McBruce

Worked fine for me. I copied the text and pasted it into a text editor and saved as a .lin file, then uploaded. No problems!

McBruce: I would like at some point to see players who have already been in the tournament and left (for whatever reason) to be banned from joining the sub list for that tournament. As it stands, a player replaced by a TD can simply rejoin the sublist and get back in by request of a player whose partner is red. In an unclocked game there is even the chance that the sub will play a board he/she has already played. But the worst problem is that you can kick someone out for calling partner a bunch of unacceptable names and look fifteen minutes later and find the miscreant back in your tourney! If somebody is accidentally disconnected, most TDs would be happy to sub directly if they received a message from the player like: "hi TD--sorry, was booted by accident on board 3, please feel free to sub me in now." Azzkikr (next message): Thats not quite true. I was disconnected and then was back within 3 minutes. i had 8 minutes on the clock and 5 cards to play on the last board of the round. By the time i got back online the director had already subbed somoene into my seat and when i asked if i could be subbed back in he blatantly refused. He didnt even ask the sub if it was okay if i was subbed back in. I took great offense to this and still do. As for the sub issue i have found that if you have a co-director, not even a TD from out outstanding base of TD's but a friend or associate who you can get to go the leg work on requesting subs for your tournament that it does aleviate alot of the problems. Since i have been doing that i havnt had any sub problems with the tournies. Am I missing something here? It seems you are saying that I replaced you and refused to let you back in. You were not even mentioned in my original post, or indeed any post in this thread. Unless you were playing under a different name at the time, it was not you I was referring to. I recall no player ever asking me to get back in during a tournament I have run.[Phrase deleted] If I was faced with a situation like the one you describe I would certainly sub the player in, but you must realize two things: 1) Even the best Director cannot always remember who has replaced who in a busy tournament. You would likely have to wait until the TD had some free time to confirm with your partner that you were the original player. Expecting to come back and sit in immediately is unreasonable: it might take 3-5 minutes to get time to check if the TD is busy. 2) People who have poor connections have to realize that they play at a disadvantage. If you are disconnected occasionally and you take tournaments seriously, you should get a better connection -- or expect that your results are going to take random hits.

I would like at some point to see players who have already been in the tournament and left (for whatever reason) to be banned from joining the sub list for that tournament. As it stands, a player replaced by a TD can simply rejoin the sublist and get back in by request of a player whose partner is red. In an unclocked game there is even the chance that the sub will play a board he/she has already played. But the worst problem is that you can kick someone out for calling partner a bunch of unacceptable names and look fifteen minutes later and find the miscreant back in your tourney! If somebody is accidentally disconnected, most TDs would be happy to sub directly if they received a message from the player like: "hi TD--sorry, was booted by accident on board 3, please feel free to sub me in now."

OK, let's get off the original example and move on to how blind Indy's would work. When you begin the tourney, you see no names, only compass positions. An auto-generated message (in your language maybe) tells you that player names will appear after the eleventh trick is completed or a claim is accepted, and you should agree on a basic system with your partner now. No profiles can be viewed. After the deal, if unclocked, the system might allow for 30 seconds to a minute of extra time to allow players to chat now that they know who they are chatting with, before changing for the next round. Kibitzers would not see names or profiles either until the players do. Advantages: --forces players who never talk to agree on a system at least instead of looking at a profile and guessing --no ICQ or instant message or telephone cheat chat possible --people who grumble about replays in unclocked indy tourneys would not know they were in a replay until the end of the round

