Familiar Faces and Absent Friends

Brighton 2011 – Day 1

I know there are a few of you out there who will want to keep tabs on me while I am in Brighton. The bulletin (“Brigton Focus”) is planning to have some articles from TDs, so I will try to avoid duplicating what get published there.

Always good to see so many familiar faces as we prepare for the start of Brighton: players, EBU staff and TD colleagues. But I am reminded by their absence of those who will not be here.

I made some comment on IBLF about players “with power and influence”. Hanging around the lobby while people were checking in, someone (who admitted he fell into the category) was interested to know who I meant and just asked “who?”!

A ruling

I was consulted on a ruling with some difficult practical aspects (what do you tell the playes and how?). There had been a failure to alert 2♣ and this had been pointed out: after the opening lead had been selected, but before it had been faced. RHO said that if the bid had been alerted he would have doubled, and the question was could LHO change her opening lead, and on what basis. The TD ruled that it was too late to allow RHO to double 2♣ when it had happened, and any adjustedment on that basis would have to wait until the end of the hand. LHO could change her opening lead because of the misinformation from the missing alert but could not use the information that RHO would have doubled. This is an awkward position where there are two new sources of information, one authorised and one unauthorised, both telling the player the same thing. It was often very difficult to work out if the new authorised information means there are now no logical alternatives to doing the right thing, so that the unauthorised information is irrelevant. At the table, the lead was not changed, and in fact there seemed to be nothing to play, whatever the lead.

Midnight

Mike and I played in the midnight speed-ball pairs. Our most successful achievement of the session (as playing non-TDs) was to ensure that pairs who moved early for round eight actually skipped. It was a bit of a surprise to the champion of web movements that:

1. we had 28 boards in play;
2. there was a skip, so he missed duffing up Mike and I;
3. it was a two-winner movement (how quaint).

At least the two-winner movement avoided us from having to compare our result with Sarah and Jonathan's.