Time violation

[Walddk]

Time violation is a frequent occurrence, not least in the final stages of a knockout tournament where it matters little for the fixed timetable. Let's take the final as an example where you don't bother other contestants by being late. Penalties are irrelevant if the players claim that they were both at fault for the time violation.

 

On vugraph a couple of days ago from Denmark we witnessed a session 5 where it took one table 1 hour and 45 minutes to complete 8 boards! The allotted time (playing with screens) was 70 minutes.

 

Now, how should you deal with this frequent and very annoying problem?

 

The American way where you take boards away regardless of whether the board has been played in the other room or not? Would that perhaps encourage the leading team to play slowly on purpose? A few weeks ago we saw how boards were taken away in the Buffett Cup in Kentucky.

 

Or should the players be monitored, perhaps using a chess clock, to determine which side spent more time? Then penalise them percentage-wise by deducting IMPs? And at what stage should they be monitored? From the start of a session, or when the TD sees that they are way behind?

 

In that case you wouldn't know who caused the delay earlier. Bridge players are quite clever. They just claim that they have spent the equal amount of time on both sides, knowing that penalising them after that statement is impossible. I mean, it's ridiculous to subtract say 10 IMPs from each team's score.

 

One of the problems with monitoring them is that it takes manpower. That could be a substantial factor if several tables must be monitored.

 

The questions are many, the solutions are not obvious, but it definitely is a problem. Vugraphed matches on the internet attract thousands of spectators. That is of course good for bridge, but it would be a shame if we chase many of them away again by offering them 4 boards in 55 minutes as was the case in the Danish session I mentioned above.

 

Time is of course an important issue in serious tournament bridge. Do you have the 100% flawless solution to this infraction?

 

Roland

[helene_t]

A semifinal of the 2004 Dutch Teams Champ'ship was very close so the time penalty came to decide the match. This is known as the "Streepjes-Gate" scandal, as the way the time spent by the respective teams was criticized. For example, when one pair ask the opponents to explain some complicated, exotic convention, the time was written on the account of the asking pair. Basically the problem was that the time measures were not bridge players so they could only try to apply some mechanistic rules.

 

As for your concern that the leading pair might play slowly on purpose: it must be possible to make a formula for a higher weight factor for the late boards which eliminates such incentives. Suppose that there are 100 boards to be played but after 80 boards it is decided to play only 10 more. To let the 10 boards contribute as much variance as 20 would have normally, they have to be weighted by a factor squareroot(2). I am not sure I am seriously suggesting this, haven't thought it through. I can imagine it gets quite complicated when everyone can predict - before the decision is made - that the number of boards will be reduced.

[shintaro]

B)

 

Interestingly a Colleague of mine TD at an EBU event actually timed a 'Notorious' Slow pair and then confronted them with the Data eventually fining them for the Slow play

 

;)

[ArcLight]

:(

 

Interestingly a Colleague of mine TD at an EBU event actually timed a 'Notorious' Slow pair and then confronted them with the Data eventually fining them for the Slow play

 

;)

I think this is the way to do it.

[JoAnneM]

I have never played with screens but I think the procedure is that you put your bid into a tray that is pass through, correct? These tables and trays should be constructed so that when the bids and plays hit the table they are recorded as to time elapsed. Now when time runs out it would be easy to determine the culprit(s) and act according to preset policies.

 

Seems like with mini computer chips embedded this should be an easy enough technology.

[dburn]

I have never played with screens but I think the procedure is that you put your bid into a tray that is pass through, correct? These tables and trays should be constructed so that when the bids and plays hit the table they are recorded as to time elapsed. Now when time runs out it would be easy to determine the culprit(s) and act according to preset policies.

 

Seems like with mini computer chips embedded this should be an easy enough technology.

That would not solve the problem mentioned above. You make a bid, or play so my clock starts running. But I need you to explain your methods to me, and this should not happen on my time (or at least, not entirely).

 

There is nothing much wrong with using clocks as they do in chess, except that it would be rather awkward to press a clock after playing each card. The only solution I can envisage is monitoring by people who know what they're doing. That's not going to be possible except at major tournaments, of course, but it ought to happen there.

[pclayton]

Take an event like the Spingold. In the round of 32, there are at least several directors in the room and they aren't besieged with rulings. Besides posting 1/4 scores, there's nothing to do but read the paper.

 

An hour into the matches, it should be very evident which tables are on time and which are lagging.