My experience with the Alphabet Point tournaments (Web Page Link) on this issue might be of interest to this thread: --I began with a clocked movement and saw several instances of players in bad contracts playing very slowly according to the opps, but I was never called early enough to have a chance to confirm that foul play was taking place --after the end of the first game, I discovered that the highest finishers had actually completed all of the 15 boards, so perhaps there is no real advantage in a longer tournament to waiting it out for an AVG- --nevertheless, I switched to unclocked at that point, and instituted a system where players had two hours (8 mins per board) to reach the final board or I would penalize them 1 IMP or 1 MP per extra minute used --of course, BBO scores cannot be changed, but my setup of awarding Alphbet Points allows me to adjust the results before I calculate them and print the leaders on the web page --I tell players that I will add extra minutes to people who are delayed waiting for subs, and I remind them of the time and where they should be during the tournament. At the end I take a screen shot of the tables in the last round and record the finishing times of late tables. I remind people constantly that it is their obligation to try to catch up even if they were not responsible for the original delay The result? 1) A few calls per tournament that players are playing deliberately slowly. I remind the caller that this is unclocked and there are no penalties for slow play on a single board as long as you get caught up, and usually this is fine. Once or twice a game I have to warn a player that their pace is too slow, and occasionally, if repeated complaints about a player occur, I will replace them. 2) NO PENALTIES FOR SLOW PLAY HAVE YET BEEN NEEDED. After four tries of the new format, nobody has gone overtime. Most players are done 10 minutes or more before the end, and usually there is a 4-5 table group that gets the last board about 3-7 minutes before the end. Almost always the tournament finishes about 2:05 after it starts. My experience with other long unclocked tournaments is that some seem to go forever before a result is declared. 3) Replays are a problem. Twice each tourney, I try to ask faster players who are more than a board ahead of the pace to take an agreed-upon break before the end of the hand to allow slower players to catch up and thius increase the number of possible matchups for the next round. Few do so. Some players are worried about the lengthy delays near the end waiting for the system to move them, but usually they are well ahead of time so a quick message quells their apprehensions. 4) Misconduct: So far I have banned four players from the Alphabet Point series. One complained repeated about just about evenything possible, and then ditched in round one during the next tourney. Another felt that a third-seat weak two on QTxxx was a psyche that should result in the death penalty or worse, and harrassed me repeatedly after the tournament with insane ravings in capitals. Two more people received repeated complaints and a tour through their fifteen boards found that they were psyching often and doubling or redoubling virutally everything. I'm liberal on agression but this was too much even for me, so poof -- banned. Outside of these four I have a short list of people I am trying to educate, and a few encouraging messages here and there seem to be working... :rolleyes: As for intentional disconnects, I haven't seen too many suspicious ones. One player disconnected after a clear misclick (1NT - 2♣ - 2♦ - Pass, with a 12 count), but most seem to realize that one mistake will not kill your chances at a good score. What I am concerned about is players making an intentional disconnect and then re-entering as a sub. I cannot keep track of all the replacements, especially now that players can choose their own. It would be nice if the software could prevent a player from signing up for the sub list if they were a player in the tournament at some point. (A player who was accidentally booted could be directly replaced by the TD if they sent a message explaining the situation, just not added to the sub list.)

Gweny: wonderful job with the new tourney schedule page. Forgive me for stealing the thread on a side issue... luis wrote: Other psyches maybe classfied as "smart" psyches and are dangerous if the become an agreement, for example a fake cuebid without a control in the suit being cuebid may lead to a very good result since inocent oponents will lead something else, if your pd is aware of this habit you may have an unfair advantage. Another example is bidding a weak 2 on a void with a 8/9 card suit elsewhere, if you remove a double to a new suit is obvious you psyched so normally you will be safe and your opponents may run into trouble never finding their fit. Definition: "A smart psyche is one that is likely to produce damage in your opponents while your side is fairly safe" Finally there're "random" psyches, random psyches are things like opening 1x on a void or doing things that are very likely to result in a very bad result for your side and/or your opponents. In my opinion, that can be very wrong a parntership with 10 recorded "obvious" psyches is less suspect than a partnership with 2 of the "smart" psyches. So there must be some careful analysis before pointing fingers. Well written! The main problem with recording psyches is that the very people who desperately want them recorded are, I suspect, the ones least likely to do the proper work in classifying and analyzing. The smart psyches above are close to what the ACBL calls risk-free psyches. To use your examples: 1) If you open 2♥ on 9-0-1-3 and it goes 2♥ - DBL - P - P - 2♠ - P - ? your partner with equal or better hearts should never pass. If he passes when he should correct, this is clear evidence that you have an agreement about this particular psyche, and this is illegal (at least in the ACBL). 2) The fake cuebid is so old that even Shieinwold mentioned it nearly 50 years ago in "Five Weeks To Winning Bridge" (Chapter 7)! But again, if partner has controls in the other suits and enough power to bid slam but signs off, this is evidence that the fake cuebid is risk-free by agreement. Even in my tournaments, which are sayc-only individuals, I warn people that non-sayc bids are legal until partner fields them. If the auction goes 1NT - P - 2♥* - P - P, there is no infraction, unless the transfer bidder has less than five spades. In this case the pass by the 1NT opener fields the non-sayc bid. This is the standard we should be using. I doubt that the anti-psyche folks will go anywhere near this far. Maybe (far down the road, there are lots of other priorities) we can have a "report a psyche" button. Click the button, point to the wacky bid, add comments if you like, send the whole thing to a database. (I'm NOT volunteering to go through the data, by the way. :rolleyes: ) We might uncover some psyche-maniacs. But my guess is that we would instead uncover people who complain far too often.

