BBO Discussion Forums: Did the wrong team win trials (Appeal Board 69) - BBO Discussion Forums

The Committee ruled against Moss' appeal. But shouldn't
Meckstroth have been required to continue with HK?

If the deal had been as follows:

Declarer QJ32 A654 64 A84

W Eric KT7 JT83 83 T965 .....E A94 KQ QJT52 J72

Dummy 865 972 AK97 KQ3

DJ led and won by K, S to Q which won, club to dummy for
second spade where it went T-J-A. Now HQ, long tank by West.
and finally H3 from Eric (encouraging).

The easy way to beat the hand is to continue with HK.
If declarer ducks again, Jeff leads a second round of clubs.
Declarer is screwed. His spades are not yet developed,
so if he wins C in dummy and leads a spade, Eric wins
and exits a diamond.

Declarer is down to SJ H A6 _ CA, dummy S_ H9 D97 C3
and Eric has S- HJT D_ C T9 so whether declarer leads H
or C from dummy Eric gets a heart at the end, to supplement
the defenses 2S and 2H up to that point.

If Declarer wins second C in his hand and leads a S,
Eric wins SK and exits with HJ or a diamond, holding
declarer to 2S 1H 2D and 3C tricks.

And Moss WOULD open that 11 HCP hand with BOTH majors.
In that 15-board set he opened two other 11's.

So maybe Moss should never have been given a chance to err.

I didn't watch this board.

Can someone provide some more detail instead of "what could have been"?

Nickell won by 16, how could 12 make the difference?

Hanoi5, on 2012-May-07, 09:04, said:

Because Moss was demoralized in the immediate hands
that followed, and the team did some shooting near the end
when, with a narrower margin, more straightforward play
might have made the difference.

it is very hard to follow your diagram, you really should try using the hand diagrams BBF provides. Giving some help about what actually happenend at the table and what was ruled would also be wellcome. Its not like everyone in the world is talking about this hand you know?

chudecek, on 2012-May-07, 09:45, said:

Fluffy, on 2012-May-07, 09:49, said:

I know from nothing about BBF hand diagrams, but I will look. Point well made.

Everyone in the world SHOULD be talking about this hand because it
was significant in International team selection.

I would be very, very surprised if the Moss team were demoralized and/or thrown off their game by this result.

Did the fact that they were now stuck a fair bit when the match would have been much tighter play into the outcome? Maybe, but surely not because of morale issues.

And as so whether the decision was wrong, we don't have the benefit of knowing what was said before the committee. I don't even know who the committee was, but my expectation is that it included some very strong and knowledgable players and that the arguments put forth were cogent.

We are all familar with the 'oh *****' types of rulings where one shudders at the outcome, but those are usually late-night committees where the directors struggle to put together a committee, and the skill/knowledge level of the panel may leave something to be desired.

Here, tho, I think that a complaint of this sort does a disservice to the committee and to the teams. I only watched part of the event, but I was struck by the uniform high level of play and the competitive spirit, apparently accompanied by courtesy and mutual compliments.

It's easy to second-guess, but unfair to do so without knowing more.

Btw, since the players knew they intended to appeal (and could have expected that Meckwell would appeal had the atb ruling gone against them...actually, I don't know who appealed), how could they be 'demoralized' on the next few boards?

most of the commentators said that Moss errored anyway.
He should have won A♥ and then lead back up to J♥
at table playing A would have have brought down Meckstroths now stiff Q♥
he had KQ♥ only to start with

but even so if Moss team hadnt bid slam on board 119 the match would have been a virtual dead heat going into last board
Nickell team had to plus on board 120 +100 and +90 which gave them 5 imps and put them out of over appeal range.



at time when Meck got in he played K♥and Rod went into tank for quite a while and played I believe 3♥ which should be encouraging, TD was called after Meck got out I believe a spade.
Moss then hooked J♥ losing to stiff Q♥
oops Meck played hearts in reverse Q first sorry

mikeh, on 2012-May-07, 10:08, said:

On the actual hand, East played the D10 after the HQ held - and declarer, who on the actual hand
held Heart AJ54, and possibly was mesmerized by his RHO's tank, misplayed the hand by playing a heart to his Jack, losing to East's King, where a heart to the ace safety play would have worked.

