Brighton Days 9 and 10 - lost weekend

Mentioning my boot in this blog, while wearing my boot at Brighton, has allowed a few more people to put a face to the blogger. If you look on the back page of Sunday's “Brighton Focus” (the daily bulletin) you can see my face in profile: photograph by VixTD.

Saturday flew by: not much time between sessions for the scorers but we did get the evening session scores merged and determined the qualifiers for the final before midnight. Scoring in the playing area and running past midnight can mean competing with the noise from the speedball while performing the (sometimes complex) tie-break procedures to determine the qualifiers.

Scoring the finals on Sunday started with typing in the movement data; surely anyone can type in the movement for eight teams in 7 rounds, someone said later. I agreed that was easy but checking that what you have typed has no errors and will not bring the event to a shuddering halt in round 3 is harder, and takes longer. The movement data was OK and the finals went easily for 6 rounds, except for one incident of less than best behaviour at bridge. But in the last round, bluejak had two rulings at the same table between two teams in contention. We were mentally preparing for appeals and a late finish but nothing happened.

One ruling was a hesitation blackwood (bluejak suggests “BIT-wood”) auction where we ruled that a 2NT opener could pass a sign-off with 3 aces (having showen O or 3). The other ruling was a more complicated misinformation ruling and the result was a weighted score: a lot of a profitable sacrifice and a little of the table result, a making game. The first ruling was a slam swing but the second only swung one IMP because the result at the other table was a making slam.

The finals and the final tidying up was finished in time to relax over a vegetarian meal at Food for Friends: an annual event.

Today's missing link: Fours Stars “B” Final data.

Brighton Day 8 - emotional swings

The day started out sombre but finished with all the fun of the speedball

I had the afternoon off and this enabled me to travel to London for my godmother's funeral. This was an internment in a large North London cemetary, like something out of Dickens. The weather was great and we could listen in peace to the readings and prayers. (When you see these scenes played out in films, it is always raining.)

I arrived back in Brighton for the end of the afternoon session and was in time to do a final score correction and post the results to the internet. Then on to the main event with four sessions and two sections over two floors, and lots of scope for scoing issues. There were a number of disputes during the opening matches - this often happens at the start of a long Swiss Teams events.

Sorting out the scoring for the main event overlapped with the start of the Midnight Speedball pairs, which I was supposed to be in charge of. My colleagues rallied round to kick the event off and when I got there Gary had everything under control. During the speedball, Gary managed to pick up two appeals: one from the main event and one from the speedball itself (but both relating to alerting). I managed to get a “referee” from the bar, and the appeal from the speedball was resolved during playing time, with the referee talking to the players between rounds. Play finished in the regulation 90 minutes and results were available on the internet before 01:45. At some stage during the speedball I tripped over a glass: my foot was ok but the glass was unequal to the encounter with my boot!

Brighton Day 7 - being firm (but fair?)

Only one event this evening because the Seniors Congress has finished; and there were no appeals, late rulings, or score changes; so the event was scored and the results provided to the display boards, the internet and the bulletin, and we were in the bar, before midnight.

In the bar were several club TDs who had been on the four-day Club TDs; and those who did well were celebrating. One of the club TDs came over to talk to us and explained that there were people he wanted to avoid. This lead us on to the very important TD skill of being to tell people to go away firmly, while remaing polite.

As a TD or a scorer, one has to be available to the players when one if on duty. But there are times as a scorer when you need to left in peace and any queries an individual player may have have to be delayed for the greater good of producing a score for all the players. Such times include at the end of the event when a complicated event involves alot of operator input to fix the problems; and also in the middle of an event when the progress of the event while be compromised if scoring problems are not fixed.

Scoring v Philosophy

One example was. when we were dealing with introducing the rover pair and their results into the scoring of the Seniors Pairs Qualifier. A player came up to discuss how the overall winner of the “Play With The Experts” was determined. It became clear that they wanted to discuss the principle that should apply to determining the winner.

• “Has there been an error in the scores?” “No”
• “Has there been any failure to implement the conditions of contest?” “No”
• “Then perhaps you can leave us to sort out the other event and we can discuss the philophy of your event another time.”

