Chat review needed for ZT

[glen]

TDs still (its been requested before) need a feature where they can review recent open chat at a table in a tourney. Otherwise ZT (zero tolerance) infractions continue to go unpunished and people are left bewildered and hurt from some of the tourney “experiences”.

 

Take today.

 

In the first tourney, in the middle of a hand, an expert openly called my bidding a joke, and then, at end of hand, used joke twice more, even after I asked him to stop (btw the expert had received a great result, so openly said "the joke is you can make 4♠").

 

This resulted in just a warning to the player.

 

In the second tourney, I’m playing against two players marked advanced and intermediate.

 

I’m playing the hand out to get to just trumps in my hand before I claim, since claims are not always clear to intermediates and rapid play often is much faster.

 

The advanced player says, before I can get to point of just trumps, via a couple of open comments, that I’m rude to not claim.

 

Then when I explain I don’t claim if the situation is not clear and an intermediate player is playing, I’m told, by the advanced player, that is “extraordinarily condescending”. [side question: is it?]

 

I point out that “intermediate” is marked as the skill level.

 

This results in a TD call, and the TD, without discussing it with me, and without a chat review feature, says to quit addressing the opponents in the manner that I am. When I point out the TD does not have the info, the TD says “it doesn’t matter, I should only be speaking about bidding”. I note that I did not speak first, and did not use bad language, or misstate anything.

 

If BBO wants nicer tourneys and to actually follow ZT principles, a chat review feature is mandatory.

 

As it was, I had a yucky two tourneys.

[Echognome]

Sounds awful Glen. I think this either has to be handle by abuse (where the players at the table keep the chatlog and/or report the time it happened to abuse) and then the acbl is out of it.

 

Or, if ZT is really going to be in effect, then the TD's need a bit more technology at hand.

 

I really think it's going to be impossible for the latter to happen. What if all the abuse you are getting is in private messages? You either have to take away all such privacy or the TD will be powerless to do anything about it. Here's where I think abuse@bridgebase is going to be much better suited to handle it. The job of the TD in an acbl tourney should (here I mean in my opinion) just handle any egregious occurences on the spot. The should recommend that all other situations should be handled by the parties directly through abuse. At the same time, they shouldn't really take sides unless it's clear.

[Walddk]

Take today.

 

In the first tourney, in the middle of a hand, an expert openly called my bidding a joke, and then, at end of hand, used joke twice more, even after I asked him to stop (btw the expert had received a great result, so openly said "the joke is you can make 4♠").

 

This resulted in just a warning to the player.

What did you have in mind? 200 hours of community service? I agree; his comments were inappropriate, but is a warning really not enough? If you call for severe punishment, I think you overreact.

 

Roland

[blackshoe]

From the ACBL's Zero Tolerance Policy:

 

The following has been given to Tournament Directors for implementation:

 

[snip]

 

If it is established that there was unacceptable behavior, an immediate ¼ board disciplinary penalty (3 IMP in team games) shall be assigned to all offenders. This may involve any one or all four players at the table irrespective of who initiated the unacceptable behavior. If both members of a partnership are guilty, the penalties are additive (¼ board EACH = ½ board!).

 

It seems that if ZT is in effect, and that has been announced or is in the conditions of contest, a warning is insufficient.

[glen]

What did you have in mind?

That the player would say "I'm sorry", or words to that effect.

 

his comments were inappropriate, but is a warning really not enough? If you call for severe punishment, I think you overreact.

Given I did not report this to abuse, I could hardly be assumed to be calling for "severe punishment", so I don't know how you got on this track. I did say privately to the TD that if the player did this type of thing again to me in a subsequent tourney, I would have to report it to abuse, and the TD said that would be a good idea. Would you agree? Do you think the TD should have also put a note on the player, so that if the player does type of thing to another player instead of me, something might be done about it, or should it just continue with warnings?

 

The other day I was subbing in a tourney, and we moved to a new table. I told the opps I was a sub (so they would understand we might not have a clue what we are doing). A player assumed that meant I was new to tourneys, and said, privately to me, "welcome to the acbl, some here are nice, others are nasty".

 

Yesterday when parked in a tourney as a waiting sub, I saw this TD announcement in the middle of the tourney:

Folks, be polite to one another--  this is a card game B)  No need to fight and scuffle amongst one another over anything that happens here on an entertaiment [sic] site, right? B) 

This suggests that others may be having a problem with some nastiness in ACBL BBO tourneys. I recommended in this thread that the TDs be given a software feature, to assist them in using ZT, if BBO management wants that to be used in tourneys. I believe if the TDs had this feature, and then started to use ZT, that the open nastiness would clear up in about two weeks.

 

On a technical note, the MYSQL database table would look like:

 

event name

event date

round

table

player1

player2

player3

player4

chat

 

As open chat occurs it is stored in the chat column. The TD feature would retrieve the chat column for a selected table and round of the current tourney. The table is flushed out every day.

[mycroft]

I would have sent this one to abuse. If I considered it enough of a problem to discuss it on the forums, I would send to abuse with:

 

"I don't think this is appropriate. I don't think it's over the top, either, but I'm reporting this in case there is other evidence that this is his normal behaviour, because that *would be* over the top."

 

But I more often recommend that people write Recorder forms for this kind of borderline behaviour than most - because I know that a *pattern* of mildly inappropriate behaviour is required to trigger sanctions, and there are those who take advantage of the fact that very few are willing to be nodes in that pattern.

 

I agree with the main point, however - that TDs should have access to the chat so that they don't have to rely on (usually privately sent, so unverifiable) evidence from the players. We have to IRL, but at least the accused/accusers are there to listen to what is said that was said, and can correct obvious inaccuracies.

 

Michael.