Three Boards Played in the Wrong Direction
Playing in a Mitchell Movement tonight one table Arrow Switched for the final round playing three boards the wrong way. Obviously they should not of Arrow Switched, but how should the three boards be scored? Each Board was awarded 50 50 after the problem was realised, however this made a huge difference in the overall scores - so some unhappy folk.
Thank you in advance.
Thank you in advance.
Comments
Well, you have bridge results on the 3 boards and can assign matchpoints accordingly - it's quite easy to do in ebu score, just enter A under the scores and it switches the pair numbers for you.
This does mean you've played a slightly strange movement that is strangely unbalanced, it's still two winner though, it's not obvious what the effect on the two pairs is, I guess this one round has a more significant effect on their scores?
This more often happens with movements that have an arrow switch, when pairs fail to arrow switch. Less of a problem of balance in that case.
I don't know whether it has a significant effect on their scores - after all they get the same number of MPs - but it certainly has an effect on the amoount of competition that the players have with the other pairs who have generally played in the same direction.
To give a simple illustration: suppose the (usual) NS pair is the only one who plays a strong NT and opening a strong NT on the hand (played the correct way) is by far the winning action. Because the hand has been arrow-switched they have been denied the opportunity to gain a good board against the other pairs in their direction on this set of boards.
The EBU do regard a board played once only in a different format as 'unplayable' https://www.ebu.co.uk/documents/laws-and-ethics/articles/scoring-fouled-boards.pdf and I suppose an incorrectly arrowswitched board could be regarded as being a board where each player has returned their cards to the incorrect slot ... In this case the scorer does award an artificial adjusted score - but has to reduce the points awarded to the other players.
(This is only of interest because the event is, presumably, a 2-winner event (which has perfect competition) and the arrowswitch has introduced some unexpected competition between the two streams, in respect of the two pairs involved. For a 1-winner event the error is going to get lost in the general unfairness inherent in such an event)
An incorrectly arrowswitched board can always be properly scored - you just change the NS and EW numbers in the scoring program. It is NOT the same as returning the cards to a different slot as in the latter case the dealer will be different and so may the vulnerability.
I know it can be scored, in that there is a (valid) matchpoint score that can be attributed to each pair. The question is whether it is fair to do so?
I think the scoring should respect the two-winner nature of the competition - this is what the players thought they were playing.
I think the boards cannot be scored normally as the NS pair held hand that none of the other NS pairs held, so cannot be properly compared.
I think that it would be best to give 50-50 and a warning to follow the movement, as it would be overtly unfair to have 3 boards for NS compared with EW players in the room (and visa versa) in a 2 winner movement.
If it was a 1 winner hesitation Mitchel or Howell then switching the pair numbers would be fine (in competitive terms as these are generally unfair anyway :))
I assume that the 'huge difference' in results are due to something like: 1 pair had 3 good scores (lets say 3 tops) but now they get 3 middles, where the other pair had 3 bottoms now getting 3 middles. On a 25 board movement, this is a 6% difference in their final scores!
If this has been a common issue and a reasonably serious night, then perhaps 40-40 would be appropriate?
I think a broadly analogous situation would be if you had two different events in the same room using the same set of boards, and a partnership had sat down at the wrong table and played a pair from the wrong event; they got a result, but the players they got it against weren't in the same competition.
You can get a matchpoint result, because there are players you can compare against, but it'll have no link to the normal standard of competition. As such, the fairest thing to do is to cancel the boards and award 40/50/60 to each side in the usual way.
That said, I don't think this is a fouled board; it's an entirely different sort of irregularity. The only relevant Law I can find is 82B, which is a catch-all for covering errors of procedure that don't have a specific remedy. There's some guidance in the White Book, section 8.87.1, but it's somewhat vague (it suggests scoring the board in its new orientation, but adds "However, the type of contest may make it impossible"); it's unclear from that whether two-winner matchpoints is a sort of contest for which scoring a board as arrow-switched is impossible.
If this were a single-winner movement, the accidental switch would be much less of a problem, because although the wrong pairs are being compared, the pairs are at least being compared against other pairs who they were supposed to be compared against; the movement has become slightly (more) unbalanced, as opposed to a comparison being introduced against an entirely separate field. So in that case, I'd allow the results to stand, with procedural penalties if appropriate.
(The extreme example of this sort of case would be instant-matchpoints; in that case, the comparison is being made against a set of results obtained in a previous competition, rather than other boards in the same competition. In this situation, the accidental arrow-switch does not cause any unfairness or imbalance, and thus the orientation in which hands are played is effectively arbitrary.)
I tried to find 8.87.1 before replying this morning - thanks for finding it.
Teams of four is the primary example of the type of contest that makes retaining the result impossible. But I think two-winner pairs is an another.
If the White Book guidance would be less vague by adding these two examples then I could add something.