Today's problems v yesterday's problems

Today we had problems with the scoring system during the first round of Seniors Swiss Teams. We were trying to understand the size of the problem and now much intervention was needed to recover all the scores. A player who was about to play in in the Open Pairs wanted to look at problem with the scores from the previous evening's Mixed Pivot Teams. I was trying to politely but firmly tell the player to come back in an hour when a colleague came to take details of the problem and promised to follow it up.

Lot of scratching of heads, printing of scores, and ticking boxes in the scores database eventually solved the problems in the Seniors Swiss Teams (with minimal impact on the players). When we came to catch up with the problem from the Mixed Pivot Teams, it turned out to be same problem that his opponents had raised earlier in the day. Despite both sides thinking there was an error, it turns out that both teams had made the same error in scoring up, and the scores we had were correct.

Brighton Days 5 and 6 - a bit busy

Two full days of scoring - setting up in the morning and then two events in the afternoon. There is little time betwen sessions - especially with early bird evening sessions - but I did manage to sit down to eat dinner today. Both evenings, there were late rulings and appeals, so into the wee small hours finalising the results and doing internet stuff.

Law 86D reared its ugly head - apparently we are back to giving an assigned adjustment when there are two non-offending side. I still think we should only be awarding a score that reflects the good result that was obtained at the table where a result was obtained, not attempting to reflect the good result they might have been obtained at the table where a result could not be obtained (or not a result untainted by extraneous infromation). But today we awarded a score that was about the biggest swing on the board that was obtained by any team in the event - surely that can not be right!

Missing links

• Seniors Swiss Teams (after 4 rounds)
• Wednesday Night Speedball (Pairs)

Brighton Day 4 - rage against the machine

As I say each Monday at Brighton, these events test corners of the scoring system that do not get used for the rest of the year. The scoring also tests the scorers — they must remember to use the rarely used features and how to use them. The “Play With The Experts” Pairs (PWTE, not PTFE) requires two unusual features: preset butler datums and multisection two winner (mitchells). This year we also had an early bird section starting upstairs at 19:00 that had to be merged with the two downstairs sections, which started at 19:45.

Yesterday the poor scorer had a late finish: there was a score change in the open teams just as I was about to upload the results to the internet. Relaunching the TeamsScorer program while the FTP process was trying to connect threw the machine in to a complete tiz. I would press a button and nothing would happen for 90s, so I would wander off to the open pairs to help finalising those results. Eventually I managed to print a new ranking list but then I tried turning it off and on again, a process which itself took forever. It was an hour after the end of the event when the printer finally delivered the revised cross-table results and I could go to the bar.

Tonight was an even later finish. We had introduced a rover into the 15-table white section (playing a web mitchell movement). Unfortunately we ended up with EW pair numbers that did not match any of the movements we could easily generate: we need to substitute a new movement with the same pair numbers with the extra rover pair in the movement, so we could then edit the rover pair into the travellers. So we had to edit a new movement file, load the new movement, re-read the scores, edit the travellers so the rover pair played the boards they played, and then add the weighted adjustments that had been lost be re-reading the scores. We finally printed a ranking list and displayed it on the notice boards ready for the player to read bright and early in the morning.

It was too late even to go the bar.

Brighton Day 3 - playing hands for fun and adjustment

Two rulings today involved curious problems in working out how many tricks the players would make (or did make).

One hand declarer said he had made 11 tricks after entering a score for 10 tricks. The TD was trying to deal with three things at once and when they caught up with the defenders they said spmething to the effect of “oh let them have their 11 tricks if they want it so badly”. So perhaps they did not really think they had conceded 11 tricks or perhaps they knew they really had conceded 11 tricks but hoped noone would have to find out how. We looked at the hand and could only see 10 tricks, so the TD went back to the declarer and they described how the defence had contrived to play all their high spades and allow ♠7 to make in dummy for the eleventh trick. So my first instinct was right; “oh let them have their 11 tricks ...” meant yes it was 11 tricks, but we don't want to talk about it!

The other hand involved working out how many tricks West would make playing in clubs.

