[hotShot]

If TD's were allowed to adjust any result that they think "would or could skew the field" where should it end?
Eliminate misplayed boards, because declarer should not have made the overtrick or because declarer should have made his contract?
Eliminate misjudged bidding, overbids and underbids or bad sacrifices?

All of this should not be adjusted, as different results come from mistakes one side makes or does not make.

Just because the TD needs to handle intentional bad play and cheating does not allow hin to adjust anything that he does not like or understand.

[1eyedjack]

officeglen, on Dec 13 2006, 07:23 PM, said:

Here are some selected quotes from Law 12 and Law 90:

Quote

LAW 12 DIRECTOR'S DISCRETIONARY POWERS
A. Right to Award an Adjusted Score
The Director may award an adjusted score (or scores), either on his own initiative or on the application of any player, but only when these Laws empower him to do so, or:
...
2. Normal Play of the Board is Impossible
The Director may award an artificial adjusted score if no rectification can be made that will permit normal play of the board.

LAW 90
PROCEDURAL PENALTIES
A. Director's Authority
The Director, in addition to enforcing the penalty provisions of these Laws, may also assess penalties for any offense that unduly delays or obstructs the game, inconveniences other contestants, violates correct procedure, or requires the award of an adjusted score at another table.

B. Offenses Subject to Penalty
Offenses subject to penalty include but are not limited to:
...
8. Failure to Comply
Failure to comply promptly with tournament regulations or with any instruction of the Director.

Since "any offense that unduly delays or obstructs the game, inconveniences other contestants" is not "limited to" the list in the Laws, the TD, in some views, has the ability to adjust the boards when it is determined that the game is being obstructed with, such as, perhaps, with bidding at random. In addition a tournament can establish regulations, such as no psyches, or at most one psyche, that the players must comply with.

Problems can easily arise in many areas here, including:

1) Regulations may not be published, or may be assumed in some forms by the TD and/or the players.

Key here is to have proper published regulations for tourneys.

2) Players may assume the TD needs evidence beyond just viewing the action to make a decision.

For example, players may assume that the TD needs evidence of extraneous information, such as an agreed long pause, before adjusting a board. Without such evidence players may assume they are free to do as they please, not having to explain their actions at some point to the TD and/or other players. However if the TD can decide that certain types of actions are obstructing the game, they can rule against these actions just by observing them, without having to determine if they were influenced by something.

What will be key here is for those "class of actions" to be known, and that there be general knowledge of what these are and how the TDs may act on them.

At this time, we appear to have some TDs that believe they are able to judge certain "classes of actions" and adjust accordingly, and others that believe that TDs do not have this right, or the right has particular restrictions in applying it.

The way I read it, no procedural penalty was imposed in this case. An adjusted score is not a procedural penalty. So we do not need to concern ourselves with Law 90 or the apparently wide powers imbued by the wording "... include but are not limited to ..."

The law governing the discretionary powers of the TD to award an adjusted score are contained in Law 12. This law clearly limits the authority of the TD to awarding an adjusted score only in the event of an irregularity. This is clear from subsection A (only allowed to make an adjusted score when the laws empower him to do so), and subsection C (express requirement of an irregularity before awarding an adjusted score).

So the starting point has to be to determine the irregularity that has taken place, and this is where I have a difficulty.

There are regulations that require the participants to take the game seriously (Law 74B1 and Law 74C6), and this just might "catch" the 7NTXX -8 scores that float around. But where the results are skewed by so obvious a breach you would invariably find that the offender has scored an inferior result (sans adjustment). Where the player has benefited from his action that should I think be prima facie evidence that the action was performed with a view to securing a profit. In that case I think it would be a much harder burden for a director to overcome if wishing to stretch the laws to fit the desired adjustment.

[blackshoe]

This director is incompetent. He should not be allowed to direct duplicate contract bridge until he becomes competent.

His entire position shows an appalling ignorance of the laws and what they mean, their purpose, and the mechanics of a proper ruling.

It seems clear to me that he had no idea which specific laws applied to his "ruling", and so he threw out a bunch of pseudo random numbers.

4 spades is a bad bid. So what? She got lucky. So what? Unless there is evidence that it was more than luck (and I haven't seen any) there is no basis for penalty or score adjustment.

There is nothing in the laws about "protecting the field". There is nothing in the laws about adjusting scores for "bad" bids. His entire "justification" for his ruling is crap.

I realize that anyone can decide to run a tournament online, and call himself a director, but this is ridiculous. Tell him to RTFLB. Tell him if he has questions about a ruling to consult with another director. Tell him to see if his NBO has a director test or course he can take. Tell him to read "Duplicate Directions" and the EBU White Book (both available online, for free). And for God's sake, tell him not to run any more tournaments until he's done those things!

Sheesh.

[glen]

1eyedjack, on Dec 13 2006, 09:07 PM, said:

This law clearly limits the authority of the TD to awarding an adjusted score only in the event of an irregularity. This is clear from subsection A (only allowed to make an adjusted score when the laws empower him to do so), and subsection C (express requirement of an irregularity before awarding an adjusted score).

Subsection A ends with an "or", which I will highlight here:

The Director may award an adjusted score (or scores), either on his own initiative or on the application of any player, but only when these Laws empower him to do so, OR:
...
2. Normal Play of the Board is Impossible

[Cascade]

officeglen, on Dec 14 2006, 12:16 PM, said:

1eyedjack, on Dec 13 2006, 09:07 PM, said:

This law clearly limits the authority of the TD to awarding an adjusted score only in the event of an irregularity.  This is clear from subsection A (only allowed to make an adjusted score when the laws empower him to do so), and subsection C (express requirement of an irregularity before awarding an adjusted score).

