[mich-b]

Ok , this is the story:

Semi final of the country's teams championship. Top 4 teams (from 12 in the Premier League) qualified after several weekends of play. This can be easily considered the most serious and prestigious tournament around.

The Semi Final is scheduled for 4 segments of 14 boards. Team X has a carryover of -14 IMPs. After they play the first segment (and lose 2 more IMPs, so now they are down by 16, with 42 board to play), one pair of team X informs the director that they wish to resign and go home, since they think "their chances to win are gone". Since resigning during a KO match is generally allowed , the director approves, and they go home (the other pair very unhappy with this).
The other semi-final is of course played for 7 more hours...

Do you think there is something wrong in this pair's behaviour? Are there laws against it? What would you suggest doing? Would you make some kind of ethics comittee look at it?

[pooltuna]

mich-b, on Jan 3 2010, 09:46 AM, said:

Ok , this is the story:

Semi final of the country's teams championship. Top 4 teams (from 12 in the Premier League) qualified after several weekends of play. This can be easily considered the most serious and prestigious tournament around.

The Semi Final is scheduled for 4 segments of 14 boards. Team X has a carryover of -14 IMPs. After they play the first segment (and lose 2 more IMPs, so now they are down by 16, with 42 board to play), one pair of team X informs the director that they wish to resign and go home, since they think "their chances to win are gone". Since resigning during a KO match is generally allowed , the director approves, and they go home (the other pair very unhappy with this).
The other semi-final is of course played for 7 more hours...

Do you think there is something wrong in this pair's behaviour? Are there laws against it? What would you suggest doing? Would you make some kind of ethics comittee look at it?

this behavior is of course ludicrous since -16 IMPS with 42 boards to go is hardly an an amount that can't be reached in the remaining boards. If they are going to give up this easily why did they enter in the first place? IMO this is just poor sportsmanship!! I would be inclined to see if this was essentially a planned bye for the remaining team so some investigation is needed.

[Ant590]

Smells fishy unless one of the team was feeling unwell.

[Ant590]

But then again, if you were being unethical you would come up with a better excuse than "our chances to win are gone"...

[Aberlour10]

mich-b, on Jan 3 2010, 09:46 AM, said:

What would you suggest doing?  Would you make some kind of ethics comittee look at it?

If the other top bridge player from this counrty will hard deliberate in the future about taking a pair with such "engagement" in their teams...I think this behaviour will be punished simply by the life!

Robert

[glen]

Top bridge players are very highly competitive (understatement) - for a pair to drop out losing by 16 IMPs with 42 boards to go implies there are other undisclosed reasons, which they may not want to tell others about. As noted above, even if absolutely nothing further is done, there is a big cost to this pair in the future as nobody can trust them as teammates.

[aguahombre]

Aber and Glen's Darwinian "natural selection" theme is, of course, correct. But, wow!! This really happened this way? Brutal to the other pair, hurtful to the allure of the event itself, potentially unfair to the winning team of the other match (stamina).

Do the event organizers have the authority to bar this pair from future events?

[spwdo]

people do that on bbo in massnumbers several times a day and are not punished for it(unless it becomes an excess) so why get all excited over it when its life one can advocate.

I say, hars punishment is in place, online and offline

[barmar]

There's a big difference between a national championship and playing on BBO. Many people don't take online playing seriously, and drop out for the slightest reason (they're often playing with pickup partners, and decide they don't like them) but obviously that's not what was going on in the original scenario.

[MFA]

I don't see what can be done about this. If the official regulations allow the team to withdraw then that's how it is.

[Fluffy]

If they had this planned they would had played a suicide first segment and collect enough loss so that resigning sounded acceptable.

I believe that if the tournament is top level, finding substitutes from somewhere, even if they are not worth the level should be encouraged and not banned.

[barmar]

Teams resign in major tournaments all the time, although not usually so early in the match. But if a team is down 100 IMPs with 15 or 24 boards to go, many of them will give up.

The Laws do say that you're supposed to try to win. Resigning when you still have a realistic chance (it only takes two game swings to overcome a 16 IMP deficit) could be considered a violation of this. It seems like they were trying to get around the CoC that prohibits dropping out of the competition for no good reason.

[jonottawa]

Need more info.

If the pair had a win 100 card in the first set and their teammates brought back a lose 102 card, I could see where they think their chances of winning are zero.

If the pair had strong reason to believe their teammates were cheating, I could see where they'd want to withdraw.

I don't think this merits any sort of investigation, but I'd certainly be reluctant to play on a team with this p'ship absent a compelling explanation for their behavior.

[Jlall]

Natural social penalties will get these guys, they will never live this down/be forgiven and it will be hard to find good teammates with this on their record.

[Poky]

mich-b, on Jan 3 2010, 03:46 PM, said:

Do you think there is something wrong in this pair's behaviour?

It depends.
Did they play for some club?
How did the other pair play the 1st segment?

[jjbrr]

there is obviously more to this story. its impossible to judge without all the info.

[Mbodell]

mich-b, on Jan 3 2010, 06:46 AM, said:

Do you think there is something wrong in this pair's behaviour? Are there laws against it? What would you suggest doing? Would you make some kind of ethics comittee look at it?

Yes.

Not if the CoC allow one to withdraw.

Change the CoC to not allow a withdraw if you don't want this to happen - otherwise hope the occurrence gets publicized so people know what happened and the social pressure kicks in.

Not at all, if the asked to withdraw and the director allowed it then there is nothing to look into IMO.

[hotShot]

Well the excuse is lame, but before throwing stones on that pair we should consider that they had a reason that they thought deserved some privacy.

Maybe a player has health problems, e.g. chronicle pain or was just informed that a close person died or had a accident. I bet you can up with something yourself that would distract you, so that you just know you would not be able to focus on bridge for days.

Lets be a little creative here, I bet you all would tell everyone starting with your teammates and your national bridge organization , that you have to go home because your wife had a nervous breakdown when your child had just been arrested for shoplifting.

Do you really think CoC could prevent someone from withdrawing is such a case?

[Fluffy]

Jlall, on Jan 3 2010, 09:39 PM, said:

Natural social penalties will get these guys, they will never live this down/be forgiven and it will be hard to find good teammates with this on their record.

Maybe they will get some penalty at the top level bridge of there, but on a lesser level it will be kinda the contrary from my experience:


Some years ago a lady was banned from a club for a couple of months for cheating. When she came back she couldn't handle to play all the people that asked her.

Lanzarotti lives around here, and he is getting sponsors.

There was some kind of similar incident like this, althou sitation was much more desperate, on the venice cup when spanish ladies withdrew Vs USA1 since 3 players retired and the other 3 couldn't fight alone. Will they get social penalty for retiring? Oh no, they qualified among the top 8 teams of the world. Kinda the contrary. Let alone that only several people (less than 10) know what actually happened.

[Hanoi5]

Quote

Let alone that only several people (less than 10) know what actually happened.

And of course you'll let us know about it, or else, why would you tell us you have such a secret?