	J 9 7 6
	A K 10 7 6
	2
	J 9 2
K 8		5 4
J 3 2		9 8 5 4
K J 8 5 4 3		A
5 3		A Q 10 8 7 6
	A Q 10 3 2
	Q
	Q 10 7 6
	K 4

Say North leads ♥A and continues with ♥K and gives South a ruff; the defence still have a trump trick. South can see the diamonds are blocked so now is the best time to play ♠A and another. Perhaps declarer will cross to ♦A and play the last round of hearts while there are still trumps in West. South ruffs with ♣K in front of West but is that the last trump trick? We thought South had to give the lead to dummy with a spade ruff or ♦K and so declarer could take the club finesse, but then we realised that East would only have clubs left and could not even under-ruff to lead the leave in West. Other lines, where the defence do not crash ♥Q are just as bad: an adjustment to 7 tricks in clubs (at least some of the time) was not good for East/West.

No chance to see the Olympics closing ceremony — not sure whether there will be time during the week to catch up on iplayer.

Brighton Day 2 - not running 5000m

Tramping up and down the playing area has aggravated the blister on my foot and I am back wearing the aircast boot that I had to wear in 2010.

The day was busy with rulings, so no chance to watch the 5000m final. One hand attracted many rulings: these were the East/West hands.

8 7 5				K
J 10		W	E	6 5 3
J 10 9 4 2				A K Q 7 3
A J 2				K 9 7 4

North/South bid spades and East/West bid diamonds; some times West passed slowly at some point in the auction and East rebid 5♦; some times East passed slowly and West bid 4♦. Usually Pass was ruled to be a logical alternative to bidding again, and clearly partner's slow Pass suggested bidding again (over passing). So in most cases the score was adjusted to North/South playing in the spade contract they had got to.

Lots of players threatened to appeal several of today's ruling (though perhaps not the rulings on this hand) but at the end of the day, and after speaking to cuddly appeal consultants, there were no real appeals.

Brighton Day 1 - real friends - virtual names

Brighton is the biggest event of the domestic calendar and so you get to meet people you don't see very often: players, TDs and backroom staff. For much of the rest of the year I communicate with these people via telephone and email and rarely see them face-to-face.

A silly incident yesterday, reminded me that people's virtual personna (or at least their names) can leak into real life®. Much of my online bridge discussion takes place on BrideBase forums. Among the TD's at Brighton are a number of BrigeBase members, who I might think of as gordonTD, mamos, bluejak, and VixTD.

A player came up to me at the start of play and said his partner would be late and he would start off playing with a substitute. Later his partner turned up and was able to start playing and so I went to the TD in charge of the White section just to explain what was going on. This was fine until I wanted to refer to the player by name — all I could think of was "gnasher" — and that did not seem an appropriate form of address. After an a bit of a pause and a bit of poiting I managed to come out with "Andrew" — sorry Andy.

(Equally, "campboy" does not sound like a name I should use at the table.)

Correcting an explanation

Although I am scorer, there is some time to give rulings. I was called to a table where South had explained partner's 3♦ as something to do with the majors but as soon as the auction reached him, he thought better of it, and decided that 3♦ was probably natural and he should just bid 3NT. Later, when he thought the auction was over, he explained that what he said about 3♦ was probably wrong. I sorted this out and there was no harm done — the other side would not have done anything different with the correct explanation.

But he should have corrected the explanation as soon as he realised he was probably wrong. This is an aspect of procedure that is not obvious to players: if a you give an explanation that you later think is incorrect then the TD should be called immediately and the correction given (Law 20F4). There can be no damage in correcting as soon as possible, and damage has been done my the original misexplanation. This is in contrast to when partner gives an incorrect explanation and does not realise: you cannot correct the explanation until at least the end of the auction (as the declaring side) or the end of play (Law 20F5).

Although the difference between the two situations is logical, it is not always obvious that logic should be assumed to apply to the laws of bridge.

Brighton Day 0 - via Reading and Gatwick

Despite a broken keyboard, I hope to resume this blog for the EBU Brighton Summer Congress. The keyboard is suffering from liquids (don't ask), and some punctuation symbols (included those needed for HTML) are just not working.

My mother died three months ago and that has been hard work - emotionally and practically. In the meantime, I have been kept busy by a number of bridge events but very few laws issues. The biggest problem was caused by me inducing a firmware incompatibility in the scoring system - with hilarious consequences.

I know my family and friends follow this blog while I am Brighton as the best way of finding out what I am up to. So a big shout out to E, who is volunteering at the Olympics and is having a whale of a time; and to the rest of the family.

Last year I travelled to Brighton via Westbury on a very crowded train. Today's route is much less direct but should be on better trains - we shall see.