sailoranch

http://i.imgur.com/JaZiZ6fl.png http://i.imgur.com/WjpZIg3l.png http://i.imgur.com/pBaGOSOl.png http://i.imgur.com/iXFR7bql.png http://i.imgur.com/z3l5AB9l.png So sneaky!

Alex: Ooooh, I'm sorry. The correct response is: What is worried?

As an aside, AIBA is using its status as gatekeeper of Olympic eligibility to expand into professional boxing. They are reverting to the ten-point-must system and dropping headgear for the top amateur men.

Certainly true, but I think it's somewhat of a knock-on effect that's developed alongside the professional ranks. Promoters try to whip up the best amateur talent, and Olympic/amateur success helps to sell fighters early in their professional careers. Also, judges often judge both amateur and pro (or have judged the other in the past).

Boxing is easy. There's a lot of money at stake, the oversight is extremely lax (and splintered), and the shadiness doesn't seem to drive away spectators. In figure skating, a lot has to do with the old scoring system, which was preferential (read: matchpoints). So a judge could easily manipulate the standings without giving ridiculous scores. In the case of the 2002 pairs event, the balance of the nationalities of the judges created a situation where a single judge could expect to be a swing vote, and thus easily bought (in this case, by organized crime figures). This was relatively recent and it was the Olympics, so figure skating hasn't managed to shed the stink. They changed the system so that the judges have to grade several different elements, so the scoring is a bit more predictable and scores that are out of line with the other judges will get trimmed. On the other hand, they made the judging anonymous in order to protect the judges from pressure from their own countries' federations (or mob bosses), but the lack of transparency doesn't help their case with the general public.

Boxing (and several other combat "contests") are clearly not sports. Also, it's not like we've never seen a football (soccer) match determined by a referee's penalty decision. Or a basketball game determined by a foul decision, or a baseball game determined by an umpire's inconsistent strike zone, or an NFL game decided by pass interference, etc. These are all, at least in practice, subjective judgments that have a huge influence on the outcome. I'm also wary of laying down criteria that give figure skating and gymnastics a lesser claim to being sports than competitive eating and beer pong. And if the issue is the legitimacy of determining winners and losers based on subjective scoring, why shouldn't we declare things like debating, chili cook-offs, Iron Chef, and the World Livestock Auctioneering Championship not to be valid as contests at all? If the issue is the prospect of corruption, that seems to be a common problem with governance or sports subculture that isn't limited to subjectively scored sports. (case study: Tour de France)

Curlers probably think the same thing about bridge.

This was discussed extensively in the topic I linked to earlier. I was taking your position, but the accepted view seems to be that the irregularity is the original instance of MI rather than the call based on MI. So in adjusting, the entire auction has to be reconstructed with the correct explanation rather than from a later point more beneficial to the NOS.

I don't see why you wouldn't award -1400 in the ACBL or a weighted score elsewhere. Of course the weighting factors are hard to determine because they are always somewhat arbitrary. The MP scores would be super hard to be confident about if the board is yet to be played at another table. On the other hand, if the event is over and the weights don't affect the MP score at all, then why the need to resort to an artificial score at all when you could just commit to some weights and be done with it.

I don't get it. Is there any situation where the possible results are too numerous or not obvious enough to award an assigned score, but obvious enough and not too numerous to conclude that the NOS would matchpoint exactly 90%? Just pick a result or weight several of them and give an assigned adjusted score, which is essentially what's happening in your mind anyway.

There was a similar discussion some time ago here.

I'm not sure where to put this, but I guess it's related to laws. I played in a sectional pairs game yesterday. After giving one of the hands to a friend, he told me he played the exact same board at a regional last week and proceeded to give me correct details of other boards from the set. I've already informed the director, so they're aware. But what is supposed to happen in this situation?

Sorry I misunderstood. The discussion was aimed at a situation where the adjustment for a call or play based on MI would be worse than the adjustment for the later infraction. This was the OP case. Here you said the proper weighted ruling was: If West asks South to explain the 2♠ call again and receives the correct info this time, then West can be confident that there's been a misbid and passes. If West receives the same MI, then the adjustment for the latter infraction would be 100% 2♠-2 (IMO), the expectation had the second infraction not occurred.

The basis in law is that offender is still required to give a correct explanation in response to a question. 20F1 and 20F2, along with 40B4. Whether it should be in Law is another matter, but I've made clear my views as to the proper remedy.