[jillybean]

Scoring: MP

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A sub joins the hand as declarer on trick 7. NS4 EW3 No one at fault, apparent disconnect.

W leads 10♠ taken with A♠, there is an obvious line for 9 tricks (♠, 2♣, 2♥) but sub plays K♦ for –2.
Do you adjust board 3N making or is it tough luck for the sub and remaining player?
(Assuming no time to describe the 6 previous tricks to sub.)

I know this isn't the Bermuda Bowl and there are no points, prizes or reputations at stake, I would like to know what is the correct way to deal with this. I did adjust to 3N=, to me it was an obvious line, the majority of tables played 3N=.
I told the opps why I was adjusting the board before I made the adjustment and got no response, positive or negative.

tyia
jb

[Echognome]

I personally think your question is touching upon a very difficult question. I don't believe the laws of bridge are really set up to handle these types of situations. In face to face bridge this is such a rare occurrence that there is no need to have a provision for what happens if a player leaves in the middle of a board.

In my opinion the fairest solution would to be to give the sub a review of the tricks played and then let them carry on playing. Of course this is not he most practical. For practical purposes, I encourage declarers to claim when there is a sub as a defender. Other than that, I would say you can take 1 of 2 views.

1. The sub and sub's partner are just out of luck. It was the partnership's fault that they needed a sub and therefore the sub's partner has to bear any risk of having a sub. The sub implicitly agrees to such risks when subbing and therefore they should just do the best they can. No adjustment.

2. There is no one that is really culpable except for the person who disconnected. (This is especially true in an individual.) Therefore, we should do all we can to restore equity by either asjusting to an obvious result on the board if it is clear or determining that the board is fouled due to the fault of neither side and award average plus to both sides.

I would be interested to hear other TDs opinions on this subject as I cannot imagine the equivalent problem in face to face.

[paulg]

Although the Laws are clearly not aware of this possibility, I would expect a competent TD to resolve this problem.

I think it is clear that all four players are non-offenders but there has been an infraction (South's departure). A result has been achieved on the board, and so you should adjust to achieve equity (from the point of infraction) rather than rule fouled board (Law 12C2, I believe).

Seems like you did very well

Paul

[helene_t]

It would be better to assign some arbitrary score. Letting a sub declare a trick 7 often makes no sense.

[inquiry]

It is unfair to more than just the sub and his partenr to let him flounder here. All the other EW at all the other tables are damaged if you allow this travesty of bridge to occur (that is, you not only disadvantage NS here, you damage a bundle of EW... Let's assume this is a six board event and this is board 4 all vul. EW just got a gift of 12 imps. +12 imps an only six boards if they are average everywhere else is still a great overall score. It can be enough to completely change the leader board.

I think the only solution in situations like this is assign AVERAGE to both sides and more on. But of course, that is just my humble opinion.

[paulg]

inquiry, on Sep 26 2005, 02:02 PM, said:

It is unfair to more than just the sub and his partenr to let him flounder here. All the other EW at all the other tables are damaged if you allow this travesty of bridge to occur (that is, you not only disadvantage NS here, you damage a bundle of EW... Let's assume this is a six board event and this is board 4 all vul. EW just got a gift of 12 imps. +12 imps an only six boards if they are average everywhere else is still a great overall score. It can be enough to completely change the leader board.

Although the logic is correct and Ben's view is perfectly sensible, I do not believe the Laws support injustice to other players (not at the table) as a reason to adjust the result. Although online tournaments tend to be a lot shorter than offline, I believe the same principle should be maintained in this area.

Quote

I think the only solution in situations like this is assign AVERAGE to both sides and more on. But of course, that is just my humble opinion.

Once a result has been obtained I believe the UK TDs will strive not to award average(+/-) scores but look to deliver equity (as I mentioned earlier). In this case it would result in the same outcome.

But of course, this is just my humble opinion too. Hopefully a real TD will post!

Cheers

Paul

[inquiry]

cardsharp, on Sep 26 2005, 10:43 AM, said:

Once a result has been obtained I believe the UK TDs will strive not to award average(+/-) scores but look to deliver equity (as I mentioned earlier). In this case it would result in the same outcome.

I am less sure that a "result" has been achieved on this board. True, with two good hearts, two good clubs, and a spade, 3NT can make. But this assumes declarer plays his tricks in the correct order including the eventual overtake of the ♥King. We see this is what "should happen" and any intermediate or higher player would surely be able to mangage their 5 tricks here if they had been awake at the table. But it is not entirely clear all players would go this way. Nor would I feel comfortable "Telling" the sub what cards have been played, so he could finish the hand. Some people have hard time "visuallizing" the play from such a description (And time also doesn't allow it anyway).

IF it is clear that only a ridiculous line would fail to win the necessary tricks, then I think assigning a average is fine. How was the sub to know the diamond king wasn't good (maybe he can cash two diamonds, two hearts and the spade ace from his point of view).

BTW, if EW were on their way to a good score (lets say that making only 3NT would be win EW two imps as most of the field were making 5, then I would assign score of average +/- or maybe go ahead and give 3NT=. There is no reason to punish EW for departure of South. And if no other pair bid 3NT NS or EW had blown the defense and all other NS's were going down? This is problematic I guess, but I still assign Averages....

[david_c]

cardsharp, on Sep 26 2005, 03:43 PM, said:

Once a result has been obtained I believe the UK TDs will strive not to award average(+/-) scores but look to deliver equity (as I mentioned earlier). In this case it would result in the same outcome.

