Too clever

Lots going on, not all of it good, and not all of it can be reported.

At the EBU AGM, I was elected to the Laws and Ethics Committee, following my work on the White Book earlier in the year. This gives me a certain privileged position (for instance, with respect of disciplinary matters) and so constrains what I can post unofficially. Thanks to all who supported my election.

Meanwhile doing some TD and some L&E-like activities:

• Referee for an appeal from a neighbouring county event.
• Mobile phone call on alerting of Pass, see “I wouldn’t have passed” on BridgeBase forums; but not easy without a Blue Book to hand.
• Started a series of Club TD training course — looking forward to insufficient bids later this month.
• Acted as an Appeals Advisor when playing at the weekend — difficult to know what to say: the players seemed to understand the law, and the judgement involved, and thought they were right.

Board 20, Dealer West

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

I declared 4♠ on the ♣K lead and ♦9 switch. I ducked to the ♦Q and ruffed the club return. Then ♠A, another club ruff, and a top spade from hand. LHO revoked with a small heart and corrected with a small spade, leaving the heart as a major penalty card.

I checked that the opponents knew the law, including possible lead restrictions, and we did not call the TD. So I played my master stroke, taking the diamond finesse immediately. This lost (not unexpectedly) but I banned a heart return hoping South would only have red cards and I would make ♦A anyway. RHO produced ♣Q and I looked as stupid as the other declarers who had been given (and taken) the opportunity to finesse twice in ♦.

Relating the hand at the tea break, a friend remarked that only a director would find that line: a friendly enough remark but not intended as a compliment!

Brighton Day 9 - things fall apart

Session 2 of the Swiss Teams was when multi-section Australia movement really kicked in. During the session the teams had a new team number which was the same as their new home/NS table number, but the overall results were expressed in terms of their initial team number. The BridgeMates use the 'in session' number whereas the scoring program used (mainly) the initial team number. This was all new for everyone but players/TDs/scorers got the hang of it after a couple of rounds.

I scored the first session of the day, which was interesting when the computer screen failed before the start of play. We could still attach a monitor and use that to duplicate the desk top — so we could copy the data files. Copying the data files to a spare computer and we were able to resume before play started.

In the evening, I had a session off from scoring — although I was involved as 'assistant to the scorer'. I had unauthorised information rulings in both sessions: whether I was TD or scorer. In both cases, it was clear there were logical alternatives but the real question was what was suggested by the disallowed information from partner.

A more interesting ruling involved 14 exposed cards during the auction period. The TD made a ruling that allowed played to continue (with fewer penalty cards). One side had just been on the club TD course, the other side included a number of national referees: and both sides thought the ruling was wrong!

Brighton Day 8 - Multi-section Australian Swiss Teams

A mixture of administration, playing, scoring and more playing.

The morning included another iteration of masterpointing PWTE and I had the afternoon off and played in the Open Pairs. Nothing remarkable happened in the bridge but it did mean I now have results on Pianola — so when I uploaded results later in the day, my Pianola login showed a breakdown of my percentage for the afternoon session.

The Swiss Teams was scored as multi-section Australian — meaning teams play at the same home table in each session, but may move sections between sessions. The software is relatively new and we did face some organisational and technical issues, but the session happened with no obvious problems. The assignments at the end of the session were complicated because we had to put some teams back where they were before to allow for various disablements. Nevertheless we were assigned, with the results and assignments on the internet, soon after midnight.

Chief (gordonTD) and I wandered into the Midnight Speedball to find there was a half table: “We could fill in” TD: “but the half table is in the movement and we have moved for round 5”; “we can fix this”. So we updated the movement (in much the same way as in the Mixed Pairs yesterday) and were able to play two thirds of the speedball. So that is two sessions of results on Pianola — the only bridge achievement is that in the speedball we were the only pair to bid and make a slam.

Brighton Day 6 / Day 7 - knees up

Upstairs/downstairs events on Tuesday led to knee problems for the poor scorer but it now feels like we are over the worst for Brighton.

The Mixed Pivot Teams was complicated as ever but seemed to go smoothly, although we continue to have BridgeMate configuration problems. There were also awkward rulings and talk of several appeals — one of which happened. Some players and appeals committees seem to expect the TDs to do extensive player-polling before giving any judgement ruling; but in some events polling can be difficult to organise and can take up a lot of time for the TD — time they could be dealing with other incidents/rulings.

