A seven-card tourney

[McBruce]

(In football/soccer, the referee shows a yellow card to a player who commits a serious infraction. The league keeps track of yellow cards and accumulating too many will get you a suspension. Two in a game, or an extreme infraction, and a player is shown a red card, which is an immediate expulsion.)

 

Friday night's event seemed to be Misbehavior Night.

 

After a recent epidemic of suspicious "please replace me, I have to go" (like seven in the last tournament), I made sure to announce a new rule at the outset:

 

NEW RULE: I will replace players who need to leave. But by signing up you promised to play all 15 boards, good or bad.

 

If you ask for a replacement or leave, the results you got while in WILL be checked and if it seems likely that you are leaving based on bad results, you will get a one-month ban from Alphabet Point tournaments, longer for repeat offenders.

 

One or two disasters will not make it impossible to break average and win some Alphabet Points. The attitude "if I can't win, I'll quit" is not welcome here.

 

Within three rounds I had issued two "yellow cards". Survivor tournaments seem to have the effect of leading people to believe that it's OK to quit when you're having a bad game, instead of trying to break average and get something for it.

 

It appeared that a third yellow card was about to be issued when a player in a bad contract asked to be subbed. I convinced the quitter to play it out and message me when finished, as I had a TD call at another table. Five minutes later I got a message from the quitter "sub me now please." I did so without going to the table, and got an immediate TD call: the quitter had played only seven tricks and the sub had no idea what to do. I had to go over the play to the first seven tricks with the sub, which took several minutes.

 

Forget the yellow card--this is a red card. People who agree to follow the TD's instructions and then don't can go play elsewhere.

 

Here is another one of my opening round announcements:

 

Be courteous to partner and opponents. The player you insult now may be your partner next round!

 

ADVICE: If you insist on "educating" the opponents (or partner), you may find that you lose more points for your sins than they for theirs. I encourage all players to call me when unquestionably unacceptable comments or behavior occur. DO NOT tolerate, call the Director...and educate!

 

...and, from the Alphabet Point website:

 

There is no greater bridge crime than being a jerk at the table, but the second worst bridge crime is responding in kind and the third worst bridge crime is to let it happen.

 

And yet, about an hour in, I got a report that a player had watched his partner go down in a slam, and felt the need to say (among other things, apparently) "if I am paired with you again, I will ask to be replaced."

 

I confirmed the rudeness with the other two players at the table. Then I asked the player whether the comment was made. Five minutes and a round change went by with no answer.

 

Would anyone do this at a f2f tournament? Ignore a TD completely when asked a question? Why does online bridge give people the impression that this is reasonable behavior?

 

That was red card number 2 (after the end of the hand).

 

Director call--off I go. A hand is finished, and a player from Turkey, the player who called the TD, is responding to partner's comments:

 

TurkishPlayer: i from turkey

TurkishPlayer: i not turkey

 

This seems a pretty good indication of what has happened. Unfortunately, it continued this way:

 

McBruce: problem here?

TurkishPlayer: stupid

 

When I told the Turkish player that 'stupid' was not an acceptable way to respond and that some might DQ him but I was only giving him a warning, he hit me with CAPSLOCK for the next few minutes, protesting angrily that his partner had called him a turkey.

 

TurkishPlayer: YES I SAY STUPID

TurkishPlayer: WHAT I SAY???????????

TurkishPlayer: AND HE SAY LAST HAND HE SAYS ME I M VERY PLAYED AND I MAKE IT 4!C X I SAY WHO IS BAD PLAYER?

TurkishPlayer: WHY NOT DISCARD HIM HE IS MY COUNTRY TURKEY IS LAUGHING,

 

McBruce > TurkishPlayer: stop this please, I cannot sort it out if you continue to SHOUT IN CAPS

 

TurkishPlayer: u dnt eork TD?

TurkishPlayer: work? he is realy rude?

McBruce > TurkishPlayer: I don't see the chat unless I am at the table so I have to confirm with the others at the table. If you continue protesting I will not be able to do this.

TurkishPlayer: i report u and him BBO borders

TurkishPlayer: chat log on bbo

 

In this storm I was unable to do what I had done in the first instance, which was to confirm the comment with the opponents. It seemed unneccessary from the comments I had seen when I arrived. So I sent a private message to the partner -- and it's only fair since we are referring to the one player as Turkish to say that the player who called him a turkey was flying the American flag -- asking if rude comments about his partner were made.

 

Again, no response for several minutes. I subbed him. Red card #3.

