Being too generous with artificial adjusted score?
On a recent club evening we had a problem with arcscorer where everything looked as if it was set up correctly but then it did not recognise presence of missing pair and asked for names. We split duties at the club, so as Director I just watch this part but it looked as it everything was inputted correctly, but there you go...
I needed the system reset which was managed OK and no one had looked at hands but there was a delay as boards had to be redistributed and people were getting a little discomforted by this.
Then after all this is sorted one particular table had additional problems with their handset - not of their doing.
I couldn't get the handset to update initially - no clear reason why not, but not their fault either.
Having sourced a new handset I managed to get them setup but now they were substantially behind everyone else and by the time they reach their third board the delay is such that I cannot let them start the board without unduly delaying the progress of the evening. (It is not practicable to have the board played at the end.)
Both pairs were entirely agreeable with the need for this.
(Not immediately relevant, but probably influenced me to some extent, one of the pairs on the table were guests who had never played with us before and this is not a great beginning to encourage them to come back.)
I didn't think this was a "director error", just glitches in the software, but certainly only me who could resolve it and I could not do this particularly swiftly as due to the nature of the error I needed technical assistance. I am more familiar with ebuscore than arcscorer.
I felt both pairs had been disrupted through no fault of their own and for the board I told them not to play I awarded Av+/Av+ to both sides.
Too generous?
Comments
Director error isn't the only case where you can award Av+/Av+: Law 12C2a provides for you to do that when both contestants are "in no way at fault". Normally that implies a Director error because an irregularity occurring implies that someone or something did something wrong, and if it wasn't any of the players at the table, that doesn't leave many possibilities (with the Director being the most common of those possibilities). However, it can also apply in, e.g., cases where a kibitzer made a board unplayable, cases where a board is unplayable due to the actions of another table (e.g. a board gets fouled as players return their cards during the penultimate round, in a way that can't be detected by the final table to play it), or (as seen here) cases where something went wrong with the technology and made it impossible to obtain a normal result.
As such, I think this is a perfect example of a situation where Av+/Av+ is the Laws-required resolution.