Maybe something other than a red dot might be better. I'm just old enough to remember the days when the ACBL required players to put a red dot on the defense section of the convention card if they played anything unusual. Clubs and tournaments actually kept sheets of the things as basic bridge supplies. When I hear red dot that is what I think. :rolleyes: Sort of like Windows NT, which Bill Gates intended to stand for Windows New Technology, but which for the past decade I have unconsciously read as Windows Notrump. :)

For individuals, a OAFA (one algorithm fits all) might be: 1) Count the players from 1, adding phantoms to get the total divisible by 4. 2) Seat the players for round one as follows: — highest at table 1 South — lowest at table 1 North — 2nd highest at table 2 South — 2nd lowest at table 2 North — 3rd highest at table 3 South etc. until you run out of North-South seats, then — next highest player at highest numbered table East — next lowest player at lowest numbered table West ...and so on. Note that the East-West pairs are placed in the reverse order, from highest numbered table down. Adding the numbers of each first-round pair should get you (players + 1), and this adding the numbers of the four players at each table should get you 2 * (players + 1). 3) At the end of each round, the highest numbered player stays where he is, and the others take the seat of the next-lowest player (player one takes the seat of the second highest numbered player) 4) As we've discovered, it may pay to flip directions in a checkerboard pattern to reduce the frequency of two entries playing the same direction for most of the boards. If you incorporate this into the movement it is probably a good idea to do it last or the progression might be difficult to follow. Here is the 4-table indy complete (15 rounds). The dashes indicate the checkerboard pattern where the N/S and E/W pairs should be switched. 1N 1S 1E 1W 2N 2S 2E 2W 3N 3S 3E 3W 4N 4S 4E 4W Round 01: 01 16--08 09 02 15 07 10 03 14--06 11 04 13 05 12 Round 02: 02 16 09 10 03 01--08 11 04 15 07 12 05 14--06 13 Round 03: 03 16--10 11 04 02 09 12 05 01--08 13 06 15 07 14 Round 04: 04 16 11 12 05 03--10 13 06 02 09 14 07 01--08 15 Round 05: 05 16--12 13 06 04 11 14 07 03--10 15 08 02 09 01 Round 06: 06 16 13 14 07 05--12 15 08 04 11 01 09 03--10 02 Round 07: 07 16--14 15 08 06 13 01 09 05--12 02 10 04 11 03 Round 08: 08 16 15 01 09 07--14 02 10 06 13 03 11 05--12 04 Round 09: 09 16--01 02 10 08 15 03 11 07--14 04 12 06 13 05 Round 10: 10 16 02 03 11 09--01 04 12 08 15 05 13 07--14 06 Round 11: 11 16--03 04 12 10 02 05 13 09--01 06 14 08 15 07 Round 12: 12 16 04 05 13 11--03 06 14 10 02 07 15 09--01 08 Round 13: 13 16--05 06 14 12 04 07 15 11--03 08 01 10 02 09 Round 14: 14 16 06 07 15 13--05 08 01 12 04 09 02 11--03 10 Round 15: 15 16--07 08 01 14 06 09 02 13--05 10 03 12 04 11 Oh dear, follow #1 through the tournament and the poor fellow meets the same four or five people as opponents 90% of the time. Back to the drawing board... :unsure: Obviously, this won't work for unclocked movements. I think for unclocked individuals the best idea long term would be to match players by speed, institute an optional penalty to your score for finishing the boards after a certain time, and enforce a hospitality break between boards or rounds for those who are finished very early (to reduce playbacks). I am trying these wrinkles out (by directing players, not by software) in my Alphabet Tournaments and I'll keep you posted on how well it works.

It sounds like these meetings and the Directors web site are helping improve tourneys on BBO. I wish I could have been there. A quibble: "Regarding psych bids, it was suggested that 1) only one psych bid be excused/allowed per tournament, 2) that the player be warned and 3) that notes be added to the player’s profile." If somebody wants to run a tourney without psyches or with limited psyches, it seems to me they have three problems. The first is that according to the Laws of Duplicate Bridge this is not bridge! You may as well run a tournament where the rules are that all one-bids are immediately claimed, or passed out hands are redealt. Psychic bids, as long as they are not regularly fielded, are part of the game. They are legal. Attempting to control them over the course of a session is silly. I make a bona fide psychic bid perhaps once every three sessions. But if the correct hand came up three times in a round, I might psyche three times in a round. Don't forget, this is a legal tactic. Imagine what would happen if a Director came up to you and said "you can't open 1NT any more this session, you've done it twice already." Second, a definition of a psychic bid is rather difficult. People who hate psyches have very different views of what consistutes a psyche than those who use them occasionally. The ACBL rule is that a psychic bid is one which grossly distorts the high-card strength or the distribution of the hand. But to some people, opening 1NT on a good 14 count, or a flawed 18 count, is a dirty rotten psyche (but strangely, only when it works--there is never a complaint when the opponents miss a game or get too high). Third, since psyching is a legal tactic, I would suggest that you need to advertise that you won't allow, or you limit psyching in your tourney. Only if you make certain that everyone knows can you reasonably take the step of warning players, or keeping a list of psychic bidders. Don't get me wrong here. If a player makes outrageous psyches every second hand, or a partnership psyches often and never gets in trouble, this is good reason to list them. But a player who psyches ocassionally should not get listed. If we really want to list someone, let's start listing the people who complain about anything and everything. Psyching occasionally (which may rarely include consecutive deals) is legal. Harrassing the Director is not.

