pran, on Jul 16 2010, 09:45 AM, said:
Is it your opinion that Law 86D should apply to the side that was so lucky as to make 1520 or 2220 (depending on the vulnerability) and they be awarded an assigned adjusted score according to this result converted to IMP? (After comparison with what?)
One of my techers in physics once taught us a very valuable principle to be applied whenever we wanted to test if something was reasonable:
Vary the premises to become extreme and see if the result is still reasonable.
In this case I vary the score on the different board to an extreme. If Law86D should be applicable in your situation it should also be applicable in my hypthetic case. And conversely it you find it outrageous to give a law 86D adjustment based on a board result 1520 or 2220 then it is equally outrageous to apply Law 86D in your situation.
Suppose that 7NT is indeed cold on this supposed board, but the other way. The auction goes 2H (weak) by us, 2NT overcall by them which gets passed out. 13 tricks are claimed on the lead and we look forward to a great score because the other table will be in at least game or the small, even if they don't bid 7. Now, if the board at the other table is cancelled (and something similiar happened to my team mates last year at brighton) because as the board was thrown to their table a loud remark was made from the passing table "You're right, you can make 7 on any lead". This rightly causes the board to be unplayable.
In the old laws we would get +3 each way. The new laws permit the director to award us a game or small slam swing (or some combination) if he thinks it's likely that would have been reached at the other table. In similar case we got +11 and they got +3.
I think it would not be unreasonable for the director to give us the benefit of that board even if the reason for cancelling were that the board was incorrect at one table. Of course, the logical extreme to this is to consider what if the other board were completely different, but able to make 7H, but our team mates had a similar auction to 3H passed out, made 13. Would 86D allow us to award 15 imps to the other side, resulting in a final score of +15 / +15 for the board? I think it probably should, but if you disagree, then I don't think you can use 86D to give just one side a favourable result in the OP.