Am I forced to psych?

[mycroft]

I did have to make one director call in the midnights in Phoenix. LHO was in the tank for a couple minutes, RHO said, "C'mon, it's the midnights", and LHO said, "I play my best on every hand of bridge I play and I will take as long as I need to make the right play no matter what the event."

• "why did you enter this event, then? Did you not know what the Midnights are?"
  
• Did you put in a note that if this player attempts to enter the Fast Pairs, his entry should be denied?
  
• 5 minutes later: "Okay, round's over, finish the board you're playing; team 2 gets 3 IMPs/board that didn't get played at table 4."

[McBruce]

Why, in a Laws version with an Introduction that says "Directors have been given considerably more discretionary powers" must a TD cancel the board? Why not let the players play it out and then decide whether/how the extra information affected the result?

 

If the wrong pair bids 1N P 6N and the new, correct pair starts 1N P 5N we are forced to stop everything and give both sides an artificial adjusted score, unrelated to clear evidence of what was almost certainly about to happen. If opener has a maximum and 13 tricks are ironclad, 15C has just deprived the innocent pair of a well-earned good result. It's no harder to work out how the extra information might affect the result than it is to adjust a score based on many other types of misinformation that we deal with all the time.

 

I think the Lawmakers forgot to update 15C to match the Introduction. The most commonly heard complaint when I am forced to cancel a board is "why is this different from other UI situations where we play on and wait for your decision?" Then later I hear "that ridiculous rule prevented us from getting a good score!"

 

Let's fix this to something sensible for the next version: the vast majority of the times it comes up, cancellation is required but there is such a small variation that rectifying would be easy if even necessary. Consider 16C3, which allows a TD to let play continue if a player receives UI (such as overhearing an auction which must be on the same board from a nearby table) after an auction has begun. Why is hearing part of an auction at another table so different from hearing part of an auction from the wrong opponents and then hearing a slightly different one from the correct opponents? The Laws allow a TD to use his judgment for the former, but do not for the latter.

 

 

 

I'm not arguing that the restriction that the pair bidding the same deal a second time make the same calls be lifted; but I think if they have a reasonable bridge reason for the deviation based on the opponents' methods or tendencies it should be considered. I know it will lead to logical nightmares to tell a pair that they are non-offending but have UI from the first auction that they must ignore. But this Law just seems to cause more results to disappear, and quite often the board could be played normally.