Fouled Board
After last night's session it was noticed that a board had been fouled with the South and West cards swopped. This happened (on the face of it) halfway through the session in which there were 6 1/2 tables.
The relevant Law is 87B with guidance in the White book which is referenced on this forum in an earlier discussion under 'Small Sub-fields'.
The simplest answer would be to scrap the board but this may be unfair to some of the players.
As director but not scorer I've received the following questions - my answers between asterisks.
if we were to try to score it as two “sections”, we’d have to decide who played it with the correct polarities, and who didn’t; it isn’t necessarily straightforward at first glance to decide, ** I think this will have to be agreed by the scorers and myself.**
some thought would need to given how to do this, as the two wouldn’t have played the board an equal number of times, and we have a pair who hasn’t played the board at all. Difficult but we'll just have to work on it.
If we’re trying to achieve “fairness”, who is going to receive a penalty for fouling the board ? Unfortunately it's almost impossible to prove who was responsible for the mistake and so a penalty cannot be levied. The best we can do is to remind everyone at the next sessions that this mistake has caused considerable extra work and delayed the publishing of results
I wonder if others on this panel have additional thoughts on this matter?
Comments
Point 1: You could ask the players - but these days (no personal score cards) they dont remember the boards at the end of a a session. Assume the switch happened once, and assume it started with the first obviously wrong score.
Point 2: The scoring program should be able to handle fouled boards, but you can contact me or Jonathan for help. The two subgroups will be factored. The pair who did not play the board will not be affected.
Point 3: Clubs rarely issue procedural score penalties for misboarding. If you can identify the guilty pairs - tell them what happened and to be more careful in future.
You will know where the board started which will be in a correct form for the rest of the session. Follow it from table to table until you find an unusual score. If leads shown, that will help. Then as Robin said.
Have you considered uploading the hand records to your Bridgemates or whatever you use? This can pick up fouled boards the first time it happens when the lead is input, can be corrected now, so will only affect one table.
Hi Robin - By checking on the EBU Movement Book I've been able to identify the culprit. There were 6 1/2 tables in play and at one of the sit-out tables the pair looked at the hands and must have put them back in the wrong slots. I need to allocate match points to each pair who played the board - we use our own scoring program. The problem occurred on board 16 on Tuesday 11th April, link follows: http://www.mayfieldbridge.co.uk/M/Index.htm Pairs 1/2, 4/9, 6/10 and 13/8 played the fouled boards while 5/7 and 14/11 played the correct boards. If they are treated as two sets how do I calculate the match points? - Many thanks for your help so far. - Alan
I've just checked and our scorer, who's just back from holiday, is tied up with high priority work and can't look at sorting this out until next week. He was hoping I could sort it out manually but I don't know where to start - help! We use Scorebridge.
I found instructions on a club website at https://www.busbridgebridge.org.uk/TinyFileManager/resources/files/18///Documents/bdbc director scorer instructions.pdf
Fouled Boards
A board may be ‘fouled’ in various ways. The most likely is that a sit-out pair looks at the hands
and returns them to the wrong slots. If the error is not spotted and corrected immediately, the
board will be played in two versions, and is said to be ‘fouled’.
ScoreBridge can cope easily with a board that has been played in two different versions (but not
three):
• Enter all the results for the fouled board.
• Click the ‘Split Board’ button and follow the instructions. For the record, these are
(a) ‘Hold down the Ctrl key’
(b) ‘Use the mouse to select those lines on the board to be split out’
(c) ‘Click the ‘Split Board’ button again’.
If you are really unlucky, the board will have been played in three versions. (This has happened.
It was fouled by the sit-out pair, played in that version, and then changed into a third version by
someone who tried to correct it without calling the director.) You will then have to score it
manually
Thanks Gordon and thank you to Robin and Triffid. I'll pass this info straight over to our scorer, Saved the day - I hope. Alan.
Yes, saved the day (and my NGS score!). New results up and sent to EBU. Thank goodness for this forum and the help given.
:)