Here is an simple algorithm for producing Howells for online pairs games: (1) Number the pairs from 1 to (number of pairs). If there is an odd number, add a "sitout" pair at the end. (2) In round one, the matchups are: — Highest numbered pair versus lowest numbered pair — 2nd highest numbered pair vs 2nd lowest number pair — 3rd highest numbered pair vs 3rd lowest numbered pair ...and so on. The sum of each first round matchup adds to (pairs + 1) 3) In round two, and all later rounds: — the highest numbered pair stays where they are — every other pair follows (takes the most recent spot of) the pair with the next lowest number, with the one exception that pair one follows the second highest numbered pair Example: 7 table Howell (14 pairs) Round 01: 14.vs.01 - 13 vs 02 - 12.vs.03 - 11 vs 04 - 10.vs.05 - 09 vs 06 - 08.vs.07 Round 02: 14 vs 02 - 01.vs.03 - 13 vs 04 - 12.vs.05 - 11 vs 06 - 10.vs.07 - 09 vs 08 Round 03: 14.vs.03 - 02 vs 04 - 01.vs.05 - 13 vs 06 - 12.vs.07 - 11 vs 08 - 10.vs.09 Round 04: 14 vs 04 - 03.vs.05 - 02 vs 06 - 01.vs.07 - 13 vs 08 - 12.vs.09 - 11 vs 10 Round 05: 14.vs.05 - 04 vs 06 - 03.vs.07 - 02 vs 08 - 01.vs.09 - 13 vs 10 - 12.vs.11 Round 06: 14 vs 06 - 05.vs.07 - 04 vs 08 - 03.vs.09 - 02 vs 10 - 01.vs.11 - 13 vs 12 Round 07: 14.vs.07 - 06 vs 08 - 05.vs.09 - 04 vs 10 - 03.vs.11 - 02 vs 12 - 01.vs.13 Round 08: 14 vs 08 - 07.vs.09 - 06 vs 10 - 05.vs.11 - 04 vs 12 - 03.vs.13 - 02 vs 01 Round 09: 14.vs.09 - 08 vs 10 - 07.vs.11 - 06 vs 12 - 05.vs.13 - 04 vs 01 - 03.vs.02 Round 10: 14 vs 10 - 09.vs.11 - 08 vs 12 - 07.vs.13 - 06 vs 01 - 05.vs.02 - 04 vs 03 Round 11: 14.vs.11 - 10 vs 12 - 09.vs.13 - 08 vs 01 - 07.vs.02 - 06 vs 03 - 05.vs.04 Round 12: 14 vs 12 - 11.vs.13 - 10 vs 01 - 09.vs.02 - 08 vs 03 - 07.vs.04 - 06 vs 05 Round 13: 14.vs.13 - 12 vs 01 - 11.vs.02 - 10 vs 03 - 09.vs.04 - 08 vs 05 - 07.vs.06 The other thing you might do would be to flip pair 14 from N-S to E-W, but otherwise this works for any even number of pairs (and for odd numbers you simply make the high pair the stationary pair.) Posleda has pointed out that this means that some pairs play the same boards in the same direction often: for example, Pair 01 and 02 play only two of the thirteen rounds (rounds 02 and 08) in different seats. I'm not 100% sure, but I think the way around this might be to switch positions in a checkerboard pattern, where in odd numbered rounds the 1st 3rd 5th 7th matchups are flipped, and in even numbered rounds the 2nd 4th 6th 8th etc. are flipped. I added dots to the flipped matchups above. It may not be a perfect solution, but if it is a fairly good one and we can do Howells of all sizes with one simple algorithm, that is probably just what Uday wants. :angry:

A little bit of testing has uncovered the following: --the sv|-|pg|| area down a line has been broken up, by the forum software I assume, from the rest above it. It all needs to be on the same line. --the character | divides the various fields. On my keyboard this is just above the enter key. --the four hands are given in the order: South, West, North, East --the hands are shown with 17 characters: AKQJT98765432 (not 10) for cards, and CDHS for suits. Commas announce the start of a new hand. If there is a void you type nothing and continue to the next suit. (Question: do the suits need to be in ascending order?) --the number before the first suit letter indicates the dealer: 1=South, 2=West, 3=North, 4=East --the letter in the field sandwiched between "sv" and "pg" indicates the vulnerability: b=both, -=none, n=North-South, e=East-West This should be enough for anyone to create a set of hands in a text editor and upload them for their tourneys. However, I don't know whether the software checks to see that you have thirteen cards in each hand, or that you have no missing or duplicated cards. You should check this manually before uploading your deals, using the movie viewer. My method for checking this in the bridge publication I edit is as follows: 1) Make sure this is the correct hand record according to some external record you have. (Nothing like printing a partscore hand record and writing in the accompanying text that the dealer should open 2♣ and the cold grand slam should be easily reached...) 2) Check each of the four hands to see if they have 13 cards. 3) Check for the presence somewhere of the ace of spades. 4) Check for the presence somewhere of the king of spades. 5) Check for the presence somewhere of the queen of spades. 6) Check for the presence somewhere of the jack of spades. ... 54) Check for the presence somewhere of the two of clubs. It takes about a minute and a half per board. But any shortcut will lead to portential disaster. Perhaps Fred can enlighten us on what the qx, md, sv, pg, and the blank fields are for.

Cascade wrote: The fact that there is a rule saying that some bid or other needs to be alerted is different that saying that whenever that bid is not alerted then there needs to be an adjustment. An adjustment is only warrented if there is first an infraction and second there is damage and third that the damage is caused by the infraction. I would handled failures to alert where no damage resulted or the damage was not caused by the failure to alert by warning offenders and penalizing them if there were repeated offenses. I agree, and I guess my previous post implied that I thought all failures to alert/explain should be worth a penalty. Of course this is not the case. Is the Laws standard that damage must be caused by the infraction, or damage might have been caused by the infraction? I think the latter is correct.

Let's assume I wish to upload some deals for a tourney. Not because I want to pick the most exciting hands I've ever played, but because there are advantages with random deals too: --the Director could arrange for a hand record to be posted online shortly after the tournament ends --such a webpage could even include analyses of the hands since the deals could be generated well in advance --for the Alphabet series of sayc-only Individuals, a program like Jack could pre-play the hands against itself using sayc, generating sayc sequences the Director could refer to when facing allegations of non-standard bidding --Jack's scores might even be useful par results for players to compare against, and the auctions would be instructive for sayc beginners. Here's the problem. BBO requires the deals to be uploaded in .lin format. Anyone know of a .pbn to .lin converter?

mr1303 wrote: 1C* P 1D* P 2NT P 3NT All Pass 1C was Polish, not alerted AT ALL 1D was the negative response or natural with diamonds, also not alerted next player to play had KQTxxxx in diamonds, with a bit extra on the side and assuming the diamond bid was natural, was forced to pass. Contract ends up in 3NT, making plus 1 on a non-diamond lead, when a diamond lead almost certainly would have set it. On seeing the dummy, player calls the director (me) and I decided to adjust to 3NT-1 Cascade replied: I agree with your decision but with a condition ... If the opponents new that this pair was playing Polish club and if they new the meanings of Polish club then the damage has not been caused by the failure to alert. The Polish club pair have still infracted by their failure to alert. I would warn them or penalize them if I thought this was serious even if I did not adjust the score. Not sure I (McBruce) agree here. The Laws apply equally to everyone. If we decide that a Polish 1♣ and the 1♦ response must be alerted, those are the rules. It leads to chaos to create alert rules that must be followed "unless you figure your current opponents are aware of your methods." For example (just an example), in the ACBL we must immediately announce "transfer" when partner makes a Jacoby transfer. If you play a three or four-board round and you make Jacoby transfers on two boards, it's not a valid defense to the Appeal Committee to say "but I used the exact same convention on the previous board." Full disclosure means we must remind opponents what we play at every opportunity, whether the information is redundant to them or not. What would be best would be if we could deal with these situations the way a real life Director would. Adjust the declaring side to 3NT-1, but use judgment in deciding what to assign the defenders. If you judge that they probably should have been aware, you might make them "eat their score," especially if they played very poorly after the infraction. (Currently we are limited to adjustments based on average, A+ and A-.) My standard is "does it seem to me that the aggrieved party - the non-offending side - is trying to improve their score, or are they merely trying to annoy the opponents?" If I feel that they are calling in full knowledge that they cannot gain unless I make a mistake in judgment, I will make them eat their score, and I may even penalize further if the non-offenders call for the police often. BTW, neat effect for the Web savvy: replace color-words like 'orange' with hex codes like #e07000 in the tags for different shades. Works like a charm!:(

Done so. There seems to be an opening for more evening Pacific time tourneys. Thanks for the heads up, Uday!

I am both a director and have a 1600x1200 screen, so I appreciate this update very very much. One suggestion. On my large screen it is a long mouse trek from the cards to the buttons below the enlarged chat area. I wonder if it would be possible to include an option to place the back, <--, -->, <-->, movie, etc., buttons at the top of the chat area instead of below.

