Fouled boards
During an all-play all event, a board is rotated 180 degrees before the cards are returned to the slots, so the N hand is now in the S slot etc.
It's not evident from the scores when this happened, and none of the players can remember their hand on the board.
Is there anything we can do? Does it matter too much if we don't do anything?
Supplementary 1:
Now a player who played the board about 2/3 way through the event does remember, and it had been fouled by then. Does this make any difference?
Supplementary 2:
In this case only the North and South hands have been swapped, but it's still not possible to tell when it happened. Is this fouled "too much" so that we cancel all play of the board?
Comments
EBUScore lets you mark the "2nd state" scores with F so the scores are calculated separately.
Even if scores are similar, wrong hands in pockets fouls the board as opener has different hand etc.
Others may disagree but for a club event you could at least mark all the boards including and after the reported fouled board as 2nd state; I think that would be preferable to averaging.
I agree with Tim - even though the hands are correct relative to each other, the starting point is crucial e.g. a player may make a bid in third position that they wouldn't in first or 1NT ranges vary or pre-empting style differs - and those are just the obvious ones
I don't really think that you can average since there was a result on the board. (EBUScore handles 1-3 fouled boards differently I believe) - all you can do is mark them as fouled and let good old Neuberg sort things out (in effect there is another board in play, and that board and the original are scored separately.)
Agreed that it matters.
The point of the question is that we don't know when the misboarding occurred, so we can't apply a sub field solution (unless it's a load of sub fields of size 1!)
Well, that is a bit of a problem. If possible I'd talk to the players involved and maybe they can shed some light. In many cases it's obvious. If the lead card is recorded that can be a useful clue, depending on how the board was switched. If you really can't tell you might be left making a best guess ruling as to the facts. I think you can at least use Neuberg for the results where you know the board has been fouled.
Do your best based on what you can find out. Do any of the players routinely take the board off the table or rotate it during play?