidating to their novice opponents to call after the hesitation pass, and it would be quite frustrating to the E-W pair for N-S to wait until the contract was made and then call the TD to claim a hesitation. Here in the ACBL we have only recently been given the 16B2 option of agreeing that there is a possibility of UI. Because it is new to us, nobody does it here: there are even some who don't feel it is the best solution. However, this particular N-S pair had already called on another hesitation situation earlier that evening, and two calls per session is about average for them, where the average for most other pairs is two per year. On each occasion when they do call I am obliged to hear them recite the entire auction, which can be a two-minute process or longer. On this particular occasion, I tried to stop the charade: NORTH: OK. We had this auction (pointing at the face up bid-box cards). Pass, Pass, Pass, 1♣... TD: Excuse me. Do we have a break-in-tempo here? NORTH: (short pause, shocked at the interruption). Pass, Pass, Pass, 1 ♣... TD: Yes, I can see all this, I would like to save time by finding out the nature of the infraction. NORTH: Look, I'm trying to tell you. The auction goes pass, pass, pass, 1♣... TD: (walks away from the table in disgust) SOUTH: Hey! TD: Let's go back to my first question. Is there a break-in-tempo here? NORTH: Yes, but... TD: Which call or calls followed the break-in-tempo? NORTH: Don't you want the whole auction? TD: I can see the whole auction. SOUTH: He paused before passing over 3♣. NORTH: He took FOREVER before bidding 3♣. WEST: I didn't even notice. EAST: I was a little bit slow, but hardly forever. You get the picture. North especially was enraged that I would not let him go through the motions of his passion play against the outrageous actions perpetrated against him, because he feels he has the right to act it all out in its full glory. From this incident (the ruling was completely irrelevant and separate) I have decided to affix a sheet of paper to the back of my Law book and bring it and a pencil with me to each call. If anyone tries to review the bidding while bid-cards are out I will stop it immediately and write the auction down myself.

On the previous Laws site before the move here, we established this last month: --Defenders or dummy may call attention to a trick turned incorrectly until the lead is made to the next trick (65B). Declarer only can go back further to have an error corrected. --A player always has the right to an accurate count if the turned tricks do not agree, but the proper way to do this is to call the TD and explain that there has been an infraction since the turned tricks do not agree. The TD will examine the played cards and discover where the error is. Any other method of discovering where the error is involves players inspecting quitted tricks (66C) or discussing previous plays, neither of which is desirable. --Even going this route is liable to pass UI, and in the case mentioned here, the result would be vulnerable to an almost certain adjustment or PP. So you have to let your partner work it out for himself.

Yes. (oops)

In the first case, I decided that the 4♥ was directly affected by the misinformation and concentrated on what would happen has South known that EW did not have a spade fit. South would certainly not have bid 4♥ and instead would have raised to 3♥ or perhaps tried 3♣. Either way, it seemed to me that West would introduce his second suit and East would get them to 5♦, which is a better bet than 4♠ on these cards--neither East nor West knows in a competitive auction that they're off the AK of diamonds and have a heart loser as well. So I ruled 5♦ down one, push. In the second, I felt that although West had UI indicating that bidding on would be a good choice, he also had considerable AI indicating the same thing. Not just from the redouble: the auction (can't open or overcall 1♣, yet good enough to redouble) places East with a decent hand but no real suit to bid. No adjustment. In the end, neither ruling meant much to the final outcome. Both parties ruled against said I was spending too much time in the sun...

