[mich-b]

The following happened recently in the national teams league (2nd division) :
In a match , which is part of a round robin of 12 teams, a team played and made 3NT.
The defenders claimed misexplanation of one of the bids during the auction, which caused them not to find the best defense to set the contract.
I don't know what was the TD's ruling, but this eventually was brought before an AC which decided that :
1. The explanation given was according to the pair's system and CC, though did not fit the actual hand.
2. It would be wrong to punish the non-offending side since they did get a wrong picture of the actual hands.
3. They awarded the declarer's team 3NT making +600.
4. They awarded the defending side 3NT down 2 +200.
5. They decided that the declaring side will be fined some amount of VP, for another case of explanation not matching the hands.
6. This resulted in the match score being 23-10 to one of the teams (15-15 scale).

What do you think about this decision by the AC? Is it at all legal? And more generally do you think that a match score where the sum is above 30 should be legal? and if so, in which cases (maybe only in technical ones like if a third party is at fault?)?

[nige1]

Rulings like this save the committee from having to make a hard decision and keep both sides friendly but disadvantage the field. When a committee arrive at decision, they should check whether it is lawful with the director. If this decision is legal, the rules need changing.

[paulg]

Independent of the rights and wrongs of this ruling, it is legal to have a match score that totals more than thirty. I've had the situation where a board in a swiss match is unplayable because of information received from another table (not involved in the specific match) and both (non-offending) sides being credited with +3 imps. If the other boards are flat this would normally result in a 16-16 win for both sides. I don't see anything wrong in this.

[pran]

mich-b, on 2010-October-26, 02:02, said:

The following happened recently in the national teams league (2nd division) :
In a match , which is part of a round robin of 12 teams, a team played and made 3NT.
The defenders claimed misexplanation of one of the bids during the auction, which caused them not to find the best defense to set the contract.
I don't know what was the TD's ruling, but this eventually was brought before an AC which decided that :
1. The explanation given was according to the pair's system and CC, though did not fit the actual hand.
2. It would be wrong to punish the non-offending side since they did get a wrong picture of the actual hands.
3. They awarded the declarer's team 3NT making +600.
4. They awarded the defending side 3NT down 2 +200.
5. They decided that the declaring side will be fined some amount of VP, for another case of explanation not matching the hands.
6. This resulted in the match score being 23-10 to one of the teams (15-15 scale).

What do you think about this decision by the AC? Is it at all legal? And more generally do you think that a match score where the sum is above 30 should be legal? and if so, in which cases (maybe only in technical ones like if a third party is at fault?)?

I find this ruling horrible for the following reasons:

re 1. The AC decided that the explanation was correct according to the pair's system, thus there was no misexplanation. That the explanation did not give opponents the correct picture of the hands is irrelevant (see Law 75 C) unless there is a probability of CPU, no such probability has been suggested.

re 2. According to the above findings there is no irregularity and thus no offending side, apparently both sides are non-offending.

re 4. Adjusting a score when there is no irregularity is abuse of Law 12.

re 5. Penalizing a side for giving an explanation not matching the hands is specifically illegal according to Law 75C.

The only non-disputable point here:

re 6.(The fact that the match result became 23-10 is not wrong as such, circumstances may justify "plus" results to both sides. But nothing in the writeup indicates that to be the case here.)

[campboy]

The two examples I can think of where it is normal to give net-positive non-balancing adjusted scores are director error (he is now adjusting because one side was disadvantaged by an incorrect ruling he gave during the bidding or play), and Paul's example of the board made unplayable by a third party.

Anyway, this ruling is not in any way legal. If the explanation was systemically correct but did not match the hand there is no infraction (law 40A3) provided the partnership does not have some concealed understanding. Even if there were a reason to adjust here there is no legal basis for ever adjusting the score for the NOS but not for the OS (in the case of director error, both sides are considered non-offending (law 82C)), although it is quite possible to adjust for the OS but not the NOS.

[bluejak]

Did the nice AC give all the players an ice-cream? Did they buy them all tea and cookies?

If an AC is going to completely ignore the Laws someone should make sure no-one on this AC ever sits on an AC again.

As others have said a score of more than 30 is legal but it needs an outside agency [TD, kibitzer, player at another table, person making up boards, and so on].

If there is no MI then you cannot give the other side an increased score because they will cry and run to mummy otherwise.

[Cyberyeti]

I was on an appeals committee that did this a while ago (EBU).

What happened ?

1. A player removes a card from the bidding box with the intention of playing it, without anybody seeing what it was (but it looked like one something) out of turn and at this point somebody says "not your bid".

2. Director comes to table and for fear of giving UI to the offender's partner, didn't ask the offender what the bid was, but simply asks their LHO whether they wish to accept the unknown bid, and they said no.

3. Bidding reverted to the offender who looked at their 13/14 count with 5 spades and ventured 3N. Dummy decked with a weak no trump with 4 spades, which were 4-0 offside, 3N made, 4♠ doesn't.

