[barmar]

At the beginning of last night's ACBL club game, one player's partner hadn't shown up yet, so I filled in for him to get the game moving. While I was playing this hand, a newcomer showed up. As it looked like the late player might by a no-show, I said she could play with the person who was waiting for him starting with the second board. Then the late player showed up, so I offered to partner with the newcomer (good marketing: don't turn away a new customer when it's possible to accomodate her); we would become a bump pair.

When the second round started, the first board was the one I'd played when I was filling in at the other table. My first inclination was to let the pair we were bumping play that one board, and we'd take over for the other 2 boards in the round. But one of them had already gone off for a walk. So I had the remaining bumpee take my seat and play with my partner for that hand.

Now the question arises: We have a pair made up of one player from pair 2 (bumpees), and one player from pair 10 (bumpers), which pair gets the matchpoints?

I didn't even realize the issue until the scorer was entering the scores at the end of the evening. While he was playing the hand, I still had it in my mind that I'd had pair 2 stay for the one board, so I'd done an EDMOV to switch them into the movement for that board. But the player who took my seat scored it on my line, and the scorer noticed the mismatch between what ACBLScore wanted and what was written on the traveler.

I decided the choice is arbitrary, so I told him to put the score in as I'd edited the movement. Was there a better solution?

[WellSpyder]

What fun!

Although you haven't raised the question, aren't you faced with the same issue on the first board you played as you discuss for the first board of the next round? In each case, comparing the actual participants with the final pairs competing you have a pair at the table consisting of members of two different final partnerships.

I think my solution would have been the same in both cases. One member of the pair who played the hand was part of the pair who should have played the hand, while the other wasn't. So I would score the result for the pair who were due to play it and treat the other player as being a substitute for the hand, albeit a slightly unusual substitute since they were part of a different partnership rather than a non-participant.

That means assigning the score on the first hand you played to the latecomer+partner (which I assume you did, even though you actually played the hand with the latecomer's partner), and the score on the first board of round 2 to yourself+newcomer.

EDIT: I realise that the above might seem a bit confused since it doesn't appear to reflect the fact that we are actually talking about the same board in each case since it has moved between the tables. But the solution still looks valid....

[pran]

Don't your regulations include anything about substitudes etc.?
You should find answers there.

[barmar]

The only thing I could find in the ACBL General Conditions of Contest regarding substitutes was "Substitutes may not appreciably strengthen the partnership". And these CoC seem to be for national tournaments, not club games. I don't think we have any written club regulations that would cover something like this.

If you know a place on the ACBL site that addresses this more directly, I'd be happy to look there.

I just got an email from the pair I awarded the matchpoints to, saying "We didn't play board 7, that's the one I filled in for you." But I knew that's how he considered it, since he wrote the score on my line.

If there's a good reason why it should be scored the other way, I'll go in and fix it. But if it's arbitrary, I'll probably just leave it as it is.

And yeah, I didn't even realize that the same thing could be said about the first play of the board. At that time, I didn't even think of myself as being part of a different partnership, I was just the director filling in temporarily.

[pran]

Don't your regulations on substitutes include specifications for how many boards/rounds or whatever a (temporary) substitute may play before taking over the full rights of the player he substitutes?


Hold it! - you wrote Matchpoints. Those are (of course) awarded to the contestant - which is the pair, not the individual. A substitute plays on behalf of the player he substitutes and not for himself. (Unless he has acquired full rights in the partnership).

The extreme case is an event with an odd number of contestants (pairs) so that there is a scheduled sitout in each round. Now say that one player gets ill or something and that one of the players having sitout rounds steps in for that player in each respective round.

The pair being helped by a substitute (Different substitute each round) receives its matchpoints as if the regular player had been playing, each substitute still receives his sitout "score" in the affected round.


(Sorry, I read OP as Masterpoints, not Matchpoints.)

