Who's at fault?
Part 1:
Two boards in a round on BBO.
There is an issue on the first board which takes the director a while to resolve.
As a result, the pairs are unable to complete the bidding on the second board so an artificial score needs to be assigned.
Assuming the call was not frivolous and neither side were unhelpful during the resolution, what would you assign?
If not Av+/Av+, who is at fault and why?
Part 2:
Same situation, but they were running a little late anyway. Had they not had the delay, they would probably have been far enough ahead for BBO to finish off.
Is your answer any different?
Jeremy
Comments
Both sides are partially responsible for the inability to play the board so I would give them both Av.
If you want to give them Av+, what is the outside agency that you think has caused the delay?
When I used to direct a lot on BBO, I would occasionally extend a round by a couple of minutes where there was a technical or director issue, to allow a proper bridge result to be obtained. I would then announce to the tournament that the next round will start a few minutes late etc...
Had I missed it then I am not sure what to assign...
This might happen face to face also - a director call taking a few minutes to be ruled on and resolved and now there is insufficient time for that table to complete the round. Should the person/pair that caused the director call now be penalised further with Ave- as they caused the delay by their offending, thus being potentially penalised twice for the same infraction? Perhaps Ave for the offending side and Ave+ for the NOS seems fairer?
Why are they partially responsible? In the terminology of WB 8.12.18, what action did the players take that they could have not taken and thus avoided being unable to play the board? Surely not calling the director!
Would you argue that an irregularity on the previous board makes them responsible for the delay? There may not even have been an irregularity on the pevious board!
Where do you get outside agency from?
The law refers to being at fault, it does not refer to or require an outside agency.
If both pairs are "in no way at fault" who do you think caused the delay?
I am quoting myself here, but from an article approved by others and of course it is part of my role as CTD to give guidance to TDs:
• Scoring – never score an unplayed board as Not Played – use L12 to give 40/50/60%
according to fault. We shouldn’t be awarding more than 100% in total unless there
was an outside agency involved in the slowness. Conversely it is acceptable to give
less than 100% in total. Take that message back to your clubs/counties! Many of
them think they can do as they like in this regard and they must be disabused of that
notion.
The requirment for the director to apply the law.
I agree completely with the (very good) document you refer to.
But... as I keep mentioning, this is not slow play. It is an "outside agency" meaning they don't have anough time to play the board no matter how quickly they go.
And that would be the TD who was the outside agency.
Last night I had a problem as to who was at fault.
The players played board 22. One player then took out her cards to play board 23 (next in sequence) - but the other three took out the cards for board 24, which they then bid. When I was called dummy was displayed on the table. (The player with the correct/incorrect cards had not bid.)
Is 3-1 sufficient to deem that one player was at fault, three players at fault, everyone at fault or just NS at fault? or what.
(In the interest of expediency I ruled against the one player (which seemed a bit unfair) with an AAS and allowed board 23 to be played.)
I'm a big fan of shared responsibility for this kind of thing. It also seems to me that it is the 3 players that have the 'wrong' cards. There's not really any good solutions here though!
Where were the boards while all this was happening?
My question would be "what happened between the cards for Board 22 being put back in the board to the time that the director was called?". How come no one said how the four of them had reached this position? what happened with Board 24?
On the middle of the table - board 24 at the top.At aguess (I didn't ask) Board 22 will have been placed at the top to play, then someone has moved it to the bottom - and one player took out the cards, then that one was moved to the bottom and the other three took out their's.
I gave A+ to the pair that had two hands from the board - and A- to the pair that only had one.
Yes difficult in a club situation. Very much depends on the people involved and the "ethos" of the club.
However, there would appear to be an awful lot of inattention to the game. Law 7 D would indicate that all are responsible for maintaining "proper conditions of play at the table". No one noticed that the board 23 had been swopped with board 24. The problem is, who drew their cards from the wrong board? Is the wrong board 23 or 24? Personally I think that the right board is 23 as one hand was drawn from it before the other hands were drawn from board 24. So effectively board 23 had been started. So Law 15 A 2(a) would indicate board 23 has to have an adjusted score. For board 24 we then have to consider Law 15 3, now we have three hands to consider and highly unlike that the bidding will be the same (Also I am assuming that one of the three hands was dummy!?). so another adjusted score.
What adjusted score to give? Well I think that they are all responsible for the fact that both boards could not be played and would adjust to AV- for both pairs on both boards. Yes a hard lesson but done with the right attitude I think it would be accepted, if not they can appeal.
I suspect that my partner and I will also suffer an AV- because at least one of our boards is likely not to be completed.
Goes to hide behind the wall.
I would argue that whoever moved a board without all 4 hands in it was at fault.
Whenevery I've seen this happen, it's been caused by someone putting a board with all four hands in on top of one from which one or more people have already removed their hands.
That becomes a little trickier to assign responsibility.
Law 7A talks of placing a board that is to be played in the center of the table. That might imply that there shouldn't be any other boards on the table, but sadly, it seems no more than an implication.
Barrie Partridge - CTD for Bridge Club Live
Moving boards not currently being played off the table has its own issues – it greatly raises the chance of a board accidentally being played arrow-switched or rotated 180° (although, admittedly, a 180° rotation doesn't usually matter much, given that players typically use the vulnerability/dealer written on the board rather than working it out based on the board number).
The primary reason to leave the board currently being played on the table is to reduce the chance of players fouling the board by returning their hands to the wrong pockets (because if the board is left in place, that reduces the chance of it accidentally being rotated).
Also - if you have a stack of four or five boards on the table, sometimes a player can find it hard to actually see the calls and plays made by their partner. We aren't all as tall as AR.