[alano]

Hi

Our local real world club has a limit on big penalties of 600 NV or 800 VUL. So on an aggregate night, for 1NTX -4 NV, the real score of -800 is capped at +600 when awarded to the gaining side (declarer's pair takes the full penalty i.e. -800). I assume it must be a local regulation (is it standard?)

What happens if the contract is REdoubled? Such a hand i.e. 1NTXX NV went for -4 last night scoring -1600 for the defence, but the benefitting pair were allowed to claim +1200 (being twice the cap of +600).

I'm not in favour of capping but I assume it's there to stop collusion to get a pair a huge score. Or at least to lesson the effect of a freak bad show, as happened here (I think the XX was supposed to be a rescue request!).

If this is the case, why should the cap be doubled just because the opps invited more pain on themselves, whether voluntarily or not! ?

Can anyone comment?

A

[hrothgar]

alano, on Apr 26 2005, 08:52 PM, said:

Hi

Our local real world club has a limit on big penalties of 600 NV or 800 VUL. So on an aggregate night, for 1NTX -4 NV, the real score of -800 is capped at +600 when awarded to the gaining side (declarer's pair takes the full penalty i.e. -800). I assume it must be a local regulation (is it standard?)

What happens if the contract is REdoubled? Such a hand i.e. 1NTXX NV went for -4 last night scoring -1600 for the defence, but the benefitting pair were allowed to claim +1200 (being twice the cap of +600).

I'm not in favour of capping but I assume it's there to stop collusion to get a pair a huge score. Or at least to lesson the effect of a freak bad show, as happened here (I think the XX was supposed to be a rescue request!).

If this is the case, why should the cap be doubled just because the opps invited more pain on themselves, whether voluntarily or not! ?

Can anyone comment?

A

Why not play bridge?
Might solve a number of problems...

[EricK]

It seems a ridiculous rule, whether or not you change it for redoubled contracts.

Really, what is the point of it? If we bid to a making slam and they sacrifice we always do worse no matter how many they go off!

Eric

[alano]

hrothgar, on Apr 26 2005, 01:05 PM, said:

Why not play bridge? Might solve a number of problems...

Er .... playing bridge was the whole point. I can't see yours.

Moving on, perhaps the question becomes, "do any other clubs have this frankly peculiar rule?"

[alano]

Jlall, on Apr 26 2005, 03:13 PM, said:

OK lets say the opps bid 7S ok? So you have 0 opp 0 and save in 7N claim 0 tricks. -800 and your opps get +600 so you get a top.

Our club rule (which BTW I had *nothing* to do with inventing! ) would penalise us bold savers for the correct -3500 (we'd be doubled, right?) but our opps would indeed gain only +600 instead of the +1510 they would presumably have been entitled to...

... so if you REALLY don't care about being humiliated in public, you could bid 7N against any nice looking slam and kick your opps where it hurts in terms of their score.

It really does suck, doesn't it? I love these crazy threads.

A

[Gerben42]

Well if our opps were the only ones to bid the grand we get a zero anyway, so a good way to take them with us on the way down! A silly rule.

How about bidding more carefully and not go for -1700?

[awm]

Such a rule actually seems sort of reasonable in an IMP pairs event, although I would cap the imps per board rather than the score. The main point is that if your opponents have a ridiculous accident (like 1NTXX-7 for -3400, which I saw from some friends of mine in a collegiate championship) then their opponents have a HUGE edge over the field just because they happened to be at the table when the nonsense occurred. So it might be reasonable to play an imp pairs where you can't gain more than +12 (say) over the field on a single board. This gives you something kind of in between matchpoints and imps in a way. Of course, if you go for a massive number you can still LOSE all 24 on a board.

Matchpoints gives some protection in this regard anyway. It's always pretty easy to get your opponents a matchpoint top on a board if you really want to, and this capping of the score doesn't change that on the majority of boards. On the other hand, it's hard to screw your opponents with a bottom unless you actually do something right... and that is no longer true if you cap the score (i.e. any time they have a vulnerable game we can just bid 7NT and give them 600 instead of 620 or 630 or whatever their normal score is). So applying such a rule at matchpoints seems wrong.

Of course, at money rubber bridge these sorts of things also make sense, to limit the wins/losses on any particular board. Otherwise I'm out big bucks when opponents happen to get the cards for a grand slam, which makes things a little overly swingy and also makes it hard to figure out what your maximum losses could be for a session.

[mikestar]

These caps are a resurrection of some ancient laws for aggregate score pairs, back in the days before all pair contest we scored by matchpoints. The purpose there was not to prevent collusion, but to limit the impact of strange results. Limits also applied to declarer's side and no limits applied to slam contracts.

[alano]

Oh god, my club is stuck in the dark ages. They will ONLY play aggregate on the night we play ..........

[Double !]

The "old days"? ......when penalties were 100, 300, 500, 700, 900 etc.
Two questions: 1) please define "old". 2) These penalty point changes occurred sometime during the mid-70s, possibly even earlier--poor memory impacting here. Perhaps those who were playing back then recall the correlate to taking a cheap sac on few cards because the cost was minimal. I am speaking about the concept of "bumping", of bidding a vulnerable game (or, perhaps, a slam) with the strong expectation that the opps, at favorable, would take a "cheap", phantom save. Strategy went both ways. The only real effect that the scoring change had IMO was ensuring that a favorable save would be down no more than three tricks vs. four for a good result.

Hey! I earned every one of these long grey hairs!! lolololol.

[mikestar]

The old days this clubs limits date to are the late 1920's, early 1930's.

[pigpenz]

really capping always gets your a free run on a sacrifice against their slam.....thats why they changes the nv penalties to 100, 300,500, 800 cause still contended that scarificing was not real bridge...i think they rules changed around 1985.

[Free]

ridiculous rule, you can always bid 7NT and get a good score when opps are going for grand...