[billw55]

broze, on 2014-October-25, 14:38, said:

Do the laws also prohibit the competitors tearing up the cards?

Exactly. There are a great many possible offenses that the laws do not enumerate. I see no reason to think that a director or club owner can only act on circumstances that the law addresses.

For this player: DQ, suspension, and inform the organization of the incident. Nope, I don't need a law to cite.


edit: ah, now I see elsewhere in the thread, some people found a law that works. Well done, but IMO not required.

[PeterAlan]

Another, more general, approach would be to invoke Law 72A:

Law72A said:

LAW 72: GENERAL PRINCIPLES

A. Observance of Laws

Duplicate bridge tournaments should be played in strict accordance with the Laws. The chief object is to obtain a higher score than other contestants whilst complying with the lawful procedures and ethical standards set out in these laws.

I would argue that the phrase "ethical standards set out in these laws" refers to norms of expected behaviour that are characterised by, but not restricted to, the particular ethical points that are specifically covered therein. It is clear that this particular form of reprehensible behaviour falls well outside such norms, and hence violates the requirement here to comply with them.

If this is accepted, then this also gives a basis on which to deal with a whole range of other matters that are not specifically covered in the Laws.

[pran]

PeterAlan, on 2014-October-29, 12:13, said:

Another, more general, approach would be to invoke Law 72A:


I would argue that the phrase "ethical standards set out in these laws" refers to norms of expected behaviour that are characterised by, but not restricted to, the particular ethical points that are specifically covered therein. It is clear that this particular form of reprehensible behaviour falls well outside such norms, and hence violates the requirement here to comply with them.

If this is accepted, then this also gives a basis on which to deal with a whole range of other matters that are not specifically covered in the Laws.

IMHO there can be no doubt that your understanding is correct.

Law 74C says: "The following are examples of violations of procedure" so it should be clear that this and other general laws are not exhaustive when listing what is and/or what is not acceptable behaviour.

[weejonnie]

helene_t, on 2014-October-26, 13:10, said:

Sometimes these discussions are absurd. I am waiting for Paul to post a story about a player who was threatened at gun point to open 7nt and then a long discussion about which law deals with it.

So I agree with Rik except that I don't believe the police would bother to deal with it in the Netherlands. Maybe in a low crime country like Svalbard the police would find the resources

I think it depends on whether it was another player or a spectator.

I think that if it were another player then Law 74A2. "A player should carefully avoid any remark or action that might cause annoyance or embarrassment to another player or might interfere with the enjoyment of the game."

A Spectator would fall under 76B4

"A spectator must not disturb a player."

[Trinidad]

weejonnie, on 2014-October-30, 08:14, said:

I think it depends on whether it was another player or a spectator.

I think that if it were another player then Law 74A2. "A player should carefully avoid any remark or action that might cause annoyance or embarrassment to another player or might interfere with the enjoyment of the game."

A Spectator would fall under 76B4

"A spectator must not disturb a player."

We are dealing with someone who committed a crime, not with someone who committed an infraction in the game of bridge. So, anybody who is browsing through the Bridge Laws to solve this problem is looking in the wrong Law book.

Rik

[aguahombre]

Some of us ancients might recall at least one Bridge player being suspended by his authority for a "crime" (at the time) unrelated to Bridge (and for which he was never charged). If you don't, we will leave it that way.

[Oof Arted]

[quote name='gnasher' timestamp='1414272405' post='816913']
I have two answers:

(1)
[i]6B: The cards must be dealt face down, one card at a time, into four hands of thirteen cards each; each hand is then placed face down in one of the four pockets of the board.


Whilst true Gnasher Technically you can deal 13 cards into 1 pile then 13 into the next etc as long as you deal them 1 at a time

[blackshoe]

Perhaps, although that law goes on to say "The recommended procedure is that the cards be dealt in rotation, clockwise."

[helene_t]

blackshoe, on 2014-October-30, 18:14, said:

Perhaps, although that law goes on to say "The recommended procedure is that the cards be dealt in rotation, clockwise."

I always deal them something like
NSNSEWEWNENESWSWNWNWSESENNSSEEWWNNNWWWSSSEEENEWSNSWE

The idea is that to minimize the impact of bad shuffling, the probability that the next card is given to the same player should be 12/51, not zero as it is in the convenitonal way of dealing. I made some simulations that showed that with this way of dealing you need only about half the riffle shuffles compared to the conventional way.

You could say that it is better to shuffle the cards well, but if the cards are well shuffled it doesn't matter how you deal them and you might as well give the first 13 to W etc.

[campboy]

Oof Arted, on 2014-October-30, 15:36, said:

Whilst true Gnasher Technically you can deal 13 cards into 1 pile then 13 into the next etc as long as you deal them 1 at a time

I have heard it said that "one card at a time" means that consecutive cards should not be dealt to the same pile, though there doesn't seem to be anything official to support that interpretation. Presumably, though, it means something.

(edited to clarify which post I was replying to)

[Trinidad]

campboy, on 2014-October-31, 05:53, said:

I have heard it said that "one card at a time" means that consecutive cards should not be dealt to the same pile, though there doesn't seem to be anything official to support that interpretation. Presumably, though, it means something.