 

All a director has to do is perch themselves at the slow tables when they aren't giving rulings. They should be able to tell which pairs are slowing things down and penalize accordingly.

 

Personally I hate it when a director comes and says "you are on the clock" to a non-offending pair. Its as if the directors don't want the burden of figuring out who the slow pair is.

[Cascade]

Even if one side uses most of the time then it is not clear that the slow play is there fault.

 

The nature of the game is that some decisions are tougher and more time consuming than others. And the division of tough decisions and hence required time in a short match or stanza is very unlikely to be equal. Therefore it is not reasonable to expect both sides to use equal amounts of time.

[Cascade]

Take an event like the Spingold. In the round of 32, there are at least several directors in the room and they aren't besieged with rulings. Besides posting 1/4 scores, there's nothing to do but read the paper.

 

An hour into the matches, it should be very evident which tables are on time and which are lagging.

 

All a director has to do is perch themselves at the slow tables when they aren't giving rulings. They should be able to tell which pairs are slowing things down and penalize accordingly.

 

Personally I hate it when a director comes and says "you are on the clock" to a non-offending pair. Its as if the directors don't want the burden of figuring out who the slow pair is.

This monitoring could be done by a camera if there are insufficient directing/monitoring staff. It would then only be looked at if there was a problem. Knowing that they are always being monitored may be incentive enough for both sides to play at an appropriate pace.

[matmat]

This monitoring could be done by a camera if there are insufficient directing/monitoring staff. It would then only be looked at if there was a problem. Knowing that they are always being monitored may be incentive enough for both sides to play at an appropriate pace.

or it could be done via electronic bid and play entry, or something like a chess clock...

[JanM]

You might be interested in the Time Regulations contained in the USBF General Conditions of Contest. Those regulations address the issue of when use of time is appropriate and when it is not. They attempt to impose reasonable penalties and limit some penalties to situations in which there is a monitor present. It has been difficult to recruit knowledgeable monitors, but we do try to have a monitor at a table where a time problem is anticipated.

 

Recently, the USBF's ITTC Conditions of Contest Committee has been discussing possible ways to encourage habitual offenders to waste less time. The discussion arose because for next year we have decreased the time allotted per board from 9 minutes to 8.5 minutes and there was some concern that this would result in more late finishes. Suggestions that were made included removing Positioning Points for the following cycle from players who were late in more segments than they were on time (Positioning Points are the points that can result in a team receiving a bye to a later round of the Trials and are therefore a valuable commodity) and barring players from the following year's trials for egregious lateness (this is already allowed by the Conditions of Contest, but only in extreme situations). The possibility of video coverage of potential problem tables has been raised, as has the idea of using the Vugraph to measure the amount of time taken. The discussion is ongoing.

 

Edited to put the URL in the background, thanks blackshoe (although I'm Jan, not JoAnne).

[glen]

I hate scoring adjustments for time problems, and I dislike the pulling of boards.

 

I like a yellow/red card type of approach, that invokes non-scoring penalties.

 

For example, a table is late: each pair at this table loses seating rights (deciding who plays who) for the next match where they would have seating rights, unless this pair is not played in that match. (exchange match for sessions for long matches)

 

A pair is late twice in four or less matches. If on a six person team, must sit out the next two matches, and must submit a report explaining on what boards and why there was so much time taken on the two matches (they can blame the opponents, but must document this attempted blame, and until they report, no play - blank or short reports not acceptable).

 

A pair is late three times in six or less matches. If on a six person team, must sit out the next three matches, and must submit a report explaining on what boards and why there was so much time taken on the three matches.

 

If the team is on a five person team, at least one of the two must sit, and the team loses any seating rights for matches with the other late player.

 

Once a pair has been late twice, but must play even though they would normally sit out (by rule above), because the team only has 4 available players (a 4 person team, or other team members unavailable etc.), they can play, without seating rights, but must play a default convention card for the matches they would normally be out for.

[blackshoe]

USBF General Conditions of Contest

 

I just copied the url to the clipboard from JoAnne's post, clicked reply, clicked the http button and filled in the two boxes the forum presented.

[mrdct]

Take an event like the Spingold. In the round of 32, there are at least several directors in the room and they aren't besieged with rulings. Besides posting 1/4 scores, there's nothing to do but read the paper.

 

An hour into the matches, it should be very evident which tables are on time and which are lagging.

