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Sportmanlike dumping


H_KARLUK

What do you believe and why ?  

41 members have voted

  1. 1. What do you believe and why ?

    • An actual case of sportsmanlike dumping has NEVER occurred in bridge game
      0
    • An actual case of sportsmanlike dumping has EVER occurred in bridge game
      34
    • Maybe, rare !
      7


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What do you mean with dumping? Playing bad on purpose? :) Only in a Swiss event you could do this in the first round, but you might end up losing too much VP's.

If you never met dumping cases in bridge or in any cometitive game, just come to China, and you will see them all :D

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Every team should try to maximize its chances to be successful in a tournament.

 

Unfortunately, the conditions of contest are sometimes such that this means losing IMPs. I think the player in question is allowed to play to lose in this position.

 

Like Jan, I think the CoC are at fault.

 

I've also seen "dumping to friends", unfortunately. Unlike the previous, that is very unsportly.

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I recall that in the 2000 Olympiad in Maastricht, the Netherlands, the Conditions of Contest addressed the problem of sportsmanlike dumping by attempting to make it illegal. The form of words they chose was along these lines:

 

Teams may play whatever line-ups they want for tactical reasons, but for the players at the table, failure to play other than as good bridge as possible is not permitted.

 

I think I was the only person present who worked out that this meant it was mandatory to play badly. The question that has troubled me since is: when the Italians beat us in the semi-finals by playing well, should I have called the Director?

Only if they played the perfect game would they have violated the condition "as good as possible".

 

Therefore even if this happened you might only expect a small adjustment - "We should have slipped an overtrick on that last board to avoid playing 'as good as possible'". So a TD call might have been useful in a close match in which the opponents had had otherwise the perfect game.

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If you are interested in stopping dumping, change the conditions of contest. If it is in your best interest to do x, do x.

 

Classic Dumping Soccer Style:

 

I believe it was the Gold Cup about 8 years ago. To move on to the qualifying stages, Team B had to win by two goals. For some strange reason, there was a rule which stated if you win in a shootout the score was 2-0. They were up 2-1 in the second half and realized they couldn't score on the other teams defense. So, instead of shooting at the opponents goal, they shot at their own goal. The other team caught on and each team kept shooting at its own goal.

 

Solution: Change the conditions of contest.

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If you are interested in stopping dumping, change the conditions of contest. If it is in your best interest to do x, do x.

 

Classic Dumping Soccer Style:

 

I believe it was the Gold Cup about 8 years ago. To move on to the qualifying stages, Team B had to win by two goals. For some strange reason, there was a rule which stated if you win in a shootout the score was 2-0. They were up 2-1 in the second half and realized they couldn't score on the other teams defense. So, instead of shooting at the opponents goal, they shot at their own goal. The other team caught on and each team kept shooting at its own goal.

 

Solution: Change the conditions of contest.

Actually, that's a very interesting situation because team A could have "won" after 2-2 by scoring in either goal! It's a very peculiar situation. Apparently, they didn't realise that and/or there was insufficient time.

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Watching the late games in the opening pools of the football World Cup is always amusing. There's always at least one game where the teams will both qualify - but only if a certain (set of) score(s) is achieved. If not, one or the other gets in along with a third team. Of course, you're not allowed to "dump".

 

It's amazing how hard it is to get past that defence in the 1-1 tie after 35 minutes. One would almost think both midfields became stone walls.

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Jan referred to an Italy - South Africa match in her post. There is absolutely

no evidence of any dumping on any of the 16 hands in that Round 20 (out of 21) match. The match was well played and low scoring. You can look at the 16 hands, and compare with the results in every other match at:

http://www.worldbridge.org/tourn/Shanghai....?qmatchid=23249

 

Why then did Italy choose South Africa? The only other surprise qualifier was Australia, which had at least one slow pair in its team (Italy knew this), and

who had also just played a recent close match with Italy. Italy prefers to play

the faster players in matches they expect to win, so that might have been

one of the reasons why Italy chose South Africa rather than Australia.

 

There have been a few real cases of probable dumping....

 

In the 1991 Bermuda Bowl, Iceland was winning one section comfortably, with powerhouse USA team about to qualify 4th. In the last qualifying match in the other section, teams might therefore want to qualify as lowly as possible, and Poland made some very strange bids in their last match, e.g. 1H raised to 6H on a four count and so forth, in an apparent (and unsuccessful) attempt to draw Iceland in the quarter-final. Alas I don't have the 1991 World Championship book handy so I cannot give you the actual deals. Ironically Iceland beat Poland in the Grand Final. The WBF has to some extent fixed these problems by giving teams who do well some choice of Final's opponents. Ref 1991 WC Book for further details.

 

In Australia's 1978 National Open Teams, two strong teams locked into the

semi-finals both lost their last qualifying match "minus 1 to 20" to unheralded opponents who thus made the semis, triggering a three page discussion of dumping in the Feb 1978 editorial of Australian Bridge magazine.

 

During the semi-final of the 1991 Playoff for the Australian Open Team,

my team's captain discovered that we had to lose either the Semi or the Final

in order to play for Australia (to our amazement), so he saw the Tournament Organiser, who told him we all had to play our best according to the rules.

"Do I have to play my best partnerships?" my team captain asked him.

"No," was TO's reply. Such oddities happen sometimes in the tournament world.

 

Overall I think dumping occurred quite often in the 1970s, but is less common now. My examples are from Australia, not because Australia is a cesspool of dumping (it isn't), but because Australia is the country which I'm familiar with.

 

Peter Gill

Australia.

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A popular tournament approach around here is to play a qualification with carryover to the A- and B-final. When it is clear that you are "close" to qualifying, which can be determined rather well with Bridgemates, it may be best for you to not qualify and then try to win the B-section rather than qualify last for the A-final. This is also a classical dumping situation.
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A popular tournament approach around here is to play a qualification with carryover to the A- and B-final. When it is clear that you are "close" to qualifying, which can be determined rather well with Bridgemates, it may be best for you to not qualify and then try to win the B-section rather than qualify last for the A-final. This is also a classical dumping situation.

I'm not saying this doesn't happen, but I don't understand why anyone would do that. If they'd rather win a weak event than play in a strong event, why don't they just find a weaker event in the first place, instead of polluting the scores in a competition they apparently don't want to play in at all?

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A popular tournament approach around here is to play a qualification with carryover to the A- and B-final. When it is clear that you are "close" to qualifying, which can be determined rather well with Bridgemates, it may be best for you to not qualify and then try to win the B-section rather than qualify last for the A-final. This is also a classical dumping situation.

I'm not saying this doesn't happen, but I don't understand why anyone would do that. If they'd rather win a weak event than play in a strong event, why don't they just find a weaker event in the first place, instead of polluting the scores in a competition they apparently don't want to play in at all?

Because of the carry-forward.

 

When they entered, they were hoping to do well in the A-final.

Now, because of the large carry-forward, they know they are virtually without hope of winning the A final but have a good chance of doing well in the B final.

 

We were in this position in the European Open pairs in Tenerife. We eventually qualified for the A final via the repechage in the last qualifying place. After the first day of the A final we were in first place before the carryforward applied, but that then stuck us down to something like 10th.

 

(We then yielded on the second day of the final but that's neither here nor there to the point of this story.)

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