I reckon that Moss saw this right after the hand, DEMORALIZING himself. In fact this may have been pointed
out to him at the table. And if you don't think the entire team was demoralized by this whole incident and ruling,
you don't know bridge players' psychology.

but in a 120 hand match there are always several hands each way that are demoralizing....these are big boys, in a match that long that have to get on to the next hand cause the last one is over.

board 118 Meck made the bid and play that allowed the opps to rectify the count against 4♠ there are gems like this littered all over the place in a match this long

chudecek, on 2012-May-07, 10:35, said:

And I don't think you know who you are talking to, or at least I hope you don't.

chudecek, on 2012-May-07, 10:35, said:

We can and probably should agree to disagree on the impact of this board on the players: only they know what, if any, impact it had.

Having said that, my take on it is that if Moss was in any way demoralized, it would be because he may have felt that he should have got it right at the table. Indeed, if I were to speculte on why the committee upheld the result, it would be because they saw his line as a bridge error.

As for bridge psychology, I am not in the same league as the players involved, but do know some of them to varying degrees, including being a teammate of Fred's in two WC, before he moved to the US and found himself a better class of teammate . If playing with us didn't demoralize him, and I don't think it did, then I doubt that much could.

Also, while I know the USBC is a bigger deal than the CNTC, I was once the playing captain of a team that had a grand slam swing upheld by what we all saw as a bad director call in the KO stage of the event....in a close match. The ruling put us behind when we should have been ahead. This didn't demoralize us...it got us good and mad and determined. And we knew, as did Moss, that a committee was available to at least in theory undo the damage caused by a bad ruling, if bad it was.

In the meantime, I think that posting a complaint about this board, without knowing the details of the committee, and asserting that a WC player like Moss, and his WC teammates, were demoralized is unfair to them, to their opps (by tarnishing their victory) and to the game itself.

mikeh, on 2012-May-07, 10:08, said:

And if they were, would you want players who can be thrown off like that representing your country?

It's possible that the result caused them to vary their strategy later on, but I don't think there's anything we can do about that. It's hard enough for a committee to make judgement calls about what would have happened on a particular hand absent some irregularity, but trying to estimate the impact on later boards is totally infeasible. Not to mention that I think it would be against the Laws of Duplicate Bridge.

The only real solution to this is to have a different method of selecting teams for international competition. We could still have a tournament, but winning it wouldn't automatically qualify you. There would also be an expert panel of judges, and they would use the tournament results as input. Perhaps the top 4 teams in the tournament would be nominees, and the panel would then choose among. Or maybe we would only resort to using the judging panel if the margin of victory were less than some threshold (I'm always reminded of the year when the Bermuda Bowl was won by only 1 or 2 IMPs -- such a close match after 128 boards seems statistically insignificant, and could have been decided by a sneeze momentarily distracting a player).

mikeh, on 2012-May-07, 11:15, said:

If the play had gone the way it did, thru the DJ return after Jeff's HQ won, let's say that Moss wins high D in dummy, and makes the "safety play" of a heart to his Ace. AND NOTHING HAPPENS - LOW LOW LOW.
He now uses his last entry to dummy - the high club - and leads dummy's last heart. Rodwell on his right wins HK and cashes the long club. Defense wins 2H 2S and one club. And Moss' partner asks "What kind of a safety play was THAT?" And Moss says: "I am demoralized!"

There is a lot more to this hand than folks are allocating to it.

chudecek, on 2012-May-07, 08:39, said:

I doubt Brad Moss would open this hand.

Whether or not a team is "demoralized" by a director-ruling, its impact on the score-line may affect its play. Reasonably enough, however, the laws don't allow for this.
FWIW, IMO, on the sparse facts available, the director should rule for declarer. It's irrelevant to the ruling whether the line is (arguably) inferior, provided declarer avoids serious error. Naturally, a top expert regards any possible lapse as serious. Mercifully, the law assesses error much more leniently.

cherdano, on 2012-May-07, 12:37, said:

In the same 15-board segment Brad opened board 68 on 11 HCP in second seat vul,
and board 73 as dealer on 11 HCP: AQJxx Qxx Jxx Jx.

If he is opening these, he is opening with both majors.

I don't think that you need to have been demoralized, in order to adjust your strategy in the closing stages to take into account your running score as you enter those closing stages.

To that extent, this result could have been influential in the outcome of subsequent hands, even if Moss retained his coolest head.

I just heard about what happened in the hand. I now think there's some reason for the Diamond team to feel offended.

I would have pretty much preferred that the Director ruled against Meckwell and that the committee changed the result afterward (if that is the correct ruling) but I sincerely wouldn't let a player go free after thinking without any reason. Of course, this is just my opinion, and I'm not in said team or director's group or committee, so it doesn't really matter.