 

From the lobby came this answer: "only after he told me twice that if was very bad and he then played with me and misbid and misplayed a hand"

 

And then: "i think you should get the whole story before you do that" _{and "when someone tell me twice, I play bad and then misbids and misplays a hand with me, where is the justice"}

_{McBruce: you admitted that you made fun of his country, what do you expect?}

_{Name-caller: "no i just called him a turkey"}

 

_{The Turkish player continued to rant, and at one point in the middle of my discussion with the other player, I saw this:}

 

_{TurkishPlayer: he is racism and may be u same side?}

 

_{Well, that's enough--Red card #4. TurkishPlayer actually had finished the tourney by now and was yapping from the lobby. TurkishPlayer broke average and won Alphabet Points, or would have--I calculated them without including TurkishPlayer.}

 

_{And it didn't end there!}

 

_{While responding to a player's question about a score on a previous board, I was at a table when a dummy said 'pathetic' while a hand was in play.}

 

_{McBruce > dummy: comments like that are NOT welcome here, this is your last warning}

_{dummy: are lunatic bids acceptable ?}

_{McBruce > dummy: you signed up for an indy, that does not give you the right to belittle others}

_{dummy: i didnt be little anyone i was saying alas why me}

 

_{My remarks were made in private. Dummy's were not. Red card #5. Mercifully, the tournament ended without any more incidents...}

 

_{Is there no decency at all?}

 

_{Can't people just say they're sorry when they make an outburst, or is it now common ground in indy tourneys that when your partner goofs you get to tear them a new one?}

 

_{Ah well, perhaps it's my fault for taking such a long sabbatical from TDing: had I been around I would have purged these goons from my tournaments one by one instead of getting all five in the same night....}

[coyot]

Tough luck...

 

BTW, what about forming a TD group (passworded message board) where we will share the offenders? (And I don't mean an official TD group so that you would know that being rude in one tournament gets you a ban to any tournament with the same name - I mean unofficial, but much wider group.

 

I would be very interested in knowing the names of all the above offenders in order to PREVENT them from entering my tournaments, EVER.

[chicken]

this was a discussion a year ago, and for some reasons we all never shared our enemy files. main reason was, that the offenders would sign in under another name anyway.

2nd point was, that different TD had different reasons for adding offenders to their files.

however i would be glad to share my file with all other td.

[McBruce]

Suppose there are, to simplify things, ten directors running free games on BBO where it is made public that if you misbehave, you will be gone and not invited back. A player named 'goombah' (obviously a name I have made up) misbehaves in TD#1's game. What action would you prefer to be taken?

 

1. The player is banned from TD#1's games.

 

2. The player is banned from all free games on BBO.

 

My theory is that under #1, 'goombah' will be more careful when he plays in the other nine games.

 

Under #2, there is no chance for 'goombah' to be educated in this way.

 

Therefore, I do not share my banned list with anyone. And, in a very few cases where a player has been put on the banned list and has apologized to me, I have removed the player from the list with the warning that no further misbehavior will be tolerated at all, apology or not.

[chicken]

as long as u host about 2 tourneys a day i agree, but i assume a much more lower frequency of hosted tourneys by a free td. (1 per week? i host 2 tourneys in 3 weeks when i work regularly) so actually goombah will need 4 or 5 months to even realize that he is banned, because the chance of trying to join one of my tourneys again is very small.

[helene_t]

I think it's problematic to share blacklists between TDs.

 

Some time ago, two players were blacklisted by a TD because they discussed a bidding misunderstanding between them in a non-english language (it was quite obvious that they were not exchanging information for use in the next board). The rules of the tournament clearly specified that such an offense would be enough to get you blacklisted, so the decision of the TD was correct. However, I can immagine that not all TDs would think that such an offense would qualify you for immediate blacklisting without warning.

 

Also (totally different problem), given the endless flood of absurd rulings posted on this forum ...... maybe a solution could be to give other TDs access to chat logs and other evidense so that they could judge for themselves if they agree with the blacklisting.

 

Within a small group of TDs that trust each other and have the same view on blacklisting criteria, it could be OK. Or maybe a system like this: if you get a yellow card from each of two TDs, you get blacklisted by the whole group of TDs.

[coyot]

I had in mind an intelligent sharing of blacklists.

 

I would not just throw a list of names and tell you "ban these from your tourneys if you trust mu judgement.

 

I imagine that a simple form of

player name | offence 1 reported by TD X| offence 2 reported by TD Y ... would do fine.

 

Every TD involved could have access to this list and use it at his discretion, deciding which of the offenders he considers too bad to be allowed in his tourney. And I assume that the TDs involved would be observed by the others when it comes to strange rulings etc.

 

I believe that this would give us a tool that would contribute to better quality tourneys for the players.

[McBruce]

Happy to report that the following tournament in the series, Tuesday night's game, went smoothly, with no misbehavior, no attempts to quit, and no slow players.

 

I knew this would happen. :)

[Rain]

If a user is on your blacklist, his aliases would also be unable to join your tournament.

 

The natives act up at times. :D