I've made several posts on BBF complaining that TDs give averages when they shouldn't after a result has been obtained. And yet, here I agree with Ben: this is precisely the sort of situation where you can't get a result on the board. The fact that the sub proceded to play a few cards doesn't really count in my opinion - if he doesn't know what's going on then he's not playing real bridge.

So in general in this sort of situation I think we should be assigning A++. This is the standard adjustment when a board cannot be played but neither pair is at fault.

Having said that, if 3NT= would have been inevitable, then it seems reasonable to adjust to that instead. I don't think there's any right or wrong here, as the Laws don't have much to say about subs (for obvious reasons).

[paulg]

inquiry, on Sep 26 2005, 02:56 PM, said:

I am less sure that a "result" has been achieved on this board.

I'm not convinced either, but it seems that the departure was late enough in the hand to enable an adjustment rather than averages (+/-) which I dislike.

Quote

BTW, if EW were on their way to a good score (lets say that making only 3NT would be win EW two imps as most of the field were making 5, then I would assign score of average +/- or maybe go ahead and give 3NT=. There is no reason to punish EW for departure of South. And if no other pair bid 3NT NS or EW had blown the defense and all other NS's were going down? This is problematic I guess, but I still assign Averages....

As there is no reason to punish EW if they were getting a good score, is there a reason to let them escape a poor score if they had already blown the defence?

Another general comment about UK TDs, they do NOT look at the other scores on the hand prior to making a ruling.

[inquiry]

cardsharp, on Sep 26 2005, 11:29 AM, said:

As there is no reason to punish EW if they were getting a good score, is there a reason to let them escape a poor score if they had already blown the defence?

Another general comment about UK TDs, they do NOT look at the other scores on the hand prior to making a ruling.

But one can look at the hand.. there is no way to look at all the other boards btw short of jumping table to table or right clicking a lot of players... But even in the UK, I guess the director can look at the hands?

[paulg]

inquiry, on Sep 26 2005, 03:31 PM, said:

cardsharp, on Sep 26 2005, 11:29 AM, said:

Another general comment about UK TDs, they do NOT look at the other scores on the hand prior to making a ruling.

But one can look at the hand.. there is no way to look at all the other boards btw short of jumping table to table or right clicking a lot of players... But even in the UK, I guess the director can look at the hands?

Of course.

What I intended to mean was that looking to see if everyone else made 3NT is not what the director should be doing, prior to making a ruling. However I see many inexperienced TDs appearing to do this.

p

[card_judge]

There is another solution to this problem. First do not allow the dummy to view all four hands. Next if declarer becomes disconnected dummy will play the balance of the hand. At the next deal a sub or returning partner my then play on.

If dummy does not pay attention to the prior plays of declarer so be it but they must finish out the hand one way or another.

Adjustments or TD intervention not required.

♥ ♥ ♥

[jillybean]

I am perhaps am using the results of other tables incorrectly. Time permitting I use the results to check what I think is the ‘obvious line’. If I had believed a contract to be –1 but on checking other tables saw that “experts” took a different line to make the contract then it would be reasonable for me to revisit my initial decision. Not an ideal situation but better than relying on my knowledge only?

jb

[candybar]

Technically, if the hand cannot be played normally, all pairs not at fault get A+. So if this happened in live bridge and the hand had to be abandoned halfway through (for example an emergency called a player away), both sides would get A+.

The Laws also state that one of the functions of the Director is to restore equity. If the board is clearcut 3N= across the field, it is very reasonable to adjust to that score.

Online, I tend to handle each situation individually. If the played cards are easy, I tell the sub (ex: 3 diamond tricks, 2 trump tricks gone). If not, I see if the line is absolutely clear and tell the declarer to claim x tricks. If can't do that, I let them play it out, but if the result is abnormal because of the sub, I adjust the score to A++, A==, or to an expected common result.

I think, jillybean, that you did the right thing on this hand. If 3N= was the normal result and would most likely have been the result without the crash, then adjust to it.

These decisions are very hard when the environment is less than perfect and rushed. The best thing to do is keep the underlying principles of
(1) no fault gives A+, and
(2) restore equity
always in the back of your mind and do the best you can within those principles.

[rigour6]

The practicalities of this are:

1. If I have time and it's early enough, I send the new declarer a private message telling them what has been played. I usually limit this to hand where 4 tricks or less have been played, because i) I am liable to misstype and ii) it does give the player a written record of the cards played, which actually places them at a greater advantage than if the sub hadn't happenned.

2. If I can, I stick around to see what happens and if things go off the rails in a way I suspect will hurt the field (the software doesn't exactly make it easy for me to know for sure), I may average the board. I am generally loathe to do that though, because in a number of cases the error is in the BID, not in the play. There are more disconnects when a miscommunication lands the partnership in an unmakeable slam for example, than when 3 finesse tries in a row all fail. So averaging in that case isn't very fair. Also I am concious that it doesn't really matter anyway, since no one is winning anything and at matchpoints, it may not make a huge difference. I don't say this as a philosophy of directing online tourneys ("it's all for fun and the points don't matter" is more a philosophy for the host of "Who's Line is it Anyway?" than a bridge tournament), but it might be how I'd view this.

3. If I am off to another table, the new sub may be sol. After all, I've got some things to do, including possibly blacklisting the disconnected player, which isn't the easiest thing either. If their partner complains (especially in any indy), I may average the board though.