 

All a director has to do is perch themselves at the slow tables when they aren't giving rulings. They should be able to tell which pairs are slowing things down and penalize accordingly.

 

Personally I hate it when a director comes and says "you are on the clock" to a non-offending pair. Its as if the directors don't want the burden of figuring out who the slow pair is.

The problem with putting a monitor in one hour into the match is that it won't overcome a frequent form of gamesmanship that I have personally witnessed when vugraph operating at a World Championship where an experienced pair known to be quite capable of playing quickly played extremely slowly for the first half of the match which frustrated the hell out of their opponents. After a couple of director calls a time monitor was positioned at the table at which point the experienced pair looked like they were in a speedball. The "innocent" pair then tried to keep up to avoid the time penalty being assessed on them and predictably a lot of errors crept in resulting in a large win to the "guilty" pair.

 

I think ultimately technology is the answer with some sort of timing mechanism at the table that can automatically determine when a bid is made and when a card is played, but designers of such a system will have a lot of challenges to ensure that the system isn't too obstrusive.

 

To the extent to which vugraph operators enter bids and plays in real time (which usually isn't the case) BBO itself could probably be used to calculate who is taking all the time. Indeed, perhaps the bidding and play itself could be entered by the players at table with the bidding boxes, bridgemates, boards and cards replaced with four laptops.

 

Of course no system will be immune to gamesmanship, for example how do you assess time penalties when declarer runs a long suit trying for a psuedo squeeze for an overtrick forcing his opponents to think long and hard about their discards when he really should be claiming?

[blackshoe]

how do you assess time penalties when declarer runs a long suit trying for a psuedo squeeze for an overtrick forcing his opponents to think long and hard about their discards when he really should be claiming?

How do you decide whether he "really should be claiming"? Who decides? While there are many situations in which the TD's (or AC's) judgement may override a player's judgement, I don't see how this is one of them, and the ACBL General Conditions of Contest say "Players are expected to play each hand to win at all times." Is eschewing the overtrick "playing to win"? I would certainly say it is not at matchpoints. IMPs may be another matter - although it is certainly possible to win or lose a match by one IMP.

 

I don't think trying for an overtrick in this way is in the same class as the gamemanship you described earlier in your post. That strikes me as at least very close to the "unethical" line, if not over it.

[mrdct]

how do you assess time penalties when declarer runs a long suit trying for a psuedo squeeze for an overtrick forcing his opponents to think long and hard about their discards when he really should be claiming?

How do you decide whether he "really should be claiming"? Who decides? While there are many situations in which the TD's (or AC's) judgement may override a player's judgement, I don't see how this is one of them

That's the whole problem - any method of determining who is wasting time will require a high degree of subjectivity.

 

Psuedo squeezes will have varying degrees of pointlessness and I guess the sort I'm talking about are where declarer really shouldn't have any remotely reasonable prospect of an extra trick and is clearly trying to consume the opponents' time credits.

[Free]

Technology is the only way to overcome this problem with reletively small effort. What you need is an electronic deck of cards and an electronic way of transfering data.

 

Suppose that every player gets a laptop, and these laptops are connected to each other. You let the players use the laptop to bid and to play.

- Now you can measure the time pretty nicely: when explanations are asked/given, you count time for both parties. Otherwise the time is added to the player who's turn it is. After the lead, the time spent for dummy's card and declarer's RHO card is shared as well.

- Problems with claims can be countered: you add a computer player in the background and let him check if a claim is justified or not. When the computer player thinks it is, you could give declarer a warning that he should claim (don't specify the number of tricks). If he refuses to claim, time is added to declarer's account.

- Not every decision is as hard as another. Again, you can let a computer player decide in the background how difficult a certain decision is.

 

If you can replace the laptops with some form of "hardware" that you can "play" with, you're out of your misery. Perhaps using badges instead of cards, other badges to bid, and some table and tray with scanners might work when we can adapt them to playing card materials.

 

Biggest problem imo is to decide the difficulty of a decision. This will have to take bidding systems into account (mainly for auctions, but also for play), which is pretty much impossible at this point. Claiming is easier but needs work (for example: not to let declarer know there's a 100% double squeeze available). At the moment I think it's already possible to evaluate carding decisions. Let the computer player make a simulation: if there's a clear card to play, you're wasting time. Otherwise you have a more difficult decision (for example if one card has 52% of success and another has 43% of success, it's a lot harder than if the second card only has 10% chance of success. With some formula you could probably make a realistic weight function.