It's almost 3:30 AM in the Vancouver area as I write this and it is 24 degrees Celsius with considerable humidity and the heat wave will be here for a few more days minimum. The local club has very good air conditioning. I think 14 teams for a club Swiss is a record for our Wednesday night game, but I also think that had I extended it from four to eight matches, well into Thursday morning, almost everyone would have stayed to avoid the sauna outside... Ruling #1: [hv=d=e&v=e&n=s952hakqjt5dk5cj8&w=sakqt63h6dt8762c9&e=s4h942dqj943ca753&s=sj87h873dackqt642]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] West opened 1♠ in third seat, North overcalled 2♥, and East doubled, alerted by West. South asked and was told this was a "support double." Thinking E-W had a fit in spades and therefore North was short, South raised to 4♥. West bid 4♠, and South persisted with 5♣, North correcting to 5♥, doubled by East. Before the opening lead, North asked again about the double, and now West admitted that it was a negative double, not a support double. The TD was called at this point. Result: 2 down, 300 to E-W. Do you ad....oops, we have new Laws now: do you rectify? :) Relevant facts to consider (if you wish): --South is an experienced player getting back into duplicate after a long absence; relatively unfamiliar with support doubles and other newer conventions. --All four are fairly good Flight B players --result at the other table: 4♥ down 1, a swing of 5 IMPs unless the score here is rectified. Ruling #2: [hv=d=e&v=e&n=s952hakqjt5dk5cj8&w=sakqt63h6dt8762c9&e=s4h942dqj943ca753&s=sj87h873dackqt642]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] This auction begins with a fourth-seat 1♣ opener by North. Two passes follow and West re-opens with 1♠. North doubles and East redoubles, showing a maximum passed hand with spade support. South bids 2♣, West bids 2♠, and North competes to 3♣. East breaks tempo and passes, South passes, and West bids 3♠, setting the "DIRECTOR!" sirens off. You say what you always say: play on and we'll make a judgment later. 3♠ is the final contract and makes eleven tricks for a push. Looks like 3♣ is probably two down if North gets to play there. Do you rectify this one? Relevant facts: --EW, as you will have guessed from the auction, are novices. Both agree on the meaning (shown above) of redouble in this auction. --North is a local expert, South a decent but volatile client type. (It's anyone's guess who's paying and how much for a simple club game.) --if you give some players the East hand and the auction without the tempo break, good players will pass, bad players will bid 3♠. Those whose status is, let us say, pending, are about 50-50. :)

OK, I'll bite. How exactly do Bridgemates prevent players from mixing their cards before they agree on a result?

That was my exact reaction. Unfortunately I expressed it in such a way that I may end up with a "Zero Tolerance Penalty" as a result. Go figure :) It sounds like it. Go figure again... Fred Gitelman Bridge Base Inc. www.bridgebase.com Fred, I do not believe that there is any excuse for not holding a hearing on this matter just because you got a ZT penalty. At the risk of taking this on a tangent, it would be like arresting someone you know to be innocent just because he said "yo' mama." Furthermore, I don't believe there is any reason for considering your reaction when you discovered what the pair was doing in deciding what penalty to apply to them. This pair clearly has some explaining to do, not just about the blatantly deliberate concealed partnership understanding, but also about the unsportsmanlike way in which they concealed it: not just refusing to answer a direct question, but carefully skirting around it to gain an illegal advantage. Page 51 of this document (the ACBL Code of Disciplinary Regulations) gives the guideline of reprimand to 30 days suspension for this offense. I think at least the maximum is appropriate here, considering the nature of the offense and the likelyhood that the pair in question is experienced (given the level of the event): the CDR guidelines are not boundaries, and a previous record of this sort of thing by this pair would greatly increase the severity of the sentence. I would recommend a very strong penalty in IMPs for the offense as well, considering the way it was sprung upon you.

The trouble with giving each side the result the other thinks is correct is that there isn't a Law that allows you to give two scores on the same hand unless you have one offending side and one non-offending side. (12A2 doesn't work for it instructs the TD to give an artificial adjusted score, AVG, AVG+ or AVG-.) IIRC, when this came up in the old forum, before it moved to BBO, the opinion was that it was unfair to decide one way and hit the side you believed with a PP to make both sides pay equally. When this happens at the table, I first work out who has mixed their cards (unless all of them have), and whether there was any sort of agreement before the mixing of the cards. Then, if necessary, I have them play the whole hand again, warning the players that I will penalize loud discussion or debate and that I will judge what seems most likely from the replay and the minimal discussion that should ensue. Sometimes you'll need to do two or more separate replays when players disagree. But at the end the TD makes a decision on the result, and may add a PP (equal to both sides unless one side was clearly at fault) for the failure to agree on tricks before mixing the cards. Definitely I will give AVG- for any boards missed because of the delay if time runs out on the round (or on the next round after a late change). More often than not, you will favor the more experienced pair if there is one, but not always.

