"Zonal Authority"

[jallerton]

Is there a definition of the term "Zonal Authority" in the context of the Laws of Duplicate Bridge?

 

Recent minutes of my club's committee meeting include the following:

 

Psyches - The EBU policy is that psyches are an accepted part of the bidding process. We have hitherto not allowed psyches on a Thursday evening, so as not to go against EBU policy, the Committee agreed we could be our own Zonal Authority and disallow psyching on Thursday evenings.

 

Is this an imaginative legal way to achieve the Committee's objective, or is this just illegal? Please give your reasoning.

[bluejak]

The WBF is composed of about eight zones. Your club is not one of them. I really think that the WBF would laugh at them if they applied. :)

 

Like it or not, your club is in the European Zone.

[RMB1]

Is there a definition of the term "Zonal Authority" in the context of the Laws of Duplicate Bridge?

 

Is this an imaginative legal way to achieve the Committee's objective, or is this just illegal? Please give your reasoning.

 

I imagine the constitution of the WBF defines Zonal Authority and recognises a number of them, being geographical organised. I think that if the club wants to avoid the authority of the EBU as its national authority, the club would need to petition the WBF for recognition as a Zonal Authority but I doubt the club would meet the (implicit) criteria.

 

Anyway, where do the Laws say that the WBF, Zonal Authorities or National Bridge Organisations may make regulation in contradiction of the Laws.

[hrothgar]

Is there a definition of the term "Zonal Authority" in the context of the Laws of Duplicate Bridge?

 

Recent minutes of my club's committee meeting include the following:

 

Psyches - The EBU policy is that psyches are an accepted part of the bidding process. We have hitherto not allowed psyches on a Thursday evening, so as not to go against EBU policy, the Committee agreed we could be our own Zonal Authority and disallow psyching on Thursday evenings.

 

Is this an imaginative legal way to achieve the Committee's objective, or is this just illegal? Please give your reasoning.

 

I fail to see why a club needs to consider itself a Zonal authority to ignore EBU regulations. As a simple analogy, when I have friends over to play bridge in my living room, we don't follow ACBL regulations even though said living room is located in North America. (And I didn't have to set myself up as a Zonal authority to do so)

 

I see absolutely nothing wrong with a club stating: "The EBU can go screw themselves. We're going to do whatever we damn well please. And, oh, BTW, we're no longer playing them card fees."

 

Said club won't be able to sell masterpoints, but them's the breaks.

[RMB1]

Is this in the right forum?

[AlexJonson]

It's not necessarily a Laws issue (IMO).

 

If a club wants to discourage psychs, they will find a way to do it. If you don't like it ... etc.

 

But I guess jallerton's question is whether the club has a bridge laws legal basis for it's position.

[hrothgar]

If a club wants to discourage psychs, they will find a way to do it. If you don't like it ... etc.

 

But I guess jallerton's question is whether the club has a bridge laws legal basis for it's position.

 

Nope, but that hasn't stopped Italy...

[mycroft]

Another term that needs to be worked on is "delegation". The Laws say that Zonal Organizations can delegate certain decisions to NBOs, and certain ZOs have done so - and have said that further delegation is also permitted. Certain NBOs have continued the delegation - right down to clubs, for certain regulations.

 

Having said that, the discussions of whether this particular regulation, even if the club is permitted to make regulations in this area and remain part of the EBU, is legal, is another story.

 

Having said *that*, with the conversion to Special Partnership Understandings, organizations with delegated power to assign SPUs can say "anything that isn't Standard Moravian as defined on the below chart is a Special Partnership Understanding, and a partnership that plays it may only do so if they agree never to make a psychic call." They won't, of course. But it's legal within the Law.

[pran]

Another term that needs to be worked on is "delegation". The Laws say that Zonal Organizations can delegate certain decisions to NBOs, and certain ZOs have done so - and have said that further delegation is also permitted. Certain NBOs have continued the delegation - right down to clubs, for certain regulations.

 

Having said that, the discussions of whether this particular regulation, even if the club is permitted to make regulations in this area and remain part of the EBU, is legal, is another story.

 

Having said *that*, with the conversion to Special Partnership Understandings, organizations with delegated power to assign SPUs can say "anything that isn't Standard Moravian as defined on the below chart is a Special Partnership Understanding, and a partnership that plays it may only do so if they agree never to make a psychic call." They won't, of course. But it's legal within the Law.

I don't see any reason at all why NBOs shall not be allowed to excercise powers duly delegated from their ZO, or clubs not be allowed to excercise powers duly delegated from their NBO?

 

Legally this means that the NBO or club as the case might be becomes agent for its superior organisation within its own jurisdiction.

[mrdct]

If a game has psyches banned, it is a game other than bridge, so the organisers of that game can do whatever they like.

[barmar]

The question in this thread wasn't whether any bridge-related organization can ban psyches. The question was: given that the Laws allow certain organizations to regulate bidding, can a club declare itself to be one of these organizations? If the club can't be one of these organizations, then the issue of banning psyches becomes moot.

 

However, if the club is allowed, and chooses, to become its own ZA on Thursday nights, that may have additional ramifications. If they're not part of the EBU, they presumably can't issue EBU masterpoints. But they can probably reduce the card fees as well, because they don't have to pay a sanction fee for the Thursday night games.

[blackshoe]

The Laws speak of "Zonal Authority" only in stating that the ZA concerned is the Regulating Authority for its own tournaments. The Laws do not say anything about who these "Zonal Authorities" are. The WBF Constitution and ByLaws "divide the world" into five conferences, one corresponding to each of the "five continents". The term "five continents" is used several times in the Olympic Charter, but I was taught that there are seven continents, and since I could find no clarification in the Olympic Charter, or on the IOC website, or on the WBF website, I'll take a guess that the five are North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, leaving Australia, along with Antarctica, out in the cold. :blink:

 

The WBF ByLaws further say that the Executive may create more than one "zone" per continent. In fact there are currently eight zones, corresponding to Europe, North America, South America, Asia (so far, four of the "five continents"), Central America, "Pacific Asia", "South Pacific" and finally, the fifth continent, Africa. The ByLaws stipulate that the various NBOs in the zone will form a "zonal conference".