Wednesday was sufficiently less 'full on' than Tuesday, that I stayed to do scoring for the Midnight Speedball and I played one board for the winning pair. The speedball went to time and we had results on the internet and photographs of the winners by 1:35am.

Thursday involved more BrigeMate configuration problems in both the afternoon and evening sessions. There was other problems in the evening Mixed Pairs, with one player unable to continue playing, due to 'illness', which meant a change to the movement. Nevertheless, the operation to merge the earlybird session with main session data while the main session was still in play was again successful.

The biggest outstanding problem in scoring is the Play With The Experts: the masterpoints have the unique combination of two winner movement, stratification, and a mixture of green/blue points. Any pair of those issues would be problematic but the combination of all three involves iterated construction of a spreadsheet with all the constituent masterpoints, and the spreadsheet has to be rebuilt by hand every time we find a problem with the previous data.

The masterpoints for the Mixed Pairs is a combination of stratification and a mixture of green/blue points: so I left that for Friday morning and we were back at our hotel until midnight. Unfortunately, the bar was open and an early night was avoided — instead the TD tradition of 'a bit after' 2am was observed.

Brighton Day 5 - Upstairs and downstairs

A busy day: arrived at 10am to set up a fourth scoring computer, left after 12:30am when I had to redo the internet uploads. These were the days events:

U25 Pairs	Upstairs	12:00-15:15 and 15:45-18:45
Open Pairs	Downstairs	14:00-17:30
Seniors Pairs semi-finals	Downstairs	14:00-17:30
Pairs Trophy (early bird)	Upstairs	19:00-22:30
Pairs Trophy	Downstairs	19:45-23:15
Seniors Pairs finals	Downstairs	19:45-23:15

I had fifteen minute outside the venue for dinner while the U25 Pairs was finishing: ten minutes waiting for chips to be cooked and five minutes eating them in a shelter on the promenade.

The hairiest point of the day was merging the early bird Pairs Trophy data in with the other sections, while the main event was still in progress. This meant the competitors could watch complete scolling results as the last boards were played and the results were final as soon as play was complete.

Brighton Day 4 - bridge missing

I had a half day: meaning I was only at the venue in the morning and evening. I spent the morning rearranging computer stations, copying files and generally setting up for scoring the midweek events. In the evening, the scoring went smoothly until it came to the master points: the combination of green points, blue points and stratification was too much for me and for the scoring programme; we went to bed and calculated the masterpoints in a spreadsheet in the morning.

During my afternoon off, I went to Shoreham by bus. We had a great aunt/uncle who lived in Shoreham and generations of my family have visited Shoreham (and the beach) since forever. My plan was to walk from the centre of town over the footbridge over the rive Adur and on to the beach beyond. The (old) footbridge was to me an iconic feature of Shoreham — so I was dismayed to see it has been replaced by a concrete and steel structure. Furthermore, the new bridge is still under construction, so my plans to recreate childhood memories were thwarted. (Hence the 'not bridge' label to this post.)

Back in Brighton, I was able to listen to some of the cricket but I missed all the action when England won the match and the Ashes.

Brighton Day 3 - Learn Something New

The Brighton Hub and Pianola is proving a success — so much so that we had to provide alternatives results because everyone wanted to access the results of the Swiss Pairs as soon as the event was finished and scored. Otherwise scoring the Swiss Pairs went smoothly, and bridge in the upstairs section was free of incident. There were more awkward incidents in the downstairs sections.

Scoring the evening's Open Pairs and Open Teams had its moments — the BrigeMates went live in the wrong events and players in the teams were able to enter some names before they were fixed. The upshot was that some players appeared to be playing in both the teams and the pairs until we checked against the names slips. The recurrent theme of scoring at Brighton is doing things that don't happen (very much) at any other event. This starts with the Sunday Open Teams were the movements are special and not always obvious for the scorer.

