Refusal to explain
What should be done when a player in an online game simply refuses to give any explanation of his bids?
In the specific instance he made a jump overcall and refused to answer when asked about the strength.
Opps passed it out and 2S-1 turned out to be a top. (It was weak).
In my view the overcaller's LHO had a very obvious bid over the intervention regardless of the strength of the overcall, which makes me wary of awarding an adjusted score because I think her bidding was nonsensical.
I can post the exact hand when I have a bit more time, right now the tournament is in progress and I have half an hour to decide whether to award an adjusted score or what.
Can you even give procedural penalties on BBO? It's only my fourth time and it hasn't come up yet.
Guess I'm on my own with this one given the time constraints, but I would welcome views for future reference. All the best
Mike
Comments
Firstly, it was always worth being wary when players say they would have made a different decision if they had received a complete explanation. There is a similar discussion on BBO at https://www.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/83283-name-this-species-of-director-call/ which emphasises that although an adjustment may be appropriate in a number of cases, directors should not simply adjust in favour of a non-offending side in all cases. In this case, if you are of the opinion that LHO had a clear bid, then an adjusted score is unlikely to be appropriate.
Many players in virtual clubs are still unfamiliar with playing on BBO so a procedural penalty is unlikely to be the best way forward, especially for a first complaint. The White Book suggests a procedural penalty should be given after two warnings. BBO doesn't allow you to award a penalty though so you would have to go through EBUScore or similar if this was ever required.
An extreme solution would be for the director to privately message the player who is asking and explain it for them as "weak", if this is clear from the hand they are looking at. This carries the risk of the player with the weak jump overcall having possibly psyched or the pair not actually having any agreement (in which case they would announce simply as not discussed). It's obviously not a specifically permitted intervention by the director and I certainly wouldn't expect it to be used in EBU or county-level events, but in clubs this may be the best case scenario (as a potentially contentious director call afterwards is avoided, the board can be played smoothly and both sides are roughly fully informed). For me everyone having a good time and being able to play out boards with minimal director intervention in a club environment is more desirable than for the laws and regulations to be followed perfectly but for players to have a score crossed out because of it - I know that's often not a popular stance, but if you are a member of the club yourself as well then you'll be better placed to know what is desirable for your membership going forward (this solution isn't specifically prohibited by the laws to my knowledge so it is technically a regulation that your club could choose to adopt).
This does seem to be a more common complaint than I would expect. I wonder if sometimes people are not looking at the relevant part of the screen and don't see the question, or don't understand the popup and how to respond to it. Of course sometimes it will just be that people think the answer is so obvious that they can ignore it, which is not acceptable.
Very probably there are such reasons. I note that the title of this thread is "Refusal to explain" rather than "Failure to explain" which seems presumptive as I see no evidence of intentional refusal such as the player saying "I'm not telling you"!
Barrie Partridge - CTD for Bridge Club Live
Maybe the wording of the thread title was provocative. I do know an explanation was requested and not given, and I have been told this is common practice on the part of the player in question, though it was the first time I had observed it first-hand.
Anyway, thanks all for your input.
I'm told that you can set BBO to 'Speak Chat' in settings in the Account tab.....
Peter Bushby Suffolk