[blackshoe]

In a pairs contest, the contestants are the pairs scheduled to play in the event. If you provide a presumably temporary substitute for a missing player, the contestant in that case is still the original pair scheduled to play the board. You started with one contestant which was incomplete, so you provided a substitute (yourself). For the second board in the round (two board rounds, I'm guessing) you sat out and let the newcomer sub. The contestant is still the original pair. Then you create a new contestant (you and the newcomer) and that contestant bumps a third contestant at another table in the second round. The new contestant (you and the newcomer) should play the boards, but you've already played the first one, and it looks like the newcomer has already played the second. So you should, I think, have provided a sub for yourself on the first board, and a sub for your partner on the second. Still, the contestant on both these boards, at this time, is yourself and the newcomer. So the subs get the pleasure of playing the boards (they were bumped, so presumably they aren't scheduled to play these boards later), but they get no score. This should hold true, I think, even if you sub the bumped pair for yours on both boards. After all, they weren't scheduled in the movement to play these boards, so there's really no place to put a score for them.

An alternative, I think, although I consider it a poorer one, is to not play those two boards in the second round, on the grounds that one contestant, you and your partner, had already played them. Your pair would keep whatever score was achieved in the first round, and your second round opponents would get Average Plus.

[barmar]

pran, on 2012-June-20, 13:52, said:

Don't your regulations on substitutes include specifications for how many boards/rounds or whatever a (temporary) substitute may play before taking over the full rights of the player he substitutes?


Hold it! - you wrote Matchpoints. Those are (of course) awarded to the contestant - which is the pair, not the individual. A substitute plays on behalf of the player he substitutes and not for himself. (Unless he has acquired full rights in the partnership).

But who's substituting for whom? Is my partner substituting for the player who went for a walk, or is the player from the bumpee pair substituting for me?

The other issue the bumpee raised when I asked him to play is that I should have arrow-switched them for that board. He was assuming that the board would be scored for my pair (that's how he scored it on the traveler), and since he's competing against us he has an incentive to throw the board. I was rushed and didn't understand this at the time, and was still thinking in terms of my partner being the sub, not him, so I didn't bother. I also know him and trusted him to play normally -- my partner would probably be (and actually was) the weak link on the board.

blackshoe, on 2012-June-20, 16:01, said:

An alternative, I think, although I consider it a poorer one, is to not play those two boards in the second round, on the grounds that one contestant, you and your partner, had already played them. Your pair would keep whatever score was achieved in the first round, and your second round opponents would get Average Plus.

It was just one board, and only I had played them (as a substitute for the late player), not my partner.

Anyway, I think the concensus is that the points should go to the bumpers, not the bumpees, so I'll try to fix it. I hope ACBLScore will let me -- I'm guessing that if I edit the movement to put us back, it will just force me to re-enter the scores for that board.

[pran]

barmar, on 2012-June-21, 10:00, said:

But who's substituting for whom? Is my partner substituting for the player who went for a walk, or is the player from the bumpee pair substituting for me?

The other issue the bumpee raised when I asked him to play is that I should have arrow-switched them for that board. He was assuming that the board would be scored for my pair (that's how he scored it on the traveler), and since he's competing against us he has an incentive to throw the board. I was rushed and didn't understand this at the time, and was still thinking in terms of my partner being the sub, not him, so I didn't bother. I also know him and trusted him to play normally -- my partner would probably be (and actually was) the weak link on the board.


It was just one board, and only I had played them (as a substitute for the late player), not my partner.

Anyway, I think the concensus is that the points should go to the bumpers, not the bumpees, so I'll try to fix it. I hope ACBLScore will let me -- I'm guessing that if I edit the movement to put us back, it will just force me to re-enter the scores for that board.

Assume that the participating pair consists of players A and B.

Player C is then the substitute if he replaces B during a (limited) number of boards.

The pair (A + C) shall use exactly the same schedule as has been prepared for the pair A + B and the scoring shall be done with B (not C) "named" as the player for these boards.

A substitute may never be engaged in the auction or play of a board he has already played or is scheduloed to play later in the event!