I run a sayc-only Individual game at 8pm Pacific time on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and keep a sort of rating system that has worked well in the Vancouver area to spark interest in our local tournaments. The first tournament was a matchpoints Indy (sayc-only), 15 boards (2 hours) at 8pm pst (11pm est) on Thursday, February 12. There is a web page with what I plan to do at this link: Alphabet Point Tournaments. I've updated this, adding pages with the schedule of future Alphabet Points games, rules, the current Alphabet Points leaders, and I hope in future to have hand records you can download within minutes of the end of the tourney. (We'll always use randomly dealt--but perhaps pre-analyzed--deals.) If you would like to see the way the rating system has worked for local bridge, you're welcome to check out the Unit 430 publication I edit at this link: Winter 2004 Matchpointer (in pdf) (ALERT: this is a large pdf file, almost 3MB.) The similar rating system I use to rate local players is described on pages 38-39. I imagine I'll be pelted with critics who 1) don't like sayc or 2) don't like individuals or 3) don't like the idea of a rating system or 4) expect that because I offer one my tournaments will be invaded by cheaters. The first three crticisms I plan to ignore (there are other tournaments, play those instead and have a good time). To the fourth I say bring 'em on, I'll do my best to deal with them. :D

Private message to Mr. 1-count once facts are determined: "There is no chance that you were damaged by the insufficient explanation to the Polish 1♣ opener. In my game, you don't get to wait until the opponents bid a slam and appear to be making it until you call the Director to complain about a poor explanation of the first call of the auction. Next time call me immediately when the 1♣ bid is made and only if you have a hand that may take action. There is no excuse for this needless disruption and if you try it again I will disqualify you, bar you from future tournaments I run, and report your behavior to BBO. Have a nice day."

1) When is the next meeting? 2) Quite a list of TDs you had in attendance? However did you manage to keep some semblance of order? We have enough trouble here in Unit 430 with our twelve Board Members... :angry:

In order to properly apply the priciple of Zero Tolerance, the Director needs to have the option of applying a Disciplinary Penalty (Law 91A). Giving various average minuses will not work. I'm afraid I simply haven't had time in the last few months to direct, but if players are taking advantage of the timing rules, we need to be able to control this. Not only that, there is a sad tendency to making public statements insinuating or even outright alleging cheating, which we need to be able to immediately control. This was posted recently on rec.games.bridge (original post in red, my response in blue): John Schuler wrote: > 1N* 2C > 2D 3D > P > > *12-15 > > I held (in on online tournament): > > x > JTx > Kxxxxx > AKxx > > The opponents, upon seeing dummy, made comments like "I'm tired of this > kind of crap", etc. I had NO idea what they were talking about at first, > and eventually they called the director. They complained that 2C should > be alerted if it didn't promise a 4 card major. > > To my utter astonishment, the director agreed! Alerting never occurred > to me. At the time I ascribed this to an ignorant director and 2 more > whining opponents* Is this really an alert? > > * A player who posts to this newgroup heard us bid 1H-1S-3H, alerted and > explained as 14-15 hcp, 6+ hearts, and 0-2 spades, and wanted a > suggested defense - chess? :angry: > > I really couldn't care less whether this is alertable or not and my advice is that you shouldn't either. If one of your opponents has been damaged by your failure to disclose your methods -- and whether the rules say alertable or not, there is no reason you cannot indicate privately to the opponents that 2C doesn't promise a four-card major, since you must know that the majority expect it to -- you should accept whatever penalty the Director assigns. On this auction I see no great likelihood that there will be damage, but I guess it is possible. However, if you allow such comments to be made at your table and do not report them to the Director when he arrives, you are doing us all a disservice. There is no reason for a player to make comments like the one you quoted, insinuating DELIBERATE action on your part, in any form of bridge, and if I am the Director and you quote the comment to me when I arrive that will be the first thing I deal with -- and now the question of whether or not your failure to alert/explain caused damage will be decided with you, not the opponent, getting the benefit of the doubt. I don't care what the Laws say, to me we are screwing bridge if we let people get away with gratutitous comments that are very thinly veiled cheating accusations. If Mr. Grumpy was actually damaged, this is my ruling: "Yes, Mr. Grumpy, there is damage here. You forfeited the right to redress when you made the comment. PLAY ON. The Laws may take a different view, but in any case I get to decide the penalty and I'm going to whack you twice as hard with disciplinary penalties. So consider this a favourable ruling. Next time, assuming your aim is restoring equity, and not, as it seems to be here, intimidating the opponents, simply call the Director and keep your idiotic opinions to yourself. You are on report and any further such nonsense will get you expelled." If Mr. Grumpy was not damaged, he gets the same speech AND a quarter-board penalty, escalating if he argues further. If we cannot penalize Mr. Grumpy a quarter board for this comment, we have no way of controlling this. If players know they will be penalized in matchpoints for this, they may think twice before doing it.