Subsection A ends with an "or", which I will highlight here:

The Director may award an adjusted score (or scores), either on his own initiative or on the application of any player, but only when these Laws empower him to do so, OR:
...
2. Normal Play of the Board is Impossible

... and this board was played normally so an adjustment is not legal.

Unless you think an unusal bid makes for non-normal play but then where do you stop.

The director is not required to exercise bridge judgement about what is a normal bid or play which is just as well as frequently they are not of the same standard as the player unless there has been an infraction - UI and faulty claims spring to mind.

The director is only required to consider making adjustments when there has been an infraction not when the board has been played "normally" but the director doesn't happen to agree with the bid or play made.

[Cascade]

Good news the director now admits he made the wrong ruling.

Bad news he thinks the double was also bad bid and should have scored it Average minus - Average minus

He claims 26 years or something like that as a director. That is a large number of strange rulings.

[neilkaz]

Cascade, on Dec 13 2006, 05:59 PM, said:

Good news the director now admits he made the wrong ruling.

Bad news he thinks the double was also bad bid and should have scored it Average minus - Average minus

He claims 26 years or something like that as a director. That is a large number of strange rulings.

I shudder to think of playing in any event directed by this director.

South took a shot to give the opps the last guess and it worked out. If N/S aren't cheating, then there's certainly no cause for adjustment as everyone has said.

.. neilkaz ..

[barmar]

Well, I agree with the director's assessment that West's double was a bad bid. If it's penalty, he doesn't have a defensively-oriented hand, nor does he have a spade stack. And if it's negative, he's not strong enough to want to play on the 5 level opposite a normal opening hand; but if you were playing with a pickup partner, and presumably hadn't discussed systems in much detail, would you presume that negative doubles are played up to the 4 level?

[jtfanclub]

What I don't understand is, why is this a bad bid?

Let's say it's a jackpot game game, $20 for first place, handshake for second place.

Last round starts up, and you find yourself at table 3 (Swiss movement). The boards are ordinary and average until the last board, where you pick this up.

Wouldn't you bid 4♠? I would without hesitation. I can make it across a Yarborough if I get to pick everybody's shape, and with a pickup partnership there's no way for me to determine if game is makeable. If I make the bid everybody else makes, we might end up moving all the way up to 4th or 3rd. On this, if I'm right, I get $20. If I'm wrong, I get nothing, same as if I made any other bid.

If it's board 1, it's a bad bid. But doesn't State of the Match (or the player's perceived SOM) count for something?

[jikl]

There is only one word, (or synonym [ok more tha one word then]), for this ruling, crap.

Yes the bid was bizarre, yet, it did have some logic behind it. Depriving opps of the red suits has some merit. As others have said, if the director did not report the south player to abuse for cheating, he may as well report himself for cheating as it is quite possible a friend called him and received a positive result. This is how strongly I feel about this ruling.

Sean

[blackshoe]

Do not ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

[jillybean]

Joining this discussion late, I agree – the ruling is wrong.
The comment the TD made about having directed for 26years does not surprise me and is akin to the self professed ‘expert’ who gives you free advice after playing 1 or 2 hands in an indy.

Do some TD’s check boards during a tournament for ‘unusual results’ that may need an adjustment or are the players calling the TD ?

Along with poor TD decisions I think there is a new class of (online) bridge players emerging who have learned to expect an adjustment (A+/A-) when ever the TD is called for anything the player thinks is irregular. The TD’s here would be doing the game and everyone justice if they would simply say ‘I don’t know’ and leave it at that, erroneously quoting ‘rules’ that don’t apply or don’t exist is clearly not the answer.

On the other hand, as some people have said ‘we don’t want to play serious games in strict accordance with the laws’ so perhaps the tournament screen should be split into 2 - ‘duplicate bridge tournaments’ and ‘other games’

jb

[sceptic]

Quote

I think that the best solution to these points would be implementing a tiered TD system like the one that I proposed last month. Split the job of running a tournament into two separate pieces:

A Tournament Facilitator function: The TF is responsible for dealing with non-technical issues like substitutions, round announcements, and the like. Tournament Facilitators are linked to a specific tournament that they create.

A Tournament Director function: The TD is responsible for technical issues like adjustments, restoring equity, and the like. Tournament Directors live in “pools” that contract services with multiple tournaments.

This was suggested by me last year and the year before or something very very similar no one took any notice then and I doubt anyone will take any notice now, which is a shame as I think that is what is really needed

[Cascade]

blackshoe, on Dec 17 2006, 06:35 PM, said:

Do not ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

I like it ...

... off topic but it immediately made me think of a player at the local club that I have receive three complete zeros against in the last four boards that I have played her ...

1.
2♣ Pass 2♦ 2♠
3♥ 3♠ Pass Pass
4♥ Pass Pass Pass

2♣ was strong but not game forcing and she bid 4♥ all by herself with a balanced 19 or 20 points - making with the aid of a couple of finesses and a couple of breaks and one great card in the dummy.

2.
2♥ Pass Pass Dbl
Pass 2♠ 3♥ Dbl
Pass Pass Pass

The penalty double of our favourable 3♥ was made on ♥ Jxxx with four-card spade support on the side. Minus one for nothing.

3.
2♠ Pass 3♠ 4♦
Pass 4♥!! Pass Pass
Pass

She introduced 4♥ on ♥ xxxx and bought ♥ AKQJ in the dummy.