Law 17D is one of those Laws that is several dozen pages in the book away from where it should be. Most of the time, the player gets to the END of the auction period and the play has begun before he realizes that he has cards from the wrong board; yet, the Law is situated at the beginning of the auction section. It would be better to put in a Law 41E that refers to 17D when the problem is discovered at trick one.

I think I'm on the same side as TimG here. If we make a list of common auctions and agreements about the bids in them, I am sure that we can find at least a thousand more common situations than this one. The key question here has nothing to do with the ruling; it is: exactly how many agreements must a player keep in his head to be allowed to play in a national event? On the ruling side, there are several strange items in the write-up: 1) (quoting) The correct information would have been “no agreement”, not “shows clubs.” (end quote) It doesn't really say that this was what transpired. What appears to have happened was that North decided they had no agreement about the bid and since that was the case, chose not to alert. Knowing, though, that they DID have an agreement in an uncontested auction, North probably should have alerted and (if asked) explained that he was unaware of an agreement about this auction, but uncontested it would show clubs. However, the very next sentence is: 2) (quoting) Such information would not make a substantial difference [to East] as to whether to bid again. (end quote) So N-S are being ruled against even though doing the right thing wouldn't have made a substantial difference?

Oops. A discussion with the West player tonight shows that I had the auction wrong, absent a single round of bidding. West passed over 3♥ and so did North, and East doubled. South passed, and West asked the question about the 2♥ call. Hearing that it was to play, he assumed partner was doubling primarily to find a competing spade fit, so he bid 3♠. So, back to the start, and my apologies. Is an adjustment in order now?

No, no, no. The point is not that I made a doubled contract or played Board 1 in a cuebid. It is that I won a 12-board tournament by 5% over second place despite taking a zero on Board 1. It is possible!

...control your pathological urges and have a look at this... :)

[hv=d=n&v=n&n=st9762h4d874c9874&w=sakq3hqt32dajt93c&e=sj8hk986dq6cj6532&s=s54haj75dk52cakqt]399|300|Scoring: IMP[/hv] ACBL offline team game. South opened 1NT in third seat. West doubled (equal or better). North bid 2♥ (transfer to spades, but South forgot). East passed and South raised to 3♥. West now asked about the 2♥ call and South confirmed his belief that it was "to play." West chose to bid 3♠. North passed and East bid 3NT. South now realized his error and explained 2♥ as a transfer. TD (me) was called. 3♠ cannot be retracted, but 3NT can (L21B1a), so I gave East that option, first informing everyone that whatever East chose to do, there was a good chance of some adjustment on this board, with the misinformation clearly a factor in East's decision to bid 3♠. East chose to pass and the auction ended in 3NT, which made after South was found, not too surprisingly to have the K♦ for his 1NT opener. However, the non-offenders think they will get 1100 against 3♠ doubled, which is the most likely contract if West has the correct information from the start and South doesn't wake up until 3♥ is doubled and North bails. West is certainly going to double 3♥ with correct information instead of bidding 3♠. Do we adjust? (It's the ACBL, so the ACBL version of L16C1e is what we're instructed to do here. We'll leave the fact that L16C1e is slightly different here than in the rest of the world for another thread.) Or perhaps you think that North is not entitled to bail, that he must sit 3♥ doubled which seems to go for 1400 or so! On the other hand, West's cards give him a pretty good clue about what is really going on, and maybe the 3♠ is too much of an attempt at a double shot for an adjustment to be made. (If so, you need to make a case that 3♠ is wild or gambling, because 'double shot' is nowhere to be found in the Lawbook.) Other table result is +90 to E-W (we're not sure how). E-W has 7 IMPs on the board as it stands. Should they be entitled to more?