Rulings

There was time between scoring to give some rulings and to reflect on previous rulings. I had to rule on misbid or misexplanation when there had been a two-suited double in a strong 2♣ auction. I did not expect to find much support from the system card but there it was: it was not the exact sequence at the table but the fact that they had a documented method of two-suited calls was enough for me to rule misbid not misexplanation. The problem with mixing scoring and directing is that it is difficult to have time to discuss/explain rulings with players at the end of the session because you have to sort out the scores.

I discussed yesterday's misbid ruling with a TD colleague who is here as a player. The bracketed words in yesterday's blog 'absent any unauthorized information' came back to bite me. My colleague agreed that the failure to use the stop card before 2NT was evidence that opener had misbid but it was also unauthorised information to his partner. So his partner's action in not making a slam try should have been judged as a potential use of unauthorised information, not (just) as potential evidence of a concealed partnership understanding.

We also learnt that non-forcing responses when opponents have doubled are alertable — a change in the Blue Book from the Orange Book.

Brighton Day 2 - Claims and Fielded Misbids

Lots to do for scoring the Swiss Pairs: dealing with new replacement pairs after pairs withdraw, dealing with names (foreign names with prefixes 'de', 'van' were causing us particular grief), and sorting out stratification. Assignments on the web and uploading to Pianola went faster than last night. I did not quite finish in time to play in the speedball but I was there to help set up the Swiss teams scoring. (Ultimately the Swiss teams speedball was scored by hand – so we will try to recreate it on the computer on Sunday.)

Claims

Two claims caused some discussion/disagreement. On the first a player claimed 12 tricks, in a line which included throwing a loser on a trick he would have to follow suit. Nevertheless the only normal lines would drop a doubleton queen for 13 tricks and that is what he got. On another claim, declarer claimed one off as soon as he saw the bad trump break, without planning the further play. There were ways to go off but the play had to be perverse not to make. (Should 'perverse' replace 'irrational', 'not normal', 'beyond careless or inferior'?)

Fielded Misbids?

I had to rule on a misinformation/misbid auction. Dealer opened 1♣ (strong, artificial) and rebid 2NT in a competitive auction. This was explained as 23+ (1NT was available to show a weaker balanced hand). This explanation caused the defenders to misdefend 3NT when declarer turned up with only 19 HCP. Opener claimed this was misbid, he bid 2NT because he thought the auction was already at the two level. This was plausible: there had been a lot of bidding for the auction to still be at 1♠ and the player had not used the stop card before bidding 2NT. So I ruled misbid rather than misexplanation. The defenders asked me if the this misbid has been fielded – perhaps responder was worth a slam try opposite 23+ HCP. I decided the misbid was not fielded but really the 'fielded misbid' regulation seems unnecessary in this sort of auction – any meaning for 2NT is permitted, there seems no reason why they should try and conceal their agreements about strong balanced hands, and (absent any unauthorized information) why shouldn't they bid how they like.

Brighton Day 1 - All dressed up and a way to go

New uniforms

The most obvious inovation at Brighton was the EBU TDs in their new uniform; out goes shirt and ties and maroon jackets — in with red polo shirts. The jackets had pockets that would fit a law book and note pad; as an alternative, a number of styles of ‘man’ bags are being sported. No pocket is big enough for the White Book, which I have printed and spiral bound, on display next to the scoring computer.

The Brighton Hub

The move is towards webifying the Brighton experience: less on paper — more on the web. The expectation is that all the results (and other player information) can be read on players' phones. The results are being displayed via Pianola. Of couse this means getting the results straight, and doing the assignments, before the poor scorer goes to bed. (This year, bed is in a different hotel — an interesting walk along the sea front through the drunken revelers.)

The Brighton Hub (on the EBU website) will also have articles that would have previously appeared in the bulletin. The ever popular TD Corner will appear there, so opportunities for more ramblings.

Unintended action is not an offence?

A follow up to White Book 2013 and Inadvertent designation is an offense?.

Firstly, the White Book 2013 is on the EBU web site: L&E publications. I made the last change last night: correcting the cross-reference from Law 45C4(b) to Law 25A.