Consequently for a sitout player to step in as substitute is only possible with barometer (serial schedule), it can never be used with Howell or Mitchell schedules. I mentioned this possibility forgetting that while almost all events for pairs in Scandinavia use barometer schedules this movement seems almost unknown elsewhere.

[blackshoe]

Oh, it's known here. Players aren't sufficiently enamored of it to demand it, and club owners/TDs, I believe, think it's too much work. I grant they don't have your 40 years experience with them.

[axman]

barmar, on 2012-June-21, 10:00, said:

But who's substituting for whom? Is my partner substituting for the player who went for a walk, or is the player from the bumpee pair substituting for me?

The other issue the bumpee raised when I asked him to play is that I should have arrow-switched them for that board. He was assuming that the board would be scored for my pair (that's how he scored it on the traveler), and since he's competing against us he has an incentive to throw the board. I was rushed and didn't understand this at the time, and was still thinking in terms of my partner being the sub, not him, so I didn't bother. I also know him and trusted him to play normally -- my partner would probably be (and actually was) the weak link on the board.


It was just one board, and only I had played them (as a substitute for the late player), not my partner.

Anyway, I think the concensus is that the points should go to the bumpers, not the bumpees, so I'll try to fix it. I hope ACBLScore will let me -- I'm guessing that if I edit the movement to put us back, it will just force me to re-enter the scores for that board.

When I was faced with this kind of multi-fill-in problem, where it seemed nicer to complete a walkin half table created by a late player- the route I took to avoid fouling comparisons [when temporary substitutes met boards again] was to get on the phone and find someone to take my chair before the movement fouled the comparisons. I learned my lesson to not allow that much accommodation (:. Your set-up did not afford the time to get a fresh body <sigh>.


I suspect what you are after is some principle as how you might deal with the situation where one or more people perform more than one role [play for more than one contestant].

Generally, a player that acts as a temporary surrogate/fill-in and then participates as a [permanent contestant] is only accorded the scores that his ‘contestant’ is credited with. As for fouled comparisons from his ‘temporary subbing’ it would be dubious to accord such contestant the status of ‘not at fault’ when contemplating artificial scores.

As for how much of an event [particularly a multi-session event] a missing player does not participate in and still be the contestant is probably best answered by the CoC rather than going through the hard feelings created when special dispensation is given after the fact.

[pran]

axman, on 2012-June-21, 12:50, said:

[...]
As for how much of an event [particularly a multi-session event] a missing player does not participate in and still be the contestant is probably best answered by the CoC rather than going through the hard feelings created when special dispensation is given after the fact.

Quite correct.

Not really relevant elsewhere, but here is the corresponding part of the Norwegian regulation:
3.8.3: A substitute may maximally participate in half the number of sessions, or half the number of rounds in a single-session event before the rights of the original player passes over to the substitute.
3.8.4: If more than one substitute is used then of the original players in the pair one must have played at least 2/3 of the total number of boards, the other at least 1/3 of the total number of boards in order to preserve the rights for that pair. If this condition is not met then the pair is disqualified from the event unless substitutes acquire the rights on the same conditions.

[barmar]

It turned out that ACBLScore was quite accomodating of my correcting this. All I did was edit the movement to put my pair back in for the board, and it automatically moved the matchpoints over to us. I didn't have to re-enter the board (not that this would have been onerous -- we save all the pickup slips until the next week's game).

[TimG]

blackshoe, on 2012-June-20, 16:01, said:

In a pairs contest, the contestants are the pairs scheduled to play in the event. If you provide a presumably temporary substitute for a missing player, the contestant in that case is still the original pair scheduled to play the board. You started with one contestant which was incomplete, so you provided a substitute (yourself). For the second board in the round (two board rounds, I'm guessing) you sat out and let the newcomer sub. The contestant is still the original pair. Then you create a new contestant (you and the newcomer) and that contestant bumps a third contestant at another table in the second round. The new contestant (you and the newcomer) should play the boards, but you've already played the first one, and it looks like the newcomer has already played the second. So you should, I think, have provided a sub for yourself on the first board, and a sub for your partner on the second. Still, the contestant on both these boards, at this time, is yourself and the newcomer. So the subs get the pleasure of playing the boards (they were bumped, so presumably they aren't scheduled to play these boards later), but they get no score.