After a hopelessly busy six months, finally I find myself with some free time to direct tournaments on BBO. I wonder which parts of my pre-recorded pregame announcements are still necessary and which have been taken care of by Uday and his amazing improvements! Following are some items in my announcements file that may no longer be needed: --"...if you would like to be on the sub list, message me and do not kibitz please." Does the substitutes list work well now? Does it maintain an order (if so, no need to message me)? Does it ensure that no player on it is kibitzing the tournament (if so, no need to mention it)? --"Let the table know you have called so I get only one call per table." Has this been taken care of? I remember that some players used to call the Director secretly and chat privately about a problem. I can imagine a case where an invisible Director might make for less UI, but in all of the cases where this happened the player who called was making silly allegations about the opponents. Probably it would be best to force players to call the director publicly. I suppose you can chat-message a Director if neccesary. --"Browse to www.bridgebase.com/myhands to look at the traveller for each board. http://bbo.bridgebase.com:81/perl/history.pl will also let you see hands you've played." Are these sites still active? --McBruce

Just played in an individual tournament and on the final board a player opened 1NT and my partner overcalled 2♥. RHO bid 2♠ and opener raised to 4♠. Both opponents had said nothing since arriving at the table. The dummy came down and was a 4-2-3-4 18 count. Partner immediately made a comment that not announcing non-standard notrump ranges was unethical. I refrained from letting partner know that this seemed awfully minor to me. The opponents made twelve tricks and to my surprise, partner continued to make his case to me privately in the lobby. I repsonded by saying that the NT opener had perhaps miscounted, and then taken a shot by bidding game which might have been quite wrong. My partner's next salvo was that it was maddening to make a overcall which (s)he wouldn't have made knowing the 1NT opener was stronger than 15-17. Apparently that 18th point is huge. I nearly asked partner if (s)he thought this Poland-Denmark combination were a trans-Baltic pair who had a whole system: one presumably that they spent so much effort not disclosing that they missed slams. Anyway, predictably, the scores came out and we had scored 88.5% for -480, most bidding slam. The point here is that there is a very unfortunate suspicion of foul play in tourneys by many players. One idea I had some time ago might work in Indys: remove the names of the players! If you sit down and you do not know the name or the stats of your partner, it would FORCE you to type at least one message to agree on a system. Too many players refuse to communicate at all in Indys. And of course, if you cannot tell who your partner is, you cannot use ICQ or the telephone to make sure of a good result. And you can't claim that the opponents are doing so. You have to sit down, agree on a system, and play the best bridge you can play. Isn't that what we all want? To implement this option would require a tweak in the software to allow for Blind Indys, and then replace the player names with compass positions, and disable the stats screens. It might be a good idea to re-enable all this when all of the boards in a round have been played and there is time left to chat. Of course, you could still chat to the other players without knowing for sure who they are, but I imagine Blind Indys would have to have a rule against a player giving away his identity. Comments?

The Winter 2004 issue of the Matchpointer, the magazine of the Vancouver, Canada Unit of the ACBL, includes an article on the final of the Bermuda Bowl, featuring many plugs to BBO. This is the link. (The file is large, you'll need patience or broadband. The BBO plugs begin on page 10. --McBruce