I was only looking at that page because of discussion on IBLF where campboy was arguing that a player who makes an unintended call and corrects it (under Law 25A) is not an offender. This is consistent with a strict reading of Law 45C4(b), see Inadvertent designation is an offense?. It appears that a player who has made an unintended action (call or designation), and has corrected the action under the appropriate law (Law 25A or Law 45C4(b)), has not committed an infraction and is not an offending side. These are the points that support this conclusion:

• The laws do not say the unintended action as in irregularity.
• Law 25A4 explains the unauthorised infromation if the next hand has called over the unintended call. If the unintended caller was an offending side, Law 25A4 could be replaced by a reference to Law 16D.
• Law 45C4(b) refers explicitly to Law 16D1 which only applies to non-offending sides. So there cannot be an offending side in Law 45C4(b).

(Of course, there are other points that do not support the conclusion.)

This conclusion does reinforce the strict reading of Law 45C4(b) re unauthorised information:

• declarer makes an unintended designation;
• dummy plays the card designated;
• the next player plays a card;
• declarer corrects the designation to the intended designation;
• dummy's played card is restored and the intended card is played;
• the next player withdraws their card and plays a different card;
• is the card withdrawn by the defender authorised to declarer?

Law 45B4(b) refers to Law 16D1, and Law 16D1 tells us calls and plays are authorised.

This is probably not what we want.

White Book 2013

The EBU White Book 2013 is done, as far as I am concerned: just a couple of hyperlinks to be updated when the target pages are ready. I have been working on this solidly since the end of March.

Inevitably, doing such technical writing (as I did in ‘real life’) you read things in source material that you thought you had read many times before and find it does not say what you thought it said. I thought that the 2007 Laws had changed the word ‘inadvertent’ in Law 25A (change of call) to ‘unintended’, but not changed it in Law 45C4 (b) (change of card designated). But when I came to quote from Law 45C4 (b) for the White Book, I found that it too used the word ‘unintended’. (The word ‘inadvertent’ does remain in the law book in the heading of Law 47C — but I am sure that is unintended!)

It is strange I had not spotted this, as an earlier post Inadvertent designation is an offense? was confused as to which word was used in Law 45C4 (b). Re-reading that post, I see that there should have been a WBFLC ‘open invitation’ response about the reference to Law 16D1(sic) in Law 45C4 (b).

If technical editing teaches you anything, it is that you can't get everything right.

“Well, nobody's perfect”

Some Like It Hot (1959)

White Book editing

Meanwhile I have got involved the revision of the EBU White Book. I have attended a couple of L&E committee meetings and given my editing brief — make it shorter!

Despite this, the White Book was donated material that is currently in the Orange Book, but will not be included in its reincarnation as the Blue Book. The shortening was achieved by deleting sections that said the same thing as earlier sections for the second (or third) time; and worse: sections that said something different than earlier sections on the same subject. There were also sections on out-dated technology and out-dated methods of calculation. Finally a consistent approach to white space has improved the look and saved a few pages.

In between the deletion, there has been much re-writing, new interpretations, new regulations, and new VP scales. The VP scales based on the new WBF VP scales, but the “discrete” (integer) scales — not the “continuous” (decimal) scales in use at the European Open Championships.

A draft goes out to the proof-readers today, and it is ¾ the length of the previous version.

Two phone rulings ... and appeals

Being on the end of a telephone means you can take rulings from anywhere in the world. Last month I had to deal with back-to-back telephone rulings from different countries, and both were appealed. Both were misinformation ruling, with the non-offending side failing to make a game try (when game was making).

1. The first ruling was from a welsh event (a different NBO, if not a different country). I contacted various TDs and players and arrived at a ruling the following morning. I gave a weighted ruling — some proportion of bidding and making game — but not enough to change the match result. The non-offenders appealed but my ruling was upheld.

2. The same day the appeal from the welsh ruling was resolved, I was rung for a ruling was from an EBU event. A couple of telephone calls to TDs and I ruled (before the end of the match): score stands. The non-offending side appealed and this time I was overturned. The AC gave a weighted ruling (some proportion of bidding and making game), which this time was enough to change the match result.

The threat of going in the psyche book

At the national level, the EBU has a procedure for recording psyches: they are classified by the tournament director and a form goes back to the EBU. If a pair is thought to have developed a parthnership understanding that is not permitted or is not being properly disclosed, then the record of the pair can be investigated from the forms. The coverage of suspicious auctions is very patchy but the process of recording the hands by the tournament director can be relatively non-confrontational.

