Hand Hogging

[jeffford76]

The agenda for the Atlanta ACBL Board of Directors meeting is available here.

 

One proposal is to make "Purposefully, regularly and repeatedly making unusual bids in an effort to prevent a partner from declaring hands" a disciplinary offense punishable by up to a 1-year suspension and 50% reduction in masterpoints.

 

Is hand hogging even against the laws of bridge?

[barmar]

ACBL requires both members of a partnership to play the same system, and I believe justifies this from their right to regulate partnership understandings. They say this doesn't apply to style, just system, but the line is pretty fuzzy there (I almost always open 1♦ with 4-4 minors, my partner varies, although the criteria isn't immediately obvious -- we consider that a style difference, but I could be persuaded otherwise).

 

They probably think that this new rule falls under similar scope.

[billw55]

It sounds like a personal beef to me. I suspect that either one influential person is really bothered by this, or just a few (perhaps one) particular "perpetrators" are being targeted, or both.

[mfa1010]

Where in the paper do I find that proposal?

[jeffford76]

Where in the paper do I find that proposal?

 

It's on the second page, item 132-02.

[mfa1010]

Thanks

[nige1]

The agenda for the Atlanta ACBL Board of Directors meeting is available here. One proposal is to make "Purposefully, regularly and repeatedly making unusual bids in an effort to prevent a partner from declaring hands" a disciplinary offense punishable by up to a 1-year suspension and 50% reduction in masterpoints. Is hand hogging even against the laws of bridge?

If a player adjusts his "style" to prevent partner playing the hand, on a regular basis, then, arguably, he isn't playing the same system as his partner. Anyway, presumably, his partner is oblivious to the details, so cannot disclose them, hence opponents are disadvantaged.

 

IMO, asymmetric systems should be legal, and hence disclosable.

[JLOGIC]

Haha that's amazing. Had to check if it was april first.

 

Seems like it conflicts with always try your best to win or w/e rule that is. Also seems unenforcable...I can't wait to cal the director on meckstroth for hoggin the dummy in a national pair game or something and filing a recorder form lol. Should go over really well, I'm sure after enough times they will suspend him from bridge and take away 40,000 of his masterpoints.

[PhilKing]

I'm guessing this will go through. :P

[jillybean]

Regardless of what I think of this rule, it seems rather senseless to add another rule that won't be applied or enforced on a consistent basis.

[blackshoe]

I agree with billw55, this sounds like somebody has an ax to grind, and with Jilly that it's likely not to be enforced consistently.

[trevahound]

The agenda for the Atlanta ACBL Board of Directors meeting is available here.

 

One proposal is to make "Purposefully, regularly and repeatedly making unusual bids in an effort to prevent a partner from declaring hands" a disciplinary offense punishable by up to a 1-year suspension and 50% reduction in masterpoints.

 

Is hand hogging even against the laws of bridge?

 

What do they want me to do? Let CHO get his grubby hands on dummy? I think not. He's been set before, you see.

[aguahombre]

our district Representative sends out emails to everyone prior to Natl Board meetings with a list of agenda items, and it was there.

 

District Representatives allegedly represent their constituents, and I urge ACBL members to make their views known to these people on any upcoming issue. The Bridge politicians don't always have the Bridge savvy to form their own opinions or to automatically know what the playing public wants. Speak up now, don't grouse later.

[the hog]

Sounds like someone got a bad result because the pro played more hands than the sponsor.

[aguahombre]

Sounds like someone got a bad result because the pro played more hands than the sponsor.

They give you a bad name.

[FM75]

ROFL.

Alert.

Yes?

Partner is a hand-hogger. He is a far better declarer than I. (Our system as we jointly understand it. He also knows better than I what he is doing.)

 

Alert.

Yeh. I got it.

 

Questions?

 

_______________________________________

 

I suppose the club, or the ACBL, could look at the "Rules of Golf" with respect to amateur status, and write their own rules.

 

 

Club pros, touring pros.

 

maybe in another era?

[inquiry]

I knew a partnership where one player was not allowed to bid Notrump (open or otherwise) when playing matchpoints. This was not sponsor and pro, and in fact, they did quite poorly. I think they also played transfer responses by the player who couldn't open 1NT and not by the other player. I say let them do it if they want... here was one partnership that it never seemed to help-- in large part because they played contracts often from the "wrong hand". True they got some tops because of the direction change but got more well below averages.

