[jillybean]

What should happen if at some stage during a game (ACBL), 2 hands (W&S) are returned to the wrong slot in the bidding tray? The mistake is not noticed until after the game has ended and the results have been announced.

[barmar]

The TD should try to determine when the swap happened, and then rescore the board as a fouled board. In ACBLScore you can use the FOUL command to do the adjustments (it can even handle the board being fouled multiple times in the session -- has anyone ever had that happened?).

[bluejak]

jillybean, on 2010-December-17, 09:12, said:

What should happen if at some stage during a game (ACBL), 2 hands (W&S) are returned to the wrong slot in the bidding tray? The mistake is not noticed until after the game has ended and the results have been announced.

The board should be scored in two parts, called sub-fields, one with the original hand, one with the amended hand. You cannot compare scores between the two sub-fields. I do not know whether ACBLScore automatically handles sub-fields.

In many jurisdictions a sub-field of fewer than four results is scored in a special way. I neither know whether this applies in the ACBL nor know whether ACBLScore does this automatically.

Assuming you are not scoring by hand, any good scoring program deals with hands with fewer than the maximum number of scores on routinely: you do not need to know the details of how - most programs use Neuberg.

Note to Scorebridge users: it comes with default of simple scoring or something, which means no Neuberg. You should immediately switch on advanced scoring which means Neuberg. Jeff Smith's program automatically uses Neuberg.

Incidentally, if the hands were switched that usually means that someone touched someone else's cards: I would consider a PP even at club level.

[jillybean]

Thanks. BTW, I have never heard of a PP being used at a club game.

[blackshoe]

PPs at clubs are rare — and IMO more rare than they should be. There seems to be a fear that if you issue a PP, half your players will immediately quit coming to your game. I don't believe it.

In the case at hand, I agree with David. Some player did something that he should not have done ("no player shall touch another's cards" - Law 7B3). Those words I bolded are a pretty strong admonition, so should get a PP "more often than not" (Introduction to the Laws).

[bluejak]

To me it is more than just that a player did something he should not have: players are always doing that. But when someone at another table is inconvenienced it is time to start thinking of PPs even in club games.

[mycroft]

Yes, ACBLScore handles fouled boards - the FOUL command, as posted above. Tell it which times it was played in the fouled configuration and it does all the rest for you.

Yes, if the board was played fewer than four times in one configuration (fouled or unfouled), then there are special scorings (A=, A+/A-, A+/A=/A-, from memory - it's in the Tech files for those people still handscoring).

By far the hardest thing to do with this is find out where it was fouled. It's easy if 3NT is making for four rounds, and then it's always 3C= or 3H-1 the other way the rest of the time; but when one card gets switched, it's sometimes not easy to be sure (especially because the first 3NT-1 might be the table it was fouled on, when the two worst pairs played it (badly) rather than the first table after it was fouled (and the king was offside this time).

Also, by far the most common use of this is misboarding in sections scored across-the-field. "Director, when *I* played this hand, I opened the North hand sitting South..." is one of the worst things to hear. (yeah, non-pre-duplicated hands, ACBL tournaments, I know the drill).

[blackshoe]

bluejak, on 2010-December-17, 12:21, said:

To me it is more than just that a player did something he should not have: players are always doing that. But when someone at another table is inconvenienced it is time to start thinking of PPs even in club games.

Well, yes, and I was going to say something about other tables being inconvenienced, and got sidetracked. But also it seems to me that there are degrees of "did something he should not have", and the Introduction to the Laws explains those degrees, and the closer what they did comes to "a serious matter indeed", the more willing the TD should be to award a PP. Even in a club game. But many club TDs don't seem to consider that aspect — to them, awarding any PPs at all is anathema, and that's just wrong.

[Phil]

ACBLscore handles fouled boards incredibly easy.

This has happened to me once. The biggest challenge, especially if you do not have hand records is even identifying when it has happened. Its only when people chat about the board, since club results are usually kind of random anyway.

[jillybean]

---

This is how the hands should have been distributed, and this was the auction at my table.
West and South hands were swapped, south bid 2♥ as 'majors'

Now that I've looked at the results some more I see that the board was fouled between
the 2 sections, not during the session.

We had 2 sections of 10 and 11 tables. Section A played this board, with W/S hands swapped.
N/S played in part score on all but 1 table where N/S must have been in 4♥=

Section B E/W all played in a game, making for all but 1 table that went down 2.

We have a dealing machine at the club now, how can this happen?