[Finch]

Wonderful!

 

 

I'm defender, and I am wondering why declarer doesn't claim. Slowly it dawns on me that declarer doesn't actually realise that 6 of diamonds in dummy is a master. In fact, declarer's thinking for so long he's about to go one off by taking a losing finesse instead. But then the computer player says "claim" and he wakes up to the fact that he has the rest in top tricks. That's my +13 imps out of the window.

[helene_t]

This computer player who tells declarer (or defenders) to claim should obviously only be triggered when every line (including the stupidest line possible) leads to the same results. If declarer holds AKQ2 of trumps in the 4-card endplay and the only trump out is the 3 it is still to early for an automated claim.

 

This will not speed up boards where a claim is justified (since the players will claim much more liberally than the computer), but it will speed it up when declarer from his own point of view still has work to do while the lay of the cards happen to be such that it doesn't matter.

[gwnn]

I agree with Helene, that would be the only sort of automated system imaginable, except I would think even that system would harm the game. If you don't realize everything is high and still think and think about some squeeze against the remaining imaginary high cards, you are paying for your own inattention and shouldn't be relieved of the extra pressure/thought. Of course defenders will also struggle to realize what is going on, but I think declarer's agony is more severe.

[naresh301]

If dummy cannot ask the declarer to claim, how can it make sense for a computer to do so?! I'm not a fan of technology interfering with sports/games, but it seems like Free's suggestion can still work: the computer simply adds time to the declarer's account when there is a good claim. There is no need for declarer to be told anything, at least until the hand is played out.

[Free]

Wonderful!

 

 

I'm defender, and I am wondering why declarer doesn't claim. Slowly it dawns on me that declarer doesn't actually realise that 6 of diamonds in dummy is a master. In fact, declarer's thinking for so long he's about to go one off by taking a losing finesse instead. But then the computer player says "claim" and he wakes up to the fact that he has the rest in top tricks. That's my +13 imps out of the window.

Perhaps it's just better to let our computer player decide in the background if a claim is justified... This is what brainstorming is for :)

[jdonn]

I just don't see the whole thing as a very big problem at all. I must be weird that way.

[Echognome]

Actually, it's not very clear to me what should be the conditions of contest and how they might vary depending on the particular competition. It seems that the egregious violations should be dealt with more on a case-by-case basis. I don't believe that timers should necessarily be used for the many reasons pointed out where certain situations just require more time and the violations come on an aggregate basis. I imagine that when Andrew Robson or Michael Rosenberg or Barnet Shenkin (or select your favorite player with a reputation for being slow at times) spends an inordinate amount of time thinking through a bridge problem, it is not because they are trying on gamesmanship. It is because they feel that the problem is complicated and that thinking is part of the game. So is it? Are they right that they should be given ample time to think a problem through? Or is it a timed sport where they should have a limited amount of time to think? (Like we impose on the bridge playing computers.) I think that answer should be dealt with first before deciding how to punish offenders. Once we decide what the limits are (are they per hand? per round? per session? do they depend on the event? etc.) then we can deal with how to enforce those rules. For now, it seems that most players know the egregious offenders and those can be dealt with individually.

 

Finally, if this is deemed to be an issue amongst the competitors, why not ask the competitors what they want done? I don't think our solutions here are going to be as relevant as the solutions proposed by the players of this national and international events.

[NickRW]

Are they right that they should be given ample time to think a problem through? Or is it a timed sport where they should have a limited amount of time to think?

In answer to that particular question, I would say obviously it is, at least to some extent, a timed sport. Organisers cannot allow indefinite amounts of time - it just isn't possible. Also, a great many of us, given indefinite time could play a lot better than we do if we were used to the fact that we could regularly tank at trick one for 5 or 10 minutes - but part of the skill is that you don't get allowed that amound of time and have to "think on your feet" (depend on experience).

 

It also seems to me (I don't know what an accurate figure is) that top events seem to be allowing something of the order of 8.5 or 9 minutes per board. At our local club we get allowed about 7 - and we have to move every three boards - and we have to keep this up for 27 boards instead of 16 - and, if we want tea or coffee, we have to fit that in as well as the TD makes no actual allowance for a break. So these top players are already being allowed quite a bit of time compared to us mere mortals. I am not saying that is wrong at all - I think our club could go for 24 boards and have a slightly more leisurely evening - and I think at top levels the game is not a race - but even so I think adequate time is being allowed already.

 

Nick