Illegal Agreements - Artificial or Assigned Adjusted score?
The situation:
NS have used an illegal agreement on an opening call. Law 40B4 requires that the score be adjusted if there is damage.
Law 12C1b: The Director in awarding an assigned adjusted score should seek to recover as nearly as possible the probable outcome of the board had the infraction not occurred.
The very first call of the board is illegal, so in order to assign an adjusted score we must bid and play the entire hand for both sides. Since this allows no use of bridge skill or knowledge on the part of the players, it seems inappropriate to do so. Would not an artificial adjusted score be more appropriate?
If so, at what point does an assigned adjusted score become appropriate? After an opening pass by non-offenders?
The only thing can find of relevance is WB2018 8.12.10: 12C2 (a) does not say “no result has been obtained” but “no result can be obtained”, so that if a board is incomplete but has reached a stage when completion of the board can be foreseen an assigned score is appropriate. This implies that a board can be insufficiently advanced for an assigned score, and surely no board can be less advanced than one not started.
Comments
I think you are looking in the wrong place.
WB1.9.7 Score adjustment for an illegal agreement
If a pair play an illegal agreement then the board is completed. If their opponents have a 60%
score or better, or have gained 3 IMPs or more, the result stands unchanged. Otherwise, the
result is cancelled, and the board re-scored as average plus to the opponents, average minus to
the pair. Normally this translates as 3 IMPs, or 60%/40%. An additional procedural penalty will
be applied if the pair has been warned previously over its use of this agreement. The results of
other boards are also adjusted, if brought to the attention of the TD within the correction period.
Thank you, Gordon - yes I most definitely was!
What does "The results of other boards are also adjusted" mean? Surely not AVE+/AVE- for all boards the pair have played with that illegal system?
My guess is that only those boards where the agreement was actually used are affected (since otherwise there is no damage). However I would note that agreements generally do not exist in isolation. Because the pair played an illegal agreement, it might enable them to gain better results on other boards because they could infer their partner's hand (which otherwise might be) wasn't a particular shape/ strength because the agreement wasn't used. I could, of course be mistaken - I usually am.
You are right, that the existence of the illegal agreement could have affected the results on other boards. I think adjusting on that basis typically comes into the 'too difficult' category.
That's what I thought.
But "The results of other boards are also adjusted" must mean something!
Anyone?
I think it means that other boards in which the same agreement has been used are also adjusted in the same way. Maybe it's too obvious to need saying, but I think it means that earlier boards in which no attention was drawn to the illegal agreement, should still be adjusted.
So that would mean all the boards already played in the current session? Seems a bit harsh (but then they shouldn't be playing an illegal agreement).
No, it doesn't mean all boards, just ones where they used the illegal agreement.
Well, you could potentially take it to mean all boards, on the general logic they're playing an illegal system. There's the potential for gain even if you don't use a bid.
I do think, pragmatically, this falls somewhere between "too difficult" and "too draconian" though. But if you found they used the illegal system on some previous board without it being flagged at the time, you'd want to adjust.
Aha!
So used means bid rather than was a part of their system. Got it - thanks.