[Phil]

jillybean, on 2010-December-17, 16:46, said:

---

We have a dealing machine at the club now, how can this happen?

A dealing machine will not make this mistake. When players hand duplicate boards these things happen occasionally.

Players pull the hands out of the board and spread them on the table. What usually happens is a card gets shifted and one has 12 and the other 14. Rarely will two hands get switched, but it does happen.

[jillybean]

Phil, on 2010-December-17, 16:59, said:

A dealing machine will not make this mistake. When players hand duplicate boards these things happen occasionally.

Players pull the hands out of the board and spread them on the table. What usually happens is a card gets shifted and one has 12 and the other 14. Rarely will two hands get switched, but it does happen.

So the machine operator put the wrong cards in the slots on one set of boards.

[Phil]

jillybean, on 2010-December-17, 18:56, said:

So the machine operator put the wrong cards in the slots on one set of boards.

Probably not.

[McBruce]

Phil, on 2010-December-17, 20:38, said:

Probably not.

As one of the directors at the club in question I can say that it is certainly not impossible. An operator can be distracted.

More likely might be this type of scenario: one player at the table where the boards are initially placed does not hear the announcement that the boards are 'ready to play' and pulls out the West and South cards to shuffle before being stopped by someone who has heard the announcement. Back they go, in the wrong slots.

[gordontd]

Phil, on 2010-December-17, 20:38, said:

Probably not.

It's possible. The boards are out of order, and the operator notices that, for example, Board 22 has been dealt in Board 23. So they get changed over by hand and a mistake can easily be made in the process.

[jillybean]

I have spoken with the director now. They did say it must have been an operator error when the hands were placed in the boards. The resolution, instead of scoring across both sections,the 2 sections will be scored individually.

[jillybean]

gordontd, on 2010-December-18, 05:06, said:

It's possible. The boards are out of order, and the operator notices that, for example, Board 22 has been dealt in Board 23. So they get changed over by hand and a mistake can easily be made in the process.

Bruce will correct me if I'm wrong but I believe this machine does not insert the cards into the boards.

[gordontd]

jillybean, on 2010-December-18, 09:53, said:

Bruce will correct me if I'm wrong but I believe this machine does not insert the cards into the boards.

Then that would make it even easier to misboard.

[pran]

jillybean, on 2010-December-18, 09:53, said:

Bruce will correct me if I'm wrong but I believe this machine does not insert the cards into the boards.

gordontd, on 2010-December-18, 10:18, said:

Then that would make it even easier to misboard.

Having worked with card dealing machines (of the type where the operator takes the cards manually from the machine to the boards) since 1991, I can assure that even with such machines operators hardly ever put cards to the wrong slot.

The operation soon becomes a fixed routine, and unless the operator is interrupted somehow he automatidally puts the cards the same way from board to board without even thinking.

[McBruce]

pran, on 2010-December-18, 15:30, said:

Having worked with card dealing machines (of the type where the operator takes the cards manually from the machine to the boards) since 1991, I can assure that even with such machines operators hardly ever put cards to the wrong slot.

The operation soon becomes a fixed routine, and unless the operator is interrupted somehow he automatidally puts the cards the same way from board to board without even thinking.

Our situation is that we've had the machine a month, so some of our club directors are just getting into their second dozen boards with it. I think my scenario is more likely.

The other thing that gordontd mentions below reminds me of a specific problem with these types of machines, which read not barcodes but the actual corner of the card. When the machine encounters a trouble card, one that it cannot read, or thinks it has already seen in the current deck, it stops. Often you can reverse the position of the card in the hopper and it continues without trouble. But occasionally you get a card that for some reason the machine will not read in any orientation. The approved procedure here is to substitute another deck, or a similar card from another deck. But, not wanting to replace decks quite that often, what actually happens is that the operator will pull the card and continue dealing, while he looks at the onscreen hand record and places the problem card into the correct slot. The machine will then stop at 51 cards because (usually!) the next card is from the next deck and has already been read. Now you hit cancel, sort out the problem and go to the next deal.

Trouble is, if you forget to go to the next deal it will assume you want to deal the previous deal again, the approved procedure. In some cases you can go four or five deals before you notice that the board the machine is dealing is not the one you have ready to accept cards. Now you have to backtrack and transfer cards from board to board. This is a possible source of error. (I try not to do this, it is almost as fast to redeal the deals as it is to transfer them. But our newcomers to the machine have not yet discovered this...)

Anyhow there is really NO reason to abandon across the field scoring just because a board is fouled. Gimme the details, jb, I'll make sure it is correctly handled.