[ggwhiz]

nige1, on 2012-May-06, 21:12, said:

A long-term solution to all McPhee's problems might be to elect a different board.

And run for it. You have an election platform but it takes time and energy. Everyone that has taken the plunge locally with the best of intentions has given up in frustration after a couple of years too.

Progress has been made (I recall a political grand theft of a Canadian National team Championship from 30 years ago) but it's glacial in nature.

[Zelandakh]

This would be somewhat extreme you could in theory take the competition organisers to court. You entered into a competition, paying an entry fee, on one understanding and the rules were changed afterwards. That sounds a lot like a bait and switch. Especially when the Board can be shown not to be independant. I am not a legal expert but I believe you would have a reasonable case for entitlement to some financial redress (assuming there was a financial prize anyway). It is likely that this approach would not be a financial success once you figured in legal fees, of course, and you would probably have to do a lot of the legwork and research yourself making it also quite time-consuming. It would make a clear statement though, if that is what you want.

A less costly, and possibly more effective, strategy would be to contact your local bridge magazine, assuming it is not owned by the Board in question, and discuss whether they would consider printing a report of the event. Naturally this would have to be written presenting both sides but sometimes a little controversy is not such a bad thing in magazine sales and this would at least make some of the issues known to a wider audience. Failing that, marry a newspaper reporter...

[kenberg]

mcphee, on 2012-May-06, 18:23, said:

The director was given ZERO instructions from the bridge body how they wanted the tournament run. This director has refused to work with this group again. Someone does care about fair ball it seems.

My own view on cheating is public flogging. They should have made these two players and example, and to let them serve a sentence and later play on the national team because they (ahem) won a birth

First paragraph: I suppose that the board made some sort of statement justifying their action.If we are really to assess this, we should hear it. It seems to me that at least one of the parties, possibly both of the parties, seemed to feel that they were accountable to no one. I only had an experience like this once. I was at a regional, there was, I thought, egregious abuse of UI at the table. I absolutely do not call for protection at the mere hint of impropriety but in this case I did so. It went to a committee. The committee mebers knew me not at all, knew the opponents very well, adressed them in familiar fashion and laughed and joked with them during the hearing. You can guess the ruling. I have not been back to that venue. So I know from experience that crazy things can/do happen, but I also know from experience that it is best to withhold judgment until getting the views of all of the participants. True, I am inclined to support the director here, but caution seems indicated. For example, you probably would like to hear from the committee I cite before unequivocally coming in on my side.

Second paragraph: As I get older, I come to view it as important that our representatives not embarrass us. Flogging my be satisfying, but keeping them from representing the country might be of greater importance to me.

[mikeh]

As for the consequences of cheating: I think the penalty was too lenient, but that's not really relevant. The ACBL allows convicted cheaters to play professionally! I have never understood the mindset of the clients who hire these people, but I've never been in a position to afford to hire a team, so maybe I can't judge.

As for the event: given the info about the nature of the event, and Bob should have told us this rather than make us guess, in my view the Director was perfectly justified in saying that there would be no carryover...unless the CoC specified otherwise.

When you have a small field, with several teams much stronger than the others, even duplicated boards don't undo the randomization that occurs when a strong team plays tough hands against a weak team, while two other strong teams battle it out. And if the boards are not duplicated across the field, the effect is even more pronounced.

So a carryover, if it is to be based on total VPs, is not necessarily a good thing.

And as Fluffy noted, so long as the actual CoC are announnced before play begins, there can be zero justification for any governing body revising them.

As for there beng members of the protesting team being on the Board that voted to overturn the results.....did they actually vote? I have enormous difficulty with the notion that anyone would actually let them vote....the result itself was appallingly stupid, if we are given the right information, but it goes from stupid to outright...well...non-defamatory words fail me... if the team members were allowed to vote.

[Bbradley62]

mikeh, on 2012-May-07, 09:16, said:

... given the info about the nature of the event, and Bob should have told us this rather than make us guess...

or research it on the internet...

[aguahombre]

Bbradley62, on 2012-May-07, 16:27, said:

or research it on the internet...

Yes, that is a good plan when the OP doesn't say where he/she is from; the level of the event; or anything else from which to research it. It is not clear that the team event described in question two is even related to the issue in question one where representing the annonymous country is an issue.

[mikeh]

aguahombre, on 2012-May-07, 16:36, said:

Yes, that is a good plan when the OP doesn't say where he/she is from; the level of the event; or anything else from which to research it. It is not clear that the team event described in question two is even related to the issue in question one where representing the annonymous country is an issue.

lol....I made a very short effort to do so while eating lunch at my desk (yes, I know I have to get a life), and then realized that I had virtually no search parameters.

