[hawkwind]

A few hours ago played a tournament which ended each round of three hands after a certain time (in the 15-18 minute region).

In last hand of a round we had taken the three tricks we had a right to, the declarer heading for 5 diamonds down one when the round ended before the hand could be completed. The declarer had 5 trump tricks and AKQ of Hearts to come.

BBO software left the result as average whilst the TD didn't adjust having earlier messaged everyone to say that BBO is always right.

Free tournament so no complaints BUT thought you might like to know as even though only five and a half tricks had been completed I would have expected the software to recognise that the declarer could rely on top tricks to take the rest.

[smerriman]

hawkwind, on 2025-March-30, 17:05, said:

the TD didn't adjust having earlier messaged everyone to say that BBO is always right.

Then you had a very poor TD.. automatic adjustments are meant to save them time if nobody disputes the result, but most definitely aren't a replacement for them doing their job when asked, and aren't always accurate. (It just puts a robot in all 4 seats if there are a small number of tricks left and lets them play, and robots aren't the best players..)

Granted, BBO did recently allow robots to claim, so it's a reasonable idea to allow adjustments for more tricks only in cases where the robot has an instant claim. But that's probably very rare, and it should really be up to the TD to do their job properly either way.. (and wouldn't help you as defenders if you were even better off and had a fourth trick coming..)

[pescetom]

smerriman, on 2025-March-30, 17:44, said:

automatic adjustments are meant to save them time if nobody disputes the result, but most definitely aren't a replacement for them doing their job when asked, and aren't always accurate. (It just puts a robot in all 4 seats if there are a small number of tricks left and lets them play, and robots aren't the best players..)

Are you certain that is how it works? I seem to remember someone (barmar?) once saying that a single dummy algorithm was used to assign the remaining tricks.

[mycroft]

IIRC, there's a setting that will auto-assign if it's obvious (with maybe a minimum tricks played count?), or bounce it to the TD to assign a score.

Lazy TDs will just accept the "A=, both at fault for being late"; more careful ones will look at them all and see.

The FtF equivalent is "you committed an infraction, A-/A+" without checking to see if A+ is worse than the score the NOS couldn't avoid getting. I had that once where my Precision partnership forgot an agreement and explained it "wrong". The TD was going to assign A+/A-, but I pointed out that the misunderstanding got us to a hopeless slam, that was going to be nearly the only negative score our way, and getting 40% would be rewarding us for misexplaining. The TD went with my suggestion :-).

[smerriman]

pescetom, on 2025-March-31, 05:57, said:

Are you certain that is how it works? I seem to remember someone (barmar?) once saying that a single dummy algorithm was used to assign the remaining tricks.

That *is* the single dummy algorithm.

[barmar]

Some tournaments will automatically use robots to assign results if more than 6 tricks have been played. These are mostly the organizations that host pay tourneys.

In other cases, the TD has to assign a result themselves, although they have the option to use robots to do it.

In addition, if you don't agree with the result that was assigned, you can ask the TD to override it.