This seems spot on to me, in the case of a substitute individual.

Quote

This should hold true, I think, even if you sub the bumped pair for yours on both boards. After all, they weren't scheduled in the movement to play these boards, so there's really no place to put a score for them.

Here, I would think that you could do it either way, give the substituting pair the score or give the pair substituted for the score. I'd vote for giving the score to the pair that played the hand, but I could see going either way.

[barmar]

blackshoe, on 2012-June-20, 16:01, said:

This should hold true, I think, even if you sub the bumped pair for yours on both boards. After all, they weren't scheduled in the movement to play these boards, so there's really no place to put a score for them.

It's easy to make a place with ACBLScore's Edit Movement screen. It's the same procedure you would use if the wrong pair played a board by mistake (e.g. if the director forgot to warn them that they would be bumped, and they started playing the new board).

[blackshoe]

Hm. I think the balance of the movement is going to get all screwed up if you do that, but then nobody cares about that anyway.

[barmar]

I don't think one board out of 24 is going to make all that much difference.

I just had another question: is it even legal to perform this substitution? The only mention I can find of substitute players is in Law 4, which just says "if authorized by the Director", but doesn't provide any guidelines for when to authorize.

The reason for the substitution was that I had extraneous information, having played the hand earlier. 16C deals with extraneous information, but only when such information was received accidentally. And even if we include this cause of the extraneous info, none of the remedies in 16C2 include replacing the player (the closest is rotating seats so he gets the hand he's seen, but in this case I'd seen the entire board).

[pran]

barmar, on 2012-June-27, 11:15, said:

I don't think one board out of 24 is going to make all that much difference.

I just had another question: is it even legal to perform this substitution? The only mention I can find of substitute players is in Law 4, which just says "if authorized by the Director", but doesn't provide any guidelines for when to authorize.

The reason for the substitution was that I had extraneous information, having played the hand earlier. 16C deals with extraneous information, but only when such information was received accidentally. And even if we include this cause of the extraneous info, none of the remedies in 16C2 include replacing the player (the closest is rotating seats so he gets the hand he's seen, but in this case I'd seen the entire board).

Law 15 B."One or More Players Have Previously Played Board" said:

If any player plays a board he has previously played, with the correct opponents or otherwise, his second score on the board is cancelled both for his side and his opponents, and the Director shall award an artificial adjusted score to the contestants deprived of the opportunity to earn a valid score.

This law (unconditionally) requires any result obtained on a board to be cancelled for both sides if (at least) one of the four players has already (previously) played the board. The exact circumstances are completely irrelevant.

[barmar]

pran, on 2012-June-27, 11:41, said:

This law (unconditionally) requires any result obtained on a board to be cancelled for both sides if (at least) one of the four players has already (previously) played the board. The exact circumstances are completely irrelevant.

But I DIDN'T play the board twice. I substituted another player to avoid it. Does Law 4 give the RA and TD wide latitude, since it doesn't specify any criteria?

[blackshoe]

Quote

Law 81B1: The director is responsible for the on-site technical management of the tournament. He has powers to remedy any omissions of the tournament organizer.

Quote

Law 81C1: The director’s duties and powers normally include also the following:
1. to maintain discipline and to ensure the orderly progress of the game.

I think that's wide enough latitude. :-)

[pran]

barmar, on 2012-June-27, 13:40, said:

But I DIDN'T play the board twice. I substituted another player to avoid it. Does Law 4 give the RA and TD wide latitude, since it doesn't specify any criteria?

Normally a substitute does not acquire any of the rights from the player he substitutes for. (This is a matter of regulation).

TD may insert a substitute for whatever cause he finds valid, and the substituted player retains whatever credit the substitute has obtained on his behalf.