I thought it might have been CNTC B or C flight, maybe in Toronto, but that wasn't enough.

[aguahombre]

Well, wherever it was, if I were on the alleged Board, I would have to recuse myself.

I still hold a grudge from 59 years ago when as a 4th grader I beat all the 5th and 6th graders to represent grammar school in a spelling bee. This was so outlandish to the School administration that they changed qualification to a written exam which I boycotted.

[mikeh]

I once won a sectional swiss, drove the 75 miles home and got a call from partner who had just heard: after our team left (3 of us had to travel) the team we beat in the last match appealed a director's ruling....without ever saying so until we had left. They were a local team, we weren't. We were (3 of us anyway) the out of town guns. They were able to find a committee and reversed the ruling so we lost. I've never actually understood why....I mean, the director ruling was at the other table so to this day I don't know what it was about. All I could do was laugh.

[Bbradley62]

aguahombre, on 2012-May-07, 16:36, said:

Yes, that is a good plan when the OP doesn't say where he/she is from; the level of the event; or anything else from which to research it. It is not clear that the team event described in question two is even related to the issue in question one where representing the annonymous country is an issue.

Googling OP's name showed that he is a consultant (or some such role) to the Cyprus Bridge Federation, and yielded the website of that group, which had lots of info about a recent event that matched OP's vague description in Question 2, including their advertising poster, names of all participants, and a spreadsheet with results. It took almost no time at all.

[Zelandakh]

Seems they went for a 100% carry-over too. They could have settled for a mere 20% and still got the "right" team to win.

[Bbradley62]

Zelandakh, on 2012-May-08, 08:06, said:

Seems they went for a 100% carry-over too. They could have settled for a mere 20% and still got the "right" team to win.

Team A had an 18-VP lead after the qualifying session. Team B won the finals session by 2 VPs, so Team A wins is the carryover percentage is anything more than 11%. I haven't played many qualifying-and-finals events; wouldn't a carryover rate of anything other than 100%, 50% or 0% be unusual, and look like rigging the results?

[aguahombre]

Bbradley62, on 2012-May-08, 07:48, said:

Googling OP's name showed that he is a consultant (or some such role) to the Cyprus Bridge Federation, and yielded the website of that group, which had lots of info about a recent event that matched OP's vague description in Question 2, including their advertising poster, names of all participants, and a spreadsheet with results. It took almost no time at all.

I conclude from that: you believe in order for us to intelligently discuss a post, we should each independently do such research on our own. Reasonable, and it does save the OP the bother of providing the requisite information.

Bluejack and Blackshoe can now stop bullying us about our failure to provide jurisdiction when asking about laws and rulings. Posters can jolly-well look it up themselves.

[Zelandakh]

Bbradley62, on 2012-May-08, 08:14, said:

Team A had an 18-VP lead after the qualifying session. Team B won the finals session by 2 VPs, so Team A wins is the carryover percentage is anything more than 11%. I haven't played many qualifying-and-finals events; wouldn't a carryover rate of anything other than 100%, 50% or 0% be unusual, and look like rigging the results?

A recent thread in Laws and rulings gave a couple of formulae for carry-overs and another poster there suggested 1/3 might be a common amount for European competitions. I thought that usually carry-overs only apply to two-stage competitions where the entire field was ranked together in the first half though. Here both competing teams came from Section A but if one had been in Section B there would have been no way of comparing what the relative strengths of their opponents might have been. As an example, DEBBIE can feel particularly aggrieved by the change in CoCs since it is quite clear that Section A was much stronger than Section B and therefore the teams qualifying from Section B had an artificially high carry-forward.

[Bbradley62]

aguahombre, on 2012-May-08, 08:25, said:

I conclude from that: you believe in order for us to intelligently discuss a post, we should each independently do such research on our own. Reasonable, and it does save the OP the bother of providing the requisite information.

Bluejack and Blackshoe can now stop bullying us about our failure to provide jurisdiction when asking about laws and rulings. Posters can jolly-well look it up themselves.

Clearly, posters should include as much relevant and accurate detail as possible. Presumably OP thought that leaving out identifying details would protect possibly-innocent people from public ridicule when we don't really know the facts of the case. It's puzzling that he specifically said this was a Swiss event when it was not at all a Swiss event: both the qualifying session and the final session were played as full round-robins.

[Cthulhu D]

Standard BBO MO when discussing cheating though is not to name names. Making it so obvious who the people being discussed are is practically naming names. In this context it makes sense not to provide identifying details.