4. The NOS appealed on a completely different issue (that the partner of the offender had said something along the lines of "Do I REALLY have to pass throughout" denied by the OS and director that this gave her partner UI in selecting 3N)

We ruled that although we'd have liked to retain the deposits for the reason for the appeal, there was a directorial error in that the director should have told the offender's LHO what bid they were accepting or not as the bid is actually made at the point it's removed from the bidding box with the intent of playing it.

We ruled that the OS kept 3N= for +10 or so, the NOS got +3 IMPS on their comparison.

I agree with the previous poster that without an outside intervention, in this case the TD, you can't get a ruling of this sort.

(This was my recollection of the facts, since the other two members of the appeals committee and the TD appear on these boards, they might correct some of it)

[Cascade]

pran, on 2010-October-26, 04:42, said:

I find this ruling horrible for the following reasons:

re 1. The AC decided that the explanation was correct according to the pair's system, thus there was no misexplanation. That the explanation did not give opponents the correct picture of the hands is irrelevant (see Law 75 C) unless there is a probability of CPU, no such probability has been suggested.

re 2. According to the above findings there is no irregularity and thus no offending side, apparently both sides are non-offending.

re 4. Adjusting a score when there is no irregularity is abuse of Law 12.

re 5. Penalizing a side for giving an explanation not matching the hands is specifically illegal according to Law 75C.

The only non-disputable point here:

re 6.(The fact that the match result became 23-10 is not wrong as such, circumstances may justify "plus" results to both sides. But nothing in the writeup indicates that to be the case here.)

Agree with all of this.

[peachy]

I also agree with pran.

An additional hypothetical point: if the pair in question frequently and habitually do not have the hand that their system says they have (not against the laws to act this way), it then becomes their implicit agreement through history and experience that in fact they are not playing the method that is explained.

I've said it before that I am in favor of instituting Conditions of Contest for more prestigious events where the players are generally expected to know the system they are playing and how it applies in common situations. If such CoC were not in place, the OP ruling is indeed completely illegal.

[dburn]

It has always struck me as seriously wrong that Victory Points should be arbitrarily added to the economy because first the players cock something up and then the Director does. This is the bridge equivalent of quantitative easing ("printing money" for non-economists such as myself) and ought to be abolished. If the result after following the Laws regarding the assignment of IMPs after an adjusted score is a 23-10 win for one side, that ought to be adjusted to a 21-9 win (or a fractional adjustment if rounding errors lead to significant loss of equity, which in this case they do not). It is, for obvious reasons, unfair to the rest of the field for there to be more than 30 VPs at stake in one match when there are only 30 at stake in all the others.

[campboy]

Surely what is seriously wrong in that scenario is that the director cocked something up, and unfairness to somebody is a mere logical consequence of that. We have a choice between protecting the players at this table from the director error, or protecting the field from the consequences of that; it is not obvious to me why either of these is more important than the other, so I see no reason to quibble with the choice the regulations have made.

[bluejak]

Part of the problem comes from misuse of the Law on Director error. Several times I have heard or read the suggestion that after Director Error Ave+/Ave+ should be given! On RGB, BLML, and IBLF we have pooh-poohed this enough that we rarely get such suggestions here now.

But consider a case from Brighton about ten years ago. MI, declarer made 2♠, the TD [after consulting with me] went and ruled 2♠ -2. But we had overlooked something. Now it became obvious that because of something declarer knows he will play it differently and presumable make seven tricks.

The immediate instinct is to change the ruling under Director Error to 2♠ -1 one way, 2♠ -2 the other. But in fact the correct ruling is 2♠ -1 so we changed it to 2♠ -1 and apologised profusely.

It is only correct to split the score when making each side non-offending in turn, specifically for the relevant bit we got wrong, might lead to different scores. If you know what the score should be you change it to that.

So, while I have no problem with split scores for the reasons campboy gives, there are probably too many. We want to be careful it is right to split before we do, not just do it as a knee-jerk reaction because a mistake has been made.

[Siegmund]

Chiming in with the chorus:

The path from "the explanation given was according to the pair's system and CC, though did not fit the actual hand" to "score stands for both sides" should be a very short one indeed. If there has been habitual mis-matching, a PP is reasonable.

I was going to say greater-than-100% adjustments occur only after director errors (plus a few other things like boards-fouled-at-another-table that apply only to pairs games.) On reflection, I suppose UI from another table is possible if it's a team game where everybody in the room is playing the same boards, but we have precious few of those in my corner of the world.

[pran]

Siegmund, on 2010-November-06, 20:33, said:

Chiming in with the chorus:

The path from "the explanation given was according to the pair's system and CC, though did not fit the actual hand" to "score stands for both sides" should be a very short one indeed. If there has been habitual mis-matching, a PP is reasonable.