At lower levels, the procedures are usually less well defined, even if they exist. The procedure usually involve a “psyche book”, even if such a book does not actually exist. The notional purpose of the psyche book is to record psyches, but as I have discovered, its main purpose if for established players to intimidate their opponents by threating to put them in the book.

Long ago – and far away

Playing in a league match, I psyched 1♠ – presumably I was third in hand, not vulnerable against vulnerable, with not many points and not many spades (two, I think). Partner dutifly raised to 3♠ ahd we played there, drifting a few off. As soon as it became clear I had fewer spades than I was supposed to, LHO (with the big hand) started to erupt. At the end of the hand, players from other tables assembled to help with the situation and soon it felt like all the players in the teams-of-eight match were gathered round the table – except for my partner and me, who were sent to the far end of the room (in disgrace?). I am sure that there was much discussion of putting me “in the psyche book”, although given that the sponsoring organisation was the league, it probably did not have such a book. Eventually play resumed, with no adjustment, although I am sure the opponents (and some of my team) thought I had cheated.

Years ago – but not so far away

My first introduction to the local concept of the pysche book occurred when a player talked to me for advice. Apparently a hand they had bid had been recorded in the psyche book but the player only learned of this after the event, and the pair had not been given a chance to explain their actions. I looked at the hand and it did not look like a psyche and certainly nothing that looked like a concealed partnership understanding. It turned out that the TD's reasons for recording the hand had nothing to do with psyches and “recorded in the psyche book” was a bit of smoke screen.

More recently and not far away

As TD, I was asked for a bid to be recorded “in the psyche book”; since the player who asked was also a TD (and had directed at this club far more ofthen than me), I presumed he knew what he was talking about. I duly took a note of the hand on an EBU “report of hand” form. After the event, I got in touch with the powers that be, only to discover that there is not psyche book and no procedures. Again, this appeared to be sabre rattling, and totally lost of the player complained of.

Iain [M] Banks

Author Iain Banks (sometimes Iain M Banks) died today, it was not unexpected, but still sad.

My first Iain Banks book was The Bridge, which I bought in Edinburgh while working on the Festival Fringe. Although it was nearly midnight the bookshops were still open, which stuck me as very civilized. Only later did I realize that the bridge in the book is based on the Forth Bridge near Edinburgh.

After that I read the lot, from the The Wasp Factory onwards, including the science fiction — The Player of Games was a big favourite. I also really enjoyed the radio adaptation of Espadair Street and the whole family enjoyed The Crow Road on TV.

It is very sad to think there will never be another Iain Banks book.

Plans for the New Year 2013

Get a new laptop — this one still has problems with angle brackets (<, >) and (semi)colons, which makes writing HTML a bit tricky. I could type “&lt” for < in the last sentence, but the semicolon at the end still has to be cut-and-pasted. The computer is also falling apart in other ways — I had to borrow a different one for the last event of 2012 and it did not have all the right hardware drivers.

A number of county and national events coming up in the first few months of the year, in between I have to fit in a trip to Bad Honnef – Germany for the EBL Tournament Director's course.

The EBU is planning to revise the Tangerine/Orange/White books this year. The obvious areas to be addressed are regulations for alerting/announcements and permitted conventions, but they also want to ensure that the documents only contain material that is accurate and relevant. I am helping by reviewing some of the material in the write book — to see if some of the material can be reduced by a third (or a half).

Last year, I responded to the open invitation from the WBF LC and sent in suggested changes for sixteen or so laws, all from issues that had come up in this blog. In many cases I was just suggesting changes to the wording of the laws to enable the law to operate as intended (this was the sort of changes WBF LC said they were looking for); but I did suggest changes to completely change the law, so that it could operate at all (for example, law 27).

To an extent the motivation behind the blog has been satisfied by the responses to the WBF LC, and there has been less to say on the “new” (2007) laws as the years have gone by. I intend to continue to document the ups and downs of being a TD and some of technical and practical issues. I am constrained by avoiding maligning or embarassing players or TD colleagues whose actions I might describe unfavourably. The EBU TDs have a new code of conduct which requires that internet discussion does not disclose identities. The problem is that incidents that are interesting are rare, and in the small world of English bridge it is difficult for the events and the partipants not to become known.