(edited to clarify which post I was replying to)

I think that when I was playing in Sweden there was some kind of regulation or official interpretation that two consecutive cards could not end on the same pile.

Before coming to Sweden, I had formed a habit to deal 1-2-3-4-4-3-2-1, etc. In Sweden, this would really tick some people off. They called the TD who then TD instructed me to redeal the hand. At some point, I decided to deal more random, basically keeping 4 counters in my head, e.g. 1-2-3-4-3-4-2-4-1-3-2-1-4-3-1-2-1. That ticked people off even more, but they never called the TD.

There were also people who were adamant that the first pile should go to West, the second to North, the third to East and the fourth to South.

Rik

[pran]

Say that South is dealing the cards to the current board.
Traditionally (while South is dealing) North collects and shuffles the cards to the next board and places the shuffled deck on his right hand side.

West (the next dealer) then eventually takes the shuffled deck from his left hand side, shuffles the cards even further if he wants to, and then (compulsory) places the deck on his right hand side so that South can perform a cut.

West is then required to deal the cards one at a time, clockwise around the table beginning with North, so that the dealer himself shall receive the bottom card from the pack.

Today, the only requirement that really remains on the dealing process is that it shall assure randomness and not cause premature exposure of any card to the players.

[billw55]

Personally, I shuffle thoroughly, then "deal" by counting 13 of the top three times. It does occasionally happen that someone objects to this, in which case I redeal in a way they like.

I do believe that it would be very difficult to distinguish my deals from computer deals. However I have not tested this.

[blackshoe]

Trinidad, on 2014-October-31, 06:24, said:

IThere were also people who were adamant that the first pile should go to West, the second to North, the third to East and the fourth to South.

"Show me the regulation".

I tend to deal left to right, then back to the left, 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1. The two end piles, 1 and 5, make up a single hand. I believe this is within the parameters of the law. Fortunately, it rarely comes up any more, with pre-duplicated boards.

[hrothgar]

blackshoe, on 2014-October-31, 07:18, said:

"Show me the regulation".

I tend to deal left to right, then back to the left, 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1. The two end piles, 1 and 5, make up a single hand. I believe this is within the parameters of the law. Fortunately, it rarely comes up any more, with pre-duplicated boards.

I recall being told that the regulations required that the hands be dealt that way...

[blackshoe]

hrothgar, on 2014-October-31, 07:38, said:

I recall being told that the regulations required that the hands be dealt that way...

Heh. It's amazing how many misconceptions there are about the rules of this game.

[barmar]

Trinidad, on 2014-October-31, 06:24, said:

I think that when I was playing in Sweden there was some kind of regulation or official interpretation that two consecutive cards could not end on the same pile.

I've been told by national TDs that this is also ACBL's policy, but I've never seen it written down.

I do the 5-pile back-and-forth deal, and I trot that out whenever someone tells me it's not a proper way to deal. But I'm not a stickler, I don't complain when I see someone doing 1-2-3-4-4-3-2-1.

[barmar]

pran, on 2014-October-31, 06:39, said:

Say that South is dealing the cards to the current board.
Traditionally (while South is dealing) North collects and shuffles the cards to the next board and places the shuffled deck on his right hand side.

West (the next dealer) then eventually takes the shuffled deck from his left hand side, shuffles the cards even further if he wants to, and then (compulsory) places the deck on his right hand side so that South can perform a cut.

West is then required to deal the cards one at a time, clockwise around the table beginning with North, so that the dealer himself shall receive the bottom card from the pack.

Today, the only requirement that really remains on the dealing process is that it shall assure randomness and not cause premature exposure of any card to the players.

That's how I've always done it when playing rubber bridge. It doesn't really make sense for duplicate.

[pran]

blackshoe, on 2014-October-31, 07:18, said:

"Show me the regulation".

I tend to deal left to right, then back to the left, 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1. The two end piles, 1 and 5, make up a single hand. I believe this is within the parameters of the law. Fortunately, it rarely comes up any more, with pre-duplicated boards.

This is a slight improvement over dealing 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4 as it "disturbs" the regularity on cards to two of the hands (piles 1/5 and 3).

Dealing consecutive cards to the same hand (like 1-2-3-4-4-3-2-1-1-2-3-4 is (for the same reason) slightly inferior to the 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4 sequence.

It is of course completely irrelevant how the 52 cards are split into the 4 hands if the 52 cards have been shuffled perfectly. The problem is that it is nearly impossible to obtain a perfectly shuffled pack of cards from using manual processes for shuffling.

[dburn]

Curious, this.

The consensus appears to be that: there is no actual rule of the game preventing a player from participating if he has prior knowledge of the hands that have been dealt.

Has it never occurred to anyone that there should be? Or is it really the case that "the rules aren't designed to prevent out-and-out cheating"? If so, are not the rules rather feebly designed? Is there some other game or sport that has rules allowing "out-and-out cheating"? If not, why not?

In passing, I am not sure that I know what pran means by "a perfectly shuffled pack of cards". Sally Brock and I differ as to whether six or seven imperfect riffle shuffles are enough to destroy information. Poker dealers believe that washing the deck, then riffling thrice, then box-cutting is enough. Hans van Staveren may have been the first to collect enough entropy to overcome the PRNG phenomenon, but even that...