 

 

[gnasher]

Whoever suggested this rule is an idiot in more ways than one.

 

If you do something regularly and repeatedly how can it also be unusual?

 

And if you do it purposefully and repeatedly, but at irregular intervals, does that make it OK?

[iviehoff]

In theory everything about a partnership's methods ought to be disclosed to you. In reality if you play against a player regularly you learn their foibles and can take advantage of them. Thus the reality is that there is useful information about a player's methods that in practice is not disclosed, and can only be learned by experience of them. This issue comes into the same category as that. If you know an opponent is a hand hog, you can take advantage of it: it is no more annoying than players' other foibles. If you know your partner is a hand hog, and you do not like this, you have the ultimate sanction available. This is an utterly mistaken proposal.

[trevahound]

Another item on the agenda (or perhaps already passed?) is to make blue ribbon qualifications expire after 3 years. Could someone explain what the purpose of this rule would be?

[ArtK78]

When I started playing, Blue Ribbon Pairs qualifications expired after 3 years. It was assumed that the Fall Nationals (the Blue Ribbon Pairs is played at the Fall Nationals) would be located in a part of the country relatively close to the entire membership at least once in a three year period, so anyone earning a Blue Ribbon qualification would have an opportunity to play in the event without having to travel to the other side of the continent. Sometime in the 1990s (perhaps earlier) the rule was changed so that once you earned a Blue Ribbon qualification it never expired until you used it.

 

Furthermore, under the old rules, when you played in the Blue Ribbon Pairs, ALL qualifications that you earned prior to the event were considered to be used. So you had to earn a new qualification to play in any future Blue Ribbon Pairs.

 

I am sure that the purpose of the proposed rule is to reduce the size of the entry and increase the quality of the competition. Whether the change in the rule will have the desired effect is far from clear.

[mycroft]

Lovely. Because the Platinum Pairs - that was pushed to be "the game the BRP used to be, based on players with current top-level results" is in place (but of course it got watered down before implementation, so now we need a super-Platinum pairs) - and now we need to punish more People Who Work, who maybe can get to a Nationals once a decade and want to play it (or the Weak or Mini BRPs, for that matter). I do hope this isn't actually the case.

 

Re: handhogging - there are those who build "style and judgement" at least as far as Helen Sobel ("your NT is 17-18, mine is 15-19; you play transfers, I don't; ..." - quoting from memory); and some that do "the pro thing" - if we play 15 of 27 hands, we'll score 60% if I play 11 of them (even if it's wrong to do so) and 52% if you do, so...

 

What about the players who "Purposefully, regularly and repeatedly make unusual bids in an effort to *get* partner declaring hands"?

 

Is it about the semi-systemic psyches? Is it the hand-hogging? The lack of disclosure (and the benefits in the play from said lack)?

 

I don't understand this one. But they won't let me do politics, for which I'm eternally grateful.

[barmar]

I knew a partnership where one player was not allowed to bid Notrump (open or otherwise) when playing matchpoints. This was not sponsor and pro, and in fact, they did quite poorly. I think they also played transfer responses by the player who couldn't open 1NT and not by the other player.

Sounds like you're talking about the "Caddy System". It was popular for a couple of years at midnight games at the Nationals, when top junior players would often pair up with caddies who just barely knew how to follow suit (but who cared, they're cute).

[barmar]

Regardless of what I think of this rule, it seems rather senseless to add another rule that won't be applied or enforced on a consistent basis.

Rules like this are typically not intended to be applied on a regular basis. They exist so that if you find someone acting eggregiously, you have a basis for penalizing them.

 

Bu I see where you're coming from. When laws like RICO and the Patriot Act were enacted, many people thought they were OK because only the worst of the worst would be targeted. But law enforcement found ways to bend them to fit many lesser perps.

[awm]

When I read about this, my impression was that the idea was to go after "very frequent psychers" even without evidence of fielding. For example, a player opens 1nt often outside the stated range of hands to "turn the contract." There is no evidence that partner did anything special to accomodate this action -- often partner is a terrible player anyway and will not even work it out after the hand! Yet there is something "off" about such a practice.