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.