 

The term "NBO" isn't really defined by the WBF Constitution or ByLaws. It is, I suppose, one of those "you'll know it when you see it" things. It appears to me that "NBOs" are intended to correspond to the International Olympic Committee's "National Olympic Committees". If so, it seems to me they do it poorly (particularly in North America). There are some rules NOC's (and thus presumably NBOs) are supposed to follow.

 

What's really germane to the original question though is Law 80 of the Laws of Duplicate Bridge. This law defines the Regulating Authority, and specifies that the RA has the powers assigned it in the laws. For a club game, the Regulating Authority is, prima facie, the NBO in which the club resides. However, Law 80A3 allows the RA to delegate or assign its powers. In the latter case, says the law, the RA "has no further responsibility for their exercise". I would say that in the former case, the RA (the NBO in our case) retains its function as RA; in the latter case it does not. So a club can be a Regulating Authority if (and only if) The NBO assigns its powers to the club. I may be wrong, but I don't think the EBU has done that.

 

The RA may recognize a "Tournament Organizer" (TO) subject to the authority of the RA and the Laws. The TO has the power and duty to (among others) "announce regulations supplementary to, but not in conflict with, these Laws" (Law 80B2{f}).

 

As to the specifics of regulations regarding psychic bids, Law 40A3 says "A player may make any call or play without prior announcement provided that such call or play is not based on an undisclosed partnership understanding (see Law 40C1)". Law 40C1 says "A player may deviate from his side’s announced understandings always, provided that his partner has no more reason to be aware of the deviation than have the opponents". So Law 40C1 explicitly allows psychs. There is one exception: Law 40B2{d} allows RAs to "restrict the use of psychic artificial calls". This does not affect psychs of natural bids. Note that in general Law 40 deals with partnership understandings, and a psych is explicitly not a partnership understanding.

 

A regulation that prohibits psychs of natural bids conflicts with Law 40C1, and is therefore illegal under Law 80B2{f}. So the answer to your question, Jeffery, is that your club's rather imaginative approach is "just illegal".

[blackshoe]

NB: The Zonal Organization is not the Regulating Authority for club games, unless the club is organized solely as an element of the ZO. The RA for clubs is the NBO in which the club resides. For clubs in England, then, the RA is the EBU.

[jallerton]

Thanks for the replies.

 

I was also very surprised that my club might consider itself to be a "Zonal Organisation", but when I looked for a definition of this term in the Laws and elsewhere (so that I could explain to them why they were obviously wrong) I could not find one. It would be helpful if this were added to the "Definitions" section in the next edition of the Laws.

 

I have now found the term on the WBF website which gives us an implied definition.

[gnasher]

It seems to me that the club is overcomplicating matters. They could just say, "The Thursday evening game is not regulated by the WBF or any of its dependents. The rules will be identical to those of the EBU, except that psyching is not permitted."

[bluejak]

They could also say "This is not a bridge club" of course, which has the same effect.

[gnasher]

That might have a rather different practical effect, but in any case it would be untrue. The WBF doesn't own the name "bridge".

[blackshoe]

That might have a rather different practical effect, but in any case it would be untrue. The WBF doesn't own the name "bridge".

 

I'll leave that one for the lawyers to hash over (and I'm not talking about "bridge lawyers").

 

Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, was once petitioned to do something or other of which I don't remember the specifics, but might be analogous to calling a game in which psychs are not permitted "bridge". The following conversation ensued:

 

Lincoln: How many legs has a sheep?

Petitioners: Four, of course.

Lincoln: And if I call its tail a leg, how many legs has the sheep?

Petitioners: Well, five, I suppose.

Lincoln: No sir, for calling a tail a leg does not make it one.

[bluejak]

I suppose in a way it might be right for "bridge", but most bridge clubs are in effect duplicate bridge clubs. In my view if a club provides a game that does not follow the Laws of duplicate bridge, that game is not duplicate bridge.

[campboy]

I'm sure there are plenty of clubs which run rubber bridge games as well. Presumably Jeffrey's club does run duplicate bridge games on other evenings, so whether or not their Thursday evening game is bridge it is an exaggeration to say they are not a bridge club.

[gnasher]

The WBF doesn't own the term "duplicate bridge" either.

 

It seems to me perfectly reasonable for the club to say "This is duplicate bridge, but not as defined by the WBF." Nobody can be misled by that, and it's certainly better than what they currently do, which misrepresents both the club's status and the game that is offered.

[barmar]

But as I mentioned above, they probably can't play this "not WBF" bridge if they want to award masterpoints from their NBO.

[blackshoe]

Funny. I don't see anything in the rubber laws that suggests it can be legal to ban psychs in rubber games either. :ph34r:

[gnasher]

But as I mentioned above, they probably can't play this "not WBF" bridge if they want to award masterpoints from their NBO.

I'm sure they can't, but they probably regard that as less important than making sure that their novice duplicate is suitable for novices. It seems hard to argue with that attitude.

[blackshoe]

It seems to me that to most novices (the ones I know, anyway) the idea of psyching would never occur, so there would be no point in banning psychs in such games. Either that, or some of the "novices" in those games aren't really novices.

 

There's an art to psyching — not only have most novices never heard of such a thing, even if the idea occurs to one, he's much more likely to damage his own side than the other side. Why should the rules protect him from that?