I think it would help if some other views were added to this highly charged issue. Let me state (as I have on rgb) that my motivation in this is to make things better for next time, not to change the result of last time or question the result's validity. 1. For the most part, bridge is a game of making fewer mistakes than your opponents. It is unsound to compare two strong teams by how they play a set number of boards against weak teams, because the weak teams may make fewer errors against one team by getting more straightforward deals against them. These are not weak teams! These are teams which have: a) won their national championship, AND :) finished high enough in their zone to earn a spot in the BB! The 22 teams may not be the best 22 in the world because of the limitation of one (or two for USA) team per country, but none of them are hopelessly weak (although the Bermudans had a bad time of it). 2. The current carryover scheme, while not perfect, does an excellent job of ensuring that everyone in contention will always play to win against another contender. Otherwise, in the late stages of a round robin, it may be to the leaders' advantage to "dump" matches to an inferior team on the bubble so as to eliminate a superior team on the bubble. The current carryover scheme enforces that it will always be in a team's best interest to play their hardest in matches against other potential qualifiers, thus avoiding the appearance of impropriety. In cases when one team dumps to another it is always easy to see how and why this is happening. So DQ the dumpers. Suppose you are on a committee in a qualifying pairs event and the winning pair is alleged to have given another pair three tops in the final round, after seeing that the favorite was on the bubble. Some think this is a reasonable strategy, but I'd vote to DQ the dumpers. 3. The current carryover scheme also minimizes the problem of apathy by teams out of the race affecting the later rounds of play. Say there are 3 teams, A, B, and Z. Going into the last round, Z is in last place, while A and B are both certain to qualify but interested in maximizing their carryover. If A plays Z in the first round and B plays Z in the last round, it would not be surprising if Z played harder against A than B, changing the "field" faced by these two teams and giving B an advantage. Z is eliminated from contention and cannot possibly win any type of carryover. What possible incentive can there be for them to play well under the WBF carryover scheme? The problem is always there whether you have a carryover rule or not, and the only thing you can do to minimize it is to try to seed the teams and make sure the last-round matches are between teams of similar expected form. I expect that was why ITA-USA1 took place in the last round. 3. Tying carryover to overall VPs would also increase the opportunity for "kingmaking". If Z likes B better than A, it could influence the carryovers by dumping to B on the last day. While most people would not stoop to such tactics, it is best to reduce even the potential for it so as to avoid comment and/or hard feelings when a team out of contention loses badly to a team in contention on the final day. Again, DQ the dumpers! They deserve it. Do not use a carryover system to legimize dubious tactics. 4. If a team picks a country with a lower carryover margin _only_ because it saddles another team with a worse carryover margin, this team is worrying too much about other teams and not enough about their own opponents. I think most teams (properly) pick based on personal evaluation of the quality of the opponent and their own carryover, not on how their pick affects other teams. Let's hope so. But the saddling strategy is possible under the current system. Not under mine. 5. Although your example is contrived, I think it is more impressive to go 25-5 against the surviving teams and 11-19 against the field than vice versa. While in general, a large sample size is usually better than a small sample size, in bridge, the quality of the opposition is far more important. If you told me a pair did very well in the last 5 National Open Pairs but has also scored below 50% for all the sessions played in the last 5 weeks at the club, I would conclude they were playing carelessly against the lackluster competition (or experimenting). If you told me a pair has done well in the past 5 weeks of club games but has never done well in the 5 National Open Pairs events they have entered, I would conclude that they were much better than the members in their club, but not of national-level caliber. Again, I agree with the idea but the worst team at the BB is always going to be good enough to be a probable winner at your local tournament. There are no hopelessly weak teams in the BB. Your arguments basically make this point for me. :)

I don't know the answer to #1 or #2 but I have strong opinions about #3. Italy won the round-robin. The round-robin is the stage of the event where all of the teams play exactly the same number of boards against each team. No team has an advantage other than the luck of the deals in each match--swingy or not. This is random and mostly cancels itself out by the end of the round-robin. The WBF awarded USA1 a carryover because in the Italy-USA1 match, USA1 won by 24-6 (in Victory Points). Over the course of the rest of the round-robin, constituting TWENTY-ONE TIMES AS MUCH BRIDGE, against THE EXACT SAME OPPONENTS, Italy was better than the USA to the tune of 1.875 Victory Points per match. Over 336 deals against the same opponents Italy was clearly the better team. But because of what happened in the 16 boards they played against one another, USA1 got a carryover. I know of no sport that does things this way. The WBF's bizarre carry-over scheme is combined with this farce of the top half of the qualifying teams choosing their opponent from those in the bottom half. Among the stratgies this makes possible: let's pick Country A--they're not our biggest carryover, but it makes it impossible for the next team to play a match in which they get a carryover. Why not be logical? The carryover should be related to the final VP difference after the round-robin, pro-rated so that the top-ranked round-robin survivor vs the low-ranked round-robin survivor, if they meet, gets the maximum carryover for each round. The difference between #1 Italy and #8 USA2 was 66VPs and the maximum carryover for the final was 24 IMPs. 66/24 is 2.75, and the difference between Italy and USA1 was 19.5 VPs. Divide that by 2.75 and you get a FAIR carryover for Italy of 7.09 IMPs. Do it this way and the #1 team will have a fair advantage, well-deserved from its total accomplishment over 352 deals. The way it is set up now, a team could squeak into the knockout phase in the last spot having lost maybe 11-19 on average to the lowest fourteen teams, with 25-5 blitzes over the surviving teams. This team would get a carryover no matter who they played, despite being the lowest-ranked team in the knockout phase. That's just silly. Italy finished first in the round-robin. First by a large margin. They shouldn't have had to be paying a carryover to a team they had already proven they were superior to. Without the carryover they would have won by 12. Most thinking people would say a win by 12 over 128 boards is more statistically significant than a loss by 39 over 16 boards (in a final round match with first-place clinched). The WBF carryover scheme is just nuts.