I was going to say greater-than-100% adjustments occur only after director errors (plus a few other things like boards-fouled-at-another-table that apply only to pairs games.) On reflection, I suppose UI from another table is possible if it's a team game where everybody in the room is playing the same boards, but we have precious few of those in my corner of the world.

I had precisely this situation yesterday: Discussion at one table revealed so much about a particular board that the players at a neighbouring table just bidding that board became unable to complete their auction (lest play) in any reasonable way. I had to award both pairs A+ (and a PP to the loudspeakers).

The by far most popular tournament schedule (both for pairs and teams) in Norway (and I believe indeed in Scandinavia) is baromether style, the same boards played simultaneously during the same round at all tables and then scored immediately. (My event yesterday was Swiss pairs with 28 tables playing 17 rounds for a total of 51 boards.)

[Pig Trader]

Cyberyeti, on 2010-November-04, 08:03, said:

..... since the other two members of the appeals committee and the TD appear on these boards, they might correct some of it)

I got here eventually! The following is re. Cyberyeti's posting, above.

I was the TD and it was some years ago at the EBU Swiss Teams Congress at Kettering in January, and I believe it was 2006, or maybe 2005, certainly it was when I was less experienced than I am now.

The only thing that I couldn't recollect was the actual ruling by the AC in changing my ruling, but it sounds right. I did subsequently convey to the L&EC my view that when a player starts to take out of their bidding box a bid that is a bid at the 1-level - and the only reason we know it is at the 1-level is because it is not preceeded by the Stop card - and there is otherwise no way for any player to know what bid is being pulled out, then this is best treated as Unauthorised Information in the same way as a Stop Card out of turn is treated. The subsequent meeting minutes showed that Max appeared to agree with this view, but there was no proposal that the regulations be amended.

I'd be interested to know if any other Regulating Authority has bidding box regulations that would treat an OOT partial drawing out of a 1-level bid as UI rather than a BOOT.

Barrie

[blackshoe]

Well, it's not a BOOT in the ACBL, since a bid is not made (using bidding boxes) until the bidding card(s) are on or near the table.

[bluejak]

No authority - we hope - is going to issue a regulation in conflict with the Laws. If a call out of turn is made it is treated as a call out of turn. If a call out of turn is not made [but is partly made] then it is not a call out of turn but is UI.

Of course the ACBL and the WBF [and maybe other jurisdictions: I believe the EBL is changing sometime] have different timings for when a call is made which are similar to when a card is played by declarer. So for them a card just out of the box is not a call made, and if replaced immediately is not a call out of turn.

[pran]

Pig Trader, on 2010-November-19, 11:06, said:

I got here eventually! The following is re. Cyberyeti's posting, above.

I was the TD and it was some years ago at the EBU Swiss Teams Congress at Kettering in January, and I believe it was 2006, or maybe 2005, certainly it was when I was less experienced than I am now.

The only thing that I couldn't recollect was the actual ruling by the AC in changing my ruling, but it sounds right. I did subsequently convey to the L&EC my view that when a player starts to take out of their bidding box a bid that is a bid at the 1-level - and the only reason we know it is at the 1-level is because it is not preceeded by the Stop card - and there is otherwise no way for any player to know what bid is being pulled out, then this is best treated as Unauthorised Information in the same way as a Stop Card out of turn is treated. The subsequent meeting minutes showed that Max appeared to agree with this view, but there was no proposal that the regulations be amended.

I'd be interested to know if any other Regulating Authority has bidding box regulations that would treat an OOT partial drawing out of a 1-level bid as UI rather than a BOOT.

Barrie

I remember from the very early days of STOP-cards and bid boxes a regulation here in Norway that when a STOP-card had been pulled from the bid box by a player not in turn to call the offender should be requested to complete his call out of turn which then should be ruled on with Law 29 etc.

This "regulation" was very quickly abandoned and we just rule UI on any unfinished call out of turn.

[Cyberyeti]

blackshoe, on 2010-November-19, 11:19, said:

Well, it's not a BOOT in the ACBL, since a bid is not made (using bidding boxes) until the bidding card(s) are on or near the table.

It was ruled that the bid was removed from the bidding box and near enough to the table with apparent intent to play it, the bid was just not visible to the offender's opps and partner as it was held with the face still towards the offender.

[awm]

Perhaps a related question...

Suppose that another team finishes second in the event by a VP or two, where the winner was involved in this 23-10 AC decision. Is there any procedure whereby this team (which was not at the table) can protest the incorrect AC decision which potentially prevented them from winning the event?

Situations like this seem to come up a lot in pairs events. What happens is that the director makes a ruling which is then appealed. But the AC doesn't convene until the end of the session, at which point the non-appealing side is well out of contention and just wants to go home. Now only the appealing side appears before the AC, giving them a substantial advantage in the proceedings. Of course, every place that the appealing team moves up in the overall results means another pair is moving down. Is there anything that can be done about this?